The Quiet Man (McGarry Stateside Book 3) Read online

  One of the chapters in Shure’s book had been “You Are Who You Say You Are”, but it had made redefining yourself sound a lot easier than he’d found it to be. Mad Dog had started trying to refer to himself as “Manzano” or just “boss”, but nobody had followed suit. They’d just given him funny looks when he did it.

  The Razorbacks had a hard-won reputation. They could bring the pain if they needed to, and they were solid if you held up your end of a bargain. Only a fool would dismiss the importance of reputation. When you were running a criminal enterprise like theirs, it was your single biggest asset. You could have all the guns, product and men you wanted, but if people didn’t fear you, you were in trouble.

  He’d been surprised to find out from Johnny Shure that those big companies were the same. The stock market was all about reputation. If people believed you were making money and handling your business, your price went up. If it looked as if you were weak, then the price went down and the vultures started to circle. Reality didn’t matter – perception was everything.

  None of this was to say the Razorbacks had an issue in the rep stakes, but you couldn’t rest on your laurels. If his five years as leader had taught Mad Dog anything, it was that you had to stay vigilant. Problems happened fast and came out of nowhere. You could never show weakness. Any hiccups at this point would be particularly unwelcome. He was in the middle of leading the gang in a new direction, and the last thing he wanted were distractions.

  They were all in his large office in the back of the Razorbacks clubhouse, way out in the Mojave Desert off Route 50. It was a great location. Far, far away from anywhere. Nobody could end up here by accident, and you could see law enforcement coming from miles away, literally. Even a drone would have to be nearly in space to stay out of view, thanks to those blue Nevada skies. The desert also made it really easy to get rid of any problems. You could bury them, or just let the buzzards and whatever else take care of it. The Mojave will devour whatever you give it if you know how to feed it right.

  There were six other members of the gang sitting around the room. It wasn’t like an ordinary organisation. You had associate members, members who’d wandered off, gone straight or were serving time. Staffing was a “fluid issue”. Mad Dog had been looking to up their manpower, which was why they had the four pledges. The need to expedite the process was also how they’d ended up with four candidates who were not of the highest calibre. Until now, Mad Dog had only suspected that was the case, but today had confirmed it.

  He needed to handle this carefully. Dimes was back out of prison and he’d been next in line for the top job before he’d gone down for six years on an attempted murder charge. The man had ambitions. Mad Dog could feel his rival’s eyes on him at all times, assessing, looking for weakness. This situation had to be dealt with right, or else Dimes would be whispering to the others.

  The four pledges stood vaguely to attention in front of him, a ragtag collection of black eyes, rising bruises, bleeding noses, and fractured or broken bones. Franco was wobbling, standing as he was on only one good leg. Gunnie held a dirty bandana up to his nose, trying to staunch the blood flowing freely from it. Mad Dog stepped back and looked at the floor beneath them.

  “Fair warning, babies. First one of you to bleed on my rug dies.”

  “Yeah,” said Mace with a giggle, from the far corner of the room. “It really ties the room together.”

  Then, there was the other problem.

  “Could we move this along?”

  The woman was five foot nothing, stoutly built for a chick, and South-east Asian, although she spoke with the deep husky growl of a longshoreman. She wore a leather jacket, Doc Martens and black cargo pants topped off with a nun’s habit over a bald head. Her scowling face was accentuated by a scar that ran down the left side, from just below the eye socket until it blended into the jawline. The skin there was red and puckered, and she had made no effort to conceal it. She also sported a patch over her left eye. It was quite the look.

  Mad Dog didn’t turn around. “I’m getting to you, Sister.”

  “It’s taking you long enough.”

  When Mad Dog and the others had returned, they’d found the pledges lying in a heap on the ground and the woman sitting where she was now, in the chair in front of his desk, training a shotgun on them. She’d put the gun down on his desk calmly and surrendered. Hell of a thing.

  They’d slapped some cuffs on her and Mace had checked her for weapons. He’d got too handsy and received an elbow in the throat for his troubles, having found nothing other than the mini-arsenal she’d already laid out on the table prior to their arrival.

  Mad Dog turned around and looked at the woman, who was still sitting calmly, her cuffed hands resting in her lap. “I don’t think you appreciate the trouble you’re in.”

  She hocked up some phlegm and spat on the floor. “Honey, let me explain something to you. Two years ago I was given six months to live. You want to put the fear into me, you’re going to have to work a whole lot harder than this.”

  Mad Dog placed his hand on the Glock he wore holstered at his hip. “I get it. You tried to break into my clubhouse on some kind of suicide mission, is that it?”

  “Tried? I resent the implication that I didn’t succeed in my endeavours.”

  “So, you wanted to get caught?”

  The woman rolled her eyes. “If I’d known you were going to try to talk me to death, I’d have just walked out into the desert. It would’ve been less tedious.”

  “Don’t worry. You are going to end up there, eventually.”

  This raised some chuckles from around the room.

  She glanced around. “Wow, you boys find that funny, huh? You should check out some Far Side cartoons. They’ll blow your tiny minds.”

  “She’s got a hell of a mouth on her,” said Dimes from his position leaning against the pool table.

  “Yeah,” said Mad Dog. “You high or something, Sister?”

  The woman cracked her knuckles. “Nope. Two years ago, when the Reaper knocked on my door, I gave up everything: drink, drugs, cigarettes, gambling, sex, chocolate, meat, killing and dairy.”

  “No shit?”

  “Yeah. Know what I miss most?” She looked around the room. “What I wouldn’t give for a Hershey bar. God as my witness.”

  “I thought nuns weren’t allowed to have sex?” said Mace.

  “Well, yeah. But I’ve only been a nun for two years, so, y’know.”

  “Nah,” said Dimes, “that ain’t right. It takes longer than that to become one. My auntie wanted to sign up.” He noticed the room looking at him. “What? She did.”

  “Well,” said the woman, “hard as this might be to believe, I’m not what you would call a conventional nun. I’m one of the Sisters of the Saint. We have a much more streamlined enrolment procedure. Technically, the order was ex-communicated, so we’re an independent group. Doing our own thing.”

  “How’d you get ex-communicated?”

  “How should I know? Happened in the seventeenth century, I think. I’m guessing we pissed off some men. That’s usually the way with these things.”

  “You some militant feminist thing?” asked Mad Dog.

  She yawned. “Why does every penis-wielding dumbass think any woman doing something is some feminist statement? I got shit to do. I’m not doing it for any other reason than to get shit done.”

  TT spoke up. “Chinese women can’t be nuns anyhow.”

  The woman raised an eyebrow. “We have a winner.” She looked up at Mad Dog. “I like to amuse myself by trying to guess who the dumbest son of a bitch in the room is. I’ll be honest.” She nodded towards Mace. “I’d assumed it was that monobrowed mouth-breather. Turned out I was wrong.”

  Mad Dog was beginning to find this woman extremely irritating. Clearly she was insane, but still, the attitude was annoying.

  “How well do you think you’d talk with a gun in your mouth?”

  “Not well at all,” she said, “b
ut take it from me, it’s real hard to get answers out of someone in that scenario. Are you guys new at this or something?”

  Mad Dog slapped her across the face.

  Her head jerked to the side and then she looked back at him and rubbed her cheek. “I’m going to remember that.”

  “Wait a sec,” said Nero, who, for the record, really was the dumbest person in the room. “Hang on – if you’re a pacifist, how come you beat the snot out of the babies?”

  The woman looked up at the pledges standing in line. “I didn’t say I was a pacifist. I said I didn’t kill people. None of them are dead, are they?” She considered the four individuals currently trying not to bleed on the rug. “Not that it’d be the greatest of losses. I’m not sure there’s a cure for cancer likely to come out of this particular brain trust. Still …”

  She indicated the shotgun resting on the table in front of her. “Bessie here shoots beanbag rounds. I got a few other tricks and toys.”

  Beside the shotgun lay some kind of Taser, a combat whip, a knuckleduster, a small pair of wire-cutters, her motorcycle helmet, and what could best be described as a titanium combat baseball bat. It certainly wasn’t League-compliant, not with those retractable spikes.

  “I got an ‘anything but’ policy. As long as it don’t kill you, it’s fair game.”

  “Did she use kung fu and shit?” asked TT.

  “Wow, dumb and a racist. You’re quite the package.”

  TT stood up, but Mad Dog stepped in front of him and placed an arm across the big man’s chest. “Easy. Easy. You’ll get your chance. We just need to figure out what the hell this is first.”

  “Has anyone got the right time?” asked the nun.

  “What?” asked Mad Dog, once he’d pushed TT back towards the lounger he’d been sitting on.

  “The time,” repeated the woman. She indicated the device on her wrist. “This stupid thing does all kinds of stuff, but I’ll be damned if I can get it to tell time.”

  “It’s three minutes to four, Sister,” said Dimes, standing up and moving towards her.

  Mad Dog didn’t like that, he was the one in charge. “So, tell me,” he continued. “That sweet hog outside yours?”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  They’d noticed it on the way in. It looked as if it had started off as a Harley with a sidecar, but the thing had been tricked out in a way Mad Dog had never seen before.

  “Nice,” said Dimes. “After you’re gone, it’s going to be mine.”

  “I’ll decide who gets the spoils,” asserted Mad Dog. He and Dimes locked eyes.

  “A little trouble in paradise, fellas? Fair warning, though. First man that tries to ride off on old Laurietta – that’s her name – is in for a nasty surprise. She’s booby-trapped. You’ll get your balls blown clean off.”

  Mad Dog looked down at her. “You can’t booby-trap a bike.”

  “I can’t, no. But I know someone who can. Her name is Zoya.”

  “She another of these crazy nuns?” said Dimes, laughing.

  “That’s right. She’s wicked smart too. A genius, in fact. That’s a rare thing, which makes it all the more surprising that there’s another one of them in this room.”

  Mad Dog and Dimes both glanced at the corner, where Arthur Faser sat, looking miserable. It was clear, for many reasons, that he wasn’t a member of the gang. He didn’t have any tattoos. He wasn’t wearing a cut – as in a vest with the gang’s logo and colours on it. Most obviously, he was bound to Nero by chains at the wrist and ankle.

  You couldn’t be too careful – at least, not with Arthur Faser. The man might have looked like nothing – short and scrawny, weighing no more than a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet. He wore glasses and looked permanently terrified. Despite all of that, he was indeed a genius of a kind, and central to Mad Dog’s big plan.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Mad Dog, trying to sound casual.

  The nun sighed. “Really? We going to pretend that none of us is aware of Mr Faser back there, and his party trick? The man also known as the Eel? The man who has escaped prison a bunch of times? He’s the Houdini of the penitentiary service.”

  “And what do you want with him?”

  “Same thing you do. I require his assistance to get somebody out of jail.”

  “Who says we’re doing that?” challenged Dimes.

  It was exactly what they were doing. Richard Ridgemont had been Dimes’s cellmate for part of his stretch in Waverley. Old Dick was a rich guy who’d got life without parole for a double murder, and he wasn’t enjoying the incarcerated lifestyle. He seemed short on regret for taking out his ex-wife and her personal trainer, even though it came out in the trial that the trainer really was as gay as Christmas.

  Ridgemont had let it be known that there was a cool ten million in it for anyone who could help him escape. It wasn’t something the gang had seriously considered until they’d been offered Faser’s whereabouts as payment for a past-due debt.

  “I don’t care what you’re doing,” said the nun. “Not least because you’re no longer doing it. I’m here to make you an offer.”

  Mad Dog looked around the room and smiled. He picked up the nun’s motorcycle helmet. It was a fancy-looking one – full face, with buttons on it. Must have a built-in radio or something.

  “Is that right?” he said, turning the helmet around in his hands. “You’ve come here to make me an offer?”

  “Sure. Be careful with that helmet by the way. Press the wrong button and …”

  “Let me guess – it’s booby-trapped too?”

  “What can I tell you? My girl Zoya has a peculiar kind of mind. It also has an in-built computer, night vision, and can hermetically seal itself.”

  “Wow. That must come in handy, Sister.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised.”

  “So,” said Mad Dog. “Fun as it is to hear about your crazy imaginary friends, what’s this offer?”

  “Right. Let me and Mr Faser go.”

  There was a pause.

  “And?” asked Mad Dog.

  “And nothing. That’s it. Come to think of it, it’s less of an offer and more of a demand.”

  “And what makes you think we will consider this offer?”

  “I dunno,” said the nun. “I, of all people, have to believe that all human beings are capable of change. I’m hoping you boys will start making better life choices before I have to say the magic word.”

  “You got some nerve, lady.” Mad Dog was growing really tired of this. “Let me get this straight. You’re making demands after we caught you in the act, breaking into our clubhouse. Have I got that right?”

  “For the last time, I wasn’t caught. I broke in. I did what I came to do, and then, after I’d dealt with your welcoming committee” – she nodded in the direction of the four pledges – “I waited for you to come to me. Are you really dumb enough to think you’re in control here?”

  Mad Dog slapped her again. Harder this time.

  Blood dripped onto her jacket. “Should I take that as a no?”

  “What?” said Mad Dog.

  “Are you turning down my kind offer?”

  “You are one crazy bitch.”

  “Mind your language. This bitch can say one word and make you cry.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “OK, I’m not getting any younger and you boys aren’t getting any smarter. Little tip: when you handcuff somebody, make sure you remove any unusual-looking watches. Otherwise, well …” She raised her now-uncuffed hands and shrugged.

  Her actions were met with confused exclamations all round.

  “If you think that was good, you’re going to soil your britches in a second.”

  Mad Dog towered over her. “I’m getting real sick of you.”

  “Likewise.” She smiled up at him through bloodied lips and raised her voice. “Shibboleth.”

  Nothing happened for a moment, but then Mad Dog heard beeps coming from several corners of the roo
m simultaneously. Smoke started to billow forth. Every one of the gang members leaped to their feet. Mad Dog turned around just in time to catch a glimpse of the nun’s head before it smashed into his face. He fell back onto his desk as he felt the bike helmet being ripped from his hands.

  The tear gas filled the room within seconds. His eyes and skin burned. He couldn’t breathe. As he choked, he stumbled to the floor, trying to find clear air.

  The second last thing he saw was the nun standing over him, wearing the helmet that could hermetically seal itself.

  The last thing he saw was a Doc Marten boot heading straight for his face.

  When Arthur Faser came to, he was sitting in the sidecar of a motorcycle that was heading down a desert road at high speed. His mouth and eyes burned fiercely. He coughed and spat.

  The bike came to a stop just in time for him to throw up without messing up the paintwork.

  “Sorry about that,” said the nun, as the engine died. “I had to knock you out. Easiest way to get you out of there.”

  Arthur looked behind them as the cloud of dust started to dissipate. “Shouldn’t we be getting out of here? They’re going to kill you for this.”

  “Meh. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that. They won’t be going anywhere for a while. I left a couple of other surprises.”

  “Here.” She pulled a plastic bottle out of a pouch. “Baking soda and water. It’ll counteract the tear gas.”

  “Right.” Arthur took it, splashed the liquid in his eyes and gargled with it. It did seem to help.

  “Better?”

  “A little.”

  “I’m Sister Joy, by the way.”

  “Really?”

  She looked down at him, unsmiling. “Really.”

  “And you want me to help break someone out of prison?”

  “Yep.”

  “Which prison?”

  “Longhurst, hopefully.”

  “Hopefully?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. He’s gotta get arrested first.”