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“What’s this about, Jax? You don’t show up at asshole o’clock in the morning unless you got pressing business.”
Jax started toward the door, his patience wearing thin. He needed a piss and a place to put his head down for a few hours.
“Look, brother, we rode all night because we wanted to get here before the sun came up. I don’t want anyone knowing we’re here, not yet. I’m go
“He ain’t here,” Bag said, as if they might go away.
Opie grumbled. “You’re not go
The invocation of Rollie seemed to fully wake Baghead at last. “Nah, of course not, man, it’s just… it’s early.”
Rubbing at the corner of his eye with a knuckle, he stepped back to let them enter. Before Jax even crossed the threshold, he felt the weight of exhaustion descend on him, like he’d been holding it off until that moment. Opie and Chibs slung their packs off their shoulders and ambled inside, and Bag shut the door behind them.
“Bathroom’s up toward the bar if you need a piss,” Bag said, pointing past a huge metal door that must have been the beer cooler. Then he gestured the other direction, where another corridor branched off along the back of the building. “Jax, you know where the crash pad is. There’re two empty beds back there but plenty of pillows and shit, and there’s a sofa in the poolroom.”
“You’re not going back to sleep?” Opie asked him. “You said you haven’t even been down a couple of hours.”
Something was wrong with Baghead, but nothing that hadn’t been wrong with him for years. He twitched, glancing shyly away as if he was uneasy with anyone expressing concern about him. Sensitive guy for a sociopath, Jax thought.
“Nah, man,” Bag said. “I’m awake now. Sun’ll rise soon, and once I see the sun, I can’t even take a nap. I’ll clean up the bar. No worries, though. I’ll keep the clatter to a dull roar.”
He turned and walked past the cooler and the bathroom, headed for the bar, leaving them to their own devices. Now that they were inside and he’d assured himself they posed no threat, Bag apparently felt no inclination toward hospitality.
Jax headed along the back corridor toward the crash pad. They passed the poolroom, a small space with a sofa, a pool table, and a little bamboo tiki bar that looked like it had been stolen from the courtyard of some Vegas hotel. “I’ll take it,” Chibs said, tilting his head toward the poolroom. “Opie’s too tall, and we can’t have our VP on the couch.”
Jax gave him a nod of thanks and kept moving. The crash pad was actually two separate bedrooms with a third—a sort of TV room, from the look of it—between them. North Vegas was a tough crew. They’d thrown down with some savage clubs and come out on top, but there was something almost quaint about the setup, as if Rollie and his boys came from an earlier, more i
The bedroom on the left stank of stale beer and month-old vomit. He spotted a red-bearded monster in one bed, massive leg thrown over the side, sleeping like he’d been hurled onto the mattress by an angry god. Thor, Jax remembered, still doubtful that it was the big son of a bitch’s real name. There were two other beds in there, one of which was occupied by a little olive-ski
The other room had only two beds, one empty and one occupied by a man named Joyce, who had a bull’s-eye of ugly burn scars where a member of the Iron Heart MC had held his face to a stovetop coil. Jax hadn’t intended to involve the charter—that would defeat the whole purpose of their coming down here incognito—but a sense of dread took up residence in his skull like a ghost in an old dark house. He forced himself to shake it off. “Get some rest,” he told Opie.
He went and dropped his bag beside the empty bed. Then he laid down and closed his eyes. Around the edges of the heavy blackout window shade, he could see the glint of predawn light.
Despite the long night’s ride, it was quite some time before Jax managed to sleep.
7
The next time Jax opened his eyes, the sun was burning around the edges of the blackout window shade and the temperature in the room had gone up twenty degrees. He felt grimy, as if he’d been sweating through the night and it had dried on him, stiffening his clothes. Stretching, he glanced over to see the other bed empty, and he wondered what Joyce had thought when he’d woken to see SAMCRO’s VP sleeping nearby.
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and dragged his sneakers on. His wallet chain clinked quietly as he stood and swiped a hand across his tired eyes. With a groan, he shook himself, wet-dog style, and glanced around for a clock but didn’t find one.
The rest of the crib was abandoned, with no sign of Chibs, Opie, or any of the SAMNOV guys, so Jax returned the way he’d come in the early morning hours. The poolroom sofa was vacant as well, but Joyce stood by the table with a cue stick in one hand, studying the arrangement of the balls. After a moment, he realized that Jax was watching and glanced up.
“You snore,” Joyce said.
“We all have our faults,” Jax replied.
Joyce chuckled, his smile causing his burn scar to stretch grotesquely.
“What time is it?” Jax asked.
“Too early to be up and too late to go back to sleep.”
“Any chance you could be more specific?”
“Going on 10 a.m. Antonio called Rollie about an hour ago. I haven’t seen him yet, but I’d guess he’s out front already.”
Jax nodded. “That bacon I smell?”
“We got a grill in the little kitchen by the bar. Thor likes to cook breakfast.”
“He any good at it?”
Joyce gave a small shrug. “Couldn’t make a decent pancake to save his life, but his eggs are fantastic. You’ll see.”
Jax made his way to the front of the building, stopping only to empty his bladder on the way. The main bar area took up about half of the building itself, mostly oak beams and thick floorboards soaked with decades of spilled beer and smelling every year of it. There were no shining brass railings in this place and no mirrors on the walls—the clientele the Tombstone Bar drew in weren’t too fond of staring at their own reflections. There were booths and tables with mismatched chairs, simple and to the point. Behind the long bar were racks of alcohol built up like bookends on either side of a huge marble grave marker with Rollie’s full name on it. The damn tombstone was the only thing in the bar that looked like anyone ever bothered to clean it.
“Morning, Jackson,” Rollie said, rising from a stool near the plate-glass windows at the front of the room. His hair had more salt than pepper these days, and his gut had belled out a bit since Jax had last seen him, but he still exuded the same combination of warmth, intelligence, and mischief as ever.
“Rollie,” Jax said. “Thanks for the hospitality.”
Chibs and Opie were seated at the bar with Antonio, Thor, and Baghead, all of them digging into plates of breakfast. Opie raised an eyebrow and gave a nod, silently letting Jax know the food had his seal of approval. Chibs didn’t even look up, and Jax had to smile. It had been a long ride, and his own stomach growled at the fantastic smells coming from the little kitchen.
Rollie shook Jax’s hand and clapped him on the shoulder.
“If you’d let me know you were coming, I would’ve at least had the boys change the sheets back there,” Rollie said, frowning in disapproval.
Anyone else, Jax would’ve doubted it, but he took Rollie at his word.