Page 8 of Iron Will

“He’s fine,” I say. “Grumpy as all fuck, but he’ll live.” Grabbing my own pack, I fish out a cigarette and light one up to keep him company. “How’s Dos Santos?”

“Chaco had a little run-in with the law, he tells me,” Axel grunts, referring to the head of the Dos Santos cartel. “Local cops came sniffing around, looking for evidence of criminal activity. Luckily Chaco’s men managed to move the product to another location before the law arrived to check things out. But Chaco’s sayin’ they’re gonna need to lay low for a bit until the heat’s off them.”

The Dos Santos cartel is our main supplier of drug shipments from the south. Our relationship with them is crucial to keeping the pipeline open to the north, toward our charter club of the Lords of Carnage in Tanner Springs. Angel, the prez of the main charter, is looking to expand our business, but we can’t do that unless we have a steady and reliable supply of product.

If Dos Santos loses its grip on their territory, that puts all our plans in jeopardy. I know Axel is thinking the same thing.

“That ain’t good.” I take a drag on my smoke. “We gonna have a problem gettin’ shipments from them?”

“Chaco assures me we won’t,” Axel mutters, but he looks dubious.

“He have any idea how the cops got tipped off?”

“He said he didn’t. But I dunno. The fuckin’ turf wars between the cartels have been heating up down there. Seem unlikely the cops found out by themselves. Chaco’s been running that part of the pipeline for a while now, and he’s careful.” Axel blows out a breath. “We can’t rule out the possibility that one of the other groups is tryin’ to destroy the Dos Santos cartel by feeding info to the law about them.”

I nod. “Or that the local cops are in cahoots with one of them.”

“Yeah.” Axel’s face is stony. “Let’s not get too worried yet, but we gotta keep our eyes open on this.”

We finish our smokes and head inside. It’s late afternoon, and after the last couple hours, I’m in the mood for a beer. There’s no bartender behind the bar right now, so I go back and grab myself a bottle, then sink onto a stool and take a long swig. Axel, still looking preoccupied, gives me a quick chin lift and heads into the back.

The clubhouse is pretty deserted. In an hour or two, things will start to heat up, as they usually do. But for now, the only other brothers here are Rogue and Yoda, who are playing pool at the table in the center of the room.

Silently, I watch them play and give each other shit as my mind wanders back to the hospital. I’m still thinking about the little kid, her mom, and that asshole boyfriend of hers. At the time, I didn’t think too much further than getting the boyfriend out of the room so he wouldn’t be agitating Paisley. But now, as I sit and nurse my beer, I start to get a bad feeling about that whole situation.

The mom’s boyfriend’s name is Mickey, Paisley said. I haven’t seen him around town, but he looks like a lowlife, for sure. I should have stuck around at the hospital a little longer, tried to find out more about the guy. What his last name is, what his story is. If he lives with the mom and the kid. And if so, where.

“Hey, Yoda,” I call out.

Over at the pool table, he takes his shot, then lifts his head and turns toward me. “Yeah.”

“Need you to get some intel on a guy in town.”

“Okay. What’s the name?”

“All I got is his first name. Mickey. Had a run-in with him earlier at the hospital. His girlfriend’s kid is in the room across the hall. The guy’s a real piece of shit.”

“That ain’t a lot to go on.” Yoda leans his pool cue against the table and comes over to talk to me. “You got anything else?”

“I can describe him to you.” I give him the guy’s approximate height, weight, his hair and eye color. “He’s got tattoos on his fingers. The four card suits on his left, and that EWMN thing on the right.” I suppress a snort.Evil, wicked, mean and nasty, my ass. “Except the pinky of his right hand is gone, so it’s just WMN.”

“Good eye. Anything else?”

“Not about him specifically. Like I said, it’s his girlfriend’s kid who’s in the room across the hall from Bear. Kid’s name’s Paisley. I think they’re stayin’ at one of the motels in town, but I don’t know which one.”

Yoda thinks for a moment. “I can find out the kid’s last name, since she’d be registered at the hospital. There ain’t that many motels in Ironwood. I can check around and figure out where they’re at. Shouldn’t be too hard from there to find out who this Mickey guy is.”

I nod. “Good. I wanna know who he runs with. I wanna keep an eye on this son of a bitch. He gives me a bad feeling.”

There’s no way this guy’s any danger to me, or my club. I can tell just by lookin’ at him he’s too small-time for that. But I don’t like that he’s around Paisley and her mom.

“Sure thing,” Yoda agrees. “I’m goin’ over to see Bear in a bit anyway. I’ll do some snooping around at the hospital while I’m there. I’ll chat up one of the nurses or somethin’ if I have to.”

I snort. Yoda’s an ugly-ass motherfucker, but damned if he doesn’t know how to charm the pants off of women. I don’t know how the hell he does it.

“Thanks, brother.” I clap him on the back. “Let me know what you find out.”

“Will do.”