“Not as much as you probably want,” Rook said with a sigh.
He looked sleepless—eyes red-rimmed, lids swollen, and purple smudges underneath. The jumpy nature of his movements said he had a shit ton of caffeine in his system.
I didn’t have much hope for what he had to say if he’d been without sleep.
“Whatever you have now is more than we have.”
“Roach’s real name is Rodney Harris.”
“Rodney,” Syn snorted as he came into the common area.
“Says someone named Syn,” Sway shot back.
“Fair. Is my brother here yet?”
“He looked like he was on his way, but Mike’s beater pulled up,” Rook explained.
Saint wasn’t living fully at the club yet, thanks to being on parole and needing to be around for random checks. Sure, Mike Ellers—with his four ex-wives, alimony, and child support—was easy to bribe. But we tried not to push shit too far with his easygoing nature.
“You can fill him in later,” Slash said. “Rodney Harris…”
“Has a criminal record,” Rook continued. “His juvenile record is sealed, but if it’s anything like his adult record, he’s been a problem his whole life.”
“Prison?” Slash asked.
“One short stint for solicitation. Mostly jail, though. For a revolving door of things: more solicitation, possession, pandering…”
“Pandering?” Syn asked.
“Nice way of saying pimping,” Slash explained. “Why didn’t he go away for any bids?”
“Fucking luck,” Rook said. “Charges got reduced, witnesses didn’t cooperate or disappeared, sat rotting in county for how long he would have gone away to prison. He just kept slipping through the system. And he’s never triggered the three-strikesbecause the felonies were mostly non-violent. But make no mistake, he’s violent.”
“How do you know?”
“The girls he used to pimp,” Rook explained. “Anytime they got pulled in on a solicitation or drug charge, they were roughed up. The mugshots are… ugly,” Rook said.
The man saw a lot of fucked-up shit.
So if he said it was ugly, that was really saying something.
“Maybe she could be one of his former girls?” Slash proposed, looking at me.
“I dunno. Anything is possible.”
“I dunno,” Rook said. “The description you gave me doesn’t match any of the girls I came across. I mean, it’s entirely possible that she just never got called in.”
“Or maybe it was a sibling,” Saint said, making us all turn to find him striding into the room. “Big sister, bet she’d do anything for a little.”
He would know.
He’d done years to save his brother.
“I’ll dig deeper,” Rook said.
“After some sleep,” Slash demanded. “Did you find out anything else about Roach?”
“All those charges, they stopped about two years back. Since then, he’s fallen off the radar. Can’t even find a current address for him.”
