Page 11 of It Takes a Thief

“Muldoon!” cried Fox. “I knew a sociopath named Muldoon in my travels.” Fox was a former hit man for the Jones cartel. If there were sociopaths to be known, Fox was our man. “Damn, that guy was a few clowns short of a circus. He once left twenty legs as a warning for Ortelio Jones. Just the legs, all arranged in a neat row like can-can dancers. And yeah, they were all womens’ legs, all Mexicans, probably trafficked. There were rumors he was into toon porn because once, when we almost hit him, he had to leave so fast he left a full-on bunny suit behind.”

“That would be furries, not toon porn,” said Speed, ever knowledgeable. “They dress up in furry costumes and bump uglies in the night.”

“No, it was toon porn,” Fox said with authority. “We found a video showing that Family Guy’s wife getting pile-driven, the usual animé, and Judy Jetson giving George a skull job.”

Duji shook his head with wonder. “Kids these days.”

“He wasn’t stupid,” said Fox, “which made him more dangerous. He just had splinters in the windmills of his mind, if you know what I mean.”

I did. “You think he’s working for Zelov now? Why else would he be up there? That’s where their feeble shack of a clubhouse was, last I heard.”

“Hot Stuff. Tread lightly with this Noodlum,” said Slushy. “A pile of Mexican legs is a good sign that you don’t want to get all up in his shit.”

“They’re up in ours,” I said darkly to our lawyer.

Wolf exploded with a lip fart so resounding it made a few guys jump in their chairs. “Holy motherfuck! Ford! This guy has crossed the fucking line, man!” He stretched his arm out to hand me his phone. I whipped it from him and read:

Woman Wearing Too Much Makeup Mistaken as Clown, Attacked by Angry Mob.

Highlighted with a photo of my wife, Madison.

It was a photo taken from her hospital’s website, but she wasn’t wearing anything that would identify her as a nurse. She was just smiling from the shoulders on up, her little chipmunk features all shits and giggles, and she definitely didn’t have too much makeup. The article went on, and I read aloud.

“Madison Illuminati, the wife of Bare Bones MC Prez, Ford Illuminati, was taken into custody last night in Cottonwood when her makeup scared bystanders into thinking she was a menacing clown come to lure their children into the woods.”

That’s how far I got before I slammed Wolf’s phone into the wall, and my men erupted onto their feet.

Some punched walls, too. “Men, men!” shouted Slushy. “Calm the fuck down!”

Duji waved a finger in my face. “That’s the limit, Ford! That’s the fucking limit! These motherfuckers have pushed us over the edge!”

Sax shouted, “This is their first fucking inroad, and you know it won’t be their last!”

Faux Pas intoned between clenched teeth, “We need to have a sit-down with these dirtbags.”

Everyone was making too much noise for me to talk. I just closed my eyes and thought Yes. We’re having a face-to-face.

We were all going to the wall for each other. Someone was going to pay for this libel. God would do the accounting when it was over.

CHAPTER FIVE

MADISON

I waited for Ford all night.

I guess I got a little bit tipsy while waiting. I used to say, well, if he’d only get home at a reasonable time, maybe I’d be sober. But what else to do while waiting for your man hour after hour?

It was always impossible to sleep if I’d expected him at seven and it was now eleven with no phone call. I used to tell him look, I don’t care if you’re late, I understand it. It’s your job and shit happens. But just call me! Text me! A simple little text would save me all this agony.

But he never did. Not once, I don’t think. He said he didn’t like looking at his texts because there were so many unanswered ones it made him feel overwhelmed. Well just look at the current one from me. Ignore all the others. No. He said he was obsessive-compulsive and would have to read every one. Then just delete them! No. There might be something important on there.

It went around and around like that, with the result that I never texted him cute photos of Fidelia or Niko, like Niko taking his first steps, Fidelia sitting on a cat, both at a birthday party, using little bows to shoot little suction arrows.

I was there for all of it. Ford was there for none of it.

So yeah, I drank. And smoked weed out on the deck. And snorted my Tango & Cash. Drinking was the only one I didn’t need to hide from Ford, although I suspected he’d started smoking weed too. It was hard to hide the scent of that shit even if you went outside to do it. It followed you like a cartoon dialogue balloon.

My favorite drink was gin. Gin and tonics with a lime squeeze. I’d sit in my office—our house had six bedrooms, so Ford let me have an office of my own—looking out over the sun feathering the waves, the billows, the sandstone spires of Mescal Mountain. I was glad from this side I couldn’t see the Citadel, the source of so much pain for me. Whenever there was a job to be done, whether it originated with the construction company or the club, it came from the Citadel at the abandoned army airfield.