The name had been a natural selection. Mayhem had been their call sign in Vietnam.
Nowadays, to make a legitimate income, the Kings had several sources of income: prostitution, pornography, custom choppers, and tattoos.
We owned a brothel called The Den. A few miles outside of Destiny, The Den was pure high-class shit. A place where both the average Joe and the executive could enjoy the finer comforts of a pleasurable establishment in the company of clean, beautiful, and accommodating women.
The Den was managed by Megan, a tall, dark-haired beauty with a knockout body and killer Egyptian eyes. Seriously smokin’ hot, she had a way about her that grabbed your attention and kept you mesmerized. Her voice was husky but as smooth as bourbon, and she had a way of slow blinking that you felt all the way to your goddamn balls. Megan and I had a weird relationship. A strange kind of mutual respect for one another. She got me. And I fucking admired her head for business—as well as the way she gave it. Yeah, we’d gone there numerous times. But we both knew the deal. There was nothing serious. A head job here and there, and the occasional night spent in her big bed. But nothing more. It suited both of us just fine.
The brothel aside, the Kings also ran an adult entertainment production company that included adult movies, as well as sexual documentaries. You know, sex for dummies, that kind of thing. It made the club a fuck load of money and staved off the need for us to look for other lucrative, yet illegal, means of income—like drugs and guns. Which suited me just fine, because just like my grandaddy, I hated that shit.
Our movies were made in our studios just off Highway 54. A place aptly named Head Quarters. It was an old converted warehouse, fully equipped with all the amenities of a well-appointed production studio, and guarded by security guards with guns twenty-four hours a day. Guards who went by the names Bubba, Tank, and Gigantor.
Other interests included a strip club in town called Spank Daddy’s—which was definitely not high-class shit like The Den, and a security detail service that was completely off the books.
Before I got so involved in club business, I used to work at Sinister Ink, the tattoo shop that bordered our clubhouse. Next door to that was our custom chopper shop, Shadow Choppers, run by a creative mastermind called Picasso. His custom paint jobs were legendary throughout the South, all the way up through the Bible belt and across the northern borders.
After visiting Jackie at the funeral home and helping Mom and Lady with some of the funeral arrangements, I headed out to Head Quarters to check out how things were going. It was Tuesday, and every Tuesday and Friday I checked in with the production manager, Tito, to make sure everything was running smoothly. Tito was a creepy looking pervert. Four-foot nothing with ill-fitting suits and a combover, he liked things a little weird. I had busted him jerkin’ his gherkin once. Not so unusual, until you factor in the detail that he was wrapped in Saran wrap and Vaseline, and rocking backward and forward on a big black dildo stuck up his ass. I’d shown up just in time to see him squirt the money shot all over his hands.
Like I said, he was a little odd. But damn he knew the porn business, and damn he was good at managing our interests.
So what if the oddball liked it a little weird?
As long as he didn’t get up in my face with his creepiness and kept things going well at Head Quarters, then I didn’t give a fuck.
Today he was in a fluster about God knows what. While I had been at the funeral home, he had rung my cell, hollering about not putting up with this craziness and if I didn’t come and sort out this insanity then he was going to go where his genius was appreciated.
Pulling into the parking lot of Head Quarters, I saw a cherry-red Mustang convertible parked by the front door, and Tito’s meltdown started to make sense.
That cherry-red Mustang was a warning to batten down the hatches.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered as I parked my bike next to it, and shoved my aviators into the front of my cut. “This is going to be fun.”
INDY
Now
After hanging up from Anson, something in the distance caught my eye. It was at least a mile up and it looked like a plume of dust or smoke rising up off the side of the road.
“What the hell?”
As I got nearer, I noticed a woman kneeling in the dirt on the side of the road and the air around her was thick with a settling cloud of dust. I quickly pulled over and hurried out of the car, my skin tingling with the same electrical charge I had right before an emergency came into the ER.