Free The Devil's Redhead by David Corbett Page A

waxy. A user’s pallor. Frank said, “If I told you to come over to my house, fuck my old lady, it’s cool. Would you do it?”
    â€œHell, yes,” Mooch said. “You got a first-rate old lady.”
    Chewy said, “Tell me what’s wrong, Frank.”
    Frank kept his eye on Mooch. “You want a shot at my old lady?”
    â€œHe didn’t mean anything,” Chewy said. “Frank, what’s wrong.”
    â€œNo, I want to hear this,” Frank said. “Mooch, you want to splay old Lachelle Maureen? You’ve met her what, twice? Or am I wrong about that?”
    â€œFrank—”
    â€œAnswer my question, Mooch.”
    Mooch took a step back. Eyes to the ceiling, he murmured, “Oh, man,” and drank from his beer.
    â€œLook, Frank,” Chewy said, “I admit, you didn’t tell us outright, you know, ‘Check out Lonesome George.’ But we thought, hey, you brought him up, you told us who he was and all. Now, I mean, if he’s gonna make us …”
    Frank closed his eyes and put his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose, pinching hard. A riot of dots materialized on the backs of his eyelids.
    â€œIt’s all right,” he said. “Forget it.”
    â€œFrank …”
    â€œForget it,” Frank said, louder this time. He stood up. To Chewy, he said, “Drink your beer.” He turned to Mooch then, and gestured for him to come close. Mooch took one step forward, no more. Frank reached across the space between them and put his arm around the boy’s shoulder. Whispering, he said, “What you just did? Don’t do it again. Understand?”
    He met the boy’s eyes. They were wild with cocaine, vaguely insolent, uncomprehending. Frank removed his arm and headed for the door.
    â€œHit the hump, boys. Time to do the deed.”
    Frank went to his truck, started it up, and left with the twins following behind. As he drove back out through West Pittsburg, he found himself not thinking about the fuckup brothers or even Lonesome George. He was thinking about Felix Randall.
    One of the last of the old biker chiefs, Felix controlled the Delta underworld from his salvage yard out near Bethel Island. He’d suffered a little in stature when the Mexicans made inroads during his last stint in prison. To make matters worse, he’d been diagnosed with throat cancer while at Boron. They transferred him to Springfield for the tracheotomy, which the prison doctors botched. Despite his ruined larynx and his years off the game, now that he was out again he was hell-bent on proving one thing: He ruled the Delta. Not the Mexicans, not the Chinks or the Vietnamese, not the rival biker gangs. Him.
    Frank’s connection to Felix was through Roy Akers and his brothers, who conceded to Felix’s control. They paid their tithe to a pair of enforcers named Lonnie Dayball and Rick Tully. Others had proved slower studies. They had to see their crank labs fireball, or their chop shops bombed, or their indoor pot farms raided by county narcs tipped by Felix’s people to realize: You Do Not Sideball Felix Randall. A few guys died, learning that.
    Only the Mexicans stood up to him now. They had labs up and down the valley, Fresno to Redding, and the Delta was no exception. With what they paid the illegals who manned those labs, you could cop an ounce of chavo crank for almost half what Felix was asking. Moving up the wholesale chain, the prices got even more ridiculous. Frank, whose mother had been part Mexican and had driven into Mexico routinely to score cheap speed, saw a little humor in this development. He doubted anyone else in his circle shared this view.
    Only a few weeks ago, one particularly unlucky mojado had been dragged from a lab out on Kirker Pass Road, stripped naked by Day-ball and Tully and the Akers brothers and fastened to a eucalyptus tree with cattle wire and molly screws. Gaspar Arevalo, age