Vindication: A Motorcycle Club Romance (22 page)

“Holy Jupiter shit,” said Kevin, his
voice like sandpaper from years of heavy chain-smoking. “When the fuck did you
blow into town, you son of a bitch?” He came out from around the counter with
his arms open wide and embraced me tightly, even if I had to bend over a bit to
make it work. The ancient metalhead smelled like cigarettes, pot, and pine. He
was one of the original thrashers of the Seattle scene, and had forgotten more
about music and the rocker lifestyle than I would ever know. The Graveyard Club
was his baby.

“Only a few days ago,” I replied,
clapping him on the shoulder. “I’m really fucking glad to see this place is
still here. I’d heard some things.”

“Oh man, lemme tell ya,” said Kevin
as he crossed his arms in front of his chest. He shook his head. “Things are
bad in the scene, Noah. Venues are closing left and right. It’s not like it
used to be.”

“Are you in trouble?” I asked, my mind
wandering to the secret stash of cash I kept buried in my yard at home. He
didn’t know it, but I’d give up everything I had to keep Kevin and the club on
its feet.

“Nah,” he said, stretching out the
last syllable with a wave of his hand. “Things are slow, but they’re not all
that bad.”

“If they get that bad, you better
fucking tell me.”

“I will, I will!” he said. “Lemme get
you a drink. You staying for the show tonight? It’s gonna be a rager.”

As I looked around the room, I
couldn’t imagine anywhere else I’d want to be. “Fuck yes, I am. On one
condition.”

“Anything, my boy.”

“We don’t talk about why I’m home.”

Kevin’s face fell a bit into a
worried hangdog expression. There was no way he hadn’t heard about it, just
like everyone else around here. Hell, he probably heard about it first,
considering his connections in the industry. He shook his head. “We don’t have
to talk about anything like that, Noah. I’m just glad to see you.”

Relief flooded my veins. “I’m glad to
see you too. Not quite glad to be home, really… or rather, home seems like it’s
not glad to see me.”

“Fuck these idiot townies,” said
Kevin immediately. “They sure like the wolves until they prod one into biting.
No one’s going to fuck with you in here, you understand? This is your home.”

I smiled. “Thank you, Kev.
Seriously.”

“Don’t mention it. You still a
Jameson man?”

~
TWO ~

Laurel

FIVE DAYS LATER

I’d packed very particularly, but it felt like I’d
left my confidence in a bag somewhere between the red-eye flight I caught last
minute at JFK and the layover in Denver. In ten minutes I had strewn my hotel
room with dresses and jeans, black shirts and bright tank tops, trying to find
some magic combination of clothing that made me feel invincible. Or hell, just
make me feel okay.

I never got this nervous before a
job. What was wrong with me? Maybe it was the shitty airline food messing with
my blood sugar.

As I rifled through my bag, the sound
of the TV blaring a commercial for the local news affiliate caught my
attention. “Tonight at eleven—we speak to the childhood friends of rock star
Noah Hardy about his latest legal trouble. And Seattle PD is in hot water
again—you won’t believe why. Tune in.”

I shook my head at the news anchor,
as if he could see me. Childhood friends, eh? Someone was desperate for a lead.

Finally, I unearthed the shirt from
the depths of my bag and threw it on over my head. It had been a long time
since I’d gone for this particular look, but as I wandered into the glowing
white hotel bathroom, I had to give myself a smile. Ten years old and my
torn-up skin-tight black jeans and band shirts still fit like a dream, accented
by a studded, black leather belt. The combat boots, well… I had never really
given those up.

My makeup was scattered out across
the counter in a constellation of colors. I was going to need more than I
usually cared to wear. In the debris field, I found a half-broken compact of
deep maroon eyeshadow and used my pinky to sweep it across my eyelid in thick
lines. It took me three false starts to get the swoop of my black eye liner
just right, looking like the elaboration of a wrought-iron fence at the corner
of my big, blue eyes. I’d splurged for a salon cut and color before I left New
York, and my shoulder-length blonde mane was looking better than it had in
months. Workaholics tend to push salon visits down to the bottom of the to-do
list, but then, this wasn’t my usual job.

“All right,” I said to the skinny
girl in the mirror. “You can do this.”

Something was missing. I looked
myself up and down in the mirror’s reflection and decided it was lipstick I
needed. I pulled out the brightest red from the counter mess and painted my
pursed lips in the mirror.

“Oh, yeah,” I said with a grin. “He’s
toast.”

I flipped the TV off and grabbed my
leather jacket from one of the chairs near the window before double-checking
that I had all my necessities: phone, wallet, keys, lipstick, pocket knife. I
left the hotel room a mess and headed down to the lobby.

About halfway through the bright,
high-ceilinged room, Steve appeared from out of the tiny gift shop with a
plastic bag. He was older than me but athletic and good-natured, and I hadn’t
seen him since we checked in yesterday. He’d been sick on the plane something
fierce, but at least his face had some color now. His eyes widened as I
approached.

“Holy shit,” he said. “You look
great. DTF for sure.”

“Oh, fuck you,” I said with a flip of
my middle finger.

“No, fuck
him
,” said Steve,
pointing his finger up and over my head. I turned to look at the giant flat
screen TV hanging over the fireplace. Another commercial for that story about
Noah Hardy blared with a still photo of the rock star, his shirtless, tattooed
chest exposed as he screamed like a banshee into a microphone at some concert.

“Yeah, right,” I said absently. “So,
what’s the deal, are you feeling better? You still look a little queasy.” We
ignored the businessmen and tourist families moving around us as we spoke.

Steve gave an earnest shrug and held
up the plastic bag from the gift shop. “Better, but still bad enough I needed
this. I think I’d just be holding you back if I came out with you tonight.”

I bit my lip, concerned. “I’d hate to
miss an opportunity if it comes along…”

“So don’t,” said Steve. “You don’t
have to wait for me to get this started. I’m basically back-up, right?”

I pulled out a piece of paper from my
jacket pocket and made him take a picture of it with his phone. “I went around
to some of the record shops today and did some asking. Took me a few hours, but
I’ve got a couple different sources that think Noah and Duke are both in town,
roaming around, but the others haven’t been spotted.”

Steve made a thinking noise as he
overlooked the list of clubs I had given him. “They could just be trying to
impress a pretty girl.”

“It would not be the dumbest thing a
man has done to impress me,” I said, and meant it. “Nevertheless, there are
enough similarities in the stories that my gut tells me it’s worth checking
out.”

“So, what’s your plan?”

“One of the record store owners says
he’s heard Noah’s looking for new band members, scouting out his old hardcore
haunts, and the like. A couple other dudes said they’ve seen him at shows in
the last two weeks, so it seems like a safe bet to get out to some and see if I
can’t stumble across him.”

Steve nodded and put his phone in his
pocket. “That’s good. That’s clean. Doesn’t sound like me spending the night
with some room service and Pepto Bismol is going to slow you down even a
little.”

I shrugged. “I am pretty good at what
I do.”

“And I must give the obligatory dude
speech of ‘please don’t get yourself into trouble…’ ”

I held up a palm and shoved it slowly
onto Steve’s mouth until he was muttering gibberish and half-smiling underneath
it. “No, you mustn’t, unless you want some trouble yourself. I’ll check in with
you tomorrow and see how you’re feeling, tell you how the night went.”

“Knock ‘em dead, Laurel,” said Steve.
He clapped a friendly hand on my shoulder and headed for the elevators.

I growled as I slumped into the driver’s
seat of my rental car. It took me two tries to get the key in the unfamiliar
ignition, but once I did the car flooded with warmth and made me feel a little
better. I hadn’t even been in the Funhouse long enough to let the engine cool
off, despite the chilly, wet Seattle night. The car smelled like pine and moss,
a combination that surprisingly sent a feeling of calm through my nerves. With
eyes closed, it was easy to imagine I was out in the middle of some quiet
forest, instead of idling in a dive bar parking lot after a night of failure.

I pulled the list of clubs from my
pocket and used a red sharpie to make an X next to the Funhouse. Strike seven.
I’d paid over a hundred bucks already in cover charges and overpriced drinks
and I was still no closer to finding Noah Hardy. All the chatter about him or
Duke being in town was suddenly gone, and I found myself wondering if I was
chasing ghosts out here.

There were only two more clubs on my
list. The list was rated purely by proximity to the hotel, starting close and
working my way out to the edges and suburbs of Seattle. The next on the list,
the Horned Goat, already had a question mark next to it. I hadn’t been able to
find a working phone number for the place and so suspected it was closed,
joining many other independent clubs and bars that were folding under
gentrification in this city.

The last bar on the list was the
Graveyard Club, and its address wasn’t even in Seattle. It was in some place
called Thornwood. My phone GPS put the drive at twenty minutes.

Tonight had already been such a
disappointing bust that I decided to hell with the Horned Goat. If they
couldn’t have a working phone, then I wasn’t even going to waste the time.

The Graveyard Club would,
appropriately, be my last stop for the night.

With the help of the GPS, I drove
Seattle’s winding, dark streets until the city was just a distant silhouette in
my rear view. The highway exit to Thornwood came out of the depths of the pine
forests like a surprise. It was a pretty cute little place in that shiny
Americana way, but to be honest, everywhere in the northwest felt like an
episode of
Twin Peaks
to me. The whole place felt haunted, dark,
mysterious—and I loved it. So all I could think about behind the pretty
storefronts and normal people were their secrets. We all had them, didn’t we?
But something about this place made it feel like it would help you hide them.

It was in a seedier part of town that
the Graveyard Club finally appeared, a gray, two-story building on a dangerous
curve of road, nestled among the dark pines. The building looked like it had
been around since the twenties, but without the care and upkeep of some of the
other historical sites. Someone had painted the front side of it a sloppy
black, then over that, in the same messy strokes, painted the club’s name in
enormous letters I could see from twenty yards away.

The gravel lot was strewn with
vehicles, so I pulled in carefully and took a quick look around after I killed
the engine. A glance in the visor mirror made me touch up my lipstick with a
heavy sigh. “If he’s not here, I’m getting drunk.”

The building thrashed with the sound
of some seriously heavy music coming from inside that was loud even before I
stepped out of the car. Each crunch of gravel under my boots lit my nerves up
again, like earlier, back at the hotel. The failed search had turned my anxiety
into boredom, but now it was coming back with a vengeance. I stuck my hands in
my jacket pockets and tried to ignore it, head high, as I stepped into the Graveyard
Club.

The hardcore music hit me in the face
first thing, speakers blaring, shaking the walls. A fat, pale guy in a black
t-shirt sat, bored, on a stool three sizes too small for him. I tried not to
roll my eyes when he gave me a suggestive smile. Over the deafening music, he
signaled for my ID, but when I gave it to him all I could focus on was his
gross, sweaty palm beneath mine as he stamped my hand. I tossed him the
required five dollar cover charge so I didn’t have to touch him again and
hurried to the bar. I definitely needed a shot after that.

Like many of the other city dives,
this place was dark, dirty, and had a smattering of schizophrenic décor
gathering dust. Decades of scuff marks from people and equipment pocked the
black-and-white tile floor. The club space was sort of split in half, with the
bar and tables off to my left, and the stage and open crowd areas to the right.
A few ratty booths lined the outer wall, most of which were vacant. A small
group of dedicated moshers were going crazy in front of the stage, pushing each
other in a circle pit. To an outsider, this ritual looked crazy, but it was
just smoke and mirrors: no one was ever out to hurt anyone in a pit. It was
good, old-fashioned daredevilry. And there was nothing like watching a good
mosh pit to get my blood going. I stepped up to the bar with an eye on the
crowd.

A grizzled old dude with
waist-length, salt and pepper hair came up after a few moments. His face was
weathered but smiling, eyes betraying he had probably just been blazing a joint
in the back room. He leaned over the counter and shouted at me in a practiced
voice, “Hi, darlin’! What can I get for you?”

“Shot of Jameson and a pint,” I
shouted back over the music, to which he replied with the “okay” sign. Watching
his tan, tattooed arms work, I had a feeling the Metallica shirt with the
cut-off sleeves he was wearing was a straight-up original he’d gotten in the
80s, and it made me smile.