We’ve never stopped talking over the same things, though.
As I make my way into the place, the old familiar faces greet me, each one of them with a story that brought ‘em here.
We sidle up to the bar, and my bartender Roy already has a couple of cans out for us. I crack open mine with a nod to him and sit down, leaning back on the bar as I look out around the place.
“We had a run-in with an outsider,” I explain as Genn takes a seat beside me, “caught her eavesdropping while me and the boys were finally having a chat with Jack Chandler.”
“The old contractor who’s started cozying up to the cops?”
I nod with a grimace. “Yeah. I think he’s been in their pocket for a while now, and if he has, he’ll know what the pigs have been covering up for a long while.”
Genn’s face started to look more grave, and he took a drink of his beer thoughtfully. “So you’re not giving up on running down John LaBeau’s murderer, are you?”
I shoot him a look. “Genn, if we let them get it in their heads that the union Club will allow this kind of shit slide under our watch, they’ll walk all over us.”
Gen nods thoughtfully. “No doubt. Just sayin’ it’s a hard search, Prez. Investigators would call it a closed case if they weren’t half as crooked as they are around here.”
I frown. “Anyway, there’s no question she’s an outsider. She took off from the warehouse as soon as we saw her, and she ran straight into one of the cops on our payroll.”
Genn snorted a laugh. “Maybe she just didn’t do her homework.”
One of my eyebrows goes up as I try to read Genn’s expression. “Homework? So you think she sounds like a fed come to keep an eye on us?”
There’s something in Genn’s eye that tells me what he’s about to say before he even opens his mouth. He lowers his voice as he speaks, even though we’re in a bar full of the most loyal men I know. “I dunno about us, Prez, but you…they might have some old loose ends they’re looking to tie up.”
I let out a low murmur and take a drink from my beer. As much as I don’t want to talk about my past, Genn knows me better than anyone else, and he knows what only a handful of the other patch-members know.
A lifetime ago, my Russian heritage was a lot closer to home. I worked for the Bratva. No, I didn’t just work for the Bratva, I killed for them. I was just a kid back then, but I stuck up for the Russian presence around town. The Russian mafia had enemies, and they needed someone who could work swiftly and quietly to do what inevitably needed to be done. It paid well, and the kind of men they had me kill weren’t the kind I’d lose a wink of sleep over.
But something got to me. I still don’t know what it was, but something in me knew I couldn’t keep doing that forever. Some of the more streetwise locals started to know me, started to fear me. I wouldn’t build a career with the people I wanted to protect being afraid. This is my home, and these people are my family, not my victims. So I tried to go straight.
Got a job at these very docks a few years back. Wasn’t glamorous, but it was honest, and best of all, our union was solid. Where the old times were a long and awful history of making sure us Russians at the docks got shit lives for shit pay, the union let us have a voice together. It gave our little community a heartbeat that spoke loud and strong. We all had fair pay, our jobs were protected, and we worked hard to make sure there was enough to go around for everyone. What had long been a neglected back end of New Jersey was starting to shape up, the community felt stronger, and we were going to provide more jobs for honest, hardworking immigrants and their children.
Then corruption from above came down on us like a hammer, all because we dared try to make a fair living for ourselves. The bosses of the old shipping and drydock companies who’d long held our community in a vicegrip got uneasy. union s have that effect on the fat-cats that mooch off our hard work. So they worked with the feds, lining their pockets until they could trump up some fake allegations of illegal activity — smuggling, larceny, embezzlement, anything they could get their greasy hands to use against us.
The union bust ruined everything. Our best workers got “laid off,” and the old union policies got blamed for it. Men paid by the bosses went around spreading rumors that the union had been smuggling drugs into the community, and incidentally, the cops started turning a blind eye to drug sales from outside the docks to inflate the numbers.
It made my blood boil. Everything we’d worked so hard for was being turned against us. So we did the only thing we could do and banded together, all us dock workers.