I cuffed him playfully on the back of the head. “Nah, they didn't have anyone as pretty as you in there, Sperm,” I jeered. “Hey, how's your mother?”
“Still not as fat as yours,” Sperm answered. The other two laughed as Sperm and I launched into the ritual we'd had ever since he joined the Reapers. “Your mamma's so fat that when she went to KFC, they asked her what size bucket she wanted and she said, 'The one on the roof.'”
I figured I was out of practice, but hey, what the hell. “Yeah? Well, your mamma's so fat that when God said 'Let there be light,' he asked her to move out of the way.”
“Your mamma's so ugly that she went into a haunted house and came out with a job application!” Sperm snapped back with a grin. Clearly, he'd been preparing these for quite a while.
“Sperm, your mamma's pussy is so loose, she can grab the lips, flap 'em, and fly away like a fuckin' bat.”
We went back and forth like that a few more times until we heard the voice of the guard in the outer tower barking through the PA system. “This ain't no comedy club, boys! Now get in your van and piss off before we find a reason to keep you here.”
Boomer displayed his middle finger to the guard and we hopped into the van, speeding back to Chicago. On the way, we stopped at a roadside diner and I ordered a big plate of turkey with gravy and fresh mashed potatoes.
It was the best damn meal I'd ever had.
Chapter 4
Rafe
When I stepped through the front door of the Devil's Nest, I almost jumped out of my skin as an entire room full of Reapers yelled, “Surprise!”
There were clusters of black balloons arranged at every table and a huge banner that read “Welcome Home, Rafe!” was strung from the ceiling. There was a large cake on the bar with chocolate and vanilla frosting arranged in the shape of the War Reapers symbol.
I made a show of clutching my chest like I was having a heart attack. “Jesus Christ, guys! I just spent the past seven years looking over my shoulder an' you jump out at me like that? I could've shivved the lot of you!” They laughed.
Bard stepped forward. He was a short man with neatly-trimmed gray hair and glasses. Most people would look at someone like him and assume he was some kind of accountant or store manager. But then, most people hadn't seen Bard kick ass like I had.
“Congratulations on your newfound liberation,” Bard said, embracing me quickly and slapping my back.
The others came forward too, hugging me and shaking my hand. There was the usual chorus of prison food jokes, prison shower jokes, and all the other corny stuff that dudes like me got to hear when they got out of the joint. I'd heard them all before, but it didn't matter. At least I was finally home and surrounded by the people who cared about me.
Nic came over and handed me a shot of whiskey. A curvy, dark-haired woman in a black cocktail dress was with him. “Good to see you again, man,” Nic said. “This is my wife Lauren.”
“It's a pleasure to meet you, Rafe,” Lauren said, smiling and shaking my hand. “Nic's told me so much about you. I hope you liked the cake and the banner. I made them myself. Nic tried doing the cake himself, but...”
“Yeah, that ended badly,” Nic said, grinning. “It turns out that mixing up cake batter requires a different skill set than repairing a bike transmission. Who knew, right?”
“Nice to meet you, Lauren,” I replied. I swallowed the shot and smacked Nic on the arm. “Holy fuck, Nic! You got married? Never thought I'd see that happen. What the hell else did I miss while I was inside?”
Before Nic could answer, Boomer put an arm around my shoulder and poked a cigarette between my lips. For the first time, I noticed that he was wearing the Sergeant-at-Arms patch that used to belong to Nic. “So Rafe, now that you're a free man, what's the first thing you're gonna do?” Boomer asked. “Get laid?”
“Yeah, with Sperm's mom!” one of the Reapers in the back called out. The others laughed.
“Pffft, seven years in the slammer an' even I wouldn't lay Sperm's mom,” I answered, prompting more laughter. I lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. The food at Potawatomi was shitty, but the worst part had been the fucking smoking ban.
“No,” I continued, blowing a smoke ring, “the first item on my fuckin' to-do list is settling up with Jester for the frame job he pulled on me and for the four times he paid people off to put the knife in me up there. For that, I'm gonna send him someplace where it's very hot and there's plenty of pitchforks to go around. That's all I've been able to think about since I went away. So until that's done, I figure everything else can wait.”
I noticed that Bard, Nic, and some of the others were starting to look uncomfortable. I looked around, confused. “What?” I asked. “That's not how we do things anymore? Did the Reapers turn into a goddamn ladies' sewing circle while I was gone or what?”
“Not quite,” Bard said softly. “But just to be clear, Jester's a capo for the Mancusos. You take him on, you take them all on. Is that really your intention?”
“Well, I wasn't gonna do it by myself,” I answered. “I mean, you guys have my back, right? You saw what that animal and his schizo niece did to me. These patches are more than just a fashion statement, last time I checked.”
“Of course, man,” Nic replied calmly. “You had seven years stolen from you over some bullshit, and it sucks. You want revenge and you deserve it. Any other year, we'd all be foaming at the mouth to help you get it, even if it meant going to war for it. But this ain't any other year.”
“You're fuckin'-A right it ain't,” I answered hotly, wondering what the hell I was hearing. “This is the year I can finally get payback. 'Cause guess what? The last seven weren't. And now you're telling me that if I want it, what, I'm on my own? Is that it?”
Bard put his hands on my shoulders, looking into my eyes. That steely stare of his was always tough to read, and tougher to push back against. I realized how quiet the room had gotten.
“You're a Reaper, Rafe,” said Bard. “Every man in this room is your brother. You never have to question their loyalty, or mine. If you want to go after Jester and the Mancusos and you want us to back your play, all you ever have to do is ask and we'll be right there with you, to the bitter end.”
“Well, that's good to fuckin' hear,” I said, finishing the cigarette and crushing it in the nearest ash tray. “You had me worried for a moment. Now let's grab the guns, find this asswipe, and...”
Bard held up a hand. “But before you ask for that, I want you to come to the back room. Growler wants to say hello.”
I followed Bard to the back room, confused. When I hadn't seen Growler standing with the others earlier, I'd assumed he must have been running late or sleeping off a hangover. The Nest had never quite seemed like the Nest unless the grizzled VP was standing behind the bar and pouring out whiskey shots. So why was he in the back?
Bard opened the door and gestured for me to walk in ahead of him. I did and looked at the figure sitting in a chair in the corner. For a moment, I couldn't understand who he was or why he was there instead of Growler.
Then I realized it actually was Growler and felt my knees go loose with shock. I reached out for a nearby chair to steady myself.
The last time I'd seen Growler, he'd been a huge and muscular man who'd always stood tall with a mischievous gleam in his eye. But now the muscles in his body had wasted away severely—at least, the parts of his body he still had left. His left eye was gone, along with the ear on that side. His right arm had been cut off at the shoulder. Both feet were missing and I could see they'd been replaced with weird prosthetics of sloping black metal.
In his lap, he held a small blackboard. In blue chalk, he'd written “Welcome back!”
“Jesus goddamn fuck, Growler,” I breathed. “What happened to you?” My brain couldn't make sense of what I was looking at. Every time I tried, it felt like cars crashing together in my skull.
The Reapers were a tough bunch, and we all knew that we might be killed in a fight someday, or maybe even have to live with being maimed in a crash. But I couldn't imagine what could have caused something so ugly to happen to a friend of mine.
Growler turned the blackboard around, erased the words on it, and wrote new ones. He turned the board around again to display them. “You think this is bad? Tongue, Balls, Cock = GONE!” Next to it, he'd drawn a smiley face.
I felt like I might throw up. Instead, I turned to Nic and Bard, trying to form the right words and failing. “How...what did...?”
“There's a lot you need to hear about what went down this past year,” Nic said.
“Then you'd better start talking,” I said. “But first, give me another fucking cigarette.”
Bard gave me a smoke and lit it while Nic told me what had happened. When Kong had gotten out of Joliet after a three-year stretch, the rest of the Reapers had thrown him a party, too. Except that Vole, a big-timer in the Bonaccorso crime family, had shown up and completely fucked up the party, resulting in a shoot-out that ended with two dead Bonaccorsos and one dead Kong.