Saving Della Ray

“Oh, Della Ray. You don’t understand anything, do you? He’ll be back for more. I’ll lay my life on that.”

Gage

Church was held on Saturday evening in the basement of St. Andrews church. It sat decrepit and surrounded by graves, but it wasn’t an abandoned building. Sundays the members of the community that still hung around that isolated area came in through its crooked, cast iron gates to attend the simple mass that Father James put on to share the good word with them.

Today however, he was away in his cottage home while we took over his Lord’s home. As long as we didn’t break what little was still intact, he turned a blind eye to our infiltration of the building once a week for our extremely private weekly chapter meetings. Not that the poor man had a choice. Snake could be very persuasive when he wanted to be.

I hated attending these meets. For one, they were taken way more seriously than necessary, and the blatant torture netted out to out-of-line members wasn’t what I’d consider premium entertainment.

I arrived late. I had a good excuse. I had to handle a debt that a prospect had been too afraid to stomp down on. The few prospects and hang arounds that guarded the iron gates parted the way with eager, attentive salutes as I rode into the premises. Grasping the brown grocery bag filled with fifty grand in hard cash from a recent meth sale, I walked into the dim basement.

Church was already in session.

The members sat on their makeshift pews, iron chairs that we had put in to accommodate the chapter’s fifty-six member attendance.

Our pulpit was a makeshift bar, stocked with the club’s most frequent choice of beverage and that was being passed around to all in attendance. Everclear, Pincer, Bruichladdich X4+quadrupled whiskey, and Absinthe flowed like the good old days of Rome.

Snake was up on the pulpit speaking, but there were also three vaguely familiar faces beside him. I studied them until recognition clicked. They were members from the almighty Durban brotherhood. It was them, who had sanctioned our club’s formation half a decade earlier. I knew then that this was an especially important meeting.

I took my seat at the back, and tried to listen to all that was being said, especially when RJ was called and given a big pat on the back by one of the brotherhood members called Trunk. The name was as befitting as descriptions went. He was cut indeed like a tree trunk, with sturdy, thick limbs that could cripple a man, and completely devoid of a neck. His shaved head was spiked with white hair, but his beard was brown and wild.

“You did good this time around, son,” he said.

RJ’s extremely rare sense of propriety was on full display. He revered the man and around him was the only time he disciplined himself enough to behave respectfully.

“When will the shipment dock?” Trunk asked.

RJ happily supplied the answer, “In about seven weeks, but first, we’ll need to tie up the rest of the strings in Dallas.”

“Is Bone here yet?” Snake suddenly asked.

“Yeah,” I responded.

“How did the collection go?”

I raised up the bag for all to see and received nods and sounds of approval.

“Get ready,” Snake said. “You’ll accompany the group to Dallas to conclude the deal with RJ’s guy.”

It was the perfect arrangement for me, and it was now to be expected since I’d gained the reputation of being disturbingly cool headed. When they needed a rise out of people or situations and didn’t necessarily want violence to rev the engine, I was brought in.

Church went on excitedly as all the members no doubt, began to anticipate our very first and very own exclusive shipment of Meth. We would have sole monopoly of the drug at our own prices and thus, run the supply in the whole area, and perhaps even the entire state.

RJ had a friend of a friend who worked for a cartel that manufactured the stuff, and he had managed to put together the deal just before we all completely condemned him as more of a liability than an asset. Just days ago, he was moments away from a bullet in his head courtesy of his recklessness, but now, he had good standing once again in the club.

You had to give it to him. He was extraordinarily resourceful and adept at keeping himself alive. It was quite impressive.

The rest of the meeting went as planned and the moment all the major business was concluded and it was time to mete out discipline, I rose for a break.

Three new patchers, Rose, Pole and Boner were being sanctioned for getting into trouble with an Armenian gang over some dealings. Worse, when they were arrested, Pole had been found not only high on Meth, but in possession of a Ruger LCP.