Riding Filthy Read online

  “The sky is falling, the sky is falling,” his over-boss would tease.

  Well, it fell.

  Sammy “The Bull” Gravano turned rat on crime boss John Gotti in exchange for a commuted sentence, breaking omerta and every possible code of the streets. Joey remembered the day it leaked that Gravano was testifying. It was 1992. His father disappeared for a week and when he finally came home he had a new face.

  “Time to move,” Carmine had announced through stiff lips.

  Joey and Cosmo had stared at their father’s bandages, dumbfounded, as their mother burst into tears.

  “Get in the car,” their father had barked.

  “No,” their mother sobbed. “I’m done, Carmine. It’s what you deserve.”

  A vicious backhand caught their mother’s jaw and she tripped backward onto the floor, sobbing. Their father’s assessing black eyes turned sharply to his eldest son.

  “Cosmo, car. Now.” Cosmo leapt to obey. You didn’t cross Carmine Auditore. “Joey, get in the car with your brother. Goodbye, Joanne.”

  “Don’t take my babies!” Their mother screamed. “Please, Carmine!”

  “They’re not babies anymore.”

  Carmine had followed his sons into the car and left their mom weeping on their Staten Island porch without a backward glance. The trio drove to Miami without a single word, twenty-one hours of silence and sweat. Miami was their oasis.

  “Las Vegas was stolen from us by the feds, the Mexican drug cartels, the big gaming corporations, and time,” Carmine would say to his sons. “But we’ll get it back! We just have to be smarter than everybody else.”

  Joey’s father set up a legitimate construction company, a car service, and an insurance business. Cosmo and Joey were sent to Harvard, then Wall Street. It wasn’t until later that Joey pieced together that all three businesses were a front concealing an elaborate web of criminal activities.

  The take-back of Las Vegas would be perfect, above-board, and corporately approved. Cosmo and Joey and Carmine had it all worked out.

  Now, here they were. But had it gone as planned? Fuck no.

  Fucking Ruiners! Sadistic punks with a death wish. Joey had to hand it to the bikers, though: those fuckers were tough as cockroaches. Unfortunately, the Ruiners were the only obstacle standing between the Auditores and a monopoly on the Strip’s black market.

  Joey sighed. Time to get back to his dirty work. He climbed the steps of the meth house porch, surveying the smoky purple dusk settling over the Sheep Mountains with a grimace. Everything was dingy, rusty, and beige.

  Joey was too preoccupied with his thoughts to notice the motorcycle tracks in the dust of the driveway behind him. He mechanically kicked at the house’s dirty siding. A grey cloud of dust rose and choked at him, prompting a need for his handkerchief.

  “Fuck,” he coughed, and knocked harder. More dust. More coughing. “Yo! Dipshit, open the door! It’s Joey.”

  Chapter Two

  A quarter mile away on a quiet rooftop, the lenses of a pair of Swarovski El 10x42mm Swarovision binoculars reflected the dusk like a mood ring; orange, blue and purple. The man behind the lenses could see with razor-sharp detail the sweat breaking out on Joey Auditore’s face, the flutter of Joey’s handkerchief, even the creamy color of his patent leather shoes in the waning daylight.

  He watched Joey smack the apron-clad man who opened the door. Joey seemed to be shouting, arms gesticulating wildly, and the newcomer from the house cringed. Then Joey and his companion both disappeared inside. The man behind the binoculars tracked the doorknob of the meth lab clicking shut, the driver in the yard crossing his arms and pacing by the porch steps, the blinds in the house windows drawing secretively shut.

  The binoculars lowered to rest, dangling by a leather strap against a firm sinewy chest. Their wearer’s eyes were sharp and moody, reflecting the changing tones of the desert sky.

  “Mr. Auditore the younger is in,” said the man. “No one came out.”

  It was impossible to tell what was going on in the mind behind those eyes. The thoughts couldn’t be seen for the desert. The black coffee eyes knew how to camouflage.

  Jesse Cruz’s hardened, disciplined body was used to abrupt transitions, to shutting down and turning on with the flick of a razor’s edge. All day he’d waited. He’d been on that rooftop for hours baking in the Las Vegas sun. His skin had turned two shades darker. So had the desert. So had his thoughts.

  Jesse had watched, waited and burnt his skin in so many deserts that the suns, winds, and deaths bled together in his memory. The Chihuahuan desert in Mexico, with its scrubby plains sloping up to the Sierra Madres, had been his first taste of life’s harshness. The Joshua tree-spiked extremity of the Mojave Desert surrounding Las Vegas taught him to survive. Seduced him. And it was the crucible of the Dashti Margo in Afghanistan that cooked him in refining fires, leaving him empty, haunted and barely alive.

  Salt flats, creosote bushes, red rocks…cop-killer FN-57 pistols, smuggled AK-47s, military M16s. What was the difference? Heat, heat stroke, packing heat, parched throat, blisters, fire, and hot death were universal.

  The landscapes and violence contorted together in his senses until he choked on sand and breathed blood even when he tried to sleep. The desert was everywhere – outside, inside. He was scorched. Jesse was sure if he were cut open, his brain, heart, and lungs would spill out dry dust and bones.

  In the inkiest pits of night when the rest of Las Vegas finally passed out, Jesse was alone and exposed to his thoughts. Powerless and sleepless, he could hear whisperings and see the flashbacks usually kept at bay by daylight and business; bones burning in the wreck of a ranch house, Afghani children without hands or legs, men mangled by bullets. Always lurking in the shadows of every picture was the knowledge that he was a part of the cause.

  Always the loathing, the heat, the fires. There were so many fires in Jesse’s life, not least of all the hiss of a Zippo torching the curve of a spoon and melting heroin, oblivion promised, a syringe handy. That fire was the hardest to put out.

  Jesse aimed a brotherly elbow prod at his companion’s shoulder, startling Grant “Smiley” Wagner. Sleep was so easy for others. Jesse envied them bitterly but never admitted it.

  Smiley jerked awake and accidentally smacked himself in the face with his arms. Snorting and spluttering in surprise, Smiley offered Jesse a lopsided grin, licking his lips.

  Jesse watched him with wry amusement. It was not the first time the thought occurred to him that Smiley was about as effective an assistant as a happy, totally bumbling puppy. It was a very good thing that Jesse didn’t really need an assistant, independent as he was. He knew how to adapt and get shit done.

  Nevertheless, Jesse understood the wisdom of working in pairs. He’d always hated groups until the Marines. Someone had to have your back if you were going to have any chance in this world.

  That was actually the whole point of the brotherhood of the Ruiners Motorcycle Club—they were stronger together than alone. They were a tribe of misfits united in the cause of a free lifestyle in their harsh desert home. As a family, they helped each other survive and built a life for themselves in Sin City, structuring the darkness.

  Jesse Cruz had had the experience of surviving alone and surviving with brothers. Brothers were better.

  “Good morning sunshine,” said Jesse, flashing an almost imperceptible, sardonic grin at Smiley. “Hope I didn’t interrupt a wet dream.”

  “Shit,” Smiley rasped, smiling goofily. “I fell asleep? Is it time already?”

  Jesse nodded curtly and motioned for Smiley to pass him the black box he’d been entrusted to guard. Smiley handed it over.

  If Smiley was ashamed of his lapse in duty, he glossed over it with a yawn. “Uh…yeah, you should be all good there Nitro.”

  Jesse shot Smiley a brief reprimanding look and hunkered down against the low rim of the roof. Quickly rubbing circulation back into his hands, he reached for his Motorola Talkabout walkie
-talkie and waited until the line was clear.

  “Axle,” Jesse rumbled through the radio waves, “It’s Nitro. Mama bird is in the nest.”

  Static. A shift in space. Ruiners Motorcycle Club President Axle Derian’s low baritone scratched painfully at him through distance and waves, sounding firm and intimate even over the radio.

  “Do what Nitro do best,” rasped Axle.

  “Ten-four,” Jesse replied automatically. He flipped open the box in his hand, revealing a tiny lever. Playfully, he waved it in Smiley’s groggy face. “Want the honors signore sleepy?”

  Smiley belched and clasped his belly. “I can’t on an empty stomach, man. If I’m gonna blow people up I’d need a sandwich or something.”

  “Meatball sub? Road-kill special? Spare human parts?” Jesse rolled his eyes while Smiley grimaced and crouched down against the wall of the roof. Smiley threw his hands over his head protectively, like a school drill. “Dude,” Jesse chuckled, “We’re out of the blast radius. Relax.” And with no further preamble and utter calm, Jesse flicked his thumb over the lever, flipping it.

  Storms always hit the desert without warning, a flash of lightning.

  The remote trigger of a cordless phone tickled a carefully placed alkaline battery from a distance. The power supply sent an impulse to the electrical detonator, which sparked the primary charge of urea nitrate that Jesse had mixed, kick starting the explosion sequence. Under the doomed house an innocent old toolbox container forced the explosion up and out. The pressure and gas belched up, exploding through floorboards and walls at the speed of 1,600 feet per second.

  Incineration. Inferno. Infinity.

  From their perch of safety, Jesse and Smiley watched the walls of the house wobble and warp before bursting in all directions. Gaseous flames licked into the yawning vacuum of ravenous space opened up by the IED. The meth house consumed itself with teeth of fire, so fast that the men inside would never have known what hit them. Bits of wood and metal shrapnel spat and bit at the walls of surrounding buildings, perforating the white Tesla Model S and driver in the yard before the flames of incineration finished the job.

  Jesse watched impassively. Where there had been enemies, now there would be only more desert.

  “Vaya con Dios, motherfucker,” Jesse whispered.

  There was no meth house left, no Joey Auditore. Fireballs and smoldering pits roared in a wide diameter around the gaping black and red hellscape. Jesse’s body stood rigid, silhouetted by dark smoke. It was a fitting backdrop for the master of endothermic and entropy change, the bringer of death. Here was another fire for his dreams to play and replay on the screaming screen of his mind.

  By Jesse’s calculations and careful reconnaissance, there had been five people in the house—two Auditore family meth cooks, two enforcers, and of course, the underboss himself. Also the driver in the yard, so that meant Jesse would have to tattoo six more skulls on his side. That should fill the empty space in the rest of his schedule this evening and help distract Jesse from himself.

  The walkie-talkie found Jesse’s lips again. “Nitro to Axle, it’s a done deal. We’re blowing this barbecue stand before any rubberneckers notice us.”

  Smiley leapt to his feet, stretching and checking around the floor for any loose stuff to pick up. Jesse had already erased any trace of their presence. The space was immaculate. Superfluous, Smiley shrugged and waited under his partner’s amused stare.

  “Get your ass outta there,” crackled Axle. “Must be time to feed Smiley again by now.”

  A wicked grin split Jesse’s dusk-lit face, revealing even, perfect teeth and laugh lines around his eyes.

  “Definitely time for his bath,” Jesse quipped into the radio. “Over and out.”

  Jesse clicked the transmitter off and stowed the walkie-talkie carefully in his rucksack. With military efficiency he pulled out a water bottle, popped up the retractable cap, zipped up the backpack, and swung it securely onto his back.

  Jesse offered the water bottle to Smiley with a deadpan face. Smiley reached for it reflexively, but Jesse was faster—always faster—and instead of a refreshing drink, gave Smiley a squirt in the face with a steady pressure, laughing at him tauntingly.

  “You dick!” Smiley croaked, spluttering. Another stream hit him in the mouth, turning his words into gargles.

  “Dick? You want me to use my dick?”

  “Pfft! Cut it out!”

  The stream of water traveled down to the fly of Smiley’s pants.

  “Control yourself,” said Jesse, smirking.

  “That’s it!”

  Smiley lunged but Jesse dodged, laughing, and burst through the rooftop door and down a few flights of stairs. At street level he slowed his playful sprint to an easy stride, crossing an intersection and still managing to beat Smiley to their parked bikes. By the time Smiley caught up he was slightly out of breath and laughing, eyes sparkling mischievously.

  “I’ll get you back, motherfucker,” he panted, crouching over his knees and letting his head dangle.

  “Sure you will,” retorted Jesse. “I’m anxiously awaiting so many of your comebacks.”

  Smiley guffawed, straightening. “I’m saving them up. Do it all at once, like, epic revenge.”

  “Some genius plot?”

  Smiley’s eyebrows danced comically. “Yeah.”

  “Intricate humiliation aimed at my vast masculine pride?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jesse smirked, fishing in his pocket for keys. “Need my help to set it up?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jesse snickered, settling himself on the welcoming seat of his matte black Harley Davidson XR12000 Sportster. The warm leather and chrome met his body like a lover’s kiss. “You let me know what you need to help you get back at me,” he said. “You know how I like planning shit.”

  “Control freak.”

  “Lazy ass.”

  Laughter and engines revved, the noise and speed of the road engulfing Jesse’s being as they left D Street in their wake. He waved Smiley away at an intersection and jetted off on his own. His bike merged with him, the two becoming one in the blur of twilight. There were so many hours until dawn, so many demons to drown out. Tattoo parlors, clubs, and road would fill some of the time.

  With no sun to gnaw at him, no sleep to soothe, Jesse “Nitro” Cruz dove into the Las Vegas night feeling only the burn of rubber meeting desert road.

  Chapter Three

  The bombing of the meth lab was impossible for Cosmo Auditore to cover up. Reporters argued on the local news, speculating whether the attack was an act of terrorism or, as suggested by Cosmo, senseless gang violence targeting a hapless civilian. A bribe kept the true nature of the meth house out of the headlines.

  Cosmo had to focus on damage control. It was a massive triumph of willpower to conceal his rage over the Ruiners attack, make sensible executive decisions, and attend to the necessary family arrangements. He even did the unthinkable—sent for his ex-wife.

  Immediate relief came with the manicured presence of Gisella Vittorio Auditore and their three children, who flew in from Miami. Together, the family faced the herculean task of a proper Italian funeral. The bombing had made a bella fugura impossible, robbing the Auditore clan of the comfort of a traditional viewing. Also, the usually requisite open casket funeral was out of the question. But the planning limped forward.

  Cards and flowers flooded Cosmo’s home, and Joey’s distraught fiancé Teresa Russo was given more lasagna and baked ziti than she could possibly fit into the freezer. Cosmo was up to his neck in private appointments receiving respectful condolences from family associates both legitimate and illegitimate.

  The day of the funeral, flowers and an embroidered banner were draped over a coffin, “Réquiem ætérnam.” Cosmo had been fastidious in sprinkling salt under the pillow in the casket, a superstition observed more out of habit than belief. He wasn’t an irrational greaseball like his old Sicilian grandmother. He knew his brother Joey had no soul.


  It was all for show anyhow: Joey’s body had been practically incinerated in the lethal blast. The funerary casket was actually empty except for the salted pillow and a small urn containing Joey’s ashes.

  Cosmo and Gisella had scheduled a prayer vigil and full Catholic mass for Joey, tipping the Las Vegas Bishop a generous stole fee to perform the ceremony himself. The funeral cost Cosmo more than fifty grand, all told. No expense could be spared for his beloved little brother. He forgot to be angry with him about business.

  At the 11am requiem mass in Joey’s honor, the Bishop added great pomp and seriousness to his rituals, his face sober and voice severe as he worked his way through the traditional liturgy.

  The little chapel of St. Therese Mission at Old Spanish Trail was packed to overflowing, and though the climate control was on high the room was growing stuffier by the minute. The scent of the flower arrangements was overly sweet and cloying, and occasional sniffles and sneezes punctuated the long mass. The congregation was subdued during the prayers, readings, and homily, lulled to drowsiness.

  When the Bishop finished the scripted mass he announced that, following tradition, the service was now open should anyone like to say a few words about Joey Auditore. The sleepy congregants blinked at him, daunted. There was a restless shuffling. After a heavy moment’s pause, a young woman rose from her place in the family’s section of the first row and gracefully ascended the steps to the alter.

  Long black hair fell in an intricate braid that swayed rhythmically all the way down to the small of her lithe back. It gave her an air of timeless innocence. A flawless black lace Dolce and Gabbana dress hugged and vivified a voluptuous, youthful figure, the cut both appropriate for the occasion and sensuously appealing. The mourning color accentuated her youth and vitality, in sharp contrast with her smooth olive skin and ruby red lipstick. She was a walking vortex of feeling, instinct, and spirit. Had she been born in another era, she might have starred in the films of Franco Fellini.