"So, are we all agreed?"
Clay eyeballed the members sat around the table. The mood in the room was tense, tight; the silence drawn. It always seemed to go like this: two steps towards something legitimate, dragging the club out of the shadows, before it inevitably spun back into chaos. Into anarchy, Jax supposed, finally breaking the tension with a smile.
"Yeah, yeah," he agreed, cueing for the atmosphere to ease a little. Shoulders relaxed, chairs were leaned back into. Only Happy, as ever, remained visibly unchanged. Opie looked drawn and tight, but he always looked that way. He had since Donna died.
The issue at hand was how to launder money. The shop was coming under scrutiny since several known associates' sojourns to prison, so that was out, along with Cara Cara. Arms deals were still occurring, so while they were deliberating for the past few weeks, the cash was slowly piling up into a mass that they couldn't do anything with, short of buying groceries and gas cash in hand for the rest of their lives. Suggestions were bandied around, before settling on the universally least objectionable: fixed horse racing.
After all, the horses didn't care, did they? They already knew the Cacuzzas were involved in it- stereotypical, the mafia being involved with fixed races- and prison was a small fish tank, everybody knew the bookmakers done up for fraud or racketeering or whatever it was called. Kozik didn't care one way or the other, really; he was too easy-going to get hung up on morals like Jax and Opie, too laid back to love the madness like Clay and Tig. He felt that way sometimes since he patched over to Charming. They were all brothers, sure, even with the bad blood between him and Tig, but he felt like there were crosscurrents under his feet that he wasn't involved in and didn't want to be, anyways.
He was drawn out of his thoughts by Clay speaking. "There's a guy one of our guys inside put us on to, apparently he's never gone in because he never gets caught, he's that good. Vince Delfino, they say he's a rat but if he's our rat, well…" Clay shrugged, flashing his smarmy, sheepish grin.
And what a rat he was. When they met him a few days later, in the back room of a nondescript office in a nondescript strip mall in Lodi, Kozik already pitied him. He blinked a lot, which Kozik thought was nerves until he figured that no, the guy was just permanently twitchy and ill at ease. He was reedy, hunched at the shoulders, and smoked almost non-stop. His hands constantly moved, while he explained things at about 500 miles an hour to them.
"...that's the DRF, right? It's given on every track, it's what every bettor looks at first, even if they can't understand it." A little head toss back with a little annoying chuckle, halfway to a scoff. "So they take the pace against the speed when they look at the horse, but they also gotta know a little bit about the horse and where he comes from, right? But a lot of them don't take into account the track bias, because they figure hey, it's California, it's all dirt track, it'll all be the same, so they start letting things like turns slip because they don't look at th-"
He was cut off short by Clay leaning right over the desk, getting right up in his face, like it was going to intimidate him. This guy was beyond intimidation. His brain seemed to be on another planet, one that revolved around DRFs and pace against track bias against speed.
"So you falsify the betting slip? You say we bet before the race, make it look like we don't know who was going to win?" Clay clarified, starring Vince right in the eye.
"Um, yes. Well, yes, um. Yes. I do," he said, ashing his cigarette, taking a draw, ashing it again. "I do. Yes. And then, um, I take fifteen percent."
Clay stared at him. Jax stared at him. Kozik stared at him. Bobby stared at him.
"Fifteen?" Jax said in a voice that was low, and dark, and had more than a hint of a threat if he cared to pick it up.
"Yes. Yes, fifteen," Delfino said, stubbing out his cigarette, twiddling a pen, adjusting his glasses, then tapping out another cigarette. "Look, it's high, I know, but I'm not going to lie I'm the best at this," head toss annoying chuckle cigarette drag ash "and, yes, it's high, and I'm sorry you feel that way, but this is how the decimal points are moved and it's really a tricky thing, to make it without being obvious, let alone past the auditors and stipendiary stewards, so there's really a reason it's high, right? And to be honest, I'm sorry, but it's higher for most guys, most guys on their own looking to cheat the system, work the odds, and I'm lowering it because you guys are going to move some serious bulk. So it'll take a while, right? Which is why it's lower, and"
It was obvious at this point that he had lost the room. Obvious to everyone but him, which is how, somehow, amazingly, Clay agreed to his fifteen percent and his timeline, then walked out of that nondescript office looking like he wondered what the hell just happened.
"Did that just happen?" Jax wondered as they got to their bikes. Clay shook his head, still looking dazed. "Yeah, it did," he said, and Kozik was convinced he would go back in there and punch the bookie until he lowered his fucking fifteen percent if it weren't for the fact that he would have to listen to him.
"We should send Gem in there to negotiate with him, she'd screw the little shit sideways," Bobby grumbled.
"Nah," Tig drawled, fastening his helmet and starting his Dyna. "He can talk his way out of anything. She'd walk back out agreeing that fifteen was fair and even give him a thanks for not charging more. I don't know how he does it."
So that was how it went, for a while. Cash turned over, though it never seemed like anywhere near quick enough, in fits and spurts into everyone's bank accounts. Kozik saw Delfino every now and again, when Clay or Jax decided they needed to intimidate him to make sure he wasn't screwing them over, mostly with Happy. And every time he walked back out after listening to the guy ramble for thirty minutes, and he and Happy agreed that they'd just say it was all good.
Cash came, sweetbutts came, the road came. Kozik still felt a little like he was floating, even when he fought, which was usually his stick. It usually brought him back into focus, but even when he got knocked for six or ended up laying someone out on their ass he still felt a little above it. Maybe he should have gone nomad, or stayed Tacoma, or or or.
"He needs an old lady," he overheard Gemma announcing to Jax one day, undoubtedly about him. Or maybe about Happy, but he ignored it either way.
He got what she meant, in a way; everybody needed someone to ground them, like Gemma grounded the whole damn club. It would be nice, he mused, as a sweetbutt rubbed herself up on his knee, cooing over his black eye, hands all on him. It was nice, and he lost himself in her for a while, but the party ended and she went home.