###Note to the reader###
Dear readers, thank you so much for following up my stories! It means a great deal to me to know that I'm read and my stories give you guys and girls enjoyment. I haven't had time to update this sooner, but here it comes, chapter 2 and I'm sure you'll find the twist at the end very enticing.
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Chapter 2
HALE BRINGS ANOTHER set of papers to Jax, whose sour face reflects precisely the horror of becoming a clerk. Now, Jax doesn't wear a tie and a suit. His office boy profile is very unlikely. Hale is wearing his thin, black tie and his gray silky suit which means it's Sunday and he's going to have dinner at Mario's, the best Italian in town, just to be seen. The door to Hale's office had been closed for two weeks and he and Jax have not exchanged a word since the trouble with the environmental issue and the nutcase activist in town ran by a certain Marla Brolin. That's when Jax may have implied eradicating the problem, using a…, just because Jax had too many problems and Marla Brolin was a mosquito buzzing in his ear while he tried to vanquish and an army of Godzillas coming to crush him and his crew. Jax was just saying and Hale had no idea, the back in his old position, Sergeant at Arms Tig Trager stayed behind to bargain Marla had been in great need, but not for bullets. How do you say no to Jax without calling the word "no", this question was bothering Tig's brain when he asked:
"Boss, why? C'mon, the bitch is all right, let me talk to her."
It made Jax smile, because he never intended the woman dead in the first place. He was just tired and sick with everything that was going wrong.
"Okay, I wanna fuck her," Trager continued, shrugging and licking his lips as if anticipating the "taste of sunshine" as Bobby used to put it, but Trager needed to stress something to Jax, who already smirked "ya know, alive…"
Jax is still smiling every time the memory returns to his mind. Now Hale stands there in the door with a folder under one arm and he's humming: "Morning!" like an old friends, Jax knows he's not.
"What's that?" Jax retorts feeling the start of a day long headache.
"Everything you want to know about Marla Brolin."
Jax takes a look at the file and everything is about August Marks. Jax goes:
"Yeah?" because Jax doesn't believe you can learn everything about a person from a folder full of papers.
"She doesn't exist, man," Hale responds, lighting up a cigarette.
Oh, yes, Jax and Hale are buddies now, they share the space while smoking, but Jax is only amused. For the first time in his life Hale imagines himself a proper criminal with proper and very gangsta' criminal connections. In a teenage boy kind of attitude, this is pretty cool.
"Great. We are the Ghost Busters," the President retorts bitterly.
Hale shrugs.
"Marla appeared on earth last November when she got hired by one of Mark's legit companies. There's no record of her anywhere else. Her identity is a fake. She quit Mark's company two months ago, but is still on the payroll as an "external advisor". I think there are many shades of Marla."
"Damned bitch!" Jax grinds his teeth into a smirk.
The outlaw is being watched by the Big Brother in Oakland, because the suntanned folks require their project went on as long as they control the players. Mr President is about to discover there is an annoying side of the legit businesses.
"No killings, Jax. I can't risk this project being compromised. I don't need skeletons beneath my windows."
Jax's sour face is reflected in Hale's expression in the form of a scared, big eyed grimace, because Jax is all about bitterness these days. It's not a matter of doing business, it's just a matter of being in control and Jax knows it and so does Marks. These are two guys who understand one another based on similitude. Since Clay has worked his ways around with Toric, the matter of who is whose bitch has grown back into the old thorns of killing requires vengeance. It's not that Marks can't sleep nights over his boss's death it's just that threatening to go after the real men behind it, is a good squeeze for an increasingly confident and powerful Jax.
"Look carefully, man, and there are bodies buried everywhere," the President replies stashing the folder in the inner pocket of his jacket.
Hale's file is a beautiful piece of circumstantial evidence, almost as consistent as the allegations which put his wife in prison. This hurts. The moment Jax lay eyes on Tara he knew she'd been falling apart and having someone so close to you faltering while making time for the Club and ultimately for you, is not something you can take. Not even when Tara hurt you. Not even when you know she tried to force your hand, take the kids and run to Oregon without discussing matters with you first. Not even when Tara told you she was fed up with Charming and the Club and the poison these two combined brought into anybody's life. And then Tara smiled and her expression reminded Jax of a terminal patient and she said: "I'm so tired, Jax." This is how Jax knows Tara got fed up with him too. Jax had two phrases he often used when shit hit the fan. One of them was: " you have to trust me, we'll get over this." Another one was: "I'm working on it. I have a plan." Jax always had a plan. He even had a plan for a plan, but more than often he found himself in situations when even the most careful strategy seemed doomed to fail. Tara's recent mishap had been one of them.
One thing to worry was the fact that Tara had known too much, actually the openness between them had led to this state of affairs and knowing too much is a dangerous thing especially in this life. Jax can admit to himself he had been wrong, yet he congratulates himself for being cautious enough to hide the most gruesome details such as keeping dead bodies in the trunk and chopping folks' arms with a hatchet. Some minor things did come out: take Wendy's mishap for example.
But it's when Tara mentions something fleetingly like "how did we get here, Jax? What happened to us?" that's when Jax worries most. There's nothing worse for a family man than to watch his home falling apart and to think this is at least in part, his fault.
Plus Marla.
It's because of people like Marla we have decaf coffees.
Fat free yogurt.
Reduced salt ham.
Vegans.
Marla, oh, Marla, Marla…
Eco-friendly homes with computer regulated power consumption.
Solar panels and wind turbines.
Environmental impact surveys.
Bio-fuel.
Reduced noise engines.
Increased gasoline taxes.
Naked models militating against cruelty towards animals.
Sprayed fur coats.
Marches and protests and chained hysterical bitches surrounding construction sites, claiming your buildings harm the rattle snakes and some bug nobody heard about.
Oh, fucking Marla!
Jax smiles, but he has no idea of knowing about the commotion back at Rosa's.
He has no clue about the blood in the kitchen.
The last week, when Rosa's blew up, the Club had to pay damages ten grand, just to put the woman's worries at ease. Last week, Mr Apocalypse has defused with a few shots and a dead hare, terrified tenants and a busy Roosevelt's team.
A burst of throttle and Jax'll be off and all of this will be over for a while, because he'll be flying low down the high way, and that's the time when this outlaw is at his happiest, when he can forget for a moment and simply enjoy the ride. Every time you come to a stop, the whole world comes crushing in on your shoulders with its problems. You gotta keep riding, riding into the sunset.
If only Jax would know about Tig hunkered down on top of a slashed up body which was once lively Rosa and about Chibs shouting: "what did you do?" and the ugly kid with a scar running head to toe running in circles outside, he would think twice about lingering on that stretch of road.
If only Jax would know about Marla walking in over Tig's denials: "it's wasn't me, I swear, man, this wasn't me" and Chibs knife pointed at Marla's thought, he would not take this half hour detour.
But Jax has no idea, which makes him for a brief instance, an innocent man again.
And now Tig is standing up and he's watching Marla who watches Chibs whose lips are twisted into a glaring growl. Bonnie has gone crazy next door and she's barking wild pouncing at the door, because she sniffs the blood. Tig's breath is quick, plus the cold sweat spraying his forehead has started to run down at the temples. And Marla rolls her eyes over towards his and then back to Chibs and she goes:
"'mind if I have a smoke?"
Chibs doesn't like the woman at all.
He is always telling Tig:
"I don't like that bitch."
With Tig, the slim figure, the big boobs and the surgery cut climbing up from the forearm, past the shoulder is a mix of sex fuelled phantasy and genuine pity, the kind that moves him when he eyes Rosa's son.
Chibs doesn't fall for these details. Chibs nearly puked last evening when Marla grabbed Tig's beer and drank from the bottle worse than a thirsty drunk, liquid dripping under the chin, down to her deep v-line, right between those breasts. Because Marla had rolled her eyes again and no sane man could vanquish over that thought of her moaning porn-star style every time she rolled those eyes like that.
But Marla put a cigarette at the corner of her mouth, touching Tig's cuffs and she grinned:
"A chain would work well between these."
With a throb and a hard on, Tig murmured:
"Oh, Marla!"
Chibs wanted to stop them, oh his first impulse was to stand up and slap her out of there, it's just that he had got so sickened that he rather ran into Rosa's bedroom for a quick one.
"Mr Trager, you already have a chain between these… you don't want to see it, but it's there, it has always been there. Just bad luck, you see, you can never be free, although this is what you want most."
The Sergeant at Arms grinned for a while, staring at her and then he rubbed his thumb over the back of her hands:
"Marla, what the hell is wrong with ya, girl?"
That was her time to throb.
"Why the fuck did you have to walk in here, Marla?" Tig screams and she can't be bothered, so he draws his gun. Tig hates this slut right now. He hates her badly. "Okay, bro, let's do this."
Now neither her, nor Chibs seem to be keen to make the first move, but Marla looks as if she had given up so the VP drops his knife into its sheath.
"No. Not now, Tiggy."
Marla puts a cigarette between her skinny fingers, stained by nicotine towards the nails and her hand is shaking just a little. There's blood everywhere and the plates are shattered to pieces on the ground and the kettle still hangs by the wire, just above the floor. The clinker of the bicycle outside reminds Trager the dead used to be a mother.
"Shit, man: who's gonna look after the creepy kid now?"
Marla shrugs puffing away, ogling Chibs briefly, with the corner of the eyes, right before he grabs her arms, slamming her face first into the wall.
"Goddamn it, Tiggy. I've been with her this morning," Chibs mumbles shaking his gray head, tying Marla down with the wire of the toaster.
"Bleach! Take the good side: she's already slashed open," Tig points out, brushing his forehead with the tip of his fingers.
And Marla giggles.
"Go out, grab the dog and the kid! Keep that poor bastard out of this!" Chibs roars.
And Marla giggles even harder now, sliding down on the floor with a bruised cheek.
"What? What ya want, ya bitch?" Tig shouts over Bonnie's squeals and his mate tries to keep him out.
"Tiggy, no! Put it down! Tiggy!"
And Marla turns right in the Sergeant's blue eyes singing:
"Bleach won't do the trick, Mr Trager. Bitch won't do the trick. The forensics have markers, did you know that? Markers for DNA, ha, ha, can you take the risk?"
Chibs hands are pushing against Tig's chest and Tig sweats with his gun in the air and the index squeezing the trigger, but not all the way through.
"What would, huh? What would?"
Marla's eyes are a dark amber and they squeeze into a glare as she whispers:
"Caustic soda."
There is a moment when things fall silent, a moment when the pity comes back and everything is good and warm-soothing again.
"What the fuck is wrong with ya, Marla?"
Yet Chibs snaps, because right this moment he can finally place a tag on Marla, knowing he's right, he's been right ever since the wind blew her into Charming, her and the Eco-Nazos.
"Who are ye, woman?"
And she giggles with her bruised cheek turning from pink into blue.
"The tooth fairy."