Have Gun, Will Travel (The Bare Bones MC Book 5) Read Online Free Page A

eighteen—but she’s got a sweet heart, and to see her face look like an upside-down pizza on the floor, well, that’s just too fucking much. She’s going to need plastic surgery.”
    Sax told the bartender, “Soda water. So who’s the fucktard I need to concern myself with?”
    Harte’s eyes clouded over. He looked from side to side before leaning toward Sax and saying, “Tony Tormenta.”
    Tony Tormenta. Sax knew the asswipe well. He’d started out in the short pants days as a low-level Sicilian mafia wannabe, real name Anthony Tataglia. But he soon abandoned wearing fedoras and suits for the rougher, more lucrative business of trade south of the border. He became an enforcer for the cartel, one of those frightening men who fold people up like massage tables and stick them in his car trunk.
    Tormenta rose from the ranks, driving around in a weird mixture of various military uniforms, insignia and medals patched together from every country and branch of the armed forces possible. His armored cars had gold-plated bumpers and wheels. Sax had dealt with Tormenta before, unfortunately. He was a toolbag of the highest order. His favorite practice was “ el guiso ,” the stew. He boiled people alive in a large pot, then set them on fire with gasoline.
    Sax pinched his forehead between his eyes. “Yeah. I know the guy. Leo’s been dealing with him?”
    “Yeah, for about four months now. Pure and Easy won’t have a thing to do with the guy anymore. Tormenta recently backed Riker, remember him? He was ‘out bad’ when Cropper went down in the desert a couple years ago.”
    “Yeah, who could forget that guy? Always running around wearing a latex hood or a PVC Y-harness going up his ass.” As a master in the world of BDSM, Sax had learned to loathe people like that. He was all for cock and ball torture, but people like Riker made it look like the most embarrassing lifestyle in the world. Riker wasn’t serious about it—he dabbled a little bit in everything, never truly committing himself. Sax had seen him wearing an adult diaper once, too, and he could’ve swore he glimpsed one of those giant baby cribs in one of the back rooms at their old P and E clubhouse, The Bum Steer. That was back in the days when anything went.
    “Yeah, well, apparently Riker ran out of employers willing to hire him, so he went to Tormenta. I don’t know if you remember, but Tormenta’s into human trafficking. Riker tried to nab Slushy’s daughter Gudrun and a couple of her friends. The Chinese Bamboo Boys are running that arm of his operation, but he’s got several other irons in the fire, of course.”
    “You think Leo’s getting into human trafficking?”
    Harte didn’t answer right away. He looked down, gulped the last of his whisky, and exhaled. He still didn’t look Sax in the eye. “Could be. Could be, man.” He finally raised his eyes to Sax’s face. “I was down at one of our warehouses in Winona about a month ago picking up some Russian ladies for the Ochoas. There was this fucking, like, dungeon I’d never noticed before. I opened the trap door, and all these Mexican eyes were staring up at me. I asked Funkhauser about it”—Funkhauser was their long-standing sergeant-at-arms—“and he told me to never mind. I just never minded, Sax. I mean, ten beaner women? Who’s going to miss them, right?”
    That was true. Harte could’ve thought they were being shipped off to be paid maids in mansions, or that the women had bribed someone to smuggle them across the border. But Winona was hellaway across the border already. They wouldn’t need to hide there anymore.
    Sax asked, “Have you seen any Chinamen coming and going at The Drawing Board?”
    “None, and none at any business meetings. I’m not saying we should go in with all guns blazing accusing Leo of human trafficking. I just know it’s something Panhead never would’ve stood for. Birdseye is all right. I only know him from runs around the Painted Desert,