No one else laughed. Levon tried to hypnotize me into submission with his intensely sharp eyes. “No one thought to look for disease in germs or water because the four fucking humors were in control of everything. Do you get me?”
I sneered. “You’re saying your house of ill repute is holy and sanctified because you men are like brothers. It’s a feeble and misguided argument to make, and you’re not swaying me. I’ll examine your men for venereal diseases and general health free of charge, as a courtesy to my sister. If they’d rather stay and sell their bodies to twisted old men, there’s nothing I can do to convince them.”
“They make good money,” said Levon, digging his hands deep into his jeans pockets. I was surprised there was room for his hands, that’s how tight the pants were. Left nothing to the imagination. “What sort of jobs do you offer down in Avalanche? Minimum wage? My men earn upward of ninety, one-twenty grand a year. Some of the best, myself included, make more than that.”
I sort of cringed a little at that, looking to Mahalia for support. I hadn’t been down to their little burg of Avalanche in southwest Utah yet, but it was highly unlikely they could offer anything as lucrative. Mahalia’s “old man” Gideon worked in a mine. Sure, he owned it, but he still toiled tirelessly.
Mahalia helped me out, lifting her chin with pride. “We do okay. We’re revitalizing the city from the ghost town Allred Chiles left behind. No one wanted to live close to the loonies, but now that Chiles is gone and we’re in charge, people are starting to move back. Real estate is doing a brisk business.”
Dingo added, “Sledgehammer opened up a butcher shop slash grocery store deli, and Yosemite Sam has a coffee shop. Maximus renovated the old barber shop. I’m the club’s IT man, floating from job to job.”
Levon snorted. “A barber shop? Oh, I can just see my men stampeding to get in on that opportunity at the ground level. And to move from their luxurious digs here on the mountain down to Hurricane—”
“Avalanche,” I practically spat.
“I can just see the rush now. Listen, I mean no disrespect—”
“None taken,” gushed Mahalia, back on Levon’s side.
“—but you can’t begin to offer my men a better life. And isn’t that the bottom line? Who’s offering a better life, a better future?”
“We launder money,” Dingo blurted.
Everyone looked at him with bulging eyes. Levon tilted his head thoughtfully. “Really? You launder ill-gotten gains through these businesses?”
“All the time!” bragged Dingo.
Now, I wasn’t up on the nature of my brother-in-law’s motorcycle club. I knew it was a “one percenter” outlaw club, and they had some illegal doings with the polygs inside the Cornucopia walls. The Assassins of Youth, they called themselves, as if joining was some kind of rite of initiation into a permanent macho adulthood. To me, it was plain old childish. I loved Gideon and his efforts to transform the town. I even liked the members Mahalia had shown me photos of, the aforementioned Maximus with his flowing silver hair and James Brolin looks. Dust Bunny had a geology degree from Stanford and was prospecting too in more ways than one, working out at the mine. Yosemite Sam and Sledgehammer looked as rough as their names implied, but I’d seen photos of Sledgehammer cooing and kissing his Leonberger dog, and even Yosemite Sam was intently into the details of making the perfect cappuccino.
In other words, they weren’t all bad to the bone as you’d expect from an outlaw motorcycle club. I could see my sister’s attraction to the macho lifestyle, although she would not wear her leather jacket with a “Property of Gideon Fortunati” patch. Not after what she’d been through, being kidnapped by the fundies, the fundamentalists out at Cornucopia who held her for five years, turning her into a deadened Morbot like the rest of them. She’d been their property, and she only escaped when they threatened to marry off her fifteen-year-old daughter Vonda to some creepazoid. I will be forever grateful to Gideon for helping her out of that mess.
Now Mahalia was paying it forward by running the nonprofit Save Our Baby Brides. We were hoping to save some young men too, but from what Levon said, no one particularly wanted to be saved.
“That’s part of my job,” explained Dingo. “Insert, layer, and extract funds from various businesses in Avalanche and Bullhead City where the mother chapter is. Our lawyer Slushy taught me how to do it.” It was sort of adorable, the way the brown-skinned, seemingly innocent boy was proud of his money laundering expertise. After a young adulthood rooting through garbage cans and sleeping in an abandoned school, he had reason to be proud.
“Hm,” said Levon. “You got any martial arts studios down there? I’ve always wanted to open up a Krav Maga studio. Even better if I can launder Liberty Temple money through there.”