“What’s your name?” Blade asked.
“Jeff,” the biker replied.
“What are you?”
Jeff’s eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed, as if he was puzzled. “How do you mean?”
“Are you part of a gang?” Blade queried. He nodded at the bodies around him. “All of you wear black leather. Why?”
“That’s our color, man,” Jeff said.
“Color?”
“Yeah. Where are you from? Don’t they have colors where you come from?” Jeff inquired.
Blade pressed on the Commando and Jeff blanched. “I’ll ask the questions,” Blade reminded him.
“Sure thing,” Jeff promptly responded.
“What is the name of your gang?”
“We’re called the Leather Knights,” Jeff said proudly.
“And do the Leather Knights have their…” Blade paused, trying to recall the words he wanted. Once before, during Alpha Triad’s run to the Twin Cities, he had dealt with street gangs. What was the name they used for their territory? Something to do with grass or sod or—“…turf in St. Louis?” he said as the word came to him.
“St Louis is our turf,” Jeff boasted.
“The Leather Knights control the entire city?” Blade interrogated the biker.
“Yep.” Jeff beamed. “Have for years.”
“Detail the history of the Leather Knights,” Blade instructed.
“What?” Jeff almost laughed. “Are you kidding?”
Blade leaned forward, his raging eyes burning into Jeff’s. “Do I look like I’m kidding?”
Jeff gulped. “No, sir. You sure don’t.”
“Then start talking.”
“There’s not much to tell,” Jeff said in a frightened tone. “I don’t know a lot about it, honest!”
“You must know something.”
“All I know is what I’ve heard,” Jeff explained, “what some of the old-timers have told me.”
“I’m waiting.”
Jeff reflected a moment. “The Leather Knights got started way back before the war,” he detailed.
“When the war broke out, most of the people in St. Louis took off. I think they were evacuated by the Government, or something like that.
Anyway, the Knights stayed put and got involved in some fights with two or three other gangs over who was going to claim the turf. The Knights came out on top.”
“Are there any other people in St. Louis besides the Leather Knights?” Blade asked.
“Yep. Bunches. A lot of people strayed back after the war was over. I don’t know how many there are now, but there’s got to be at least a couple of thousand,” Jeff said.
“How many Leather Knights are there?” Blade questioned him.
“Six hundred, if you count the studs,” Jeff answered.
“Studs?”
“Yeah. I’m a stud. The guys you just wasted were studs. You’d be a stud, too, if you were a Knight.”
Now it was Blade’s turn to be confused. “I don’t understand,” he admitted.
“You’ve got balls, don’t you?”
“Balls?”
“Nuts. Coconuts, man. Gonads,” Jeff said, accenting the last word.
Blade was more bewildered than before. “What do my sexual organs have to do with it?”
“Everything. If you ain’t got nuts and a pecker, you can’t hardly be a stud,” Jeff explained.
Blade’s eyes widened in comprehension. “You mean all of the men are studs?”
Jeff snickered. “The foxes ain’t got the hardware, if you get my drift.”
“And the studs control the Leather Knights?” Blade speculated.
Jeff snorted again. “Where’d you ever get a dumb idea like that?” He hesitated, appalled at his own stupidity. “I didn’t mean anything by that crack,” he quickly blurted out. “Honest!”
“If the men… the studs… don’t control the Leather Knights, then who does?” Blade demanded.
“Who else? The foxes.”
“The women?”
“Why do you look so surprised? Ain’t it the same where you come from?” Jeff inquired.
Blade shook his head. “Our men and women share responsibility. You can’t really say one dominates the other.”
“You’re putting me on!”
“I’m serious,” Blade stated. “How did the women assume control of the Leather Knights?”
“It’s always been that way,” Jeff replied.
“Always?”
Jeff frowned. “I did hear a story once, but I thought the old guy who told me was wacko. He said that long ago, way back about the time of the war, the men ran the show. But all the fighting over our turf killed off most of the men. The Leather Knights became top dog in St. Louis, but few of the men survived. So the foxes, the mamas, sort of took over.”
“And the women have been running the show ever since,” Blade concluded.
“They do now,” Jeff affirmed.
“How many of the Knights are studs?”
“Oh, about two hundred,” Jeff answered.
“But you said there are six hundred Knights?”
“That’s right,” Jeff said.
“And the other four hundred are all women?” Blade asked.
“Yep.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Blade said. “How can you have so many women and so few men?”
“We’ve got more men,” Jeff responded. “Lots more. But the women don’t let every man into the Leather Knights. Only enough to handle their dirty work.”
“Dirty work?”
“Yeah. Things like the cleaning and the laundry and stuff like that. It’s a real drag! I wouldn’t of joined up, but it was the only way I could get me a bike,” Jeff elaborated.
“Only the Knights are entitled to motorcycles?”
“Of course.”
Blade stepped back, studying the biker, debating. He believed the man.
But where did it leave him? What good did the knowledge do? In the final analysis, what did it matter whether the women or the men ran the Leather Knights and controlled St. Louis? Either way, getting Rikki out of there promised to be no easy task. “You mentioned a guy in black earlier.”
“The one who wasted our dogs,” Jeff said. “We were after Lex and Mira, when Cardew came hauling ass and told Terza about this guy in black who racked three sisters. That’s what the women all call themselves. The sisters. Anyhow, Terza got real ticked off and ordered us to send the dogs out.” Jeff paused. “I’ve been on the dog detail for six months. I’m so damn sick of dog shit I could scream.”
“Back up a bit,” Blade directed him. “Who are Lex and Mira? And Cardew and Terza?”
“Lex is one of the sisters,” Jeff said. “She got tired of the Knights and was trying to split. But the sisters ain’t allowed to split once they take the oath. As for Mira,” he said, shifting to his right and pointing at a woman lying among the dogs, “she got racked.”
“And Cardew and Terza?”
“Cardew is one of the studs. He was riding point when they caught up with Lex and Mira. He’s the one who told us about the man in black.”
“That leaves Terza,” Blade reminded him.
“Terza is our head, man,” Jeff revealed. “She runs the whole show.”
“Terza rules the Leather Knights?”
“You got it.”
“What kind of a woman is she?” Blade asked.
“She’s one mean mother!” Jeff said. “She don’t take any crap from anybody. Sort of like you.”
Blade grinned. “Where are they holding the man in black?”
“Is he a friend of yours?”
“Yes. Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Jeff answered.
Blade took a step forward.
“Hey!” Jeff held up his hands. “Really, man! I don’t know where they’ve got him! He’s in St. Louis, but that’s all I know.”
“What will they do? Hold him prisoner?” Blade inquired.
“The Leather Knights don’t take no prisoners,” Jeff said. “He may be dead by now. Terza don’t like it when one of the sisters gets wasted, and your friend racked three. One of them, that one there,” and he pointed at another corpse, “was called Pat, a real good buddy of Terza’s. I imagine Terza will rack your friend first thing. Maybe take him out herself, or stake him out for Grotto, or even feed him to Slither.”