Griggs asked. Stan looked at Wallace. For a brief second, he felt a flicker of pity for the bank man. Wallace was out of his depth, drowning in a reality that didn't operate on interest rates or legal precedents. "He's from the bank."
Stan said, his voice flat. "He's here to foreclose the shop. Padlock goes on the door at noon." A murmur rippled through the front lines of the bikers. It wasn't a loud noise, just a collective shifting of leather, a dark muttering that sounded like a warning growl from a very large dog.
Griggs didn't react visibly. He just tilted his head slightly. He slowly walked over to Wallace. Wallace's knuckles were white around his leather folio. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
"Foreclosure." Griggs said softly, testing the word. He stopped 3 ft from Wallace. The height difference wasn't much, but Griggs took up all the oxygen in the space. "You're taking his shop."
"I am just a representative." Wallace stammered, his voice cracking violently. "I don't make the decisions. It's a commercial loan default. The court ordered "I don't give a damn about a court."
Griggs interrupted. His voice didn't rise in volume, but it felt like a physical blow. "I asked what you were doing." "I'm securing the property for the bank." Griggs stared at him.
The silence stretched out torturous and thin. The 500 men standing behind Griggs didn't move. They were a wall of muscle, iron, and loyalty, waiting for a single word from the man with the ice blue eyes. "How much?" Griggs asked.
Wallace blinked, confused. "Excuse me?" "I asked how much." Griggs repeated, stepping 1 in closer. "What's the balance on the debt?
What does he owe your bank?" Wallace swallowed hard, his eyes darting frantically toward his car door, calculating if he could get inside and lock it before they got to him. He realized instantly he couldn't. He opened his folio with trembling hands, pulling out the top sheet of paper. The principal balance, including late fees and foreclosure penalties, is $34,212 and 50 cents.
Wallace read, his voice shrinking with every syllable. Griggs didn't blink. He turned his head and looked at Bear. Bear didn't say a word. He reached into his heavy leather cut.
He pulled out a thick rubber banded stack of bills. He tossed it to the man standing next to him. That man reached into his own vest, pulled out a wad of cash, combined it with Bear's, and passed it down the line. Stan watched, stunned, as a silent wave moved through the crowd. Men were digging into saddlebags, unzipping jacket pockets, pulling out money clips, hundreds, 50s, 20s.
It flowed forward like water, passed from hand to calloused hand, moving toward the front of the pack. Within 90 seconds, Bear was holding a canvas saddlebag liner. It was bulging. He walked over to Wallace and dropped the bag onto the hood of the silver sedan. It hit the metal with a heavy muffled thump.
Wallace jumped back. "Count it," Griggs said. Wallace stared at the bag. "I can't take cash. We don't process."
Griggs reached out, incredibly fast, and gripped the lapel of Wallace's expensive charcoal suit. He didn't pull the man off his feet, but he pulled him close enough that Wallace could smell the stale tobacco and highway dirt on him. "You're going to count it," Griggs whispered, his voice holding the promise of absolute violence. "You're going to write a receipt on that piece of paper. You're going to stamp it paid in full, and then you're going to get in your shiny little car and drive back to whatever glass building you came from and you are never going to look at this mountain again.
Do you understand me? Wallace nodded frantically, his face completely drained of blood. Yes, yes, sir. Griggs let go, smoothing the lapel of the suit with a mocking pat. Wallace fumbled with the bag.
He unzipped it. The sheer volume of loose bills was staggering. He didn't count it. He couldn't. His hands were shaking too badly.
He pulled a pen from his pocket, laid the foreclosure document on the hood of his car, and scribbled furiously. He crossed out the red foreclosure pending stamp and wrote "Paid in full, debt satisfied" across the bottom, signing his name with a jagged frantic scroll. He thrust the paper towards Stan. Stan didn't take it. He looked at the paper, then at the bag of money on the car, and finally at Griggs.
"I can't take this." Stan said, his voice thick. The cynicism that had armed him for the last 7 years was suddenly cracking, fracturing under the weight of something he hadn't felt in a long time. "You don't have a choice, old man." Griggs said, turning to face him.
The hardness in his eyes softened just a fraction. "You fixed a brother's machine when he was bleeding in the mud. You gave him your own parts. You treated him like a man, not a patch. Out here, that means something.
We don't owe favors. We settle our books." "It's too much." Stan argued, gesturing to the canvas bag. "That's 30 grand."
"There's probably 50 in the bag." Bear chimed in, a faint smirk returning to his bearded face. "Keep the change. Buy some new coffee. The stuff you make tastes like battery acid."
Stan stared at the men. His throat was tight. He looked past Griggs, past Bear, out at the sea of faces watching him, men who were feared by society, men who lived by a code written in violence and loyalty, standing in his muddy lot, saving his life. Wallace scrambled into his sedan. He didn't bother putting his seatbelt on.
He jammed the car into reverse, tires spinning wildly in the mud, throwing dirt onto his own polished hood. He managed to back onto the highway, slammed it into drive, and sped off toward the valley, leaving the canvas bag of money sitting alone on a rusted oil drum where Bear had moved it. The bank was gone. The shop was his. Stan looked down at his cracked, grease-stained hands.
The tremor was still there, but it didn't feel like weakness anymore. It felt like an engine idling, waiting for the clutch to drop. He looked back up at Griggs. "My coffee is fine." Griggs let out a sudden, bark-like laugh.