Chapter 14 #6
Gideon’s nose was swollen and taped, and he’d needed stitches on his temple and his cheek, would need dentistry—hell, would need to have his wrist set in the next two days because he had a hairline fracture that had been too swollen to do more than splint.
Gideon nodded soberly. “Tell them, kid,” he said. “That way they’ll be on the lookout.”
“I… I don’t think he’ll do anything right away,” Joey mumbled, and then glanced up to meet the eyes of everybody at the table.
“But they… the reason Gideon and I didn’t die from an overdose—well, there were a couple.
One of them was that they were aware that too many bodies had gone over at the pier, and as you know, it’s easier to move a live body than it is a dead one.
The other two are more complicated. Yesterday, I sort of… .” He felt his face heat.
“When the Sons of the Blood attacked, he spared our youngest attacker,” Gideon said softly. “Let him go. I would have too. Kid was maybe seventeen, and God—so scared.”
Joey nodded. “I couldn’t.” He finally took that bite and spoke through a heavenly burst of protein and grease. “I mean, I could have, but, you know. I thought it was unnecessary.”
Under the table, he felt Gideon’s splint bump gently against his knee. Gideon knew the truth; that was all he needed.
“Anyway, that kid’s father was the one in charge of the needles. And he was going to let me live for it, but, you know, I had to have Gid’s back.”
“What’d you tell him?” Harding asked like he understood.
“Well, first I said if he killed my partner I’d burn his shit to the ground, and then, when he just stared at me, I….” He sighed and took another bite. After he swallowed he said, “I invoked my father. You all know who my father is?”
He glanced up and saw everyone exchange glances, and Crosby nodded, looking embarrassed, before Calix Garcia said irritably, “No. No I do not know who your father is. Why does everybody else?”
“Because you fell for Crosby so hard when you walked in the door, the rest of us assholes ceased to exist,” Gideon said dryly, and Garcia’s cheeks went dark pink under his bronze skin.
“Fair,” he mumbled, before taking his own bite of steak and eggs. “So who is your father, for those of us not in the know?”
Joey opened his mouth to answer, but Harding did instead.
“Stevie Carlyle,” he said, crossing his utensils over his cleaned plate. “One of the biggest mobsters-slash businessmen-slash blackmailers on the East Coast.”
“Oh shit!” Garcia was staring at him with round eyes. “No kidding?”
“No kidding,” Joey said, his mouth twitching.
He’d thought this moment would be hard. “Anyway, he’s been trying to recruit me pretty much since I left the FLETC.
I told Harding. It’s why I keep switching out phones and SIM cards—sorry everybody.
I visited his place over Christmas, sort of, uhm, made an impression that I was never fucking coming back, and he needed to leave us alone before we investigated him. ”
“Could we?” Crosby asked Harding astutely. He’d eaten about half the food on his plate, but that, apparently, was what happened when you graduated from two months undercover with a shit-ton of damage and a peptic ulcer.
Harding grimaced. “Yes and no. Yes, this crew—you guys and the folks who went to Washington to make their own busts today—my squad? We could take ’em down. Won’t say easy, but Harm and Gideon know you don’t find this much talent just anywhere.”
“But no,” Crosby said, “because you don’t just go after somebody like that without a reason.
It’s… mobsters know. Whatever their racket, they know how to stay under the radar.
They’re always under investigation, so they keep their activity levels at a place where that shit doesn’t go up.
If it does, they escalate violence, and everybody loses.
It’s an ecosystem. If you have enough wolves, the ecosystem thrives.
You have too many wolves, and they’re fighting for food, or they feel threatened, there’s a lot of fuckin’ carnage.
Not enough? All the deer overgraze, and the ecosystem gets fucked.
We need to be the wolves, they need to be the deer.
We can’t wipe out all the fuckin’ deer or there’s a bloodbath and a lot of dead civilians. Right, Chief?”
Harding smiled at him. “Those classes on organized crime paid off,” he said mildly. “Yeah, kid—you learned some stuff.”
“And I watched some of Carlyle’s fuckin’ nature documentaries when I was stuck in my flat under cover,” Crosby said. “It’s weird the shit you miss from pizza nights.”
Carlyle grinned at him. “Yeah, well, I missed your fuckin’ stupid shoot-em-ups.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Gideon muttered. “We watched plenty of fuckin’ stupid shoot-em-ups when you were gone.”
There was some general laughter, and then Harding made a subtle sound, and Joey knew it was time to finish the story.
“Anyway, I said that if they killed me, my father would burn their families to the fucking ground. I know he would because he’s a sadistic bastard like that, and I also know he’s been tailing me.
Harding knows they’ve got my apartment under surveillance.
” He shuddered. “I would love to fucking move, but when we go there now, we know their camera angles, and we know how to get in and out without them seeing. And I’ve spotted my tails a few times in the last few months.
” He grimaced. “Between my father and your problems, Crosby, I would love to take a fuckin’ dump in peace, if you know what I mean. ”
Crosby sucked air through his teeth. “Yeah, I feel that.” He shuddered the deep tremor of a man who’d been living in a crappy studio that had been watched over by his mortal enemy for nearly two months. “Fuckin’ deeply. So why tell us now?”
Carlyle sighed and took his last bite before placing his own utensils over his plate and pushing back to sigh.
“’Cause of what you said about the deer thing.
You were right. Predators, prey, they form their own ecosystem.
And now that we took out a bunch of wolves, my father’s the mountain lion that’s gonna move in.
One of the things he texted me was not to go after the Sons of the Blood. ”
“Fuck that!” Garcia snorted, and Joey nodded.
“Harding said the same thing. But we… you know.” He turned pleading eyes to all of them. “Guys, it was like one big fucking asshole at a time, you know?”
They nodded.
“So what now?” Crosby asked.
“Well, I figure we give ol’ pops a chance to deal with the fallout, and in the meantime? You know those eyes we grew in the back of our heads these last two months?”
“We don’t shut them anytime soon,” Gideon finished for him, and he gave Gideon a grateful look.
“Yeah. And we tell the others. Like, unless we have something pressing, we should have a meeting about it special while we’re wrapping this last shit up. How long you think that’ll take, anyway?”
Harding grimaced. “Two weeks for Crosby to be back in the field, and then he’s going back to the 43rd Precinct to help them clean up the mess those assholes made in their ranks.
Between that and debriefs and testifying for everybody, I’d say six weeks to two months before we’re fully operational again. ”
Joey nodded. “Don’t count on Stevie Carlyle to wait that long,” he said on a sigh. “But I’m pretty sure he’ll only be after me.”
“And Gideon,” Harding said softly.
Joey sent him a stricken look before meeting Gideon’s eyes.
“Why Gid?” But he knew.
“’Cause you told that guy Gideon meant something to you, Joey. It’s why you haven’t let yourself get attached until now, with us.”
“Why us?” Crosby asked. “Not that I’m not grateful, Carlyle. Just sucks how being special never did me no favors.”
“’Cause with one fuckin’ exception, Crosby, you fuckers can defend yourselves,” Gideon told him dryly, and Crosby grinned at him while Calix elbowed him—gently—in the bruised ribs, avoiding the gunshot graze from that morning.
“Exactly,” Harding told them, shaking his head at his wayward children.
“But it’s still hard to have things—people—you value when you’re growing up with a sociopath.
” There was a gasp at the table, because this group of people knew what that word meant in their bones.
“Sociopaths will destroy what you lo—value, to control you. Joey, your father knows what you value, and it’s your partner.
So both of you, keep those eyes in the back of your head wide open, okay? ”
Joey nodded soberly and was relieved when Gideon did the same.
Harding gave them both kind smiles. “And in the meantime, who’s got room for a milkshake?”
Surprisingly enough, everybody. Every-fucking-body at the table had wreaked violence and mayhem in the last twenty-four hours.
They could fuck up a milkshake.
HARDING DROPPED them off at Gideon’s place, bringing them in through the alley and the back entrance to the stairs.
He walked them up, double-checked the apartment for security, and then paused as Gideon and Joey wandered in, lost and exhausted and strung out, behind him. Joey stared at him, at a loss.
“Whatcha thinkin’, Boss?” Gideon asked after a quiet moment.
Harding met his eyes with the levelness of an old friend.
“Remember when we moved Crosby into Garcia’s, and you guys were like, ‘The guest room, who in the hell do they think they’re fooling?’”
Joey’s eyes widened, and he glanced around the apartment again.
His shirts, folded neatly on the back of each tweed couch cushion and the recliner, used as doilies.
The banners they’d bought—from Wicked to the Stone Pony—strung together and used as curtains in the bedroom.
The weapons safe next to the couch, with books about the natural world stacked on them, books Gideon had bought for Joey, since his obsession with the natural order of the animal world was still going strong.
He must have made a noise then, because Gideon gave him a reassuring smile.