Chapter 10
HARLOW
"Remember that time you said Fairfield's phone was too clean?" Boner clasped his hands in front of himself and slid a gaze in Cass' direction.
"Yeah?" Cass' brow crinkled.
Boner grunted. "This Getzoff guy. He's too clean."
"On paper, aren't you just as clean?" I asked.
"Not as clean as this bloke," Boner said. "I have a speeding ticket to my name. Maybe a drunk and disorderly."
"I'm shocked." Jules rolled his eyes.
"You are not shocked," Boner said.
Jules rolled his eyes harder. "Not even a little bit."
"That's better," Boner said approvingly. "Doesn't it feel good to be honest?"
Jules flipped him off with both middle fingers.
Boner grinned. "I'm starting to like this guy. Okay, like might be a strong word. I'm starting to not want to throw him in front of a subway train."
"Thanks," Jules said sarcastically. "I'm starting to not want to throw you in front of the Midtown bus. I won't rule out the Staten Island ferry."
"I have to admire a guy who has ambition," Boner said. "Getting me on that ferry, then off it again? That would be a feat of epic proportions.'"
"You don't like ferries?" I asked.
"Love, I don't like boats of any kind," he said. "Except rocking them." He pointed a finger gun at me. "That I can do."
"I've noticed that," I said with a smile. If anyone was good at rocking the boat, it was Boner.
"Is there a point to any of this?" Jules asked. "So he's clean. So what? How does that help us?"
"It means he's hiding something," Cass said, tapping his fingers against his lips thoughtfully. "Anyone who's hiding things has to hide them somewhere. We need to find said somewhere."
"Or we could stop looking," I suggested. "If we dig into him, he might return the favor."
"He's not going to find anything,” Boner said confidently.
"You're sure about that?" I asked, not particularly certain myself.
"Of course, we're us, aren't we?" Boner said, unflinching. "We have mad skills between the five of us. And if we don't, Jules could find a way for him to accidentally electrocute himself."
"Jules could do that," Jules said reluctantly. "It's easier than you might think."
"Toaster in the bathtub," Boner suggested.
"That wouldn't be very subtle." Jules narrowed his eyes at the Englishman.
"No, but it'd be effective," Boner said. "Dibs on watching him zap." He threw his arms out to either side and shook his whole body like a sudden surge of deadly electricity was passing through him.
"You're an idiot," Jules told him.
Boner dropped his hands to his side. "Oh, care to enlighten us? How does someone look when they're being electrocuted?"
"Not like that," Jules said simply. "If you want a demonstration, I can throw a toaster into the bath the next time you're in there."
"That's such a generous offer," Boner said. "But I have to decline."
"Shame," Jules muttered.
"No one is going to fry anyone with a toaster," I said firmly.
"Of course not," Boner said. "Not when a hairdryer makes so much more sense. I mean, people would definitely think a toaster in the bathtub was suspicious."
"Unless someone likes to make toast while they bathe," Archer said.
"Is there anyone on the face of the planet who does that?" Boner seemed genuinely curious.
"Not that I'm aware of," Archer said, toying with the phone in his hand. "But if we can think up something, then someone's done it. It's like book genres. No matter how weird the idea you can come up with, someone's written it. Like snowman porn. Or deadly games of ping pong."
"What about dragon smut?" Boner challenged.
"It's a thing," Archer replied.
"Huh." Boner grunted. "What about door smut?"
"Also a thing," Archer said. “There's even a book about a self-service checkout."
Jules stared at him. "How do you even…" He shook his head. "You know what? Forget I asked. I don't want to know."
"You might learn something," Boner said, grinning at his expense. "What happens if one day you wake up as a self-serve checkout and you don't know how to fuck?"
"If I wake up one day as a self-serve checkout, fucking is going to be the last thing on my mind," Jules said.
"What will be the first?" Archer asked, his expression deadpan.
"Let me guess." Boner was having way too much fun with this. "The first thing you'd think about is how to weigh bananas."
"Have you had therapy recently?" Jules asked him. "Because you need therapy."
Boner laughed. "Is that denial I hear?" He placed a hand to his ear and listened intently.
"No, it's the sound of me telling you you're out of your fucking mind," Jules said darkly. After a moment, he added, "For the record, if I woke up tomorrow as a self-service checkout, I'd wonder how the hell I ended up that way. It'd probably be because of something Boner did."
"Guilty," Boner grinned. "If anyone could find a way to do that, it'd be me. Lucky for all of us, magic isn't a thing. We'll have to read books and imagine the possibilities."
"I wrote a fire hydrant romance once," Cass said, breaking the brief silence that followed Boner's words.
We all turned to look at him.
He shrugged. "They have long hoses."
I bit back a laugh.
"Can I read it someday?" I didn't want him to think I was making fun of him and his creativity. He piqued my curiosity, that was all.
"Yeah, I guess so," he said after a moment's hesitation. "You'll think it's weird."
"I want to know what happens when dogs piss on them," Boner said.
"Of course you do," Jules told him. "I bet that was your first thought when he mentioned fire hydrants." He didn't seem surprised to hear about his brother's writing. This might not be a revelation for him.
Boner spread his hands out to either side in a shrug. "Isn't that everyone's first thought when they think about a fire hydrant? I mean, they are famous for being pissed on by dogs. Am I right?"
He looked around at all of us.
"Yeah, you're right," I told him. "Cass might show us a new way to look at them. After all, they are useful for, you know, putting out fires."
Boner pretended to be shocked. "Is that what they're really for? I thought they were for dogs and street decoration."
Jules scooped up a spoon from beside his coffee cup and threw it in Boner's direction. It hit him on the chest, before bouncing off onto the floor. He grunted in annoyance. "I was aiming for his face."
"You missed." Boner smirked.
"No shit." If there was another spoon in front of him, Jules probably would have tried again. Instead, he finished his coffee and pushed his cup away, thankfully not using that as a projectile.
For one thing, it would hurt if it made contact with anyone, especially their face. For another thing, it might fall to the floor and break. I didn't think Archer would appreciate us breaking his cups without good reason.
What constituted a good reason? I could think of a few. Most involved Hypnos and Zeus.
"Now, where were we?" Boner pulled a chair out from the table, turned it around and sat on it backward.
"Snowman smut?" I suggested.
"No, before that." He scratched the side of his head. "Right, we were talking about Getzoff, and how suspiciously clean he is."
"What do you suggest we do about it? I asked. "We can't exactly stake out his place and wait for him to slip up. That would be suspicious. Not to mention time consuming. We need to focus on something else. Hypnos and Zeus are still out there."
"Yes, they are, and they're waiting for us to find them," Boner said.
"Let's stop obsessing about Detective Getzoff and focus on finding them." I turned to Cass. "Have you found anything new?"
He let out a long sigh. "I've looked through Fairfield's financials, as well as Solomon Danforth's financials. If they had any business partners in common, I couldn't find it. They didn't even use the same bank."
"That sounds suspicious to me." Boner said. "They were careful to keep everything separate. That's what I would do if I was an asshole like them."
Jules opened his mouth.
Cass gave him a slap on the chest with the back of his hand.
He closed it again.
They exchanged glares, but neither said anything.
"It could be suspicious and we could be barking up the wrong tree," I said reluctantly.
"They've been doing this for a long time," Archer said. "They know how to cover their tracks. We've always found them before. We'll find them this time."
"I hope so," I said softly. Sooner or later, something would turn up. A sign to tell us where to find them.
"Solomon said they weren't in the city," Jules pointed out. "They could be anywhere on the face of the planet."
"They could," I agreed. "But I don't think so."
"What are you basing that on?" Jules asked. He sounded accusing, but it was a reasonable question.
"Instinct," I said. I relied on it for a long time and it never let me down. It wasn't going to let me down now.
"Harlow is right," Cass said. "I have the same feeling. They're here in the city somewhere."
"They might be in the next building," Boner said, his eyes shifting back and forth, like he was a cartoon character. "They could be on the other side of that wall right now." He pointed to his immediate left.
"That's the bathroom," I said.
"Right, well they could be that way." He pointed in the other direction.
"That's the outer wall. The street is on the other side," Archer said.
"They could be right below us then." Boner pointed down, giving us a look as if daring us to contradict him.
"They might be that close." I shivered. The idea made my stomach turn. If they were near the whole time, we could have dealt with them months ago. Years ago.
"Don't," Cass said. "Don't start thinking about things you think you should have done already."
He shot Jules a look, reminding him to keep his mouth shut before he could accuse me of not acting soon enough. He blamed me for what happened to his brother because I was busy setting up my restaurant. Because I hadn't tracked them down fast enough.
For a while, I thought he was right, but we'd hit a dead end with the last two on my list.
There was nothing I could do but carry on as normal. Keep working. Keep my restaurants open. Watch and wait.
"We will find them," Boner promised. "We'll find them and make them pay for the things they did. Then we'll make them pay a little bit more. Then just a tiny bit more." He held out his fingers slightly apart. "And when we're done with that, we'll make them wish they were never conceived.”
"I wish they were never conceived," Cass said, glaring into his half-empty milkshake glass like he might find them there.
"Me too," I said with a sigh. "But they were, and we'll deal with them."
I wished I knew how, and where, if anywhere, Detective Getzoff fit into all of this.
What is it they say about tangled webs? I was starting to feel like I couldn't struggle out of this one. I'd come too far to stop now, but what if I never found them? What if the last two lines tattooed on my arm were never crossed off?
I had to accept the possibility Hypnos and Zeus might remain in the wind forever. For all I knew, they were dead already. If someone else was out there, doing the same things we were. If they'd killed Lionel Gammage, they might have gotten to them first.
This might all be for nothing.
My instincts told me it wasn't. They were out there. We just had to find them.