Page 90 of Make Them Bleed
“Pretty boy,” Paul continues. “Beau Latham. Hedge fund a mile wide, morals a centimeter deep. He thinks he’s the face of the group because he owns shirts that fit.”
“Pinky ring,” I say.
“There’s a B on it,” Paul says. “Or a 13. He jokes about both. He’s the one who thinks the finger gun is funny.”
Polk’s eyebrows can’t move but I can feel Gage’s disapproval through the rubber. “Hilarious.”
“Short one,” Paul says. “Merritt Voss. Fixer. Smiles like a knife.”
“And the last one,” I say.
“Devin Pike,” Paul whispers, and now he looks ashamed. “His family did half the city’s first big condo projects. He’s got a YouTube channel he pretends he doesn’t run. He wants to be Coleman when he grows up.”
Gage underlines each name once, then draws a thin box around them like he’s putting them in a terrarium. Ozzy leans back on the couch arm, Fillmore grinning goofily at the ceiling. On anyone else it would be comedy, however, on us, it’s a weapon.
“Why did Coleman shoot you the finger?” I ask.
Paul laughs, a shred of hysteria still clinging. “They call it acheck. Like, ‘bang-bang, you’re complicit.’ It’s an in-joke. He did it when he greased procurement for a marina add-on and I signed like a good boy.”
“And Nico?” I ask, even though I know. I need to hear it. I need to hear it enough times that when I say it to Juno, there’s no wobble.
“Nicolas Armand,” Paul says. “They call him the ferry. He moves things across water and pretends he’s poetic about it. Sometimes it’s art. Sometimes it’s people. Sometimes it’s… other things.” He swallows like he swallowed a knife. “He thinks girls are puzzles.”
Ozzy’s hands curl. “We’re going to break his face.”
Paul cries again, shorter this time, like his body hit the reserve tank and found it wanting. “I didn’t know what they were going to do to her,” he says. “I swear. I thought— I thought the live thing was a scare. I thought they’d shut off the feed andscareher. I didn’t—” He chokes, coughs, sags. “I’m not a murderer.”
I step closer, squatting so Hoover’s face is at Paul’s eye level. “Listen to me. We’ll get you out. Not clean—you don’t get clean—but out. You’re going to do three things. One: you’re going to keep breathing. Two: you’re going to keep your mouth shut about this talk. If you so much as breathe a word of this to anyone you’ll be on our shit list. You donotwant to be on our shit list, Paul. Three: you’re going to deliver a packet to Detective Chloe Huxley with your name on it and enough breadcrumbs that she can say she found them herself.”
Paul nods too fast. “Okay. Okay.”
“Plus addresses,” Gage says. “Where do they meet when it isn’t Club Greed or the marina?”
Paul scrubs his face on his shoulder. “Stonehouse, back room. That new speakeasy behind the flower shop—Cicely’s. And there’s a warehouse by the train spur, near the river. Unit 14. They think no one knows it exists. There’s a door with a keypad and a camera with a blind spot at the southeast angle.”
Ozzy’s head snaps. “Do not give us keypad talk,” he says. “We are not doing anything illegal in this legal conversation.”
Paul huffs a hysterical laugh that breaks open into a sob again. “I’m sorry.”
“Done,” I say. “Last thing: why were you in Pride?”
He exhales like a balloon dropped. “I’m trying to feel something,” he admits, eyes red. “My wife left in June. I walk through my house like something’s missing. Club Greed is—” He gestures helplessly. “It… It felt safe.”
No one says anything for a beat. Sometimes the truth is the worst sound in the room.
Ozzy raps the Fillmore chin with a knuckle. “Are we done scaring the substitute teacher?”
I stand. “We’re done.”
Paul looks at us and reaches for humor the way a drowning man reaches for the lip of the pool. “If anyone asks,” he sniffles, “I was interrogated by some old presidents”
Ozzy, solemn: “Not even that.”
We cut the ties. He sits there, transfixed by freedom like he doesn’t know what to do with it. I slide a business card onto the table—it’s blank except for a handwritten note on the back:FOR C. HUXLEY.
“You have until morning,” I tell him. “We won’t come back if you do the packet. If you don’t?—”
“I will,” he says, too fast. “I will.”
