Page 54 of Making His Bones

Fuck fuckity fuck! How long had I been waiting to hear that? Hell, I was impressed with Elektra. She’d just barreled out there uncaring of her own safety to save my pathetic ass. It should’ve been embarrassing, but I was only busting with pride for her.

I thought it would take ten Cape buffalo and a rocket ship to change the Bare Bones’ minds about Elektra. “Oh, man! You don’t know how much that means to me. So they accept her as my old lady?”

“They are trending that way, but we heard she’s starting up a chapter of her DNA biz in Flagstaff.”

“That’s true.”

“We don’t want the FBI taking up residence in our assholes. What if some other bizarre, obscure murder led her back to us?”

I tried to chortle, but deep down I knew Slushy was right. What if someone like Baron Funkhauser had murdered a shopkeeper or his wife ten years ago, and Elektra uncovered it? Would I expect her to set aside her professional standards just to protect someone who was, to be honest, half-baked? I knew we sometimes had to take men down to the ground in our business. What would Ford’s DNA rap sheet look like if Elektra was able to lay all the bodies at his feet? Like a Silicon Valley org chart.

I said, “I can tell her the rules. No pinning anything on any Boner.”

Slushy snorted. “That’s what we’re skeptical of, buddy. Would she be able to bury her ethics to cover for us? Wait, that didn’t sound right.”

Galileo said, “What you mean is, will she be able to disregard her upstanding sense of self to hide the truth about some heinous, bloodstained murder one of us carried out?”

“That doesn’t sound any better,” Slushy pointed out.

There was another light knock at the bedroom door. Elektra entered in the same flowery sundress she’d worn when rescuing me. For some weird reason, I didn’t feel unmanned by being rescued by a woman, maybe because she was with Lytton and Wolf, or maybe because she was my love. Just her entrance into the room lightened things considerably. It was like she should have cartoon birds and flowers over her head.

Now she was shy, and held onto the door, especially when she saw Slushy. “Oh. Didn’t mean to barge in.”

Which was funny, because “barge in” is what she’d done at the Pitchfork property.

I scooted to the foot of the bed, my hands held out. “Elektra. My savior.” I said it only half-kidding. She really had saved my ass. Those Seeker hayseeds could have done me in, and we’d have no recourse, no proof I’d ever been there.

She warmed up when she looked at me, but still cast a doubtful eye at the lawyer. We must’ve looked a sight, all rapping on Maddy’s guest bed. “You’re having a sit-down. I’ll come back later.”

To my surprise, it was Slushy who stood and said grandly, “No need to, miss. I was just congratulating Gray on making progress toward nailing those Pitchfork goons to the wall. I can see the amount of pride stuffed into this guy’s cut. And you’ve proven your faithfulness to him, and therefore to the club.”

“Only, he left his cut in Knoxie’s truck,” said Galileo. “It wouldn’t fit under the squirrel suit.”

Elektra said, “Well, I appreciate that, Mr. . . . Slushy. I know I’m not your favorite person in the world after setting forth all the evidence needed to arrest Rufus Cole.”

Slushy rubbed his nose with his knuckles. “Well, ah, let’s just say I’d rather think of you as our partner than our enemy. That was some impressive numbers crunching.”

Elektra practically pshawed. I could tell she liked the outlaw lawyer. “I started out as a big fan of Kary Mullis. He was the LSD enthusiast who—“

“—developed the polymerase chain reaction!” cried Slushy. By now he was thoroughly into it, and practically grabbed Elektra by the arms.

Even Galileo stood, pointing to the heavens above. “Micro-dosing LSD led me to canceling a week of classes I was teaching at a reservation school. I realized that being abandoned by an authority figure was in itself a life experience for these kids.”

“Yes!” cried Elektra, ignoring Galileo. “Scientists started using his formula to understand cold cases seventy years old, the genealogy of dinosaurs and royalty—“

“—and the diagnosis of hereditary diseases!” declared Slushy. He looked like he’d just won a long-shot race. “I just knew that because multiple sclerosis runs in my family so it, ah, caught my attention.”

I finally stood, clutching the bedpost to stabilize me. “Slushy was just telling me the club is coming around to our side of things. They’re impressed at what you did at the distillery.”

Elektra came closer, taking my good hand in hers. “I’m so glad you came out of it all right. It could’ve been so much worse. Don’t you fucking try anything like that again.”

I chuckled modestly. “Well, I proved they’re the ones distilling the booze used to poison Latin kids.”

Tiago said, “We knew that. Just ask us.”

I shot Tiago an ungrateful look, but Elektra smiled sunnily at him. “You just reminded me, Tiago.” She slipped her phone from a compartment in her purse and swiped to find something. “I saw a fairly good photograph of the extended Pitchfork clan posing for some family gathering.”

“A regular hoedown,” snorted Slushy.