Page 26 of Goose

“Where’s the fucking body?”

“He said he cut it into pieces and disposed of it.”

“Fucking amateurs,” I muttered.

His face contorted. “Excuse me?”

“If Cash shot him in the head, the bullet’s rattling around in the dead man’s skull. I doubt Cash split the man’s head open and dug it out. So, wherever he tossed the head is where the cops can find the bullet. When they find the bullet, they’ll be able to tie the death to Cash through ballistics. If he’s carrying that piece, they’ve got a murder weapon and an easy conviction. Like I said earlier, we’re a club. A group. The tattoos we have on our backs make it tough to claim in court that we’re nothing but old drinking buddies. The RICO act means that if Cash shot him, I’m just as guilty as Cash. So are you. So’s everyone else. You said, ‘Cash said he cut him into pieces and disposed of it.’ That means you weren’t there. If you weren’t there, that means Cash did things the way Cash does things. It’s no big secret that Brother Cash is one of the laziest sons-of-bitches on this planet. Lastly, people who are stupid as fuck cut bodies into pieces to dispose of them. That’s the kind of shit the cops have them write into TV scripts in hope of convincing some dip-shit criminal it’s what they ought to do the next time they kill somebody. I can’t fucking believe you were part of this clusterfuck, Bake.”

“Tell me what’s wrong with cutting the guy up into—”

“Ever heard of DNA?” I asked.

He glared.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” I said. “Well, if you have a body in one place, you have one chance they’ll find the DNA. If you have a hand in Encinitas, a foot in LA, a head in El Cajon, another foot in Oceanside, another hand in San Pedro, and a torso in Compton, you’ve got six chances of them finding the DNA. Might as well have killed six motherfuckers and tried to hide the bodies. There’s a reason they catch every serial killer that’s ever existed, and that’s because there’s just too fucking much evidence out there not to.”

“I’ll talk to Cash—”

“We’ll talk to Cash,” I demanded. “We will also tell Reno about this, because he’s part of this Brotherhood. He has a right to know.”

“Alright,” he agreed. “We’ll talk to Cash.”

“And Reno.”

“And Reno,” he agreed.

“Let’s get out of this motherfucker,” I said. “I need to go get something to eat in a joint that has silverware that’s made of metal.”

I also needed to calm my nerves.

I knew one place to go where I could possibly do both.