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He’d gotten a concerning voicemail on the shop’s machine from a guy named Will Gorski who claimed to be a friend of Wolfie’s and didn’t say he was a cop but was definitely a cop, telling Felix to lay low and steer clear of Lila Fachini.
Naturally Felix ignored it and went straight to Wolfgang’s place, having about two seconds to take in the scene of carnage and register that Wolfgang wasn’t one of the dead before having to hide in the wardrobe when a pair of living guys in hazmat suits came in and started cleaning up the pair of dead guys in hazmat suits.
He told himself it was more practicality than cowardice to let them finish, not anticipating them taking so long and giving it such a thorough deep cleaning that they even managed to get that weird stain off the wall that had been there before Wolfie moved in. It was actually quite impressive. He and Wolfgang had tried everything to get that stain out, up to and including mixing some chemicals that shouldn’t have been mixed and knocking both their asses unconscious. In true Wolfgang fashion, he’d shrugged it off and learned to live with it instead of just covering it up. Somehow, it didn’t impact his sex life.
Wolfgang hadn’t left any guns in the closet but Felix was able to quietly remove the bare hangers while Hazmats were scrubbing, and unscrew the metal bar. He’d helped Wolfie put the wardrobe together in the first place, and one thing he’d learned about life with his friend, always recognize what could be used as a weapon.
Once the place was spotless Felix waited for them to start heading out the front door, then ran up behind them swinging. Hazmat One was out cold before Hazmat Two tried pulling his gun and Felix kicked him down the hallway stairs with a battle cry that would sound way cooler when he told Wolfgang the story later.
The old Turkish lady who lived upstairs told him to keep it down and let herself back into her apartment with a glare. Wolfgang’s uncle, may he rest in pieces, owned the whole building, concrete boxes where you paid in cash and on time and you never ever called the cops for anything. Wolfie had lived there since he was sixteen when a particularly violent interaction between him and Steiner, plus Felix and five of Steiner’s friends, made it clear that the cousins living under the same roof was untenable.
Hazmat One started to stir and Felix grabbed his gun, dragging him to the stairs and letting him tumble down to his friend. If Wolfie was here they could haul the bodies together but Felix was not made for manual labor. They were both still breathing, starting to come around but not putting up much of a fight. Whoever hired these goons must’ve got them in bulk. More concerning than them getting the jump on Wolfie at all was that he’d only managed to kill two of them before whatever happened to him.
A not at all suspicious white van was parked outside, the back filled with the corpses from Wolfgang’s apartment and his duffel bag. Felix grabbed the bag and the wheeled gurney and left the van where it was, using the gurney to go back for the survivors.
Fuck it, he wasn’t moving two of them. He did eenie meenie miney moe and shot the loser, wheeling the winner to Wolfie’s car and shoving him in the trunk.
There was no CCTV in this area. No man's land as far as the cops were concerned. Felix stopped to catch his breath as he pawed through the duffel bag. Clothes. Some cash. The stuffed tiger Wolfgang’s mom gave him that Felix pretended he didn’t know about. He was skipping town.
“Fuck, Wolfie.” Ignoring the sting of abandonment, Felix zipped up the bag and started the car. Whoever these guys were, they’d done something to Wolfgang before he could leave. And Felix intended to find out what.
The Bogdanow house had always creeped him out. It was ice cold even with a fire going in the middle of July. He wouldn’t set foot in it as a kid without Wolfgang there to protect him. Sergei tried buying guard dogs, great big dobermans that were scared to go inside. Only Aunt Elke’s demonic chihuahuas were brave enough.
Now that it was empty, somehow the ghosts of the place weren’t as bad as the people who’d lived there.
He’d heard from Elke that there was fire damage. All the women in Wolfgang’s life called Felix when they couldn’t get a hold of him, and she was no exception. She’d gone to stay at one of Sergei’s other properties while this one underwent renovations. Only the renovations hadn’t started since she had a gang war to deal with first, and insurance, and it was just as Wolfie had left it. Minus the bodies.
If Hazmat was in better shape, Felix would’ve put him to work. This wasn’t fire damage. A bomb had gone off. Wolfie did all this?
Avoiding the maze of bloodstains, he went up to the kitchen for supplies. “My friend is the fucking Terminator.” Whoever had Wolfie, they might want to just bring him back.
Cooking may have been for “bitches” as Wolfgang’s dad liked to say, but Sergei had shown them plenty of uses for cooking utensils. No matter where Felix put that cheese grater, it wouldn’t be the worst thing this house had witnessed. “Okay, Herr Hazmat. It’s time to talk.”
As it turned out, Felix didn’t actually have the stomach for torture.
“Don’t make me use this.” He really didn’t want to use it. But he’d do it for Wolfie. He’d do anything for him.
“A cheese grater?”
“You wanna find out, motherfucker?” It occurred to Felix in hindsight that Sergei might’ve been messing with them. He was terrible at this. He needed to stop trying to be cool. Stop trying to be Wolfie. And do what he did best. Bullshitting “How’d you get that stain out?”
“The weird one above the bed?”
“Yeah.”
“Just scrubbed it.”
“With what?”
“Whatever they gave us. Some chemical shit.”
“Who’s they?”
“I don’t think you wanna get involved in this, kid.”
“I don’t think at all.” Scheisse.
The guy chuckled.
“Give me something, man. I’m just trying to find my friend.”
“Your friend left a lot of blood for me to clean up. You think he’s still alive?”
Mornings before school were always the worst. Felix had never been early to anything, but after that first meeting with Wolfgang’s father he started showing up before the teachers. He spent more time pacing around their designated meeting place than he’d spend attending actual classes. Just waiting, wondering if Wolfie would show up. School bullies were one thing but he’d seen the look on Anton’s face, and the look on Wolfgang’s, and one of them wasn’t making it out alive. Then on a cold October morning Wolfie was waiting outside his house as he was leaving for school, crack of dawn, smelling like a bonfire. He didn’t speak a word for hours, and that was that.
But they were children then. Wolfgang had since gone one man army over his entire family. It would take more than a handful of hypochondriacs to take him down.
“I know he is.” Felix wasn’t made to be a leading man. He was a sidekick through and through. He could call Aunt Elke whose house he’d broken into and whose fault it technically was she was now a widow, or Fuchs who Felix didn’t entirely trust but who was more brokenhearted over Lila’s betrayal than he was mad at Wolfgang over her trying to fuck him. And who definitely also wanted to fuck Wolfie. Yeah that would work.
Sebastian Fuchs looked the way Felix felt. Tired, despondent, alone. And ready for blood. Fuchs leaned against Sergei’s desk and surveyed the damage. No point in doing the torturing elsewhere, the carpet was already beyond saving. “Wolfgang really did all this himself?” Hazmat looked around, more concerned at the damage the mythical Wolfgang had caused than anything Felix had done to him directly. “For you?”
Sergei had been a long time coming but Fuchs didn’t need to know that. “Well he doesn’t have any other friends.” With a knowing glance, he clarified, “Didn’t have.”
Picking up the cheese grater and promptly putting it back down, Fuchs asked, “Do you have an apron or something? I’d rather not get blood on this shirt.”
“I was just assigned cleanup, man,” Hazmat said, suddenly feeling talkative. Rude. “They told me where to go and I went.”
“Who’s they?” Felix asked again.
Fuchs raised a finger to shush him. “The apron please, Felix.”
“I’m talking!”
“I’m gonna get that fucking apron.”
“Biologic Preservation Organization. They work with medical research. Something about brains. I don’t know much about it, I just go in and clean up when there’s a mess.”
“Lila Fachini.” Fuchs stated more than asked.
“Never heard of her.”
“Felix?”
“Apron,” he said threateningly.
“I’ve only been on the payroll a few months. I’ve never even had an assignment before.”
Fuck. He shot the wrong guy. He should’ve grabbed Moe.
“Where’s his phone?”
“Didn’t have one.” None of the corpses did either. Wolfie’s was in his bag, but Felix figured it was probably safer to leave it turned off.
“Where were you taking the bodies?”
“The van had GPS pre-programmed. I don’t know offhand.”
Fuchs took out his own phone and made a call. “I’ll send some of my men down to get the van.”
Felix hadn’t thought of that. Of course he didn’t. It was a small consolation that Wolfgang wouldn’t have thought of it either. He wouldn’t have even had the patience for the cheese grater. Or an apron.
They let Hazmat bleed on his own for another twenty minutes, waiting to hear from Fuchs’s men. Google said BPO was a multinational corporation that specialized in medical research. Google said Will Gorski was a former American cop who was wanted by Interpol. Props to him. Not even Wolfie was wanted by Interpol. Not yet anyway.
“You boys are proving to be more trouble than you’re worth.”
“We get that a lot.”
Fuchs was solemn as he answered his phone. Felix’s heart sank. He already knew the response before he said it. The van and Moe were gone. “I’m sorry about your friend.”
“Sorry about your girl.”
“If you find her, I want her dead.”
“Done.”
“Do you want me to deal with him?”
“No. I’ll take care of him.”
***
Gorski hadn’t left a callback number. There was no sign of Wolfie. Or Lila. Weeks spent begrudgingly laying low as he was told, by a cop, because what else could he do. He felt like a soldier’s wife, waiting for news from the front. He’d used way more than his ration of cigarettes and vodka, probably less than his ration of food. Was this what Wolfgang went through while he was in the hospital? Just endless waiting.
Being Wolfgang’s friend had never been easy. Even without the ever present threats of violence from the outside, having to play along and pretend everything was okay when it most certainly was not, because bringing that shit up was the quickest way for Wolfgang to shut down. A lifetime spent watching him tightrope that line between life and death, dipping his toe in the other side because he didn’t give a fuck about anything. But it had always been worth it. There wasn’t a day he regretted taking baby Wolfgang under his wing.
Felix comforted himself in the fact that if anyone was going to kill Wolfgang Bogdanow, it was probably Wolfgang Bogdanow. He just hoped no one dared him to do it. Playing chicken was Wolfie’s specialty.
Scrolling through his phone’s camera reel for the millionth time, unable to sleep, he stopped on the video of Wolfgang doing karaoke. It was mostly out of focus, a lot of it just Wolfie’s voice in the background while the camera was on the table because Felix was as drunk as he’d been. But Felix could swear Wolfgang was looking at someone. Not in the fuck you way he’d been before the song began, but staring right at somebody. German gangsters were one thing, but how the hell did he get involved in BPO and Interpol.
Wolfgang had always been crazy, but was he medically crazy? Felix had to admit that in hindsight, Wolfgang had been weirder than usual lately. The India fascination certainly seemed to come out of nowhere.
He went to the Tiergarten before turning on Wolfgang’s phone just in case it was being tracked, but the internet search history was clear. There was a pixelated pic of a creepy old dude in his photo library, and a couple pics of two guys fucking which was a little unexpected, even more so when Felix recognized one of them from those badass Mexican action movies. “Huh.”
Setting the phone beside him on a bench, Felix hoped it was being tracked. His only lead was dead, buried in the Bogdanow family crypt, which Felix did end up asking Fuchs for help with since digging a grave was harder than it looked, and it already looked hard.
Felix jumped as the phone rang, but it wasn’t Wolfgang’s. He fumbled in his pockets for his own phone, a number longer than the European ones he was used to but it was a video call with Wolfie’s face and Felix got so excited trying to answer it that he threw it in the dirt at his feet and had to answer it from the ground.
“Wolfie!”
“Felix!” He looked exhausted and weirdly perky and appeared to be in the back of a panel van like the one Felix let get away.
“You fucking asshole! I’ve been worried sick. What kind of phone number is that? Did you go to India without me?”
“No, I’m in France.”
“Oh. Ew.” He sneered. “Why?”
“It’s a long story.”
A long story usually meant a drunken night of peppering him with questions or else never hearing about it again. “Are you consorting with known law enforcement?”
Wolfgang laughed. “Yeah. Sorry, someone else should’ve called you. Are you okay? Safe?”
“I tried getting information from that guy but I’m not good at this shit, Wolfie.”
“What guy?”
“The hazmat guy. They cleaned your place. Like, really cleaned it.”
With wide eyes, he balked, “You went to my place?”
Felix shrugged. “Yeah.”
He could tell Wolfgang was getting mad, the way he did at times when other people would get scared. “Goddamnit, Felix.”
“Well I’m not going to do what a cop tells me to do,” he muttered. “And don’t you try to tell me you weren’t leaving anyway because your bag was packed, asshole. I have your shit, by the way.”
Squeezing his eyes shut, Wolfgang sighed. Then he softened, as he always did. “Thank you.”
“So should I come to France or what?” If Wolfgang said no, he didn’t know what he’d do. Probably just sit in the dirt like he was now.
Wolfgang looked around at whoever was with him. “How are things with Fuchs?”
“Not ideal but workable.”
“Can you get guns?”
He smiled. He was joining his husband at the front. “How many guns?”
“As many as you can sweet talk out of him.”
“Done.”
“I’ll call you later.” At the face Felix must’ve made, he added, “soon. I miss you.”
“And if I see Lila?”
“Run.”
***
Felix still had no idea what was going on, but after seeing Kala, he could definitely understand why. Wolfgang handed a gun to the guy he called Capheus and told India Plans that he’d catch up.
Seeing him this happy made Felix realize just how much had been missing. “I think she might actually be too hot for you, Wolfie.”
“You’re not wrong.” Wolgang laughed, wrapping his arm around Felix and watching them drive away with an intense look of longing. Oh he had it bad.
“She’s married.”
He sighed. “She is.”
“Who is she?”
“You’d better sit down for this.” Wolfgang held out his hand for the car keys.
“Fuck you, it’s my car now. You left.”
“Not by choice.”
Felix handed him the keys and looked away. He could never stay mad at him long, not after seeing firsthand how shitty his life was. But it still fucking hurt. “You were gonna tell me something, anything before leaving town, right? With your other Sherpas.”
“I would’ve come to get you. Explained everything on the way.” Wolfgang gave the keys back. “You know you’re my only Sherpa.”
Before Felix could close his hand around the keys, Wolfgang yanked them back away. “Asshole.”
“You’re actually gonna need a drink.” He opened the passenger side door. “Vodka in the glove compartment?”
“You know it, baby.”
After nearly a fifth of vodka and a world changing revelation, Felix only had one question. “So are you gonna fuck her husband?”
Wolfgang inhaled sharply through his teeth. “That would be ideal, but they’re pretty…conservative.”
“Like anyone ever turns you down. Your momma gave you that face for a reason, Wolfie.”
“It might take more than that.”
“You’ve provided me enough proximity pussy for a lifetime. I’ll wingman the fuck out of that shit. Is he rich? He looks rich.”
Wolfgang took Felix’s phone, googled Rajan Rasal net worth, and handed it back.
“Whaaat?” Felix nearly choked on his tongue. Wolfgang should’ve started with that instead of him being an X-men mutant. “If you don’t fuck him, I will.”
With that all too familiar sad Wolfie smile, he finished the vodka. Italians drove drunker than that every day. But that’s not what Felix was worried about. “What is it?”
He shook his head. “I’m just really glad you’re here.”
The only thing Wolfie had ever needed was for someone to be there for him when he wanted comfort, and to get out of his way when he didn’t. And until now, Felix had been the only one who managed it. Now there were seven. Plus a very rich husband. “Where else would I be?”
Wolfgang kissed him on the cheek and started the car. “Nowhere.”