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“Right. And that would be easier to say, right? We would say ‘cutting off a toe is his moo.’ Moo is one syllable. It’s easier to say. MO is two syllables. Who’d abbreviate it and make it harder to say? So it can’t be that.”
“We can google MO, Jazz,” Sal said.
“Right, of course.”
Then Myron said, “Modus operandi.”
“Huh?”
“That’s what MO stands for. Modus operandi. It’s Latin.”
Jazz liked that. “Look at Einstein the comic vocalist over here,” he said.
Sal added, “Einstein without a pinky toe.”
“Well, he’ll still have one pinky toe if he cooperates.”
“Einstein with one pinky toe instead of two.”
“Kind of a mouthful, Sal.” The leader—Jazz—turned back to Myron. “So that’s the deal, my friend. You lose the pinky toe. No matter what. Even if you sing like a canary. But if you don’t want to lose more appendages—”
“Good word, Jazz.”
“What, ‘appendages’?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks, Sal. I do that word-a-day thing online.” Back to Myron. “Anyway, if you don’t want to lose more appendages”—he looked back and winked at Sal as he said it—“you’ll tell us what we want to know. Where is Bo?”
“How do you know I’m looking for him?” Myron asked.
“Yeah, that’s not really important.”
“Well, yeah, Jazz—can I call you Jazz?—yeah, Jazz, it is.”
“How so?”
“Because if you know I’m looking for Bo, you also know I don’t know where he is. If I did know, I wouldn’t be looking for him, would I?”
Jazz took that in. He looked at Sal.
Sal said, “Kinda makes sense, Jazz.”
The other two goons nodded agreement.
“But you are looking for him, right?” Jazz said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Myron debated how to play it and decided to play it as straight as possible. “He may be connected to another missing person.”
“Who?”
“Who what?”
“Who’s the other missing person?”
