The Bottom Line

Wednesday evening, Elijah called Olivia to ask if she had the name of the woman who’d altered his suit for Oliver and Olivia’s anniversary dinner last spring. She didn’t, but she had the name of a different tailor on Atlantic Avenue who was “better and cheaper and also, Marcus from The Gilded Fern says hi.” This was how conversations with Olivia worked—you asked one question and received three answers, two recommendations, and a piece of neighborhood gossip.

Tonight, the gossip had an edge to it.

“So Oliver found something,” she said, her voice dropping. “An anonymous LLC filed for a restaurant on the waterfront, like, two days after Hank disappeared. Oliver thinks it might be connected.”

“Oliver thinks that?”

“Well—he thinks it’s a ‘hypothetical.’ But he spent five hours at the library digging it up, so I think he thinks it’s more than hypothetical.”

Elijah leaned back in his chair. His apartment in Bed-Stuy was quiet. It always was; disorder cost energy he couldn’t afford to waste. Through the window, he could see the streetlights coming on along Classon Avenue, the last daylight fading to a bruised purple above the brownstones.

“And what do you think?” he asked.

“I think Marcus said Hank was jittery. I think an anonymous LLC two days later is weird. I think we should find out who’s behind it.” A pause. “But Oliver won’t send it to the group. You know how he is. He’s going to sit on it until Sunday and bury it in disclaimers.”

Elijah knew exactly how Oliver was. They’d been friends for three years, since Olivia had nearly spilled a latte on him at The Coffee Hole and annexed him back into her life, Oliver included. Oliver was the quietest person in any room, but he was also, in Elijah’s assessment, the most observant.

“He should tell the group,” Elijah said. “Or at least Noah. If there’s an LLC to trace, that’s exactly the kind of thing Noah’s tools are built for. Otherwise Noah’s going to show up Sunday having Googled ‘missing hot sauce guy’ for five minutes and shrugged.”

Olivia laughed. “That’s literally what will happen.”

“I’ll text him,” Elijah offered. “Or I’ll put it in the group chat myself. Oliver can disclaim all he wants after the fact.”

“You’re the best, Elijah.”

“That’s what my mother says. Usually before asking for money.”

After they hung up, Elijah sat for a moment, turning Oliver’s finding over in his mind. The timing with Hank was suggestive, but suggestive wasn’t conclusive, and Elijah had spent enough years in finance to know that coincidences looked like patterns if you wanted them to badly enough.

Still—the group needed something to work with, and Oliver’s discovery was the only real data point any of them had. Elijah picked up his phone and opened the group chat.

He typed it up and added the LLC number.

ELIJAH (Group): Oliver found something worth looking at. Anonymous LLC applied to open a waterfront restaurant two days after Hank gave up his stall. Might be nothing, might be a thread worth pulling. It’s LLC #2847 if anyone wants to dig.

He set his phone down and went to heat up leftovers. His instinct said this was probably a dead end—a group of friends chasing a story that wasn’t there.

He’d do some quiet math before Sunday. Nothing elaborate—just a quick look at what an artisanal hot sauce brand could be worth on the open market. If someone had gone to the trouble of hiding behind an anonymous LLC and rushing a liquor license, there was money involved.