“How did he do?” Grouch asked Left when they returned to the compound, eyes on Geir.
"He did fine," Left admitted.  "Wasn't too gentle.  Didn't showboat."
"He can start to work off Right's bills, then."
Grouch shook the zoan's hand, to transfer the money they had taken from Jared 13R-C88.  Then he took Geir's, too, not trusting that the vulture hadn't taken anything himself.  It came with the species, Grouch or no.
"You're in the bunks with them," he said, when he was satisfied he wasn't being skimmed from.  "Until I decide if this is a long-term deal."
He turned away from them, to check his wrist display privately.  His office was small and unassuming, though Geir could tell that its furnishings were expensive.  Desk and chairs of real wood and fabric, light-colored carpet woven with a tasteful floral pattern, shelves of paper records.
"I have calls to make," the human said.  "Go away."
The office was off a main hall, which for all Grouch's stolid severity had a welcoming luxury to it.  Geir assumed it was where the mobster held his meetings, and probably took his meals alone.  It was set up like the dining hall of an aristocratic manor, with a long table, bunched velvet wall hangings and faux-marble figures on pedestals against the walls.
"Have to share a room with you now," Left growled.
He fumbled a pack of nicotine gum out of his pocket.  In designing zoans, humans hadn't been sure how to adapt a pachyderm's stumpy forefeet to fingers, and had settled on the half-measure of tapered keratinous fingertips that were impossible to develop much dexterity with. Geir offered a hand with the gum, and Left grudgingly accepted. The human world may not be fully adapted to hooked talons, but Geir's were easily deft enough for most tasks.  He got the tablet out of its foil-backed case and returned it.
"Why Grouch?" Left asked when he accepted it.  "If all you needed was money you could've just fought.  Now you've got shit."
"Bed indoors," Geir shrugged.  Added, "I wanted stable work, and I've done muscle before.  A long time ago."
"Even as a Housie?"
Geir considered telling stories about the enforcing he'd had to do to keep the Brightlove House running, but if Grouch hadn't told his zoans yet who they were working with, maybe it was for the best.  If Grouch had even found out himself; the human still hadn't said anything about it.
"I ran away," he explained, more or less honestly.  "I was on my own for a long time.”
Left shrugged.
“Come on,” he said.
He showed Geir through the aging hallways to the office block that had been converted into the zoans’ bunk. With a hand on the knob to let him in, he gave a grim but dismissive look: Right was inside.
It was surprisingly well-appointed, if sparse. Left and Right had low beds like those in a firehouse, each with a footlocker and a minifridge, and a weight bench between them. All good quality, not cheap. Also no bed for Geir at present. That was alright.
The alligator sat on the far bed from the door, back to the bird. Shirt off, like the last time Geir saw him, scarred scutes on display. He had been occupied with something beyond the beds, but when the door opened he stopped. His head turned the merest fraction, enough to show the gauze packed over one eye. And enough to direct his growl at the intruder.
Geir didn’t waste time being apologetic, let alone indirect. He crossed the wide room, sparing a moment to inspect the weights setup, and stood across the bed from Right. The alligator stood: a simple, economic motion, whose effect he had plenty of experience to know. To anyone less than remarkably tall, he kept rising, up and up. So much bigger than he seemed when seated. So much bigger than seemed possible.
When Right turned, Geir had a brief view of what he had been working on. An arrangement of potted plants occupied the far end of the room, carefully trimmed and freshly watered. But it disappeared when Right squared on him.
Shovel-shaped snout hung low, fearsome teeth right in front of Geir’s beak. The uncovered eye—a bit bigger in proportion than that of a real crocodilian—was full of anger and hurt.
Geir offered his hand.
“Geir,” he said. He didn’t smile. That might seem like gloating, and he was not.
The alligator only continued to glare for a moment, then turned away. Left pushed past Geir to talk with his partner privately. Geir kept out of it and backed off, but watched. Left talked seriously and in a hush; Right didn’t say a word.
“If Grouch wants you here then Grouch wants you here,” the rhinoceros turned back to Geir. “Right isn’t gonna be trouble. But you’re on the floor.”
Geir nodded acceptance of the circumstances.
“Will I get blankets?”
“If he’s got extra somewhere, and wants to give them to you. Is this the life you got in the ring to get into?”
“A bit more spartan than I expected. What’s Grouch’s deal?”
“Before my time and I don’t ask." Left fumbled out another piece of gum, on his own this time. He gave it some thought, though. “I know he used to have a wife and kids.”
“Ran out on them?”
“People say they ran out on him because he was borrowing money. Who knows. He doesn’t talk about it. I’ve heard him say he used to be under someone’s thumb but he isn’t anymore. He says it like he killed whoever it was.”
“But he paid or canceled his debts and now he’s a big player too.”
“Guess so.”
“Does he ever work with any of the big outfits?”
Sunken rhinoceros eye turned on him impatiently.
“I dunno. It’s not our business who he works with.”
“What about activists, resistance groups?”
“Housie shit. It hasn’t always been me and Manny—Right. We had another third five years back. He thought he could use Grouch to get in on bigger action.”
“Did he?”
“Grouch shot him in the face where the weight bench is.”
“Ow.”
“It smelled like bleach in here for weeks.”
“I’m not looking for any bigger action. I just want to be good at the job.”
“You’re fine at the job. I’m going to bed. You figure something out”
Left spat his gum out into a wastebasket and went to confer with his crocodilian opposite, and leaving Geir to figure out his own sleeping arrangements. For tonight it seemed like that was going to be the bare, stiff carpet on the far end of the rhinoceros’s bed.