by David Levien
Behr doubled over a bit, cradling his wounded arm, when a hand landed on his shoulder. He flinched and shrugged it off, then spun to see who else was coming after him. It was Pal Murphy.
“I heard the noise,” he said.
“What noise?” Behr wondered. He had experienced the fight in complete silence. He received a quizzical look from Pal, and even Susan, who had emerged from behind the car. As he replayed the encounter in his mind, he realized that all three combatants had screamed unconscious war cries as they attacked. His ki-ai was as instinctual as it was loud.
Pal put his hand back on Behr’s shoulder, and his other on Susan’s lower back. “Come in. Have something to drink until the cops come.”
“No cops,” Behr said.
Pal looked him in the eye, then nodded. “Okay, just the drink. And something for that arm.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
BEHR DROVE FAST. He had allowed Pal to lead him and Susan back inside. Twenty minutes later, after a pair of Tullamore Dews, Behr’s arm was wrapped in a bar towel full of ice. Susan was recovering from a slight case of the shakes, and the color began to return to her cheeks.
“Hell of a date you put on, Frank,” she said, smiling over the rim of her glass. He’d imposed upon Pal to take Susan home. They’d hugged each other tight and promised to see each other again, and Behr prayed she didn’t have second thoughts about it.
There was no connection between him and Paul. Riggi had made a play for Paul’s identity, which he had shut down. All the same, Behr took out his cell phone, hesitating for only a moment before dialing his employer. It was odd, he didn’t think of Paul in that way anymore. Though the man was paying him, their relationship was unlike any he’d ever had with a client. They weren’t partners and they certainly weren’t friends. A tether that went beyond compatibility and personality now joined them. They weren’t soul mates, for the silly romantic connotations that term held, but they intersected at a place in the soul. They were joined, in this moment in time, looking for a single answer, simple or complex, and wouldn’t be pulled apart until they had it.
He tried the Gabriel house and got no answer. He hung up after four or five rings, before an answering device picked up. He tried Paul’s cell phone, and this time when the voice mail picked up, he left a message.
“It’s Frank. Be aware tonight. If anything’s out of the ordinary, you hear a doorknob rattle, a branch scraping a window, call the police first and then me. Call me either way when you get this.”
He called the house again, ready to leave a similar message, when Carol answered.
“Hello,” she said, sounding distant. He wasn’t sure if he’d woken her, or if this was just the way she seemed now.
“It’s Frank Behr. Can I speak to Paul?”
“He’s not home. I’m upstairs, but I haven’t heard him come in. What’s wrong?”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, what do you mean? Are you?”
“Is the house locked?”
“Yes—”
“Keep it that way. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
Paul’s cell phone had been ringing, but he didn’t bother answering it. It was all he could do to keep his car on the road and in an approximation of the standards of speed and safety. He felt like he had a dead body in the trunk. There was the accompanying clunk and shift as he cornered too quickly. Paul couldn’t remember ever doing anything as reckless as this, and he’d thought he was about to pay for it when he was caught in the high beams. He’d expected the car to stop and for Riggi to come at him out of the glare. Instead the car slowed, the baffled face of the driver just staring at him as it passed by. The car continued down the block and turned into a driveway, but Paul was in the LeSabre and out of there before anything else could happen.
He pulled into the garage, leaving the door up behind him, and turned off the car, the adrenaline finally easing off in his system. He picked up his cell and saw the call had come from Frank and that there was a message waiting. Instead of checking it, he opened the trunk and removed the garbage bags. He was bent over at the waist, untying the first bag, when the door to the house opened. Carol, dressed for bed and wearing a robe, stepped into the garage.
“I thought I heard the car,” she began, looking with curiosity at the bags.
“Hi, what’s up?” Paul said.
“You tell me,” she answered.
They were illuminated by the sweep of headlights as a car rolled to a stop in the driveway just outside. Behr got out of his car and walked toward them, a towel wrapped around his arm.
The separate pieces of the night came together as the three of them picked through Oscar Riggi’s trash. Carol, for the most part, was silent in her surprise. She’d had her ideas about her husband’s and the detective’s comings and goings, but none as to how far things had gone. Paul bowed his head while Behr chastised him for his surveillance of Riggi’s house and for taking the garbage. Both of the Gabriels fell silent at the telling of Behr’s assault.
“We must’ve pushed his buttons,” Paul said of Riggi.
“Oh, yeah,” Behr answered, “and he tried to push mine in return.”
Carol was aghast when Behr rolled up his shirtsleeve, wet from melted ice, and showed his swollen forearm.
The garbage bags didn’t yield much: old utility bills — cable, electric, and water, no phone — all shredded, and various food packaging, both frozen and fresh. There were magazines: Sports Illustrated, Indianapolis, Money, and Playboy. They learned that Riggi drank scotch, good scotch. There was an old pair of sneakers, along with a bunch of worn-out socks. Riggi wore size eleven. There were plastic and stickers from CD or DVD purchases. They all kept half an eye out on the street in case a strange car showed up.
They stood back from the pile of refuse.
“I guess that was a lot of risk for nothing,” Paul said. Behr clapped him on the shoulder in encouragement.
“It’s late,” Carol said. “Either I fire up the coffee maker or it’s time for bed.”
“You gonna head home?” Paul asked.
“Why don’t I stay here, make sure nothing exciting happens tonight?” Behr offered.
Paul and Carol looked to each other. Paul nodded.
“You can stay in Jamie’s room,” Carol said.
Behr understood the significance of the offer. He cleared his throat, then said, “I should be closer to the front door. The couch is fine.”
“Okay. I’ll get you a pillow and blankets,” Carol said, heading through the door into the house.
Behr spoke quietly to Paul alone. “Do you have a gun?”
“No. You don’t?” he answered.
Carol stopped. “Oh, Jesus.”
Behr adjusted his tone for everyone to hear. “I don’t generally carry one. It would’ve just been a precaution.”
“What about Jamie’s baseball bat?” she asked.
“That’ll be fine.” They continued on inside.
Carol had rested Jamie’s bat against the couch and had gone up to sleep. Behr was scrolling through numbers on his cell phone when Paul hesitated at the foot of the stairs before going up for the night. He had something to say that seemed to be bothering him. “After what happened tonight,” he began, “is it time to … Are you going to back off?”
“That’s not the way I play, Paul,” Behr said.
Riggi was jumpier than he ever remembered feeling. He’d been crossing the hotel lobby when he got word from Wenck and Gilley — Wenck on the phone, Gilley slurring through a cracked jaw in the background — that things had gone to shit. He’d made a hard left to the front desk and checked in. He asked that a bag containing a few things be brought from his car up to his room. He asked to be registered in complete privacy, that no calls be put through, and no messages taken on his behalf with no acknowledgment made by the desk staff to any visitors that he was there. Fifty-dollar bills all around ensured his wishes were carried out.
He passed a long, unpleasant night unl
ike any he’d ever spent in a nice hotel, places in which he usually enjoyed room-service dinners and flowing champagne in the company of young women. It was only when the morning light came burning around the edges of the curtains that he realized he hadn’t slept for a moment. He forced himself into action, ordering eggs, toast, and cappuccino from room service. Then he took a shower, alternating the water temperature from scalding to freezing for a good twenty minutes until the food showed up. He sat on the edge of the bed in his hotel robe and felt his mind start to settle and his calm return. His exposure was fairly limited, after all. He decided he would stay at the hotel for a few more days, for good measure, and would risk a quick swing home to pick up some clothes and other things he’d need. He also decided he would no longer allow himself to think about how things had recently gone wrong. What he needed to do was to focus on a positive future and a rebuilding. Once he finished eating, he dressed, turned on the television, and put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door. He’d let a chambermaid in to do her business only once he was back to supervise. Looking both ways down the corridor and seeing no one and nothing, he headed for the elevator.
He could’ve sent someone, but after the job Wenck and Gilley had done, he suddenly felt there was no one he could trust, and the truth was, he wanted to clap an eyeball on his house himself, to make sure there was no activity around it, police or otherwise. He figured if everything looked clear, he’d go in, get his things, sanitize certain papers, lock it down, and be gone in ten minutes. As he was driving up his block, his recent return to calm deepened. The suburban street was quiet, almost silent but for the birds. Putting his money into a nice house in a desirable neighborhood had been a great investment and an even better quality-of-life choice. It seemed to his eye that nothing out of the ordinary had, would, or ever could happen on his little street. It was by dint of discipline alone that he drove past his house and around the corner at speed. He then circled around and passed more slowly. On the third pass, all was still quiet and he turned into his driveway. He pressed the garage button while he was still at a distance and slid right in. He left the garage door up, the car running, and headed for the interior door. As soon as he entered the small hallway that the real estate agents like to refer to as “the mudroom” and had closed the door to the garage behind him, he realized something was wrong. There was no beeping of the alarm. He turned to the panel and saw the light a steady green. He was sure he had armed it before leaving the night before.
TWENTY-EIGHT
IT WAS STILL DARK and Carol was sleeping when they left for Behr’s place.
“Do me a favor and make the coffee while I shower,” Behr asked when they arrived. He crossed to his answering machine and played the lone message; it was a woman’s voice.
“Hey, Frank, Sue. Wanted to thank you for last night. Do me a favor: When you call, don’t forget to tell me again how that kind of thing never happens. Well, that’s it. Oh, and do me another favor: Watch yourself.”
Behr wore a faint smile as he headed toward his bedroom.
Paul was pouring his second cup of coffee when there was a rapping at the door. Behr, hair wet, pulling on pants, emerged from the bedroom and went to answer it. The man at the door was thin, dark-skinned, with black hair that would have been curly had it not been cropped close. His nose was prominent, like the prow of a Viking ship.
“This is Toombakis,” Behr said by way of introduction. The man shifted his battered mason bag from right to left and offered a work-callused hand.
“Paul.”
“How are you?” Toombakis replied. Paul detected an East Coast accent, New York probably, not New England. The man’s voice was fairly bright, but he had dark shadows under his eyes that hinted of a difficult past.
“Coffee,” Behr offered, and went off to finish dressing. As he did, Paul saw not just Behr’s injured forearm, which was swollen and blackish-purple, but welts, scars, and cuts, including a starfishlike magenta pucker on his lower back that wrote a story of a life battling in the streets across Behr’s large torso.
They drank their coffee, and Toombakis didn’t volunteer why he was there and Paul didn’t ask; rather they talked dispassionately about the Colts and the Hoosiers.
A half hour later the three of them were sitting just around the corner from Riggi’s house, where they had a view of the place across a lawn. The night before, Paul had set up farther away but on the actual street. His was a more conspicuous spot, he acknowledged to himself. Toombakis was in the backseat, his head leaning forward between theirs; his car was two blocks farther away.
They sat and watched the house for a mere quarter hour. There were signs of morning activity beginning in the other houses nearby, but none in the one in question.
“Well,” Behr said rhetorically, then pulled out his cell phone and dialed. He put it to his ear, and in the quiet of the car they could hear the muted ringing on the other end. It rang and rang before voice mail picked up. Paul felt a sharp dose of embarrassment over the obviousness with which Behr probed whether or not someone was inside the house. Behr hung up on the voice mail and redialed.
“Is he listed?” Paul asked, hoping to mitigate his feeling like a dunce.
“No, but I’ve got a reverse directory that lists every number by address. It’s very comprehensive.” This made Paul feel better, but only by a little.
“All right, we’re a go,” Behr said after a final ring, closing his phone and getting out. Just like that, a short wait, no excruciating period of hours.
Toombakis fell in next to Behr, Paul a few steps back.
“Locks aren’t my thing, you know,” Toombakis said. “I could give it a try, but …”
“Let’s just have a look,” Behr said. They continued past the house, and Behr pointed at a security company sticker in a front window.
“Ah, fuck, I see it,” Toombakis said as they crossed around to the side door. “The blue Valiant crest.”
“Problem?” Behr asked.
“We’ll only have thirty seconds instead of a minute once we’re inside,” Toombakis answered. “And we can’t lean on the door until we’re in. Pressure strips.”
“Hmm,” Behr breathed as they reached the door. His eyes scanned all around the frame, then came to rest on the knob and lock. He moved quickly. There was a zipping sound and a black leather case folded open in his hands. An array of almost dental-looking equipment was fastened to the velvet lining of the case: Allen wrenches, awls, tiny screwdrivers, and a dozen of what Paul now knew were pry bars and tension wrenches.
“You sure you don’t want to try?” Behr offered Toombakis.
“Nope. Not even. Unless you want me to drill it,” came the response.
Behr gave the man a look and then kneeled and went to it. Toombakis and Paul did their best to appear casual, as if waiting for a friend, and used their bodies to try to shield Behr as he worked. A few minutes later, with no unusual activity on the street, Behr stood. “Okay.”
Paul glanced at the lock, which looked as if it had undergone acupuncture, with several thin metal tools protruding. Behr had his hand on a short, corkscrewed piece of metal, holding it in place.
Toombakis opened his bag, drew out a few pump-ratchet bit drivers of different sizes and several tiny two-ended alligator clamps connected by red wire, which he draped over his neck like a tailor’s measuring tape. He handed Paul his bag, which was surprisingly heavy.
“Keep this close to me,” he instructed, then nodded to Behr.
“If we need to head for the car, do it fast but don’t run,” Behr instructed, then turned back to the knob. He snapped down with the hand that held the tool, causing a clicking noise in the lock and a grimace to cross Behr’s face. It was his bad arm. He turned the knob with his other hand. The door opened and they stepped inside.
The house felt vacant around them, the only sounds that of their shoes on the tile floor and the high-pitched beeping of the alarm’s warning signal. Toombakis approached the panel. His hands
moved like rising doves as he tried several sizes of bit drivers on the screws holding it in place. He dropped the drivers that didn’t fit onto the floor with a clatter. When he found the right one, he pumped hard and popped off the alarm plate within seconds.
Paul bent and collected the discarded bit drivers, glancing up to see exposed wires behind the panel. The alarm’s beeping sounded increasingly insistent with the panel off, but he wondered whether it was his imagination. Toombakis worked, clamping off wires, to restore the alarm’s circuit. The time seemed to be growing extremely long, well over half a minute, and Paul braced himself for the alarm’s scream when Toombakis placed a last clip, raised his hands like a rodeo roper after tying off a calf, and stepped back in a new, complete silence. He gingerly tipped the hanging panel out of the way so they could see the light was now a steady green.
“Take care of the panel, then let yourself out. And thanks,” Behr said, offering a hand to Toom-bakis, who nodded. “You can forget about that thing,” Behr added.
The statement seemed to brighten Toombakis’s dark eyes a bit. “Don’t worry, I won’t forget that other thing,” he said.
Behr nodded and said to Paul, “Come on.”
“Are you going to try and open it?” Paul asked.
They had moved slowly about the house, through rooms that were furnished well if sparsely. Couches were dark leather, the rugs and walls of standard solid colors. The home was conscientiously decorated, but by a man. The living room was dominated by a big-screen television, DVD player, and stereo all rigged up with surround sound. They looked briefly through Riggi’s music and movie collection. It was mundane, certainly not depraved, and consisted largely of classic rock: Seger, the Who, the Stones, and up through Guns N’ Roses. The films were mostly dramas: The Godfather series, Scarface, Wall Street, and everything by Tarantino.