by David Levien
Thirteen Million Dollar Pop
( Frank Behr - 3 )
David Levien
David Levien
Thirteen Million Dollar Pop
1
Frank Behr walked two steps ahead of the principal toward the blacked-out Chevy Suburban. The winter had cracked a few weeks earlier, and the night air swirling around them had lost its bite. The report of their hard shoes on concrete reverberated off the walls of the underground parking garage of the Pierson Street office building. The principal was half a foot shorter than he was, so looking back, Behr had a clean view of the amber-lit geometric rows, now mostly devoid of cars due to the late hour, that spread out around them.
“Yeah … yes,” the principal said into his cell phone, “it’s going to happen. Tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon latest. Shugie’s just getting the press conference together.”
The principal was Bernard Kolodnik, a prominent businessman with a real estate and property development background who was so smooth and successful in his dealings that he was admiringly known around greater Indianapolis, and throughout the Midwest, as “Bernie Cool.” Fit at fifty, Kolodnik had a strong jaw, blue-gray eyes, and hair the color of steel-cut wheat.
“What? What?” Kolodnik said, fighting reception that was growing choppy as they got farther underground. “You’re crapping out on me, Ted … Ted?” He clicked off the call.
“Damn things,” Kolodnik muttered to himself of the cell phone, and began walking more quickly. Behr, in turn, stepped up his pace.
Executive protection. It wasn’t an area in which Behr was expert. He was pinch-hitting for Pat Teague, who had approached his desk at 6:15, when he’d been about done for the day, and asked him to fill in. Teague was an involved father apparently, and had a few kids playing several sports or vice versa. Either way, there were a lot of games for him to go to, as Behr had gotten similar requests a few other times over the past six months he’d been at the Caro Group, the private investigation and security company that was as close as it got to a white-shoe firm in the field.
The job was an uneasy fit for Behr. Working for someone else-along with the starched collars, the suits and ties, and the stiff and shiny black Florsheim wingtips he was required to wear-rubbed him the wrong way. In fact, the outfit chafed his feet and neck raw for the first couple of weeks. But with Susan near nine months pregnant he found himself doing what he had to to earn a living, and trying to make his peace with it.
Behr had been reluctant about filling in for Teague the first time he was asked, not being professionally trained as a body man. But Teague assured him he was up to it without any advance preparation, that Kolodnik was a low-maintenance client who just wanted someone to organize his table at restaurants and to keep away “wakeboppers”-his term for business aspirants hoping to make contact and gain by the association. There was nothing against the switch in company policy, so Behr had asked a few questions, read some tactical guidance in the archives, and gone ahead in order to collect the extra money. He soon learned he was basically meant to be a hybrid of chauffeur and babysitter.
All sound besides their footsteps dropped away as they neared the P3 level. The elevator wouldn’t take them lower than P1. It was broken, or perhaps they needed a key card this late in the evening. Though Behr wasn’t an experienced bodyguard, even he could see that this should have been a two-man detail, minimum, had they been going by the book: one man to accompany the client to his meeting and a driver to stay with the vehicle and pull up to a rear or side entrance of the building when it was done. Three men, with a backup for the walk, would’ve been even better. But in the current economic climate the “book” was out the window, and no one who earned his own money, even a guy like Kolodnik, was springing for multiman teams unless there was real reason. That was Behr’s guess anyway.
So when Kolodnik had asked him to come inside, to wait while he took his meeting, and to help him carry some stuff out, Behr had done so. He’d parked the Suburban on a low floor in the visitor spaces because the garage had been full at that time, rode the elevator upstairs with Kolodnik, and waited outside the glass-walled conference room while a nearly three-hour meeting took place between Kolodnik, a redheaded woman, and a pair of gray-haired men, all dressed in sober blue business suits. Now Behr toted two bankers’ boxes full of files back to the vehicle.
They turned the corner and reached the head of the row where the Suburban and a few other cars were parked, when Behr felt a blip on his mental radar. He transferred the boxes to one hand and was fishing in his pocket for the Suburban’s key fob when it caught his eye. There was an aberration in the lighting pattern. A black gap, like a missing tooth, in the otherwise uniform yellow light grid of the garage, and then it was too late.
The gunshots punched through the air in a broken chain of crackle and thunder. A stripe of rounds tore into a Toyota Camry near them as Behr dropped the bankers’ boxes and jammed Kolodnik to the ground beneath him. The air went out of Kolodnik upon impact. A breathless “fuck” was all Behr heard before more rounds wanged off the concrete behind them and started getting closer.
Behr had never been fired upon by an automatic weapon before, and he instantly found he was not a fan. The buzz-saw sound scrambled his mind, and he felt the urge to make his six and a half feet and two hundred forty pounds as small as he possibly could, but that urge competed with the instinct to cover Kolodnik. He stayed over the businessman and scramble-crawled them toward the Suburban, shredding the knees of his suit pants as he went.
He scanned the darkness for a target, but between bursts, the area the gunman fired from was pitch-black. Another stripe of rounds ripped past them on the ground, and Behr was sure he was killed as he pressed the key fob. The Suburban unlocked with a chirping sound that joined the ringing in his ears. The fob tumbled from his hand and fell to the pavement as he reached up and jerked the door open between them and the shooter. There was little chance they’d be driving out anyway, as the shooter let off another burst.
Dead, Behr thought, with just a piece of flimsy Detroit steel between him and what were undoubtedly full-metal-jacketed.223 or 7.65mm shells coming their way.
The door shuddered with the impact, and Behr expected he and Kolodnik to be covered with shattered glass and worse. But there was merely spalling, and the window held. The door shook and absorbed the live rounds with a dull whump.
Armored. The realization echoed in Behr’s head. But getting the principal up and inside the vehicle would be more dangerous than leaving him down right now.
“Oh, Jesus,” he heard Kolodnik grunt from behind him, and Behr realized this wasn’t going to end on its own.
Return fire, Behr exhorted himself. His hand, slick with sweat, found the holstered Glock 22.40 caliber that Caro required him to carry on his hip. He didn’t generally favor the gun, the squared look and plastic feel of it, but he loved it at the moment.
When firing in low-light or no-light conditions, the idea is to keep the shots within an imagined two-foot box, centered on the opponent’s muzzle flash. Another burst erupted at them. There was some muted flare coming from the weapon across the garage, but not the three-foot stream of flame he expected.
Flash suppressor. Nice information but not that helpful at the moment. Behr sprawled out beneath the bottom edge of the door and put the tritium dot of his front sight where he’d last seen a muzzle burst, hoping the shooter didn’t know enough to fire and move, and emptied a mag. Ten rounds pitched worthlessly into the darkness. Behr tried to determine if he’d made any hits as he dropped the clip and reloaded. At least he’d stopped the incoming fire for a moment. Then Behr’s desperation to survive fed him an idea. He rolled on
to his back, accidentally kicking Kolodnik along the side of the head as he did, and shot out all the nearby lights along the ceiling. Plastic and glass sprinkled down on them along with a thick blanket of darkness.
Behr had gone through his reserve mag now, but he hadn’t quite shot himself empty. He grabbed at his ankle where he wore his Bulldog.44 as a backup gun, strictly against company policy. He had the five rounds in it and then they’d be done.
He tried to listen as he held fire, but there was only a hollowed-out buzzing in his ears after all the shooting. Behr perceived Kolodnik’s racked and panicked breathing nearby. Then he got the impression there were footsteps across the way in the dark. There was a broken rhythm to them, perhaps a limping gait, and Behr wondered if the shooter was actually hit, or if he was coming toward them. But then the steps grew fainter. Behr’s heart surged at the idea he was giving up and leaving. There was the sound of a car engine, just around the corner; that came through clear enough.
Get up after him, Behr urged himself. But he didn’t move an inch.
2
Behr felt Kolodnik lying still under his hand. He was sure the man had been hit and he wondered how badly.
“Is it over?” Kolodnik asked, then started to stir.
“Believe so,” Behr said, hardly recognizing his own voice. A set of high beams had striped the wall opposite them, followed by a screech of tires, and then they’d been left alone.
Kolodnik’s knee and elbow had gotten thumped when he’d fallen to the concrete, and his jaw was sore from the kick, but otherwise he was unshot and unhurt. Behr, for his part, felt giddy to be alive.
“Get in the car,” he ordered Kolodnik. They climbed in, Kolodnik in the front passenger seat, Behr behind the wheel.
“I got nothing,” Kolodnik said of his cell phone.
“One bar,” Behr said of his, and dialed 911. He gave the particulars to the dispatcher and they waited in shocked silence for about two minutes before the first police cars responded.
Vehicles and voices and activity quickly filled the parking garage, along with lights-the red and blue of the cruisers’ flashers, the xenon white of headlights, and the hard carbon glare of the driver’s side spots-that chased away the darkness in which the danger had been hiding.
A young/old pair of patrolmen was first. Then another. Behr stepped out and identified himself and showed them his Caro credentials. He found the key to the Suburban. Then a dark Crown Vic tooled into the area and a solid man, who was dressed in a suit, climbed out.
“Lieutenant,” one of the patrolmen greeted him.
“I’m Breslau,” the new arrival said in a husky voice, and shook Behr’s hand.
Behr ran him through what had happened, beat by beat. Breslau’s muscled jaw worked a piece of gum feverishly around his downturned mouth, his eyes cutting about the garage, landing on the Suburban, the place where the shots had come from, Kolodnik, and finally back on Behr.
“Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh,” he said as he processed each piece of information.
Kolodnik, meanwhile, had removed his jacket and stood off to the side, talking with a tall, lanky officer. Behr heard the muttered particulars of his statement.
“On recommendation of several executives at my company,” is what Kolodnik said when the cop asked why he had security with him, and “no” was the answer to whether there had been any specific threats made on his person recently.
“Yes, of course,” Kolodnik said to the follow-up question: “Are you known to carry lots of cash?”
A paramedic arrived on the scene and sat Kolodnik against a nearby car to look him over.
“So, Caro … I know plenty of those boys-how come I haven’t met you?” Breslau said to Behr, half question half accusation.
“I’m fairly new,” Behr answered.
“You just a meat shield? Or are you an investigator or case manager?” he wondered.
The question wasn’t a simple one. It got to the heart of what Behr didn’t like about the Caro job. When the company had come to him the first time, he’d suspected it was to do the dirty work, to be the “radioactive man” for the company, so the rest of them, a tight clique of mostly ex-FBI and ex-Treasury guys who’d gone private, could keep their hands clean. He’d turned them down because of that, but they’d come back two months later, and he surveyed the paucity of clients out there for him on his own. Ten million people were looking for jobs and here was one. A good one. He signed on.
After a short honeymoon of polite respect around the office, he’d seen his concerns bear out. Caro was on retainer to an insurance conglomerate, and they started by asking him to videotape a waitress pulling some disability fraud. It was easy enough, even if she was a single mother who got arrested because of it. Then it was on to placing GPS units on subjects’ cars. They requested he break into a few vehicles next, to plant voice-activated recorders. He tried to put them off, saying, “I look like the Pelican to you?” referencing the dirty tricks P.I. who was currently serving a long jail sentence. He’d gotten a laugh, but they’d pressed him and he’d done it; and after that they wanted him to illegally enter an office after hours in order to retrieve certain documents. He’d balked at the office job, and found a work-around, getting the papers while the place was open, but he knew it wasn’t the last time they’d be asking for a B and E.
“I guess you could say I’m a floater,” Behr finally answered. Breslau just looked at him.
“Gonna need to borrow that for a bit,” Breslau said, pointing a forefinger at Behr’s hip.
“Sure,” Behr said, easing the empty Glock out of its holster and dropping it into a plastic evidence bag held out by a jowly sergeant who appeared next to Breslau. The police would run a serial number check, make sure it matched the company’s paperwork. Behr added the first magazine, which he’d collected from the ground, and wished he’d been wearing his gold ring with the diamond-studded letters “IMPD.” It was commemorative of a special relationship with the department, and only given by the brass, which was how Behr had gotten it. But it was sitting at home in a drawer as usual.
“We’ll return the Glock to you asap,” Breslau said curtly.
Behr nodded and watched as Breslau went on a little walking tour of the scene, shining a small flashlight at a few particular spots, taking it all in. He kept the gum moving all the while as he walked, like he was training for an Olympic chewing event; and Behr found himself standing next to Kolodnik, who was finished with the medic.
“How you doing?” Behr asked.
“Good. I’m all right,” Kolodnik said.
“So, an armored SUV …” Behr said, leaving it out there.
“We have a project coming up, a big development in Mexico. Between the drug wars and the kidnappings down there, we thought we might need a half dozen for the executives and the project managers. The company in New York we ordered them from sent us this one to try, to see how it performed.”
“Performs pretty good, I’d say,” Behr remarked, and they shared a jagged laugh. Then there was a moment’s quiet rippled only by radio calls as the cops all looked at the ground or crawled around on it. They’d found eighteen of Behr’s shell casings but were having a heck of a time locating the other two, as the things had a tendency to roll.
“Thank you, Frank,” Kolodnik said, clearing his throat. “I mean it. What you did … That was … I really don’t know what to …”
“Just glad how it came out,” Behr said. “Believe me.”
Kolodnik handed Behr a business card, just his name and a telephone number engraved on heavy ivory stock. “That’s my personal number. You call me if you ever need anything.”
Behr nodded and went back to watching the cops work, when the squealing of tires on the cement announced the arrival of another vehicle. It was a blue Cadillac STS adding its headlights to the party. Behr recognized the car as belonging to Karl Potempa, the head of Caro’s Indianapolis office. The Caddy jerked to a stop, and out jumped Potempa, looking oddly casu
al in a velour tracksuit with an FBI crest on the left breast. Behr had never seen the man without a necktie, but the absence of a business suit didn’t diminish his authority any, and his silver gray hair was perfectly combed. After just a handful of months on the job and no real interaction, Behr wasn’t close with Karl Potempa but knew him well enough to see he was shaken.
“Karl,” Kolodnik said.
“Bernie, Jesus H.” Potempa crossed to Kolodnik and wrapped him in a brief but intense embrace. “I’ve got a team reporting here, and another on your house right now. Cops were already there-all’s quiet.”
“Good, good,” Kolodnik murmured.
“Why don’t you wait in my car,” Potempa suggested, and Kolodnik made his way toward the Cadillac. “I’ll drive you home myself.”
“Find any blood trail over there?” Behr asked Breslau as the lieutenant rejoined him.
“Nope,” Breslau answered. “So twenty rounds, no confirmed hits.” It hung in the air like an allegation.
“You notice there were none on our side either,” Behr said, indicating that he and Kolodnik were standing there, healthy as hogs, “dumb ass,” Behr finished, half under his breath. Even as it came out of his mouth, he wished he hadn’t spoken.
“What’d you say?” Breslau demanded, his gum finally stopping for a moment.
Behr quartered toward him. “I guess you heard me or you wouldn’t be asking.”
“It wasn’t ducks on a pond here, Gary,” Potempa jumped in, using his command voice, a varnished baritone, as he strode closer to Breslau.
“I know, I know,” the lieutenant said. Potempa shook Breslau’s hand in greeting, then he turned to Behr and pumped his hand with vigor.
“Congratulations, Frank. Hell of a job tonight.”
Behr just nodded.
Breslau, brow knit, was already on to the next topic on his mind. “No casings on the shooter’s side. What do you make of that?”