by David Levien
The Schlegels were generous owners and let him have the run of the place, with no tab, on the nights he worked. It was about the safest place he’d ever DJ’d, too. He looked at them there, lying up along the corner curve of the bar: Kenny, Charlie, Papa Terry, and Papa Terry’s partner. If you thought about throwing a punch in this place, you might as well step in front of a bus—it’d be faster and the results would be prettier. M.D. slid under the counter and moved in next to Pam, who was pouring Jameson into shot glasses. Half a dozen pints of Guinness were already drawn and settling when Dean Schlegel walked in the door. Now the gang was all here.
“Deanie!” rang out from the Schlegel section in the corner. Dean walked over to his crew, sporting a puffy left jaw and dark circles under his eyes.
M.D. slid behind Pam and took the opportunity to appreciate her fine ass as he helped himself to a Michelob Ultra. She started topping off the Jameson with Baileys Irish Cream, and M.D. caught some low banter that he did his best not to listen to. What he did hear led him to believe the Schlegels had robbed or otherwise taken off a place, and it even sounded like Kenny had kicked a girl’s ass.
“You want one of these?” Pam offered as she doled out the Jameson with Baileys floaters and Guinness to the Schlegels.
“Nah, I’m good,” he said.
“Come on, bro,” Kenny said, dropping his shot glass into his Guinness, “do an Irish Car Bomb with us.”
“You don’t gotta be Irish,” Papa Terry said, smiling. “We’re not.” He dropped his shot into the Guinness as well, and then picked up the pint. He crooked a finger at a young blonde Kenny ran with a little. “Kathy, get over here.” She broke off from a pack of other white high-school-age chicks.
“What’s up, Mr. Schlegel?” she said.
He made a big show of looking around behind him, under his bar stool. “Who you talking to with the ‘Mr. Schlegel’? I don’t see my father here. Terry,” he said. “How old are you? You got ID?” She reached for her pocket, causing them all to laugh. Terry stopped her. “Here, try this.” He handed her the pint glass.
“Okay, Terry,” she said. The others drank theirs quickly, their gullets moving like wolves’ taking down meat. Kathy struggled with hers, but got it about halfway before breaking off.
“Tastes like dessert,” she said. Papa Terry reached out and wiped off her Guinness mustache with his finger, then stuck the finger in her mouth. She sucked the foam off it, and then he put it in his own mouth.
“You’re right, it does,” he said. Kenny, his brothers, the partner, they all cracked up. Papa Terry waved Kathy away back to her friends. He turned back to the bar.
“I don’t drink that shit either, Doc,” he said to M.D., “unless you’re doing one with me, Pammy.”
“Oh, no, Terry,” she said, “you remember what happened last time? Clean up, aisle six!” They all laughed.
“Give me one of them Michelobs like my man Doc is having,” Terry said. “He’s a man of taste.” M.D. raised his bottle in return, real friendly. But he didn’t kid himself. They weren’t his friends, and he wasn’t planning on ever getting comfortable around here. He remembered a pair of big, tall, tough-looking white guys who’d recently become something like regulars over the course of a few weeks. The guys were real snazzy—blazers, white dress shirts, and shiny wingtips. It looked to M.D. like they were in the process of getting into some business with Papa Terry and his partner. Then one day M.D. had heard Papa Terry and partner talking between songs about a meeting they were gonna have that night after the bar closed—one that wasn’t gonna go the way those slick boys planned. He hadn’t caught the details, but he got the gist, and it was nothing he wanted to know. M.D. cleared out before closing that night. The snazzy white dudes hadn’t, and he had not seen those snazzy white dudes again.
The Schlegels fell silent as Kathy showed up next to them. She held up the pint glass, which was now empty.
“Good girl,” Papa Terry said. “You want another?”
“Sure, Terry,” she said. He looked at her.
“You like cars?” Papa Terry asked.
“Sure,” she said.
“My shop’s right next door. You should come see some of what we got in there,” he offered.
“Okay,” she said. Papa Terry got off his bar stool and started walking for the door. She followed. The rest of the Schlegel crew acted like they hadn’t seen or heard a thing, and that’s just the way M.D. acted as well. He moved down the bar to go back to his faders. He’d be leaving before closing tonight, too.
Behr returned home, entered, and left the lights off. He dreaded the nights, black and endless, when the work was done and all that was left was time to think. He was fine while there was work. That was when he was at his best. But it never lasted long enough—or he didn’t. He needed to shut it down and rest so he could function properly the next day, but that’s when things went slippery in his head. He had gotten a chance to forget how bad it could be this last year and change, spending most of his evening time with Susan. Maybe he’d let himself believe that things had changed for good. Now he sat for a while with the phone in his hand, considering whether or not to call her. He looked around his place at the evidence of her presence—her organic cereal on the kitchen table, her hairbrush thrown on the couch, a stack of CDs on the coffee table on top of the tabloid magazines she loved. She was probably going through hell, and doing it alone right about now.
He went to dial, but even that simple act felt traitorous. He couldn’t do it—any of it. Not to himself, to his past with his son Tim, to his ex-wife Linda, even though there was nothing between them now but dead memories. He stood and dropped the phone onto the cushion from which he’d just risen. He walked down the hall, flicking on a single light as he went. He stopped when he reached the linen closet, which he used as storage since he didn’t have much linen, and opened it. There was his one extra set of sheets and a blanket and pillow inside. There was also several years’ worth of phone books, hunting boots and insulated bib overalls, camping gear, road salt, coffee cans full of change, and extra lightbulbs among other household detritus. He pushed some of it aside and found a cardboard box, which he pulled to the front of the shelf. He opened the flap. It had been a long time since he’d done this—a lifetime it seemed. He peered down into the box and saw them. Tim’s old things. A policeman figurine, Thomas the Tank Engine, Matchbox cars, a squishy vinyl football, some lifelike rubber dinosaurs. Behr felt a grim smile burning on his lips. They were Tim’s favorites. Nothing would replace either his boy or that time, Behr knew. Nothing. He handled the items for a few moments, feeling for the past, numb and distant between his fingers. Then he closed the flaps. He walked back down the hall with the box in his hands and continued right out the door. He went around back to where the building’s trash area was and lifted the lid on the small Dumpster. He heard the toys rattle around as he threw the box in. He slammed the lid down with a hollow metallic clang and marched back inside, his heart empty. When he reentered his place, the phone was ringing, but he didn’t answer it. He just let it ring.
EIGHTEEN
Behr was on his way out first thing in the morning when he saw them. Two men, sitting in a silver Crown Vic that had his car boxed in. He stopped in his tracks when he made out who was behind the wheel. It was Police Captain Pomeroy, his former boss. Last time they had spoken it had not been a pleasant conversation. Now the pair saw him and got out of their car. The second man was a few years older than Pomeroy and was beefier by thirty-five pounds. He was florid faced already, with the heat of the day still a long way off.
“Behr. Looking quite the winner today,” Pomeroy said. “Didn’t have you for a churcher.”
Behr was dressed in his blue blazer and tie again. “Memorial service, Captain,” he answered, looking at his old boss. Time didn’t seem to change the man. His nose bone was still sharp as a hawk’s beak and his black eyes as pitiless.
“The department could use a favor,” Pomeroy said.
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“Really?” Behr asked, mainly to check the rough thrill that ran through him at the words. He’d heard of ex-cops doing outside work for the force, at times when it was something so mundane it wasn’t worth the department’s time, and others when it was a situation so sensitive the cops couldn’t afford to be around it. Either way, Behr had never been on the ask list. “Near Northside stuff?” he guessed, thinking of the amount of drugs and drug violence that existed there.
“Not exactly—,” the other man said, speaking for the first time.
“Jerry …,” Pomeroy interrupted, silencing him.
“Who’s this?” Behr wondered of “Jerry.”
“City attorney,” Pomeroy answered, and didn’t add any last name.
“So is this official?” Behr asked.
“Officially unofficial,” Pomeroy said.
“What does that mean?”
“He’s having this conversation on behalf of the department,” Pomeroy said.
More confidentiality, Behr realized. He wondered if lawyers were the new must-have accessory around town.
“What’s it about?” Behr asked.
“I want you to reconsider the Caro job,” Pomeroy said.
“You want me to help with that?” Behr asked.
Both Pomeroy and “Jerry” nodded.
Potempa must have reached out, Behr realized. “But you ran me …,” he blurted, confused and remembering how it had ended for him with the police years ago. Pomeroy had sighted in on him and pushed and pushed until he was done and all Behr had left was a quarter pension and his old tin. It was personal. The sickening feeling of failure, of being discarded, revisited the pit of his stomach.
“That’s right. And now I need someone who knows what he’s doing,” Pomeroy said. “Who can go places where the official asky-asky nicey-nicey won’t work. Who doesn’t matter.”
“I guess we’re being honest this morning,” Behr said. The city attorney made a sound, a half snuffle, half cough that connoted both amusement and disgust.
“You weren’t incompetent, I just didn’t like you.” An early morning silence stretched out for a moment between Pomeroy’s words. “But I know what you were able to do on that thing a while back.”
Behr said nothing.
“I’m hoping for a similar result here. This is a situation you’d be paid an hourly. Off the books. Not by us. Beyond that, it’d be considered a contribution to the department. A serious contribution. It’ll be noticed and remembered if it’s done right. It can change the future of the doer. You want to hear it?”
Behr looked at Pomeroy, then to Jerry. Their faces were scowling and serious. He heard what they were saying, what he was being offered. He knew it was a real chance. “There’s something I’d want up front in return,” Behr said.
“Really?” Pomeroy asked. “What’s that?”
“Flow through on your investigation into the Santos murder.”
“The judo guy?” Pomeroy said.
“Brazilian jiu-jitsu, but yeah,” Behr answered, wondering why he felt it so imperative to be specific.
Pomeroy shrugged. “That’s doable.”
Behr nodded. “Caro wanted me to locate some of their boys, but they wouldn’t even give me a hint. I can’t do it unless I know the whole story.”
“Of course.” Pomeroy handed him a folder. “It’s not only about their boys.”
The other man practically lunged into the conversation. “There’s someone out there—some group or crew making jerk-offs out of the department taking down shake houses—”
“Thanks, Jerry,” Pomeroy cut him off. Then he turned to Behr and spoke more quietly. “What do you know about pea-shake houses?”
“Same as everybody. Lottery-style betting parlors. Drawings done several times a day with numbers written on balls. There’s an editorial every six months calling them the scourge of the city or else suggesting they be legalized and taxed.” That wasn’t all he knew. He also knew that the occasional bust of a shake house was the old standby photo op for the police. Department scandal? “Police Raid Pea-Shake House” would be on the front page of the paper. Teen gang violence? “Shake House Taken Down” would be the lead story on the evening news. It was like a joke that everyone was in on. But this was a whole different approach.
“You know how much illegal gambling money they represent?” Jerry piped up.
“How can anybody?” Behr wondered.
“We know—” Jerry said.
“That’s not the point,” Pomeroy cut him off again. Jerry fell silent, tugging at his collar, which had irritated his neck to the color and texture of tenderized meat. “The point is, by tomorrow night, the next morning if we can’t hold it off, there’s gonna be a story in the news about a city inspector looking to condemn a place and turning up a few bodies in a shake house out on Everly.”
“Who are they?” Behr asked.
“Couple of Peruvian fellas running it. And let’s just say they weren’t fresh.” Pomeroy sighed and took a pause. “It’s not the first time it’s happened.”
“How many times?” Behr asked.
“One other body, two months back. And seven or eight instances of players getting terrorized and the guys running the shakes getting beat down. Bad. In the past three months. Those are the ones we’ve heard of. There must be more we haven’t.”
“Christ. You’ve sat on houses waiting for the crew?” Behr asked.
“The shakers move their locations, so does the crew. We never know which one will be next, so we keep missing,” Jerry said. Behr turned to Pomeroy, who looked annoyed but nodded.
“Seems like CIs could be developed who would—,” Behr started.
“That’s been tried. We never even get a reliable description. No one’s talking,” Pomeroy said.
“Someone always talks.” Behr had never seen a case when a confidential informant couldn’t be developed or paid or leveraged into giving up a key piece of information.
“Everybody’s scared shit. That’s the problem. You’ll see.” Pomeroy sniffed and then spit. “I want this crew, and I want it before we have a war, or the Feds, up my nuts. It’s what Caro was after, they just didn’t say it to you.”
Behr took it in. “And if I find something—a who, when, or where?”
“You let us know,” Pomeroy said.
“Simple as that? These guys are leaving behind corpses, so if I stumble into something and I need a little help and have to call for backup?” he asked.
“Don’t.” Pomeroy said. Jerry just shook his head and fought with his collar some more.
Don’t stumble, or don’t call for backup. Behr wasn’t sure. But the point was clear: there was no room for fucking up in this.
“You still wear that wheel gun?”
“Sometimes,” Behr shrugged.
“Start carrying it.”
This gave Behr pause. A police captain telling him to carry while pursuing an off-the-record case was no small deal, but then again the comment fell under attorney-client privilege, so it couldn’t come back on Pomeroy. After a long moment Behr nodded.
“Keep our communication limited and outside of regular channels. That means don’t call my office,” Pomeroy said.
“Got it,” Behr answered. He watched as Pomeroy and Jerry climbed back into their car.
“And those Caro boys—Bigby and Schmidt?”
“Let me know if you find ’em,” Pomeroy said, and then drove away.
So that was it. Behr was suddenly standing there alone thumbing the folder he’d been given. He was back inside the ring ropes. He might only be on the undercard, but at least he had a new chance at the main event.
NINETEEN
The academy was usually a place of joyful, spirited effort. Today it was hushed and somber. Behr had arrived early, right after his little chat and long before the memorial was to begin. He had glanced in the window and seen that the mat had been cleansed of Aurelio’s blood. He had also seen a few people with dark hair and car
amel complexion moving around inside, setting up coffee and pastries. The family, he surmised. But he wasn’t ready to go face-to-face with them yet, and he walked away from the window. Instead, he visited the rest of the businesses in the strip center. The check-cashing place was closed, and would be until Monday at 9:00 A.M. according to an hours sign hanging on the door. He visited the dry cleaner, the sandwich shop, and the shoe store, which were all open despite it being a Sunday. The current economy was not one that allowed many businesses the luxury of a day off. He ran his questions with the owners and employees: Was anybody at work here that morning? Did you see anyone suspicious in the area in the days before it happened? Do you have exterior security cameras? Do your interior security cameras pick up anything outside through the windows? All he got in response was “no,” “no,” and “no,” as well as “we already told this to the cops and who, exactly, are you?”