by David Levien
“Dennis doesn’t come in on Sundays. What do you want?” the kid said. He seemed to enjoy rising up over Behr. Behr didn’t experience the sensation often—certainly not since his football days—and had to admit he didn’t much care for it. He took a glance over Big Boy’s shoulder and was struck anew by just how many tough young bastards there were out there pursuing the fight game. Here alone, on a Sunday evening, in a little corner of nowhere, were eight rugged bucks spanning the weight classes. Most of them had short, spiky hair or were shaved clean. All of them wore ink. Some sported tribal tats, or barbed-wire rings around their biceps, colorful pictures, or professionally done prison-style black Gothic lettering, like the jacked, shirtless kid on the end with “RTD” on his upper chest. And the thing about the game now was that it promised big money to those who studied the science. Most weren’t just brawlers anymore, though they were that, too. Besides striking and kicking, they also worked takedowns and takedown defense and could go to the ground and apply submissions. It was a nasty business indeed out there with the kids these days.
“When’s Francovic in?” Behr asked.
“I’m not his secretary,” Big Boy said. “What’s it about?”
“I want to talk to him personally,” Behr said, already tired of the interaction.
“Whyn’t you tell me who you are and I’ll let him know you came by,” Big Boy said, rolling his shoulders and loosening his neck.
“I’ll cover that when I see him,” Behr said, not wanting to tip Francovic to anything in advance, hoping to get a cold reaction from the man when they spoke.
“You come walking in here asking questions, and you won’t say who you are?” Big Boy said, his eyes going flat and angry.
“Pretty much,” Behr said, causing Big Boy’s eyes to flare outright this time.
“All right then, spiffy, have it your way,” Big Boy said, flipping Behr’s tie up in the air.
Now Behr felt his own eyes flicker in anger. He seethed for a moment but reined it in. “I’ll come back,” Behr said when he could unclench his jaw.
“You do that,” Big Boy said. They turned from each other to see the team watching the exchange.
“I said keep ’em going, Tink …,” Big Boy called out, turning to rejoin them. “All right, frog hops, motherfuckers.” Behr saw them begin the exercise, and then as he neared the door he heard something muttered, at his expense no doubt, and then there was laughter. Behr got outside, took a big suck of the cooling evening air, and got in his car.
TWENTY-ONE
Darkness had fallen gunmetal blue over the city by the time Behr reached Donohue’s. It had been a long day, a long weekend, a long week, but it wasn’t going to be over until he worked his Caro case at least a little. He wanted a beer and he needed information, and he didn’t know a better place to get those things than Donohue’s. He cracked the door and the amber light spilled onto him. Business was quiet, and the half-dozen drinkers at the bar kept half an eye on an Indians game playing on the elevated corner television. Behr saw Pal Murphy, crisp in his white dress shirt and gold-framed shades, sitting in his owner’s booth and going over some paperwork. It would’ve been bad form for him to go rushing over there, so Behr pulled up at the corner of the bar and raised a finger to Arch Currey, who nodded and moved toward the taps. During the fall and winter that finger meant Beck’s Dark; since it was summer it meant Oberon Ale.
“Thanks,” Behr said, feeling the ale’s cold bite. “I could use a minute with the man when he’s ready.”
“Sure, hang out,” Arch said, then crossed out from under the bar to Pal. They had a muted exchange and Pal nodded before Arch returned to his post.
“He says, sure, hang out,” Arch said as he climbed back under the bar.
“Will do. How’re things?”
“Quiet enough,” Arch said, and then began wiping down bottles.
Behr nodded hello to Kaitlin, with her pen behind one ear, wispy strands of dyed blond hair behind the other, who stood on the service side of the bar leafing through a tabloid magazine.
Behr had just received his second Oberon when he glanced over at Pal, who pushed aside his papers and gave him the nod.
Behr slid into the booth across from Pal Murphy and they shook hands. Pal’s exact age was difficult to determine—Behr pegged him somewhere between sixty-five and eighty. Pal’s skin had a desiccated, parchment quality to it, and laugh crinkles cut deep at the corners of his eyes, though they must’ve been pretty ancient because in the twelve years Behr had been coming to Donohue’s, he couldn’t recall Pal laughing.
“So, Frank,” Pal said, gravel under his voice.
“You need a drink?” Behr asked. Pal preferred small batch whiskey, if he recalled. Behr wasn’t offering to buy, it being Pal’s place, but merely get it for him.
Pal raised his half-full coffee cup in response, so Behr got to it.
“I’m working a thing,” Behr said, “and I don’t have the luxury of time.”
“Who does?”
“Someone’s making a run at the shake houses,” Behr said.
“Robbing ’em?” Pal asked.
“Not sure. Robbing ’em, squeezing ’em. Something. I need to know who, or to be at one before they get to it, not after.”
“Why’s it your problem?” Pal asked.
“It just is,” Behr said.
“Course. Dumb question, forget I asked it.”
“You didn’t. If there’s something you hear, and it’s something you can tell, I’d appreciate you passing it on,” Behr said. “For some reason it’s not information that’s been previously available.”
It was tricky with Pal. He was one of the most wired guys in the city. There were plenty of rumors about what he was into, and more about what he’d done when he was young. In a world with immigrant gangs showing up in the city each week, and truck-loads of meth and weed rumbling by on the interstates, an old-world gent like Pal, with his patronage and hookups, wasn’t often bothered by the cops. And he kept it that way by playing his every day like a chess master. Behr merely hoped his request fell into the fabric of Pal’s larger plan.
The older man’s eyes pinched, causing the skin at the corners to wrinkle, and Behr realized they were lines of thought, not laughter, and that he’d done plenty of that over the years. “Okay,” was all he said.
“I hate asking,” Behr said, “but I’ll owe you—”
“You’ve done for me. And if I can … you know, we’ll keep it going.”
Behr nodded his thanks and stood.
Terry Schlegel sat behind the wheel of his Charger and peered at the broke-ass house. It was astonishing, but half a dozen cars had arrived over the last fifteen minutes. He looked over at Knute. “You believe this motherfucker?”
Knute just shook his head. It was kind of incredible, but then again, since he’d been “inside,” and certainly since he’d been back out, nothing about human behavior really surprised him anymore. “People just act in their own self-interest, man,” he said. “Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong.”
“Well, this taco’s got it all the way wrong,” Terry said. “This was supposed to be simple. But we need to step it up, so we step it up. This is how we step it up.” He was really just tossing the words around in his mind, trying to keep his thinking linear and efficient, which was hard to do considering the dirty sonofabitch who was still open for business and farting in their faces.
Terry tried to force out the rage and focus on where he was at, and on the future. He remembered when he’d sat with Knute and Financial Gary—who was also known as “Numbers”—a few weeks after Knute’s release and presented the idea.
“I want to get into pea-shake houses,” he’d said.
“Mice nuts,” was Numbers’s response. And he was right— the take from an individual pea-shake house was meaningless on its own.
“I don’t want three of ’em, man. I want ’em all,” Terry said. There was a moment’s stunned silence, as
Numbers calculated.
“All of ’em rounded up and operated together? Now that’s a huge business,” he said.
“Right,” said Terry.
“How huge?” Knute asked.
“Millions. Tens of millions. Maybe a fucking hundred,” Gary said. Terry just nodded. He was no whiz like Financial Gary, but he’d roughed out a general idea. “You want to be Starbucks …,” Gary continued, with admiration.
“Fuckin’-A,” Terry said. “Except I don’t want to round ’em up and operate ’em.”
“No?” Numbers asked.
“No, because we’ll get skimmed and beat and ratted on. It just won’t work. What I want is to close ’em down, kill the business city-wide—”
Numbers nodded, excited now. “Create a vacuum—”
“That’s right, create a vacuum, and then open our own to fill it,” Terry finished.
Knute shook his head wearily, the practical little bastard. “That’s gonna be a lot of work. A lot of work.”
“Yep,” Terry had said. “You think you were gonna get out and relax? You were supposed to rest inside.”
So they’d gotten started. The pea-shake houses run by white dudes had fallen like dominoes. They knew half the guys operating those joints, and they were willing, if not happy to close for a while and agreed to let the Schlegels take over later rather than face the alternative. A roughneck out by Speedway held fast but reconsidered after he’d had his dental work rearranged by Terry’s boys. That turned out to be good advertising anyway.
When they moved into the Latin market, word was already spreading. A pair of hard cases out by the fairgrounds had stood up and had to be dealt with—fucking immigrants had a lot more sack than real Americans these days—but that was it. The gangs supposedly had a piece of some of the houses, but they hadn’t come forward to claim them. And if they had, the Newt had some connections from Michigan City he could work out a deal with. The converts and closures started coming fast. Before long, any houses that were still shaking were too small to get on their radar. One place was so accommodating when they showed up that they decided to just leave it open to get a better idea of the take. “Beta testing” Numbers Gary had called it. But that had turned to shit in its own special way, for Dean anyhow. Maybe showing a little lenience and mercy had been a mistake, because now there was this current stubborn prick … But that would be ending tonight. Once the Latin ones went, they’d start hammering the black-run houses. They expected some opposition there, which is why they saved them for last. Terry wanted them to feel like the odds were stacked against them, like they were in the Alamo and surrounded.
Then, when the darkies had gone down they’d reopen big-time to fill the void. The players would come in droves once word got out that it was safe. Between him and Knute and the boys, and other guys they knew, they had all the right personnel to operate fewer but more profitable houses city-wide.
“It can’t last forever,” Knute had said.
“Don’t have to. We only need to be up for a month or so, show some returns, before we sell,” Terry responded, and the others had gotten it.
Now, Knute nodded in the car. It was easy enough for him to follow the disjointed statement. After they were open and were pea shake in town, for all intents and purposes, buyers from Chicago, or maybe Campbell Doray locally, would take them out lump sum, buying the infrastructure for cash, and the Schlegels would stay on in management for a cut, under the umbrella of protection, of course. It actually mirrored standard mergers and acquisition procedure, according to Numbers Gary.
An electronic beep punctured the quiet of the car. Kenny and the boys had just arrived, and his voice blared over the walkie-talkie feature of his phone. “You believe this dumb fucking cholo?” Kenny said.
“Shut your phone off,” Terry answered, trading a look with Knute, and then shut off his own. A moment later the back door of Charlie’s Durango opened and Kenny came running back to the driver’s window.
Terry lowered his window. “You want the cops to be able to triangulate our whereabouts by cell records—,” he began.
“Sorry, Pop—,” Kenny cut in.
“Why don’t you send ’em a text message while you’re at it?”
“All right. Good idea. I’ll set up a Web cam, too—”
“Enough,” Terry said, and Kenny shut up. “Where have you been?”
“Training. So what’s the play?” Kenny asked. “We go in storm trooper?”
“Not this time,” Terry said. “You guys tried to make your point, and this fucker missed it. Get back in the truck and wait till all the players leave. Tell Dean to come over here.”
Kenny’s eyes went serious. He nodded and walked back to the Durango.
Behr left Donohue’s and was headed home when his car seemed to develop a mind of its own and he found himself parked in front of the building on Schultz Park. He went to the door and buzzed but got no answer. He had turned and was walking back to his car when an early ’90s silver Honda Accord rolled down the street and parked. A tall, black-haired woman got out and started for the building. Behr felt himself hitch and process something unconscious. He slowed his step as he reached his car, turned and moved quietly back for the door. She was putting her key in the lock when he spoke.
“I’ve been trying to reach you,” he said, noticing her shoulders jerk upward in surprise. “I think …” He let her face him before he said more, and when she did, he was struck by her beauty. Her skin was creamy and mocha colored, her lips full, her eyes dark. “Flavia Inez, right? My name is Frank Behr,” he said.
“Frank Behr?” she asked.
“I’m a private investigator. I left you messages regarding Aurelio Santos,” he said, flat and sure, leaving her no room to maneuver. She processed it quickly and nodded.
“Yes, of course.” There was the slightest of Latin accents under her words. “Would you like to come in?”
I found the girlfriend, Behr thought.
Her apartment was dark, and when she flipped the switch it was still mostly dark, because all the lights were on dimmers. There was a faint whiff of sandalwood incense in the air. A large piece of batik fabric functioning as a shade flapped in the slight breeze coming through an open window. There was a white slipcovered couch and chair that appeared to have come in a set, and a dark wood coffee table covered with crystal figurines of dolphins. The kitchen was new—a stainless steel fridge and range, granite countertops and cherrywood cabinets. Even if it was a rental, the place cost some money.
“So you heard what happened to Aurelio?” Behr said as she tossed her keys on the counter.
“I did. How terrible,” she said plainly. “Would you like some water?”
“No thanks,” Behr answered. “How come you weren’t at the memorial?”
“I couldn’t make it. I really wanted to, but I had an appointment.”
“I see,” Behr said, wondering at the cool temperature of her voice.
“He was such a nice guy …,” she said, as if recalling a grade-school friend she hadn’t seen for years.
“You were his girlfriend …?” Behr half asked.
“Me? No.”
“No?” There was a moment of silence as she shook her head. Her smooth hair shushed over her shoulders when she did. Behr forced his eyes from her and glanced at some framed photos on a shelf. He saw none of Aurelio. There were shots of Flavia out with girlfriends, and others of an older couple—her parents it seemed—and one of an even older couple, likely her grandparents.
“He was a good-looking guy, but I just got out of something and wanted a break.”
Behr thought of Ezra’s condition back at her prior building. “I think your ex roughed up your old building manager.”
“Ezra?” she said, concerned, her hand coming to her mouth. “Is he all right?”
“A little banged up, but okay.”
She pouted over it for a moment and then moved on. “He told you where to find me?”
“Let�
�s just leave it at I found you,” Behr said. “How’d you know Aurelio?”
“He was my teacher.”
“He was teaching you jiu-jitsu?” Behr asked. She didn’t seem the type. But that was the thing about martial arts, especially a grappling style; it brought in all kinds. “I never saw you at the school. What class did you usually take?”
“I was taking private lessons. I don’t like to go to classes in a group. I learn better on my own,” she said, and Behr felt himself nodding in agreement.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” he said.