by David Levien
“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 caramel 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?”
After a while Behr noticed cars showing up and a stream of people, some of them students and instructors he recognized, heading into the academy. It was time.
Behr entered to find the place
four times as crowded as he’d ever seen it. Besides the regular members of the school, many others were arriving. Aurelio was something of a legend in mixed martial arts, and lots of trainers, aficionados, and fighters, past and present, were entering, some even famous. Behr could only wonder at the attendance had the memorial been held in Las Vegas or Los Angeles. Things were more cramped than they would have been, because the mat where Aurelio had been found was taped off, and the proceedings were held in the waiting and warm-up area.
Snuffling, coughing, and wiping of tears had already begun even though people were only milling about and speaking informally. A framed and prominently displayed thirty-inch photo of Aurelio in his prime, smiling, his hands raised in victory as he straddled the cage wall after a fight, was enough to break them all down. A ring of votive candles burned around the photo, and soulful Brazilian guitar music played softly out of a boom box. Behr walked past the massive and impressive display of Aurelio’s trophies, belts, and awards. He felt awkward, attired as he was in blazer and tie. Most of the others, especially the Brazilians, were dressed much more casually. He greeted several instructors and a few of the students he knew.
He also noted the IMPD detective on the case, there clocking those in attendance, based on the old saw that the killer often can’t stop himself from going to the funeral, Behr supposed. He didn’t know the guy, who was trying to blend in by the coffee machine, but it was clear enough who he was-after all, he was wearing a blazer and tie just like Behr. Behr gave him a nod across the room. Nothing came back.
Despite today’s turnout, the school was still small, Behr realized, perhaps three more years from really starting to grow and needing a larger space. Aurelio had left Brazil a decade ago, but he had first gone to New York, where he had trained out of a cousin’s gym. After he had finished the main body of his career as a fighter, he had decided to find a new city in which to establish his own training center and had moved to Indianapolis. This was the way Brazilian jiu-jitsu spread-families and friends built their schools in loose association with more established ones. They used their reputations to make inroads into new markets. Eventually, as the original students, the ones who hung in, started to earn their brown and black belts, took on some of the teaching duties, and began competing and winning in local and regional matches, a school really sunk its roots and grew. Aurelio’s was just on the cusp of that kind of success. Now there was a real question as to whether or not the place would survive without him.
As he moved through the crowd, Behr lightly grabbed elbows of the locals and doled out business cards, asking people to e-mail him so he could be in touch. Those who knew him, and what he did for a living, asked him if he’d heard anything. This was a bad sign. A lot of the time people didn’t know how much they actually knew, and he believed there must be something out there, but he already felt like a jackal scavenging for scraps of information during a time of mourning. He couldn’t take it much further at the moment. The other bad sign was that the police had turned the location back over to the family after only a few days. After their initial processing of the crime scene, they must not have felt there was any more hope of physical evidence.
Behr steeled himself and moved through a maze of folding chairs and a din of English, broken English, and Portuguese, toward the family in its place of honor.
“Mr. and Mrs. Santos? Frank Behr. I was a student. My condolences.” He wasn’t sure if they spoke English, and after they nodded their thanks, he still wasn’t. He moved past them to two men in their late twenties or early thirties. Curly haired, heavy featured, and fit, they were clearly Aurelio’s brothers. They flanked a dark-haired, grief-stricken young woman with red-rimmed eyes whom Behr pegged as a sister.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Behr said to them, shaking their hands between both of his.
“You train with my brother?” the older one asked. “I’m Alberto.”
“Yeah, Frank Behr. I was taking private-”
“Oh, sure, ’Elio told us about you. He say you will be a pain in the ass to submit one day soon. He say you forget you only training.”
“I’m stupid like that,” Behr said. He glanced over at the other brother, who seemed to be listening.
“Rory don’t speak English,” Alberto said. Then Alberto spoke Portuguese and Behr heard his name. Then Rory said a few words including “detetive.”
Alberto turned to him. “You are a detective?”
Behr nodded.
“The police say there is nothing so far. You can maybe find something about what happened?” he asked. The desperation Behr saw in such a strong man’s eyes made it all the more unbearable.
“I’ll try. I am trying,” Behr said.
Rory, who’d been following the exchange in silence, stood up. He crossed to a table where perhaps a dozen Brazilian flags were folded. Rory took one and handed it to Behr and then spoke in Portuguese.
“These are the flags he wear into the ring,” Alberto translated. Behr knew that Aurelio’s practice was to drape one around his shoulders when entering, and he waved them and held them aloft to the crowd after a win. “We want to give them to the special students. To remember.”
Behr felt the green flag, smooth and shiny under his fingers, and stood there for a moment unable to speak. He finally nodded his thanks and scratched out an “Obrigado… obrigado.” He looked up and saw that Alberto’s eyes were moist, but he wore a smile so close to Aurelio’s they might have shared the one.
“Your accent is good,” he said. “So tell me, I don’t see the new girl. You know her?”
“Girl…?” Behr began.
“The one he start with maybe six weeks ago,” Alberto said. “I don’t speak to him much in these days, he so busy. So busy with her. He don’t tell me her name, just that there is a new girl.”
Five hours a week alone with the guy, and he didn’t know something as basic as his new girlfriend. Behr marveled at his own anti-people skills, his ability to not connect. Before the conversation could continue, Aurelio’s father stood and cleared his throat.
“We talk again after, I translate for my father now,” Alberto said. Behr nodded and moved toward the door where there were still one or two empty seats.
Aurelio’s father began in halting, emotional Portuguese for a time and then allowed his son to speak his words to the room. “My son Aurelio love the jiu-jitsu. My father taught me. I teach Aurelio. And even though he don’t have a son, he love the people he teach. He do it from when he was five year old and it is his life…” The father spoke again for a few moments and Behr’s mind ran back over some of the many things Aurelio had taught him, and taught him the hard way-by using them on him. The guillotine, the reverse guillotine, front headlock choke, omaplata, gogoplata, knee bar, ankle lock, the Western, the stocks, kimura, jujigitame-arm bar-of all stripes, triangle choke, arm triangle, bolt cutter, a nasty one called the crucifix. The list went on and on. The variety and combination of the moves was an endless and fluid stream from Aurelio, but then it had stopped in the abrupt, graceless way that only death could bring.
Behr had a reason for choosing his seat near the door: as inappropriate as it was to walk out on a friend’s memorial, Behr knew it was his last best chance to get into Aurelio’s house. The family, if they were staying at his place, as he assumed they were, would all be at the school for the next little while. When the ceremony was over it was likely they would go back and begin packing his personal effects, and Behr would lose the chance for good. He only hoped the police wouldn’t still be sitting on the house, or that he’d have the good judgment not to go in anyway.
The father paused in his words and then Alberto took over once more. “My son have a special way with the people. He always compete with the most respect,” he said. “He never try to make someone feel small, he always try to lift up when he teach,” Behr raised his eyes and scanned the room. Several of the fighters were nodding. “Even the many that he beat, many become his friends after. And some of them
here today…”
But some of them aren’t, Behr thought, as the words bore into his gut, and it’s not just because they don’t live nearby. He glanced toward the door, about six steps away. He hoped his taking French leave wouldn’t be too conspicuous. He made his move.
Luck was raining down on him. There was no cop posted on Aurelio’s house. Behr had parked around the corner and was approaching from the rear, in case anyone on the street happened to be watching. And now he had an open window. As he cut across the backyard he saw it right away. He could’ve beaten the locks- which were bargain basement Schlages he remembered from his last visit-but he wasn’t the type to look a gift horse in the mouth. He figured he had forty-five minutes before anyone would be back from the memorial, so there was no time to waste, and he had the blade on his Leatherman tool out by the time he reached the house. He slid it quickly behind the frame of the screen, which came out of its track with a pop. The other side went even easier, and he raised the window and slid through.
The inside of the house smelled delicious. He had entered in the kitchen, and he saw a large pot of meat and rice on the stove that he imagined Aurelio’s mother had cooked for the group. The aroma made him hungry, but he moved on into the living room. There were a few open suitcases on the floor, as well as two large half-packed duffel bags. A sheet, blanket, and pillow were on the couch, which was likely being used as a bed by one of the brothers. He saw that the wires of Aurelio’s stereo had been disconnected, and the components were ready to be boxed up, the same with a forty-two-inch flat-screen television. The cable box and remote rested on the coffee table bundled up in the power cord. Behr checked along the bookshelves for any photos or loose papers but didn’t find any. He feathered the pages of several likely hardback books, but found nothing stashed. He considered continuing on through the hundred-plus paperbacks but abandoned the idea as too time-consuming with too little expectation of reward. As he walked toward the bedroom he hoped he wasn’t mistakenly leaving a lead undisturbed.