by David Levien
The moment he entered, he saw that the bedroom was a problem. There were four large cardboard boxes, three of them already sealed with tape. Damn, Behr breathed and crossed to the closet. He pulled a string, lighting the bare bulb. All he saw were wire hangers and dust balls. The family had been thorough and quick with the packing. He opened the only box that wasn’t closed up and found it full of shoes-dressy ones, sneakers, flip-flops, and a pair of low rubber winter boots that Aurelio must’ve despised. Behr closed the flaps and scanned around the room. It was not heavily or particularly well furnished. Aurelio wasn’t the kind to care. Behr dropped to his hands and knees and looked under the bed. He found nothing there but a yoga mat and a massage stick for breaking up fibrous tissue.
Back on his feet, Behr went and took a cursory glance at the bathroom. He examined the toiletries in it. Some were women’s, and he tried to deduce whether they were the mother and the sister’s or if they could belong to the “new girl.” Some of the products were Brazilian, others American. But a Schick razor and Suave shampoo weren’t much of an indicator. He noted that there was a half-empty green box of Trojan Twists in the medicine cabinet.
Behr was feeling he’d used up all his good fortune on getting inside when he continued on through the last door in the house and discovered the guest room. It held two twin beds that had clearly been slept in and two carry-on size roller suitcases with luggage tags from Brazil. And tucked in the corner was a desk. Behr practically leaped at it. He started with the laptop that rested in the center. He supposed it could have belonged to one of the brothers or the sister, but for some reason, maybe because of its placement, it seemed like Aurelio’s. Behr tried to remember if there had been a computer in the office down at the school, and believed there hadn’t been. He pressed the power button and the machine turned on with a mechanical chime. After a moment it booted up, and to his dismay, Behr saw that both the keyboard and the desktop were in Portuguese. He tried to double-click on some documents, but a box came up asking for what Behr assumed was a password. He considered stealing the machine and taking it to his IT connection to unravel it. After a moment Behr abandoned the idea and turned the computer off.
There were two drawers on either side of the desk, and he found them full of various papers-paid bills, solicitations, an outline for a book on jiu-jitsu handwritten in English with crudely drawn diagrams of the moves. There were snapshots taken at the school and in Aurelio’s home country, menus from local restaurants. Then, in the second to last drawer Behr hit pay dirt when he found Aurelio’s checkbook.
A quick glance told him the stubs went back almost a year and a half. He started the long process of thumbing through them, from most distant to most recent. The checks painted a picture of the mundane. It was Aurelio’s personal checking account, so there was nothing having to do with the academy, but there was a rent check each month on the house, same with the cable, and gas and electric. Aurelio had two credit cards on which he paid between two and six hundred dollars a month total. His car insurance was paid quarterly. The balance on the account hovered around six thousand in the beginning, but over the following year or so it had grown up to a high of sixteen thousand. Then two months back there was a check for four thousand made out to cash.
Red flag, Behr thought. And three and a half weeks later, another was written for seventy-five hundred dollars, again to cash. Flashing red light. Erratic banking often meant erratic behavior. But Aurelio was solid. He’d seemed solid anyhow. Drug use would often be the first thought, but surely Behr, even with his limited social skills, would have noticed the physical changes that drugs on that scale would have wrought. Gambling was his next thought. Gambling wouldn’t have left any physical traces. Behr had never heard him mention online poker. And as far as Behr knew, Aurelio never cared about American football or basketball. He was a soccer fan, and Behr supposed he could’ve gotten in deep over that even though local bookies weren’t that exotic and might not have taken big action on those games. There was also the possibility he was betting on MMA fights. Aurelio was no degenerate cowering over losses, Behr realized, someone showing up to strong-arm Aurelio into paying would’ve found himself in a rapidly deteriorating situation. It could’ve gone to guns…
Behr tossed the remaining drawer for the bank statements that would contain the canceled checks with endorsements that might fill in the picture, but he couldn’t find them. He looked all over the room, coming up empty, before he wrote down Aurelio’s account number and the numbers of the two big checks. He glanced at his watch and chewed the inside of his mouth. It’d be pretty handy to find those canceled checks, but he didn’t know where else to look and time was getting tight. He got up to go, made one last cursory sweep, and let himself out the back door. He paused to replace the screen before hustling low across the lawn toward his car.
“Tommy? Frank Behr,” he said into his cell phone as he made a short crosstown drive.
“Hey, Frank-o,” came back to him. Tommy Connaughton was the I. T connect he’d thought of earlier. Connaughton’s day job was as a computer repair and data recovery specialist, but that’s not how Behr had met him, or how he made the bulk of his money.
Some years back, just after Behr had gotten off the force and went private, he’d received a call from a student at Butler. It seemed the young man was having problems with the Taus, the football fraternity. He’d had the temerity to show up at their party and talk to the wrong girl or some such bullshit. The kid said he was from up Carmel, and his parents had money, and he was interested in hiring a bodyguard temporarily. Behr figured this was what happened when your name started with a “B” and someone went yellow page hunting, but he’d had precious little work back then-even less than he currently had-so he’d gone and met with the kid, though he had no real intention of taking the bodyguard gig. Behr was sitting across from the pale, skinny Tommy Connaughton in the student union, talking over coffee when the kid went stiff. Behr glanced over and saw half a dozen strong-looking athletes enter. They ranged from stout and solid to tall and lanky, as the positions they played dictated, and one, a thick-necked lineman, stood out.
“That’s Molk. He plays nose tackle and he’s like the lead prick,” Connaughton said. The nose tackle had longish greasy yellow hair in the Bob Golic mold and looked over at Connaughton with malice. It was probably only Behr’s presence that kept him from approaching.
“I tell you what,” Behr said to Connaughton, “I’m gonna help you. I’m not gonna bodyguard you, I’m just gonna make this go away.” They agreed on a five-hundred-dollar price.
Behr walked over to the athletes and rested his fists on the table, leaning down over the now-silent ballplayers. They may have been carrying a lot of gym-made meat on their frames, but he was pure gristle.
“You see Tom Connaughton over there?” Behr said. “You give him a twenty-five-foot buffer zone from now on. You don’t say anything to him. You don’t say anything about him. You sure as hell don’t touch him. Otherwise you’re dealing with me. Got it?” The ballplayers all just nodded. Behr looked into Molk’s eyes and saw fear there. He also saw a distinct lack of intelligence, and that was to become a lesson for Behr. Behr left with Connaughton, who promised him a check.
Two days later Behr received a call to come get his check, and Behr showed up at Connaughton’s apartment. When Connaughton opened the door, Behr saw the place was a dump, not the dwelling of a well-to-do kid from Carmel, even if his parents were keeping him humble. He also saw that the kid had been roughed up. Connaughton had a big, nasty shiner with greenish yellow edges that had purpled into the hollow of his nose bone.
“Molk?” Behr asked.
Connaughton nodded and handed him his check. The way the kid paid him anyway was what really got Behr. If it was calculation on Connaughton’s part, it was the perfect one.
“Crap, I’m sorry, Tom,” Behr said, realizing that the dimness he’d seen in Molk’s eyes was what had allowed the ballplayer to do this, despite the conse
quences that had been promised. Behr vowed to himself never to underestimate the combination of stupidity and malevolence again.
“You hold this,” Behr said of the check. “I’ll be back.”
Behr went directly over to campus and found the Tau house. He parked out front and slipped on a pair of zap gloves-tight-fitting leather gloves with eight ounces of powdered lead sewn across the knuckles that caused punches to land as heavy as falling cinder blocks. Behr went right through the front door, which was open, as fraternity house doors always are.
A half-dozen frat brothers and ballplayers sat around a big television that played The Jerry Springer Show.
“Molk?” Behr demanded when their heads had all turned toward him.
“Who the fuck are you?” a tall black kid who looked like a free safety asked, standing.
Just then Molk came out of the kitchen holding a bottle of beer. His eyes flashed scared when he saw Behr, but he tried to hide it.
“You want something?” he said to Behr, attempting to act casual. He took a sip of his beer and Behr didn’t hesitate. He struck with his palm, jamming the bottle back into Molk’s mouth. Molk went down, his face a mess of broken teeth, glass, and blood.
The free safety stepped around the couch toward Behr, ready to front. Behr crushed him with a body shot. The zap gloves did their work, folding the big kid over, and dropping him next to the couch.
Behr stood over Molk, who tried to writhe away, expecting a kick. “Don’t make me come back,” Behr said. The nose tackle nodded. Behr saw a new level of understanding in Molk’s eyes and knew it was over.
When he returned to Connaughton’s place it wasn’t long before the kid admitted he wasn’t from a rich family and he’d used his computer skills to order some stuff-a big-screen television- that he’d sold to raise the five hundred dollars. They argued for a moment over who should keep the check until Behr shoved it into Connaughton’s pocket. A year and a half later Behr needed some tax information for a background search that wasn’t coming up on the regular databases. Connaughton was happy to help him out, and that was the way it started.
“So I almost had a big job for you,” Behr said into his cell phone, shutting off his car. “Laptop from Brazil.”
“Fun,” Connaughton said.
“But, instead I have something less far afield,” he went on. “I’ve got an account number and a few checks I need you to run. They’re made out to cash, but I figure you can trace who cashed ’em.”
“Hmm,” Connaughton breathed. “The laptop might’ve been easier…”
“Ahh-,” Behr began.
“I don’t work at the bank, man. You know? I’m not a teller. I’m gonna have to hack it. It’s gonna take some time.”
“How long?” Behr wondered.
“Three, four days. And I’m gonna have to charge you, you know? Real money. I’ll give you the friendly rate, but still-”
“Do it.”
“Do it? That’s it? You don’t even ask me the price?” Connaughton said.
“You’ll be fair, and I’ll pay. If I don’t, you’ll probably hack my bank account. And if you aren’t fair, I’ll hack your front door,” Behr said.
“Right…,” Connaughton said, sounding a little uncomfortable.
Behr read him the account and check numbers. “Call me when you have something. Soon as you can, Tommy.” He hung up.
Behr was parked outside the house of someone who should have been at the memorial but wasn’t. He got out of his car and went toward the house, which was dark, with the blinds down despite it being afternoon. Behr knocked anyway. “Pounded” was a better word for what he did to the door. After a moment it swung open revealing Steven Dannels, a man of about Behr’s age, half a foot shorter, but thick through the chest and arms, and with longish brown hair.
“’Lo, Steven,” Behr said.
“Frank,” Dannels said, his Australian accent present even in the single word. He shook hands with the light grip of a fighter whose knuckles were perennially sore. “C’mon in.”
Behr followed as Dannels crossed his dim, cavelike living room. He walked with a ginger, swinging gait close to a limp that revealed long-term injuries from ankle to knee to hip and shoulder. It was no surprise; the guy practically lived on the mat. In fact, Behr heard he rubbed Preparation H into his sore spots before workouts on the theory it would shrink swollen tissue. Behr had asked him if it worked. “Fucked if I know, mate,” Dannels said, “but my joints sure don’t have hemorrhoids.”
“Have a seat, man,” Dannels said, and Behr found a spot on the couch. The room was filled with books and the air was rank with sweaty workout clothes and the menthol of Thai liniment. Dannels was the senior instructor at Aurelio’s school, an equal, nearly, to his former mentor in both knowledge and application of jiu-jitsu, despite his not having had a storied career in the ring. Dannels’s day job was as an engineer at Navi-Gen, a company that built next-generation heavy and medium trucks and buses, and he held a PhD in physics. Because of that, or his technical approach on the ground, or both, most people referred to him as “the Professor,” though Behr didn’t.
“Missed you down at the memorial,” Behr said, as Dannels sat across from him in an armchair. Dannels had started with Aurelio soon after the school had opened. He had arrived from California, where he’d worked for Lockheed, with two black belts already-one in tae kwon do, the other in Japanese jiu-jitsu.
“I spoke to the family, but I just couldn’t face it. Know what I mean, mate?” Dannels said.
“I do,” Behr said, and it was the truth. He didn’t suspect the man of anything but grief. Dannels had summarily claimed his black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu a short time after undertaking his training with Aurelio. That was close to five years ago, and Behr could only imagine the extent of the man’s knowledge now. Soft-spoken, with an educated, unassuming manner and an easy smile, he was what Behr classified as a basic bar nightmare. If Dannels got a drink spilled on him, he’d probably be the one to apologize, but if the spiller decided to push it, he’d find himself in a disastrous situation-broken or unconscious or some combination thereof.
“You have keys to the school and the lease won’t be flipped for a while I imagine. You shouldn’t take too long before you get back on the mat,” Behr advised.
“You neither,” Dannels said. “Your game was coming along.”
Behr nodded. He’d had the opportunity to roll with Dannels a few times and equated it with grappling a boa constrictor. Attacks didn’t seem to work against the man, and submission, usually by choke, was a steady process executed smoothly and inexorably. When discussing the fine points of a technique, Dannels would often begin with “Of the hundreds of men I’ve choked out…,” and there was absolutely no bravado attached. It was more the tone of a mechanic referring to the brake jobs he’d done.
“Maybe you should pick up teaching some classes if you can,” Behr suggested.
“Some crap state of affairs, eh?” Dannels said, as if talking to the walls, which it seemed he’d been doing for the past few days.
“Yeah…,” Behr said, and then launched in, hoping Dannels’s subtle mind possessed a detail that would help him. “You knew Aurelio as well as anyone, inside and outside the ring. You hear anything about a girl he’d been seeing?” Behr asked.
“Man, since Maria,” Dannels said, “he’d seen a couple of chicks, but he was taking it slow and they weren’t lasting. Maybe he’d met someone lately-matter of fact I’d seen him on his celly having some quiet convos the last few weeks-but we’d both been busy, just passing in the locker room and talking shop on the mat, so I don’t know fuck-all about it. Sorry, mate.”
“I know less than you, don’t worry about it,” Behr said, trying to keep his subject confident. “So who was he beefing with? Who wanted to take him down? Who could’ve?”
Dannels paused, but it wasn’t to think, because he’d already done his thinking on it. Behr had asked the right question. Dannels got up and cross
ed to a desk where there was a laptop. He booted it up and Behr moved around behind him as he opened an Internet video clip.
The screen played rough footage from a mixed martial arts Web site that had been shot at an event in Chicago. After a winner was announced in a lightweight bout, a large bull of a man with a brush cut stepped into the cage and took the microphone from the announcer. “Who’s that, Francovic?” Behr asked.
“That’s right,” Dannels said. Dennis Francovic was a well-known fighter who’d been champion at light-heavy up until about two years back, when he’d fought and lost to Aurelio. Behr knew he was a ground and pound specialist with good stand-up and wrestling and enough submission experience, in combination with his unusual natural strength, to build an impressive career in the sport.
“There’s a guy here who’s got something that’s mine,” Francovic growled into the microphone. His eyes searched the crowd. “Come on, Santos, let’s do it again. The first time was a war. But you know we’ve got unfinished business together. Show me what kinda man you are. Let’s do it again!” The audience ate it up. The camera jerkily panned the crowd where Francovic was looking. It was like something out of a WWE show, but the fight he was asking for would be for real.
“When was this?” Behr wondered.
“’Bout a year ago.”
“Is Aurelio even there?” Behr asked.
“Nah, man. Not even in the building,” Dannels answered. The camera shot returned to the ring and found a burly young man wearing a bad suit and sporting a faux-hawk who was clapping and smiling in the background.
“And him?” Behr wondered.
“Promoter hoping to get it going.”
Francovic continued using the microphone to call out the absent Aurelio.
“How good is he?” Behr asked.
Dannels nodded his head with respect. “If jiu-jitsu and MMA had been popular in this country when he’d been a kid, he would have been one of the game’s all-time legends,” he said. “But there’s no substitute for time, man, and when Aurelio moved to the area and they fought, he became second best.”