by David Levien
“Huh,” Behr grunted.
“Not by much. But second all the same, ya know?” Dannels asked. Behr nodded. He did know. It was the kind of thing that ate at a fighter, at a man.
“So there was an issue?” Behr said. Dannels hit a key on his computer and the grainy footage paused. “Was Aurelio pissed about that?” Behr pointed at the screen. “He was retired. Was he going to come out and give him another fight? He never mentioned anything like that to me.”
Dannels just shrugged. “Fucking Francovic showed up at the academy with a camera crew a while after their fight. This was a bit before you started training there. It was a pretty big deal around the school apparently. Aurelio hadn’t been there that day, but the advanced students were up in arms that he’d been disrespected. Aurelio was pretty stoic about it. That kind of posturing is par for the course down in Brazil. You know what he said?”
“What?”
Dannels mimicked Aurelio’s Portuguese accent. “I would have run over and kick his ass for free, but I already do that in the ring and got paid.” They both laughed at the memory of their friend.
“So I don’t know if he was gonna come out. Doubt it, mate. Retiring with the belt worked for him, and that last fight was a gem
…,” Dannels said.
Behr remembered the affair as a five-round classic and made a mental note to watch it again.
“Francovic trains out of Muncie, doesn’t he?”
“He’s got a fighter factory up there. He turns some damn fine grapplers out of his gym,” Dannels said.
Behr nodded as he took in the information. “Guess I’ll go pay him a visit.”
“I showed this to the cops when they came to interview me, but I didn’t tell ’em this: you figure out it’s definitely him…,” Dannels said, “let me have ninety seconds with him before you put the cops in it.” That was the fighter’s mind-set-even a guy who gave someone better and more experienced than you all he could handle in an epic battle, and you still wanted him for yourself.
Behr thought about it for a moment, then said, “Hold on,” and went out to his car. He came back to the door and handed the folded flag to Dannels, who knew exactly what it was.
“The family asked me to give it to you.”
“Did they?” Dannels said, his eyes on the shiny green fabric.
“I mentioned I was dropping by, and that’s what they asked me to do,” Behr told him.
“Thanks, Frank.” Dannels stuck out a hand. “Thanks.”
Behr left and got in his car. He had a new direction.
TWENTY
Behr cupped his hands around his eyes and peered through the window into the darkened interior of the Francovic Training Center. A dozen heavy, Thai, uppercut, and speed bags hung dormant in the darkened space inside the brick building. There was a low wooden platform in front of a mirror for skipping rope and shadowboxing. There were free weights, benches, squat racks, dumbbells and such in a corner. A pegboard was mounted on the rear wall. A regulation octagonal cage centered several hundred square feet of mats. Factory indeed. Late on a Sunday afternoon, however, no one was there. Behr had called before driving up and had gotten no answer but had made the trip anyway on the off chance he’d run into Francovic training or doing some cleaning or maintenance.
He should have headed home to get to work on the Caro case, but he couldn’t seem to make himself leave. Instead, he hung around for half an hour, then left and cruised the Rust Belt streets of Muncie, killing time. He drove past the chain stores on McGalliard and stopped in at a Bob Evans for coffee, where he burned another half hour, and then went back to Francovic’s gym, where this time he was in business. The lights were on inside and there was movement on the mat. Behr opened the door and immediately caught a whiff of the heavy, musty sweat smell common to all the serious gyms and dojos he’d ever frequented, the kind that never had time to air out fully before the next workout, where the rank moisture built up over the years into a cloud that became another part of the challenge of attending. A small group of grapplers dressed in board shorts and rash guards were going through warm-ups, lunge walking around the mat like a line of circus elephants. At the head of the pack, leading, was the human equivalent of Jumbo. Every school or gym has its resident heavyweight, its monster. This young guy went a good six feet eight from the tips of his massive toes to the top of his blond dome and weighed three bills easy. He was one big boy.
“Let’s go, get down and deep, the way your girlfriend likes it,” Big Boy called out in a bass bellow.
Behr moved into the room but stayed well away from the mat as he was wearing street shoes. When the line made it around the corner, Big Boy saw him there.
“This isn’t a class. Team workout,” Big Boy called out. “Schedule’s on the door.”
“Not here for a class. I’m looking to talk to Dennis Francovic,” Behr said, stepping closer.
“No shoes on the mat!” Big Boy shouted.
“That’s why I’m staying off the mat,” Behr shouted back.
Big Boy broke off his lunge walks. “Keep ’em going, Tink,” he said to a middleweight who was next in line. Then Big Boy crossed to Behr. The kid sported a high and tight haircut without sideburns that made him seem like a dimwit from the Middle Ages. He already had a sheen of sweat going that made Behr wonder how deep into a fight Big Boy could take all that bulk.
“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.”