by David Levien
“So, here to pick up Miss Susan?” Ratay asked and looked at him in a way that made him wonder if the reporter knew the specifics of their situation or was just a reader of situations in general. Either way, Behr felt like he was on a slide under a microscope.
“Yeah,” Behr said.
“I’m headed in. Take ’er easy,” Ratay said.
“Any way I can,” Behr answered, and with a knock on the car’s roof Ratay moved toward the Star’s building with long, unhurried strides.
Twenty minutes later Susan exited the building. Her hair flashed in the evening sunlight, but it looked like she bore a weight across her shoulders. She turned left, walking away from where he was parked. He started up the car and rolled up beside her at a trolling pace.
“Take you for a Ritter’s?” he asked. She looked over and saw him and stopped.
“I’ll follow you,” she answered.
They sat down outside Ritter’s with their frozen custards as the twilight settled around them. The cars going by created a steady, soothing drone.
“Didn’t have dinner yet,” she said.
“Better than dinner,” he responded, working the top scoop in his waffle cone with a spoon.
“Yeah.” They shared a smile, the first one in a while.
“You look beautiful,” he said, and she did. Despite a slight shadow across her eyes, her skin shined, and he thought she looked like she’d been bathed in milk.
“Thanks,” she said, though simple compliments weren’t going to do it for her. She ate more of her custard, the plastic spoon scraping softly against the side of the container. “Have you been working Aurelio?”
He nodded. “And another thing.”
“You making any progress?” she asked. He grimaced and left his spoon in his mouth for a long time after a bite, unwilling to speak, and she figured the rest. “But you got this working it?” She ran the back of her finger over the purple and swollen bridge of his nose. He just shrugged. “Oh, Frank.” It seemed part of her wanted to reach out for him, another part of her wanted him to reach for her, and something else in her wanted to get far, far away to where she’d be free and easy. She stayed though. She sat there on that bench next to him and ate her ice cream.
“It’s nothing,” he finally said. “What about you? How you feeling? You all right at work… considering?”
“Yeah. Just a little tired.”
“You want another custard?”
“Nah, this one’s making me nauseous as it is.”
“Something else then? A proper meal.”
She couldn’t stand the concern oozing out of him. It made her feel silly. “It’s just because it’s so sweet. Forget it.”
“Okay,” he said.
She wished things were normal between them, so they could just talk, and after another moment, that’s what she went ahead and did. “Frank, I’m sorry, and don’t take this wrong… but how good a friend was he?”
Behr didn’t answer for a long while. He looked into her eyes and saw she wasn’t trying to insult him or diminish Aurelio. She was trying to give him perspective, which was what he needed. She was wondering when she would have him back. He thought about her question. How could he answer it? What constituted a friend? Aurelio wasn’t his oldest friend, or his closest or best. That would’ve made things clear. They hadn’t gone to school together, or been on the force together. He had none of the usual markers, just a feeling. He saw other questions behind her first one: Could he walk away from it? Could he leave it to others? To no one? But something about Aurelio’s death had pierced him. The man was no saint, he wasn’t saving orphans, he was just a regular guy who’d earned a living the way he saw fit. But in another way he was a pilgrim for strength and good, a missionary spreading his art. And someone had chosen to take his existence from him.
“It just seems like there’s a line that needs to be held,” Behr said.
She nodded, and neither of them spoke for a moment.
“Can we talk about us for a second?” Susan said.
“Sure,” Behr said, then her faced pinched as if her custard had gone off. “Uch, listen to me, I sound like one of those annoying ladies on Oprah.”
“No you don’t,” Behr told her.
“Things feel bad,” she said, her voice flat and grim.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“We’ve got some decisions to make. I shouldn’t have run out of the car like that, but we’ve got to deal with this thing.”
He nodded.
“When I’d just graduated college and was dating some meaningless guys, my mother used to say to me, ‘You’ll never be younger or prettier or more wanted than you are right now.’”
“Sounds more like a madam than a mother.”
“Don’t talk that way about her, Frank,” she said, without anger.
“Sorry,” he said.
“She was trying to steer me to the ‘eligible’ guys. But you’re right, it never meant much to me. I was looking for what I wanted, not for what someone else wanted for me. And then, later, I wanted you.” She stopped for a moment, and put down her spoon before continuing. “But I’ve gotta know if this is how it’s going to be.”
“You know I don’t make a big living, Suze,” he said.
She shook it off with a toss of her head. “We both do okay. Better together,” she said. “But that’s not what I meant. I’ll admit I found it romantic or exciting, in the beginning, when we first met and you were fifty feet deep on that thing. But I mean, now, is this how it’s going to be when you’re on a case?”
He blew out a lungful of air. “If I’m doing background checks and asset searches, and crap like that, no. But if it’s something real… this is how it gets. How I get.”
She nodded, and stood. “Then I guess you’ve got to ask yourself… is life something you’ve got to face essentially alone, or can you share it? Really share it? ’Cause I won’t do it like this.” She tossed her ice cream container into the gaping mouth of a trash can.
TWENTY-SIX
Agargoyle. That’s what Susan had called him coming back from the lake, and she was right. He’d apparently turned to stone and lost his ability to speak-or to speak about things of importance anyhow. The rest of the conversation at Ritter’s hadn’t gone very far or well. Susan had said her piece, and he had found himself looking down at his feet, trying to answer but doing a poor job of it. Resolution was a long way off as they separated. They had mumbled a pledge to speak again soon, but there was neither force nor commitment coming from either side, and he had driven off toward Lafayette Street.
Behr parked under the illuminated sign that read: “Don’s Guns-I don’t make the rules, I just follow them.” He reached the door just as the clerk, a fortyish man with a salt and pepper mustache and a similarly colored buzz cut, was locking up. He wore a stainless. 357 on his hip.
“Just want to pick up some shells,” Behr said, showing his three-quarter tin. This time it actually had some effect. The clerk waved him in and followed him toward the ammunition shelves, spinning his key ring on his finger, past the sign bearing Don’s well-worn motto: “I don’t want to make money, I just want to sell some guns.”
“What you need?” the clerk asked.
“Forty-four special,” Behr said. The clerk gave a nod that was not quite devoid of interest and pointed to the small area stocked with the slightly unusual caliber. Behr grabbed ten boxes of wad-cutters for the range, where he pledged to put in some time since he hadn’t for a long while, and one box of Winchester Special Super X 200-grain Silvertip hollow points for carry. He followed the clerk to the register.
“Which will make it easier for you, cash or credit?” Behr asked.
“I closed out the drawer already, so credit,” the man said, and took Behr’s charge card.
Dropping the heavy plastic bag in the trunk and getting in his car, Behr wasn’t sure exactly for what or whom he needed the shells, he just knew he did. He felt like he was entering the dark tunn
el of the flume ride at Kings Island-things were dark and all he could expect was a big drop and a splash. Then his phone rang.
The Ritter’s tore it. Sucking down a container full of creamy milk fat alongside her misery was no answer. She’d gone straight home to get her suit and goggles and had called Lynn Budusky, a friend whom she used to swim against in college, to meet at the IU Natatorium, where they had privileges and there were open lanes for free swim. Now she stood on the edge, bathed in blue fluorescent lights and the familiar chlorine smell, the long pool stretching out before her in perfectly organized geometric lines. She tucked her hair up under her cap as Lynn hit the water in the lane next to her with a hard splash and started eating up meters with her powerful chopping stroke. Lynn’s nickname had been “Mule” back in college, because she could pull like one in distance races, and the intervening years hadn’t changed that. Her shoulders and glutes were still thick and powerful. She’d been swimming a lot more than Susan lately, that much was clear. Susan launched herself into the water, slick as a dolphin, the one aspect of her swim game that she never lost, no matter how long a layoff she took. She started with a thousand meters freestyle, feeling her shoulders getting loose and finding more travel in their sockets.
It had all come out wrong with Frank today, an ultimatum instead of a conversation. And he hadn’t helped matters. She usually liked the fact that he wasn’t the nervous, gabby type like so many guys these days. They seemed like they needed shrinks more than they needed a woman most of the time. But it was only a positive when things were going well. When things were going badly, Frank’s taciturnity took it all the way to terrible. She shut her mind for the remainder of her freestyle laps, reached for the wall, readjusted her goggles, and started in on backstroke. She’d been a multi-event swimmer back in the day at DePaul, and in high school before that. Her favorite had been individual medley way back when. She’d had all the strokes back in her late teens. By college she’d had to cut down her events to the 400 freestyle relay and the 50 and the 200 fly, due to the level of the competition. Specialization always brings loss.
Now she could have killed herself for letting her training dip to such a horrifying level. Getting it back was always the hardest part. After gutting out a thousand meters of backstroke, she dropped her heart rate and breathing with a medium-paced set of breaststroke. There was a time when a 5,500-meter training session was just her morning, and only one component of her workout. She’d also do dry-land training, core work, the occasional run. She cut through the water, paying attention to her technique, trying to draw on smoothness to minimize effort. Ten more laps of freestyle, moving more quickly through the water now, kicking off each wall, alternating her breath smoothly side to side every fourth stroke, she seemed to be alternating what she should do about her situation. In one moment she was sure she would keep it, have the baby, that Frank would come around, that she’d help him come around and pull him out of the black hole he was in, and even if he didn’t, she’d do it herself. She could do day care, or move nearer to her parents in Chicago. Then after a flip turn, she knew what she had to do, because a child, a family was serious business, and you didn’t toy around with a responsibility like that alone, and certainly not with a brooding dude with major issues.
She felt her heart hammering and gauged that she had another thousand meters left in her, maximum, and transitioned into butterfly. This was her wheelhouse, her dominant stroke. She felt her arms windmilling above the surface, plunging in and carving a keyhole shape beneath her, while her legs thumped as one. She was like a mermaid or some amphibious mammal. She ran down her last laps as fast as she could manage and reached the wall to hang on. She stripped off her goggles and cap and looked over to see Lynn had just wrapped it as well.
“Whew,” Lynn said, “good one.”
“Please, I’m disgusting. Don’t try to make me feel better,” Susan said, pulling herself up onto the pool deck.
“You’re still a fastie,” Lynn said, following.
Dripping, Susan grabbed her towel and realized she’d decided exactly nothing.
Behr walked into Chubby’s, the toasted sandwich joint, and didn’t see the guy he was looking for. Pal Murphy had called and said his nephew knew somebody who knew something that might have gone down in the pea-shake world, and Behr should go meet him and pursue it. But the only customer in the place was a greasy-looking black-haired dude just under thirty with a slightly pointy nose poised over the second half of a delicious-looking toasted sandwich. Behr didn’t have him as a relative of the natty and crisp Pal, but there was no accounting for family, he supposed. He crossed over to the guy.
“You Pal’s nephew?” Behr asked.
“You the PI.?” the guy said, looking up at Behr with shiny black eyes that were a little bit off.
“Yep.”
“Fuck, you are big,” the guy said. “You been scrapping?” Behr ignored both the comment and the question. “I’m Matt McMurphy,” the guy finally said. “Everyone calls me Kid.” Behr sat down and they shook hands.
“You a Murphy or a McMurphy?” Behr wondered.
“McMurphy’s a stage name,” the guy said. “Pal is my dad’s brother.”
“You’re the musician?” Behr asked. He remembered hearing the guy’s roots rock music on local radio, and he thought he saw a flyer a while back about him playing Donohue’s on St. Paddy’s Day, too.
“Yeah,” Kid said, and stuck his nose into the wrapper holding the sandwich half. It looked bigger than he could possibly finish, especially with the nibbling bites he was taking, but he stayed after it until Behr was convinced. After a while, he finally took a break.
“You gonna get something?” he asked.
“Nah,” said Behr. It wasn’t because he didn’t like Chubby’s, but he’d become aware, upon sitting down, of a certain wet mop smell that didn’t make him want to eat. The smell wasn’t coming from the floor either. “Whenever you’re finished.”
Eventually McMurphy wrapped the remains of the sandwich in its paper and took a suck on a large cup of soda and belched. “Okay,” he said, looking nervous.
“So you know something that can help me?” Behr said.
“I know lots of things. Meth scene, E scene, blow scene, vike scene-,” Kid McMurphy stated with some odd pride.
“That’s not a help to me. You know something pea shake?”
“Not really. But I know a guy who used to work at one, and he said he saw some crazy doings go down. It might have just been bar bullshit, but you know…”
“What kind of doings?” Behr asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Who’s the guy?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t say,” McMurphy winced. “I mean this guy could really fuck me up.”
“All right,” Behr said. He noticed the kid was getting a little twitchy. The eyes, which looked like they might have been ringed with a coat of black eyeliner several days prior, shot from side to side. He wore a dusty black suit over a burgundy vest, and a black shirt open at the throat revealing several rawhide necklaces and a Celtic crucifix. It was the outfit of a dandy after all, so maybe that did run in the family. But this kid didn’t look too dandy at the moment. He looked like he’d been sleeping in the suit, on a long stagecoach ride.
“So how do you want to do it?” Behr asked. “You want to slide me his name and I’ll bump into him and leave you out of it?”
“Well,” the kid said, sucking on his soda straw but coming up empty and casting a longing eye at the refill machine, “I don’t think that’ll work. But my uncle said to help you. So maybe I should go to this guy, see if he’s willing to tell it to you, then give you a call.”
“Okay,” Behr said, “that sounds good. Offer him money.”
“Uh, I don’t have any money,” McMurphy said.
“I didn’t say give him money. Offer it to him if he’ll talk to me. I’ll give him a little if he’s helpful,” Behr told him.
“Oh, cool. Cool, cool,” McM
urphy said. “That’s totally cool, cool, cool-”
Behr, fearing he’d go on indefinitely, slid him a business card. “Call me the minute the guy’s ready to talk.”
Behr stood up and left. This flume ride was going nowhere but down.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Some nights were hurtling locomotive engines, others just wheezed along the tracks. This night at the Tip-Over Tap Room wasn’t going anywhere fast. DJ M.D. was spinning, but they’d just called him down last minute, it wasn’t a night he’d promoted, so the crowd was thin. There were still a few girls worth doing, but Charlie Schlegel wasn’t there for fun. He checked his watch. He had Peanut coming for a meeting, and no doubt that fucked-up, silent, slit-eyed partner of his, Nixie, would be along with him.
Charlie pulled at the corner of the bar across from where M.D. was spinning. He raised his eyes at Pam, who started drawing him a Stroh’s from the tap. She delivered it with the shy smile of the once banged and seemingly forgotten. But he hadn’t forgotten her. They’d had a couple of fun nights after closing, but the way things worked in the family was to ring up the numbers and keep the attachments to a minimum, or a little more neatly put: bros before hos.
“Thanks, Pammy,” Charlie said. Besides, she was a bit of a “butter face,” and his mother would mock the shit out of him for it if he showed up with her like a proper girlfriend.
“Sure thing,” she smiled again, and moved away, giving him a chance to admire her rock-hard ass.
“Thanks, Pammy,” he heard in a derisive singsong at his elbow and looked over to see a chick named Raquel, who was the older sister of some little blonde Kenny and he had just done up an ID for.
“Hey, Rocky,” Charlie said.
“Chickie,” she said, “got any sniff?”
Before he could even answer he felt an arm, strong and hairy, wrench tight around his neck. “No, Chickie don’t have any sniff,” his father’s rough voice sounded, “’cause he knows if he fucks with that, Daddy will bust his head.” The girl went wide-eyed with fear and beat it. Charlie just shrugged, done with it. But Terry wasn’t done.