by David Levien
He watched the tall bitch key her way inside, and all went still again for a few minutes. Then the piss pressure hit him low and hard. He thought about letting it go into the Big Gulp cup but wasn’t in the mood to get sprinkled with the end drops, so he eased himself out of the car. He’d just unbuckled and begun when he was pretty sure he heard a door open and close. He was midstream when he crouched down a bit and thought he caught a look at the bitch’s ponytail dunking over a fence in the back and then disappearing. He tried to force out the rest of it and buckled up as he went for the car door, but he had a feeling he was going to be too late. And he was. When he got around the corner he couldn’t find the blond bitch anywhere.
She heard him before she saw him, his car anyway. The screeching sound of brakes came to her inside the quiet lobby and she looked out to his see his car parked roughly by the curb in a cloud of tire smoke. Thick greasy rubber marks tailed off behind the vehicle. When Frank jumped out, dirty and wild-eyed and crabbed low-as low as he could get, considering his size-his hand against his lower back, gaze cutting about the parking lot in all directions, she felt a warm wave of safety wash over her. She understood many things about her life in that moment. He hit the door, his eyes still intent and vigilant as they swept the bank, and then he saw her. She rushed to him from her position near the guard, where she had been waiting fitfully for five or six minutes. They embraced and he leaned back and touched her face. That’s when she felt her tears start to come.
She had dropped down beneath the window in his place, her back against the wall, and had just decided to hell with it, she was calling the cops and would deal with the embarrassment later, when her cell phone rang. She’d dug it out and gasped, “Hello,” and heard Frank’s voice.
“I’m ten minutes away,” he’d said, after she’d told him where she was. “You need to get out of there. Go out the back and meet me at the National City Bank, there’s a security guard there.” She’d never heard the kind of urgency he had in his voice.
“Should I call the police?” she’d asked. There was a pause while he weighed it.
“Call ’em, but don’t wait for ’em. I’ll explain it later. Can you make it?”
“I think so,” she said, thinking of the child she was carrying and suddenly feeling strong. She used the landline and spoke to a 911 dispatcher and said she was being followed.
“Stay on with me until you go for it,” Frank told her. She poked her head up and glanced out the bottom of the window. She thought she saw some movement at the front of a nearby car but didn’t want to raise herself up for a proper look. She saw a flash of denim, a man’s lower body clad in a pair of jeans. Her heart thundered when she thought he was heading for the building, but he stopped and relaxed into his stance and she saw he was relieving himself behind his car.
“I’m going,” she said, and headed for the rear door.
She’d made it. She ran the whole way, six long blocks, after climbing a low fence at the back of the building. She didn’t look back a single time to see if she’d been spotted or if she was being followed. She didn’t think she could possibly have run any faster no matter what was behind her. It was like a tight race in the pool: looking was only going to slow down your touch.
The worry he saw on her face made him feel sick for a moment, and then a hot bolt of anger shot through him. He knew he wasn’t walking away from anything now.
“Suze,” he said, “are you all right?”
She nodded, mute, tears spilling down her cheeks. Behr pulled her close again and met eyes with the guard across the lobby, a middle-aged black man, who turned away after a few moments.
“Is everything okay… with this?” he asked, touching her belly. She nodded again, placing her hand over his.
“What’s going on, Frank? What’s happening?” she asked.
“The guy-was he around my age, big?” he asked.
“No.”
“Young, early twenties, muscled up-”
“No. He was on the small side. Late thirties. I couldn’t see too well, but I think he had some kind of scar on the side of his face.”
Behr gritted his teeth. He had an idea who she was talking about.
“Why didn’t you want me to wait for the police?” she asked.
“Too long to tell right now.” That’s when Neil Ratay pulled up outside. Behr had called him as soon as Susan had hung up with him. From the looks of things Ratay must have run to his car and lead-footed it over.
“Frank?” Susan asked, as Behr led her out of the bank toward Ratay’s car.
“I need to put you somewhere safe and I can’t watch you right now. I figured you’d be happy to spend time with him.” Behr’s eyes searched the parking lot while they crossed to the reporter, who had gotten out of his car and waited for them.
“Neil,” Behr said.
“Frank,” the reporter answered. His eyes held questions, but he didn’t ask them.
“Thanks for coming,” Behr said.
By now Susan had calmed a bit. “Hi Neil, sorry about this,” she began, but he waved her words away with a cigarette he’d just lit.
“So I’ll work from home today, no big thing,” he said.
Behr gave him a nod. “There shouldn’t be much danger. It’s just a precaution because she walked into it. Even if they know who she is, he didn’t follow her here. Just stay off the street for a while.” Behr’s mouth shut. He looked at Susan. He couldn’t speak what he wanted to, not with the thoughts swirling in his head- thoughts of causes, violence, results, and revenge, of linkage.
“How long?” Ratay wondered.
“Not long,” Behr said. He put his hand on Susan’s back and steered her toward Ratay’s car.
“What about you?” Susan asked, her voice steady now.
“I’ll be fine,” he said.
“Frank-,” she started.
“Neil, would you mind?” Behr said, gesturing at the cigarette and then to Susan as Ratay moved to get in his car.
“Sure,” he answered. Ratay paused for a moment. “Oh…” A half smile of knowing came to his lips as he flicked away the cigarette.
FORTY-ONE
It was finally payday. ’Bout fucking time. After all the work: the lugging the equipment, the installing the lamps, the tending the plants, the making the connections. Yeah, it was about fucking time. Charlie Schlegel stood in an alley off Lambert Street with Kenny waiting for Peanut and Nixie to show. He had the shit in the back of his Durango and they were leaning against it when Peanut’s Neon came around the corner. He pulled up close, and he and Nixie got out of the car.
“’Supps?” were exchanged, and Peanut handed over a thick envelope of money before Charlie passed an old nylon gym bag containing the weed and oxy. It should’ve been that easy.
“Count it, bro,” Kenny said, evoking noises of displeasure from Peanut and Nixie.
“Man, it’s all there,” Peanut said.
“I know it is, ’cause if it’s not, I’m gonna take a reciprocating saw to that piece of shit ride you’re so proud of,” Charlie said, jutting a thumb over Peanut’s shoulder toward the Neon. Kenny smiled; the other two did not.
“Lemme know when you need more,” Charlie said.
“Uh-huh,” Peanut answered, turning back for his car.
“Yeah,” Kenny said, “don’t smoke it all in one place. We know how you folks get.”
Peanut stopped and turned.
“Yo, what fucking ‘folks’?”
“Dirty African folks,” Kenny said, smiling and squaring with Peanut. Charlie tucked the money into his pocket and smirked.
Peanut shook his head, looked down, then swung a right hand, open palmed, and bitch-slapped Kenny hard across the face. Everything froze for a moment, as if none of them could believe it had happened. Then Kenny, eyes full of rage, lunged forward, dropped his level, and laced an arm under Peanut’s and around his back. Kenny pivoted and flipped him to the concrete. Peanut landed on his shoulder and the side of his fa
ce with a slapping sound that forced the air out of him. Kenny dropped a knee on Peanut’s chest and began punching.
Charlie shook off the momentary surprise and stepped forward toward the action and right into the point of Nixie Buncher’s Piranha automatic knife. Charlie staggered back, swatting ineffectively at the blade, which landed two more times. Liver-stuck, Charlie sat down and landed heavily on the sidewalk. Kenny looked up and met eyes with Nixie. The knife, slippery with blood, hit the pavement with a clink. Kenny jumped to his feet and went to his brother, who was slowly reclining back onto the ground. A groan of air escaped him.
“Chick,” Kenny said, coming close and seeing the massive amount of blood spilling out through his brother’s hands. “You motherfucker!” Kenny screamed, yanking the Smith amp; Wesson out of Charlie’s belt. Nixie had already started sprinting and was halfway down the block by the time Kenny was done fighting with the safety. Peanut had struggled to his feet as well and was making a run for it, weaving unsteadily away, when Kenny fired half a dozen times and lit him up. Hit all over the back and legs, Peanut tumbled forward onto the ground, his cheek pressed against a crack in the cement. Kenny stood and put two more rounds into Peanut’s upper back, ending him.
“Cocksucker,” Kenny said, kneeling back down, cradling Charlie’s head. His brother sputtered but couldn’t seem to talk. “Goddammit, Charlie, what good is a piece if you don’t pull it, asshole?” Kenny groaned. Charlie’s breath came heavy in his chest and sounded like a kettle on its way to a boil. Kenny scrambled Charlie’s cell phone out of his pocket and dialed 911.
“Yo, send an ambulance!” Kenny yelled the location off Lambert. “There’s a white guy stabbed down here. Forget the spook who’s been shot, he’s done. Just treat the other guy.” He snapped the phone shut and wiped greasy sweat from Charlie’s face.
“Don’t fucking die, bro,” he said quietly. “C’mon, Charlie boy.” He waited there for another minute, until he heard sirens in the distance. He wiped off the gun with his shirt and then placed it in his brother’s hand. He felt a slow, heavy drumbeat kicking in the base of his skull and heard the echo-effect lyrics in his head:
You’re nobody, till somebody kills you… I don’t wanna die.
He tried to shake the stupid shit off, took the envelope of cash out of Charlie’s pocket, left the bag of weed, climbed into the Durango, and drove away as slowly as he could make himself go.
The heat had finally broken. The day had started much cooler than had any in months, and it had stayed that way. Vicky Schlegel went through the empty house turning off the air conditioners. Why keep the house cool when no one was home? Everything was costing a fortune now: electricity, food, gas, booze. Well, maybe not booze. They had plenty of that. Terry brought home cases’ worth from the bar. And he and the boys had been coming home with a real snootful lately, too. They were under a lot of pressure, she supposed, and needed to blow off steam. They were all handling it well enough it seemed, except for Deanie. He was the one she was worried about. He’d sicked up all over the place that morning and made a big racket over something he’d seen in the paper. The rest of them had tried to calm him down, but nobody would tell her what it was about when she’d come out of the bedroom. She’d make Terry tell her later, but for now she didn’t know. And then they’d all gone out. She went to take a shower, and when she was done the cars weren’t there.
It was when she’d finally shut the last window unit off that she heard it, the low hum of a running vehicle coming from the garage. The odd thing was, they never used the garage, there was too much crap in there to park inside, and any work on the cars took place down at Rubber House where there were countless Latino mechanics to do dirty work like oil changes. The sound of the engine grew louder as she reached the door and opened it. A cloud of exhaust and horror hit her and she staggered and pressed the button raising the door to the outside. Household junk had been pushed to one side to accommodate Dean’s Magnum. Fresh air flooded in as she crossed to the driver’s side of the car, where a figure was pressed against the window. Even distorted like a horror-movie monster because of the plastic bag stretched over his head she could see it was Dean, her boy, his face bright red and lifeless…
“This is it,” Behr said into the phone as he raced toward the Speedway address. “I got you what you wanted.”
“Linkage,” Pomeroy said.
“That’s right, by witness statement. A shake girl.”
“Schlegel?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s the girl?” Pomeroy asked, and Behr gave him the location.
“They don’t know where she is-,” he added.
“I’m gonna pick her up anyway,” Pomeroy said.
“Good idea.”
“And you?”
“On my way to the home address-”
“Behr-”
“I’ve got something to settle.” Behr turned off Crawfordsville Road and onto the Schlegel’s street and started scanning house numbers.
“Your friend? Let’s not get stupid here-”
“It’s more personal than that now.”
“Behr!”
But Behr hung up on him and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat. He saw the rambling house he was looking for at the end of the block. It was fairly well kept, with a slightly yellowed yard and a chain-link dog run poking out from around the back. The garage door was open and a slender blond-haired woman was pounding on the driver’s side door of a Dodge Magnum and screaming. Behr rolled into the short driveway, jammed his car into park, and paused. The woman didn’t seem to notice him as she began to yank on the door handle, but the door appeared to be locked. Her head whipsawed around the garage, and she moved to a workbench. She ran her hands over a pegboard, selecting and discarding car keys. Now Behr got out of his car and watched as she scrabbled around the loose tools on the bench and came up with a wooden mallet. She went to the Dodge, which Behr could hear was running, and began pounding on the driver’s-side window. He noticed a shop-vac hose taped over the tailpipe and running into the cracked rear passenger-side window. The heavy odor of exhaust was in the air. Behr crossed the driveway toward her as the driver’s-side window shattered, the safety glass pebbling into a thousand pieces. Mad piano, baroque guitars, machine gun drums, and a distinctive voice playing on the car radio spilled out of the gaping hole. Behr recognized the song. It was Meatloaf’s “Bat Out of Hell.” A bereft wail escaped the woman as she reached inside, opened the car door, and a body slumped out.
The kid was dead, that much was clear enough. After a moment, Behr eventually recognized him as the same one he’d followed from Flavia Inez’s old building. It took him a moment because the man had a plastic bag secured over his head that the woman tore away revealing his face, cherry-colored thanks to the carbon monoxide poisoning. The woman had slumped to her knees by the time Behr approached and she looked up at him with dazed and distant eyes. She began backing away across the cement floor of the garage. Behr extended what he hoped was a calming hand.
“Ma’am,” he said. It seemed to ignite her. She leaped to her feet and bolted inside the house. Behr took a look back over his shoulder. No units were responding as of yet, and if sirens were sounding in the distance the operatic rock music blasting out of the car stereo was drowning them out.
Shit, Behr sighed, and headed inside the house after her. He didn’t have much choice, and he went quickly because he didn’t know what he’d find waiting for him in there and didn’t want to give her time. He moved down a hallway, the house silent around him. He came upon her in the kitchen. Her eyes flashed with hatred. Her feet, shod in sneakers, squeaked on the linoleum floor as she came at him, slashing, with a boning knife.
Rush in. Close the distance. Get inside striking range.
The staccato thoughts of what he was supposed to do when facing a knife screamed across Behr’s cortex. But instead, he found himself leaping backward, instinctively trying to clear the weapon in the other direction. It was a m
istake. She cut him on the outside of the left forearm, and he felt the cold burn immediately. The floor would soon be slick with blood, difficult to keep his balance on, his hand perhaps not functional if she’d nicked a tendon. The pain woke him up to the fact that this was real, and as she stumbled forward for another strike, Behr set his feet and drilled her in the face with a straight right. The shot caught her flush on the cheekbone and sounded a loud crack. Her feet ripped up and out from under her and she landed flat on her ass and her head went back and hit the kitchen floor. Behr felt something for the blonde, laid out there, what looked to be her son dead in the garage, but he stuffed it down deep and kicked the knife away. He checked his arm. Blood was seeping from a three-inch slash, but the wound wasn’t deep. He grabbed a dishtowel and wrapped the arm before checking the rest of the house. The rooms were all empty. He discovered the woman’s purse on her unmade bed, rifled it, found her cell phone, which he snapped in his hands. He took the battery for good measure and returned to the kitchen, where the woman was stirring slightly and moaning on the floor. He considered waiting for her to come out of it and questioning her but didn’t want to invest the time or get entangled with the responding officers. On his way from the house he ripped out the telephone landline where it fed in by the side of the open garage door that held the car and the dead kid, and then he was back in his car. He placed a call to Pomeroy’s cell phone, but it rang through to voice mail. He left a message of what the police would find at the Schlegel residence, and though he knew he should stop, pull over, turn off his car, and call it a day, he signed off by saying: “I’m heading for the husband’s work addy.”
Where the fuck is everybody? Terry Schlegel wondered, closing his phone. He’d called them all in succession. Charlie, Kenny, Dean, and Vicky. It was like some kind of cell phone outage, Terry thought, as he dialed into the AMSEC safe that was set in the floor of his office at the garage. The only one whose location he had locked down at the moment was Knute, who would be coming by in a few hours once he’d met up with the Chicago guys. Fifty-seven thousand in cash was what he had in the safe. He’d have seven left in his pocket when it was done. It seemed like a good time to carry extra cash, as he’d be needing it to take a powder for a while. He filled a small tool bag with the rubber-banded bills. Beneath the money was the stainless Smith amp; Wesson. 40 caliber Charlie had given him a while back. Some might have thought it a strange gift, but that was the kind of family they were-they did things their own way, they had their own kind of closeness-and if people didn’t understand it, they could go fuck themselves. Terry checked the clip on the Smith, racked the slide, and tucked it in his belt. He was closing the safe when there was a knock at the door.