by David Levien
Behr parked and made his way up the steps of their place. He knew Susan liked the town house. If they moved quickly, they could be in and settled before the baby came. He reached the door, where Susan waited. There was a wooden crate with his name on it blocking their way. Behr bent and saw a Laurel Ridge return address. Laurel Ridge was one of the highest-end neighborhoods in Carmel, which was about the highest-end suburb of the city. Behr bent, lifted the box, and carried it inside.
Once in the kitchen, he used a flathead screwdriver to pry the lid off.
“What’s that?” Susan asked.
“Don’t know,” Behr said. He pushed back packing straw to find smooth green wine bottles lined up, torpedo-like, in rows. The labels read: Harlan Estate, the Maiden, Napa Valley Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon.
“Who sent it?”
“Not sure.”
“So you want to take the town house?”
“Maybe.”
“I know it’s kind of expensive for a rental.” It was true, fifteen hundred a month was a much bigger monthly nut than Behr was used to, but that’s the way things were headed.
“Yeah, it’s not that—”
“And it’s not as private as we were hoping for …”
“Right.”
“We could—”
“Just let me breathe on it for a minute.” He said it quiet and calm, but the words themselves were strong and certainly didn’t invite further conversation on the topic.
Down between some of the bottles Behr found an envelope and opened it. Inside was a card with the letters “BK” embossed at the top that bore the handwritten message: With my deep thanks, Bernie.
“It’s from Kolodnik.”
“That’s nice,” Susan said, knowing enough not to dwell on the apartment question for the moment.
“Yeah,” Behr said, pulled a bottle out of the case and took it to the computer. He sat down and punched the wine’s name into Google and quickly learned that it scored in the high 90s in all the major ratings.
“Retails for two-fifty a bottle, case price twenty-two hundred,” he said.
“That’s an expensive gift, Frank,” Susan said.
“Technically I should declare it to the company,” he said, turning the bottle in his hands.
“What are you going to do, O ye of fancy friends?” she wondered.
“I’m gonna drink it,” he said, rummaging in the drawer for a corkscrew.
“Aren’t you supposed to wait a few weeks after shipping for it to settle?”
Behr just looked at her and pulled the cork.
10
A bright orange wind sock, luffing in the breeze.
It was the first conscious memory Shugie Saunders had. He was five years old, standing out on the tarmac at Hendricks County Airport, waiting to fly to Cincinnati with his parents. He had seen the sock filling and turning and instinctively understood why the airplanes were taxiing around, taking off, and landing according to which way the wind blew. It made sense to him, young as he was.
It was something he had taken with him all the way through his school years and into politics. Some called him a campaign manager, others an adviser, still others a fixer, but thirteen state senators, a dozen mayors, and the last three governors would all agree that when it came to the Indy political scene, Shugie Saunders was a necessity. But that day of clarity on the runway was forty-three years ago. Things weren’t so clearly indicated now. The wind sock was either hanging limp or blowing around in all different directions these days.
How the hell did I end up here? he wondered.
He glanced at the envelope on the edge of the desk, holding three thousand dollars he couldn’t really afford. Melting ice clinked in his glass and he took a sip of the sour-tasting small batch bourbon that was supposed to be so smooth and looked out over the city. Twinkling lights and the occasional monorail-like movement of a car along St. Clair were the only indications of life out there.
The musical ringing of his cell phone startled him and made him angry all at once. It was going to rouse Lori, and she was going to leave. He crossed quickly to his desk to answer, and his anger grew when he saw the name of the incoming caller: Lowell Gantcher. He would have loved to have let the call go to voice mail, but that would be four more rings, four more times through the brassy samba figure that was his ringtone, and Lori would certainly be gone by then. He snatched the phone off the desk.
“What is it?” he said by way of greeting.
“I want to talk to him,” Lowell Gantcher said on the other end of the phone. The connection was so clean it was as if he were in the room.
“No,” Shugie Saunders said.
“What do you mean, no?” Gantcher asked.
Shugie let silence reinforce his answer, and heard the regretful sound of rustling in the bed behind him. He glanced back and caught a profile view of Lori’s rounded breast, the curve of her back, as she reached for a piece of clothing in the near darkness.
“Come on, Shugie, don’t gate-keeper me. You’re standing in between Bernie and me, and I’m reduced to leaving messages like some kind of jerk off.”
“Then stop leaving messages.”
“I just want to talk to him.”
“Not now.” It was a conversation they’d had a dozen variations of over the past few months, as things had tightened to the strangle point on the business front and as the political picture grew more clear for Kolodnik. Lowell Gantcher was an important builder who held some sway in certain business matters around the city, but for him to call Shugie, insisting on a conversation with Kolodnik now, revealed thinking that verged on the delusional.
“He’s my partner, for god’s sake,” Gantcher insisted.
“Was,” Shugie corrected. “He doesn’t touch that investment anymore.” Then he felt a tap on his shoulder, a few fingernail tips dancing like ballerinas along his clavicle. Shugie turned to see Lori standing there, dressed, her sandy blond hair bed-ruffled, and her eye makeup gone slightly raccoon. He loved seeing her this way. She looked five years younger than her already youthful twenty-three, and it also meant that they’d been together, that he’d had her. He raised a single, feeble finger for her to wait one minute.
“He’s in public service now. He considers you a friend, but that’s all. He’s got to weigh the public good and many other interests against those of the gaming industry. Perhaps you can talk to the trustee overseeing the blind trust—”
“Fuck you, Shugie,” Gantcher said.
“I’m going,” Lori mouthed to him.
Disappointment and fury met in Shugie’s chest and he vented it on Gantcher. “This conversation is over,” he said icily and hung up.
Lori already had the envelope in her hand as he tossed the phone down on the desk. Her hand crushed the paper softly, and she let him wrap her in an embrace that had a similar effect. He breathed in the scent of her hair—a synthetic fruit smell—that delighted him to his core. She stepped back.
“When am I going to see you again?” he asked.
“Just call me.” She smiled. Of course.
“Better question: when are we going to take this to the next level?” he said, as lightly as he could.
“Same old question.” She sighed. “You know the deal, Shugie: overnight is no problem if you tell me in advance and you’re willing to spend the eight. And you can book a weekend.”
“Sure, just go on the Web site, and you’ll need your own room. Right?”
“Just for a few hours a day. It’ll still be a great time. And you don’t have to go on the site, you can text me,” she corrected.
“You know that’s not what I meant,” he said, hating how it sounded.
“I know,” she answered, and he swore he recognized real feeling under her words. He embraced her again, nuzzled her neck, and then she was gone as if he’d been holding a ghost.
He knew exactly how he’d ended up here.
11
C’mon, Frank, Behr urged himself, get up.
Behr tried to distance his mind from the exertion, to take the focus off the pain of what he was doing, and to think about what he always did these days: the moment in less than four weeks when his soon-to-arrive son would be born. He and Suze had found out it was going to be a boy a few months back at an ultrasound.
“There it is,” the technician said. “You want to know?”
“No, we just want you to know,” Behr had answered.
“Yes, tell us please.” Susan laughed. She was generally amused at the semirude utterances he inadvertently dropped. But that didn’t stop her from spreading some diplomacy around.
So, his second son was on the way. The one he’d be able to hold, to feed, to take places, teach, and to support. To support. It stopped him. It was the question that weighed heavy on him now, and it always would. He remembered that much from the first time around. It was what pushed him to go ahead and give up his own business and take the Caro job. A fallow period is one thing when you’re the only one eating spaghetti at home three weeks in a row, Behr thought. But with mommy and baby, that kind of struggle just wasn’t acceptable. And he couldn’t forget the fact that in three and a half years’ time he was looking at preschool and private school bills, which was going to be required barring a miraculous turnaround by the city’s abysmal public system. At times like this the steady paycheck was mighty welcome. Which was why it was of no use to him for his thoughts to keep drifting back to the night in the parking garage. The sledgehammer pounding of the rounds hitting cars had a physical quality as he remembered it. The air around him had been so disturbed it was like being in the wake of scores of tiny fighter jets buzzing by.
Behr stood between sets, and paced around the small patch of grass, getting his wind back. The attempt was made on Kolodnik the night before he was announced as the governor’s choice for the vacant Senate seat. Political assassinations didn’t happen in America more than about twice a century, and more often than not they concerned a psychopath working out some inner drama on a public stage. They sure as hell didn’t happen in Indianapolis, aka Nap Town, the city that never wakes. But the cops would have to be blind not to see it as such. As an investigator, Behr needed to not leap at the obvious, and as a Caro investigator he needed to not worry about it at all and instead focus on his cases, which meant the Payroll Place robberies.
Then there was the wine. He hadn’t been very communicative with Susan the night before about receiving the gift—if that’s what it was. The reason for that was it had made him uncomfortable. A few thousand bucks’ worth of cabernet—on one hand it was uncalled for. It was more than was necessary. Behr had been doing his job, what he was paid to do, and he’d been protecting his own ass too. On the other hand, what kind of gesture was it from a rich man such as Kolodnik? Did a man like Bernie Cool think the value would be lost on someone like him, or that he’d be overwhelmed by it? It seemed the case of wine and the note was supposed to put final punctuation on the matter. But was it a thank-you or was it grease?
Behr picked up his kettlebell and retook his starting position on the ground, lifting the weight overhead. He sucked in a deep breath and climbed to his feet. He didn’t know much about the Turks, or what had pissed them off enough to create something as nasty as their get-ups, but by the end of the set there’d be nothing in his head except blinding white pain. He lunged and rolled back to the ground and tried not to extend the pause.
Get the hell up, Frank, Behr told himself again, and he did. He kept on getting back to his feet.
12
Altgeld Gardens—Alligator Garden as the locals called it—was a place that struck fear into the hearts of white Chicagoans. Waddy Dwyer knew that, and it followed naturally that that’s where he was. He needed weaps, and he couldn’t be buying them from the Walmart. That’s why he’d called his contact and had come here. Besides, he’d been outside the Green Zone in Baghdad after dark. He’d walked the streets of Al Mazraa in Beirut. He’d done solo night ops in Grozny, Chechnya, so the pair of blackies in front of him was hardly going to make his knees quake.
“Have you got H and K? Or SIG?” Dwyer asked.
“Nah, man,” the kid answered. The kid was lean, maybe eighteen years old, and was named Blaze. That’s whom he was supposed to ask for, anyway, according to his contact. He’d approached the kid in front of the cluster of decrepit government-built row houses.
“Are you him?” Dwyer had asked.
“I’m Blaze, as in Johnny Blaze,” the kid had said, whatever the fuck that meant. “You the English guy?”
“I’m a Welshman,” Dwyer corrected pointlessly.
The kid had shrugged and started walking toward one of the buildings. Dwyer followed and another kid, a big one with a black nylon stocking on his head, had fallen in behind.
Now they were all crammed into a small, airless storage room that smelled of old marijuana and was filled with pressboard desks and other cheap furniture.
“Look, look, look, we don’t got no high-end SIGs and shit. We got Taurus. We got these Colts …”
Dwyer shook his head. He didn’t love his choices.
“We also got this AK …” Blaze pointed to a battered weapon that looked as if it’d been recovered from a cave in Waziristan.
Dwyer shook his head. Tempting though it was to wrap his hands around the familiar wood grips of a Kalashnikov, he couldn’t see himself waltzing around U.S. cities with an assault rifle.
“What’s your personal gun, then?” Dwyer wondered.
“My personal gun?” Blaze asked back.
“That’s right. You’re armed, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I’s motherfucking armed.”
Blaze lifted the basketball T-shirt that went down to his knees and showed the butt of some kind of chromed-out heavy-caliber automatic. It was exactly the kind of flashy nonsense Dwyer didn’t need. At least now he knew what the kid was holding when it came time for them to try and rob him.
“Lovely,” he said. “Let me look at the Colt.” Blaze handed it over and Dwyer was pleased to see that it was a .45 ACP, but that the make was actually Česká Zbrojovka. The CZ 97 B was a good gun, not off the Springfield production line, and had a smoother action and better balance than those did. Dwyer didn’t bother asking how they’d come up with a Czech-made gun, as he quickly racked the slide, removed the slide stop pin, and broke down the automatic. He inspected the recoil spring, barrel, and trigger action. The weapon was sound. “Okay, this’ll do. I’ll have it with four magazines.”
For a moment Blaze’s shrewd look went blank.
“Clips, man,” Dwyer said. “Four of ’em.”
“I got two,” was the answer. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the way it was. Then a dull black object that was leaning against the wall in a dark corner of the room caught Dwyer’s eye. “Is that for sale?”
Blaze looked at his hulking companion and th
ey laughed. “Homeboy likes the shotty,” Blaze said. He went and picked it up, then crossed the room and rested it on a desk. It was a short-barreled Saiga 12-gauge automatic shotgun. An impressive close-quarters weapon designed for leveling men in enclosed spaces. And if things went poorly, it was equally useful for getting out of the same spaces—three or four rounds fired into a wall and there would no longer be a wall, and escape could be made. Dwyer inspected the shotgun and saw it was in working order and that it was loaded with 00 buckshot.
“I’ll have both,” Dwyer told them, putting the shotgun back on the desk.
“Wasn’t gonna sell the Saiga,” Blaze said, “but a’ight. I’ll do both for twenny-fi’ hunned.” The price was too high by half, but Dwyer didn’t waste time.
“Done,” he said. Then he pulled one of the packets of American cash off his abdomen. Proper tradecraft would have had him secreting the money in five hundred or thousand dollar increments all over his body. But he came in here recommended and hadn’t wanted to waste time. His mistake became clear the minute the two salesmen saw the five-thousand-dollar brick he had started peeling bills from.
“You want something else?” Blaze asked. “Can’t let you be leaving with all that cash.”
“No, just the CZ and the Saiga,” Dwyer said.
“Go on, buy a Taurus.”
“I don’t want a mingy Taurus.”
“Well, likes I said, we can’t let you be leaving with all that cash.” Blaze’s voice had changed when he said the last. Dwyer felt it and had looked up from counting money in time to see the big fellow reaching for the Saiga on the desk. Dwyer bunched the cash in his left hand into a fist and swung a thousand-dollar hook that drilled the big man in the throat. The man’s face registered surprise, then crumpled into pain, and he went off his feet sideways. He landed, gurgling, on the floor. Dwyer lunged across the space between him and Blaze and grabbed the wiry young man’s wrist, which had been diving for the heavy chrome auto at his waist. Dwyer yanked the wrist down and held it firmly in place against the kid’s body. The other hand caught him by the neck. He stared into Blaze’s eyes and let the kid feel his superior strength.