by David Levien
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 consequences 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 crossed 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.”
“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 you
r 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.
