by David Levien
Behr moved toward the fallen man, cautious, his gun raised ahead of him and saw that Schlegel was hit twice, about two inches apart, in the chest, just left of center mass. The slow, heavy rounds of the big-bore revolver had done their work. A coarse, bronchial grating noise accompanied Schlegel’s breaths, followed by the telltale bubbling of a sucking chest wound. Blood and urine pooled beneath his body. The silver automatic rested five feet from his hand, and it was clear he’d never touch it again.
Behr dropped to a knee right next to Schlegel. “Aurelio Santos. Was it you?” he asked.
After a moment, Schlegel issued a weak nod. “It was all of us …”
“You, your sons, and that partner?”
Another weak nod came from Schlegel. “And the Chicago guys,” he added.
“Who?” Behr demanded, a cold chill running through him.
“Bobby B…. some guy Tino … a quiet one.”
“Pros?”
A third, almost imperceptible nod came from Schlegel. “Had to. Couldn’t handle the guy.”
“You wanted to know where he’d put the girl?” Behr asked, but Schlegel’s eyes got glassy. Behr slapped him a little, trying to bring him around.
“Who pulled the trigger? Was it you?” A feeble hand came up and waved at Behr. He couldn’t tell if it was Schlegel saying no or a pointless attempt to shoo him away. No more details came forth. Behr realized he was as close as he’d ever likely be to knowing exactly how it went down that night—and that he was headed to Chicago.
Then he asked the pointless question, the one cops, detectives, and investigators rarely profited from. The one for which he both already had the answer and also never would. Not a satisfactory one anyway. “Why?”
“We shouldn’t have never even been there,” Schlegel rasped. “The fucking skank. My son …” A wheeze was followed by a gurgle, and then all sound stopped.
Terry Schlegel had ceased being. Behr sat down on the cement floor next to the body to wait.
FORTY-TWO
Behr drove south on I-65 toward Seymour as he slowly came out of the haze in which he’d spent the last several hours. The cops had gotten there within moments. A pair of uniformed Speedway officers, then a second pair of Northwest District boys stormed the place before the brass arrived. Behr had his weapon holstered and sitting on the ground next to him and had his wallet held open so they could see his tin when they walked in. It was the last conscious thing he’d done before he was overcome by shock at what had happened, and why tiny hurtling bits of metal had stopped another man, but had passed him by and left him alive. Nobody did much talking until Pomeroy walked in. Behr was vaguely aware that they’d locked down the building and the surrounding block. Paramedics and medical examiners and crime-scene photographers dealt with Schlegel’s body. Numbered evidence cards were set up next to the shell casings he had fired. Investigators were locating the rounds in the wall high and to the right behind Behr, though they had only found three of the four so far. Four rounds. Schlegel had fired first and at twice the rate as Behr and for whatever reason he had missed. Behr knew the model of gun. It had a notoriously long trigger pull. Maybe it had caused Schlegel to yank his shots. That could happen without sufficient practice. And even with practice, it wasn’t easy. They handed Behr a bottle of water and helped him up.
Pomeroy oversaw his questioning, during which Behr gave a dry recitation of what had led him to the garage—leaving out his contact with Pomeroy and the Caro Group—and what had occurred in it. They told him he’d have to come down to the shop and run through it again soon and that he could bring counsel. When the cops recording him and taking notes were done and had drifted away, Pomeroy told him that they’d collected Flavia Inez and that she was giving a statement. They’d also picked up Victoria Schlegel, who was currently under suicide watch at Carter Hospital in an hysterical condition. Charles Schlegel had been discovered stabbed to death after a 911 call, in an apparently unrelated incident, though Behr didn’t believe much in “unrelated” anymore. Kenneth Schlegel and Knute Bohgen were currently unaccounted for and would be sought for questioning. It was going to take a while, but a slew of charges ranging from criminal conspiracy, to promoting gambling, to extortion, to murder would eventually be mounted against them.
“They’ve gone to ground,” Pomeroy said. “I wouldn’t worry about them right now.”
Behr nodded blankly.
“I’ll get this back to you as soon as I can,” Pomeroy said, raising a plastic bag that contained Behr’s gun and holster. Behr nodded once more.
“Some special family you turned up,” Pomeroy said, shaking his head.
The work continued around them, though it had slowed as it entered the wrap-up phase. Equipment was being packed. Silence had fallen between them when Behr asked, “Can I go?”
Pomeroy eyed him for a moment before agreeing.
• • •
What the hell does he know of family? Behr wondered. Other than that he’s just helped destroy one. He was headed south toward the remaining vestige of his own. Behr had passed Seymour and had reached the small town of Vallonia, where his ex-wife Linda, remarried and a stepmother, had lived for the last six years or so. He didn’t need directions to get to her place. He knew the way. He’d be embarrassed to admit how many times he’d made the southbound drive, how many times he’d parked down the road from her house and watched her comings and goings. He’d managed enough restraint not to talk to her but seemed unable to stop looking. The visits had ended over a year ago, though. A case had consumed him back then, and of course he’d met Susan. She filled a place in him he didn’t think could be filled, and the need to drive south had vanished. Which is what made it all the more strange for him to be rolling down the smooth gravel drive past the mailbox that read “Vogel,” Linda’s last name now, and parking right in front of the house. He seemed unable, or unwilling at least, to stop himself as he walked to the door and knocked.
After a moment, Linda’s face, still beautiful to him, appeared in the door’s glass pane. She still looked young—younger even than the last time they’d spoken several years ago. Her black hair was only betrayed by a very few gray strands. Upon seeing him, her eyes lit in an initial smile that quickly went out as she became guarded.
“Frankie,” she said, cracking the door, “what’re you doing here?”
“Hi, Lin,” he said. “I’m not sure.”
They stood there for an awkward moment before she opened the door to him, and he stepped inside.
It was a nice home, not lavish, but comfortable. There was evidence of early teenage children’s artwork and sporting goods equipment and the like. The place had a familiar smell.
“Beef stew,” he remarked, mostly to himself, as Linda led him into the kitchen.
“Todd likes it,” she said, “so do Gina and Jared.”
“Why not? It’s the best.” It wasn’t enough to put the smile back on her face.
“I just put up a pot of coffee. You want some?” she offered. Behr nodded. Some things didn’t change. Linda drank coffee all afternoon long. She always had. It never stopped her from sleeping either. Until their bad time together, after Tim died. Then she swore off coffee altogether and endured the terrible headaches that going cold turkey brought on, but to no avail. Nothing she tried would allow her to sleep back then. They’d both lie awake all night, helpless in their grief. Maybe this resumption of her habit signaled a return to some kind of normal. He sat down at the kitchen table while she poured and delivered his cup.
“Are you in some kind of trouble, Frankie?” she asked. She was looking at his forearm, which the EMTs at Rubber House had wrapped and taped in a white bandage. He didn’t answer for a moment. “Because you’re pale as a sheet. And you’re here, so it must be for a reason.”
“I was, I suppose, for a minute there,” he allowed. “I’m not anymore.”
“That’s good.” She stood uncomfortably across the kitchen from him.
“So you
like it down here?” Behr asked. She nodded.
“It’s nice. Quiet. People down here don’t know what happened. If they do, they don’t let on. I can be how I want.”
“And things with Todd?” Behr asked.
“It’s good. He’ll be home soon with the kids. You can meet them.” She paused and grew shy, and then: “They call me ‘Mom.’”
He expected to feel like he’d been stabbed. But he didn’t. A pleasant sensation washed over him with the words.
“So you’re happy?” he asked.
“I’ve come to be,” she said.
“That’s good,” Behr said, meaning it.
“And you?”
Behr didn’t move and couldn’t answer. The traitorous feelings he’d had before, that day after the lake, made their way back into his chest, but she cut them off.
“You’ve got to,” she said. Got to what? he wondered, but Linda went on. “You’ve got to do it—whatever you want. Whatever you have to do. To get out of the tunnel … Back into life, Frank. There’s a lot of ways to say it, I guess. Do you get it?”
Behr nodded and he recognized he had come there for absolution of some kind, and that her simple words had granted it. He sat there for another minute and knew he was looking on Linda for perhaps the last time. Finally, he got up to go. That’s when he saw a stuffed monkey, a wooden fire truck, and a few dinosaur figurines along her windowsill above the kitchen sink. He recognized them well—they were some of Tim’s old favorites. There they were just beneath the window she looked out of as she washed dishes. He realized she lived with it every day, even as she’d moved on, and that it was okay. He crossed the kitchen and picked up the truck and handled it. He saw there was a rescue hero action man in the driver seat. He looked to Linda.
“Sure,” she said, “you go ahead.”
Behr drove north toward Indy, going slow, his eyes locked on the road, the little fire truck riding on the seat next to his leg.
FORTY-THREE
The shit had truly hit the fan. The Schlegels had been blown up and burned the fuck down. Terry done, Dean done, Vicky locked down, and Kenny and Charlie apparently lit out for the territories. Knute Bohgen had just lost all the friends he currently had, along with the only thing in his life that passed for a semblance of family. He no longer had an income stream, or any real ideas on how to open a new one.
He had sat in his car down the street from Rubber House watching the police activity and calling guys he knew who worked there. Rumors were flying thick and furious already. SWAT had taken the place down. Terry had wasted a handful of them before they got him. An ex-cop had shot him. They’d surrounded the place, and after they lobbed in gas, Terry ate his gun.
Knute didn’t know the truth, and he didn’t much care to at this point. There was really only one thing on his mind, and that was getting a piece of payback for all of them.
The Tip-Over Tap Room was not currently open. Besides Terry, Knute was the only one with a set of keys, so it’d be a perfect place to meet with the Chicago guys, whom he’d called and told to hang back for a while until the cops had dispersed. After having a drink and seeing what was in the safe to pay them with, Knute would call the Chicago guys again, have them come in, and give them the assignment of punching this Frank Behr’s ticket. Even if there was nothing in the safe, Knute felt pretty sure he could talk them into doing it on a payment plan. After all, their asses were riding on the outcome, too.
The building was dark and locked, as it should have been. That’s why it was such a goddamned surprise to Knute when he walked into the back office and saw they were already there.
“What the fuck’s up, guys?” Knute said, reaching into his pocket and coming out with a slip of paper that had Behr’s address on it. “You’re early.”
Tino nodded and kicked the office door shut behind Knute, who felt the air change in the room, just like out on the yard at ISP before someone got offed. It just changed. It got cold or dark or somehow unfamiliar and indistinct. Whatever it was, Knute didn’t have much time to weigh it, because the quiet one, Petey wrapped him up in a bear hug and lifted him straight off the floor. The guy was strong as fuck, and all of a sudden Knute felt weak as diner coffee …
When he’d recall it later, Petey wouldn’t remember the man with the pink scar on his face fighting very hard, but then again, when it finally comes, there’s not much use in fighting it. Before long it was over and they’d wrapped him in a blue plastic tarpaulin. They considered whether or not they should drop him in the same place they’d done the dumping the last time, but that spot hadn’t seemed to hold up very well. Bobby B. figured he knew another one that was a lot closer and easier. Knute Bohgen never made it beyond the parking lot—specifically his own trunk. Petey remembered to pick up the slip of paper that Bohgen had dropped. Add-on jobs were not the way you stayed out of jail in their line of work. Eliminating the nexus was. Petey burned the paper before they made their way out, back to Chicago.
FORTY-FOUR
You want another?” Neil Ratay asked, threatening to pour a fourth cup of coffee, black and strong. But Behr had had enough and waved Ratay off. Behr had gone straight home on the heels of the longest day he could remember living and passed out into a dreamless sleep. Seven hours later he shot bolt upright. He’d sweated through his T-shirt and the sheets. He had a feeling that would be happening for the next few weeks, or months, or maybe even longer. When he noticed morning had slipped around the blinds and into the bedroom and there was no point in trying to go back to sleep, he rose and went to get Susan. And while Susan sat there listening, her jaw clenched tight, he’d told it all to Ratay—all except for Pomeroy, and the name of the big investigation firm. It was what he owed the man, plain and simple.
“So I can write it?” Ratay asked, jotting his final notes.
“Give me a day to think it through clearly,” Behr said, “but yeah, you can write it.”
• • •
After that he took Susan home. They didn’t talk along the way. Something he couldn’t name wouldn’t let him speak. All Behr could do was glance over at her every half block or so and replay the events of the past week in his head. None of it made much sense to him, and the part that made the least was why he’d felt the same sensation when he learned Susan was pregnant as he had when he’d faced Terry Schlegel’s gun: cold, chest-squeezing blackness. He could dress it up and tell himself he’d felt disloyal, that he’d been concerned that a new life would wipe away his memories of Tim, and even Linda, and those memories were all he had left of his son—they were all he had at all for a long while—but now he knew the truth. He was afraid, plain and simple. Because what she had given him with those words in his car that night was hope—hope, and a chance at joy, and a future. But it is a fearful thing to love what death can touch. And the prospect of losing it all again was more than he could face.
Too quickly they reached her house, and the thing that wouldn’t let him speak kept on and she climbed out of the car. She looked at him for a long, disbelieving moment, then turned for her place.
FORTY-FIVE
The strapping young man got the first Whopper of the day when the breakfast menu switched over to lunch, backed it up with a chicken sandwich, and despite his pronouncement that he “never eats this shit,” wolfed them with a monster Pepsi. Then he walked down Scatterfield Road and entered the United States Marines recruiting station there.
Sergeant Fred Kilgen’s eyes got big when the kid walked in. It had been a slow day, hell, a slow time altogether with the latest press the war was getting, but now he felt like a buyer at auction sizing up a prime Angus beef calf.
“I want to join,” the kid said. He was salty as hell, that was for sure, from the spiky hair right on down to the wiseass T-shirt that read “Jesus Didn’t Tap.” They were gonna love him in basic.
“Sure,” Sergeant Kilgen said, getting out his sheet to start writing down the particulars and trying to look cool about it. “Where do you live?”
>
“I stayed at the Motel Six last night. That’s where I’ll be until this is done.” The kid didn’t mention the cell phone and car he’d dumped after his half hour drive to Anderson.
“How fast you want this to happen?”
“I don’t even want to go home.”
“Well, okay,” Kilgen said. This was the kind of signing that would help him “make his mission,” as they said at the productivity briefings. “We’ll contract you here. Then you’ll head down to the MEPS in Indy for processing. It’s a two-day thing—don’t worry, we’ll cover your room and board. You’ll do your medicals, your ASVAB—that’s your vocational exam. There’ll be an Initial Strength Test, which, to tell by looking at you will be a layup, and you’ll be a shipper.”
“Head off to boot camp?”
“That’s right. Next stop Parris Island,” Kilgen said.
