by David Levien
“Slick,” Behr said back, with perhaps slightly less respect. They slapped hands, and Chad jumped up and pulled Behr into a bro hug with a back slap for good measure. For his part, Behr used to consider Chad akin to a device used to clean a certain part of a woman’s anatomy, but he’d actually grown fond of the kid’s wise-ass ways.
“Hi, Frank,” Susan called out.
“Hi,” Behr said, picking up the baby, amazed as always at how light and compact he was. It felt like there was hardly more to him than the cotton clothing he was wrapped in, yet Trevor was the magical source of joy for him and Susan.
“You find that guy you were looking for?” she wondered.
“I did,” Behr said.
“What’s the case?” Chad asked.
“A windmill I’m wasting my time with,” Behr said. “What about you?”
“I was just telling Susan about ‘The Two,’ ” Chad said.
“The two?” Behr asked.
“More Chad war stories,” Susan said, arriving at the table with the salad she’d made.
“I see,” Behr said.
“Yeah, ‘The Two’ are this pair of dime pieces I know.”
“Dime pieces are hot girls,” Susan volunteered.
“Thank you. I’ve been on the street, so I know.”
“They’re friends with my ex, actually, but you know, not good friends,” Chad went on. “We were out at Average Joe’s, and the shots were really flowing and then this sort of Truth or Dare game got started. Soon I’m wearing two pair of panties around my wrists like bracelets …”
Behr felt himself tune out and vaguely follow as the conversation seamlessly moved off of Chad’s exploits and on to office gossip down at the Indianapolis Star, where he and Susan both worked. At some point Trevor was buckled into his seat and put at the end of the table, where he could oversee the dinner proceedings. Then Chad launched back into more tales of the girls he was dating and sleeping with—which were not mutually exclusive categories. The subtext that bled through to Behr was that none of the women involved were the true focus of his desire, which was Susan.
But Behr’s mind was mostly cluttered with Kendra Gibbons, and what to do next. Then, when he turned his head toward the television and saw a news report saying that the body found at Northwestway Park had not yet been identified, Behr had an idea. He stood and kissed first Trevor, and then Susan, good-bye.
“Where are you off to?” she asked.
“Something I’ve got to go do,” he said. “Take care.”
“See ya in the wee hours, Chairman,” Chad said.
As he reached the door, Behr glanced back for just a moment at Susan and Chad on opposite sides of the table, with Trevor in his seat between them, and in that flash took in the perfect portrait of a family. One that he was not in.
14
Other needs a taste.
The night surrounds him fluid and deep. He moves through it, the camouflage it provides him complete. The lights of the city bounce off his windshield like star points. He cruises the strip off Pendleton Pike between Shadeland and N. County Line Road over and over, his car engine a rhythmic hum, watching as the filthy working girls show up to find their spots, then catch their customers, and then, finally, disappear one after another into strange cars to do what they did for money. There are black girls and Latinas mostly, but whites too, and after about an hour he sees her. The one he wants. His. She is almost six feet tall, though a lot of it is the shoes. Spiked towers of black patent leather that reflect the night. She can barely walk on them, so she totters and twirls more than strolls. She wears a faded black denim skirt punched with rhinestones and no stockings, her bare legs as thin, white, and shapeless as PVC pipe. A short, tight leather jacket is her only concession to the cold. She has on hardly any makeup, he sees during his first pass, just red lips. But her hair is blond, piled on top of her head, held up by a large plastic clip.
After a second pass he feels a gnawing sensation inside that someone else will stop and get her, so he pulls over quickly and lowers his window. She points her way over to him, like a newborn horse.
“Hi there,” she says, leaning down.
“Hello,” he answers.
He smells the mint of her gum over crushed cigarettes when she speaks, and the manufactured fruit essence of her hairspray.
“You looking to party?” she asks.
“Yes,” he answers. Stupid words he’s heard many times, though he supposes it is a party, of sorts.
“A shorty or all night long?”
“I don’t know yet,” he says.
“A hundred for the hour, or three hundred for the whole shebang.”
“I want to go to the Always Inn.”
“Oh baby!” she says, moving around and getting in the passenger side. “That’s good news. It’s way too cold for this car bullshit. Besides, I can’t do my thang good in a car. It’s a little far, will you drive me back afterward? You’re gonna be so happy you stopped …”
He isn’t really listening to her, because the humming in his head is rising louder and louder. He drives to the motel and parks away from the office. She has the heat cranked and is playing with the radio when he leaves her. He buys the room with cash. The clerk makes him leave a credit card imprint for security. He has one specifically for this purpose, and it doesn’t bear his real name. It wasn’t difficult at all to get. He’s had it for years and never actually charges anything on it. He takes the key card, goes back to the car, and pulls around to the room.
They get out near the door.
“You got any stuff?” she asks.
He shakes his head. It does feel odd walking into the room without his kit, but he is empty-handed tonight.
“Okay, so no toys,” she goes on. “Lots of guys like toys, you know?”
He doesn’t answer. Just flicks on the light.
“You want to get drinks, or …?” she asks.
He sits down on the foot of the bed, his hands in his lap. The sense of calm he feels is overwhelming. He has an image behind his eyes of a glacial mountain lake, with no current, no wind, no people, no boats, no fish, no birds upon it, nothing at all to ripple the surface. He is the lake.
“You’re a quiet one, aren’t you?” she says. She drops her purse on the small round table by the window and takes off her jacket. She has large breasts, pressed together and upward by a tight tube top.
“So, player, what’ll it be?” she goes on. The cold has made the top of her chest pink, the color of processed ham in a supermarket case. “Something specific, or should we just, you know, take ’em off and try it?” She sits down next to him on the bed.
“How much,” he asks, “to punch you in the face?” His voice sounds level and distant to him.
“What?” she says, a laugh in her throat.
“How much,” he asks again, “to punch you in the face?”
“Ha-ha,” she says, “two hundred bucks.” She shakes her head. “Seriously, what would you like to …?”
But his hand has gone to his wallet and has taken it out.
“What are you doing?” she asks, the first tremor of worry arriving in her.
“Two hundred dollars it is,” he says.
“Two hundred bucks to what?”
“To punch you in the face.”
“No, no. Hold on—”
“Shhh,” he says. He pinches two hundred-dollar bills between his fingers and slides them free from his remaining money.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she says, alarm now in her voice as he puts the money on the bed.
“Shhh,” he says again, a finger pressed to his lips. Then he touches her cheek and pats her hair, which has a stiff texture thanks to the spray. “Shhh.” He can’t allow anything to ripple the lake.
“Oh God,” she says quietly in the moment of calm before he draws back his fist and hits her in the face with a crushing blow. There is an audible crack as his knuckles meet her eye socket. She gasps. A youth and young adulthood
spent in manual labor running punch presses, welding and fabricating metal, operating heavy machinery, sinking fence posts, pouring concrete, and pounding framing nails provide the power behind the punch. A pure jolt of pleasure runs through him. He isn’t completely sure, but thinks he’s fractured her orbital bone. She doesn’t go out. Good for her. But her face drops into both her hands for a moment as she scream-sobs, then she stumbles back, grabbing the money and her purse and jacket, and runs for the door.
His breathing comes ragged and excited as the door slams shut behind her and he quickly undoes his pants. The room seems to vibrate in the silence that remains in her wake and he is able to finish himself off.
A short time later, cleaning himself in the bathroom, he feels light and free. A spill gate has been thrown open to release built-up pressure. But then he looks at himself in the mirror and takes in the appalling visage that is still sometimes strange to him: his moonlike face, his physique like that of a Belgian blue bull, muscles rippling, their smoothness broken only by spidery veins under skin so pale it almost glows. And in that moment he wonders how long the release will last.
15
Frank Behr sat over his second pint of Bass ale and stared out the window at wisps of fake smoke floating from the lid of a massive kettle barbecue that was suspended over the front door. He had a corner stool at the bar of the Weber Grill and was probably the only silent one in the place. The Pacers game had just ended, and a bunch of rowdy Maverick fans were celebrating their win. Behr had been waiting close to an hour, but as he had asked a big favor, he was in no position to be impatient.
Finally, Behr saw the broad-shouldered, overcoat-clad figure of Gary Breslau enter the place. Breslau, a lieutenant on the IMPD, worked a piece of gum in his mouth as he scanned the room, then spotted Behr and sliced through the crowd toward him. Behr was pleased to see he carried a large yellow-padded envelope under his arm, but when Breslau got close, Behr noticed with disappointment the bunched-up sleeves of some dress shirts puffing out of it.
“Behr.”
“Breslau.”
The lieutenant took a seat next to him and put the envelope down in front of them, and Behr supposed he was in for a lecture on staying out of police business instead of getting what he’d asked for, which was IMPD’s file on the Northwestway Park killing.
“Why do these assholes think they can come in here and whoop it up like this?” Breslau began as he settled in, pointing out over the crowd. “It’s a regular-season game, not the finals.”
“Ought to call in a sweep and take them all down,” Behr suggested.
“Yeah, try out those new Tasers. Send ’em back to Dallas with sore asses,” Breslau said, signaling the bartender. “Give me a Stella,” he ordered, and then turned back to Behr. “I’m fancy like that.”
“So it’s a no-go on the file then?” Behr asked, pointing at the envelope on the bar top.
“Huh?” Breslau said, taking a drink of his beer. Maybe asking for the file on an open murder case, especially one that was getting so much media attention, was an overreach. He and Breslau certainly weren’t friends. In fact, they’d gone through some choppy waters thanks to Behr and a matter he was involved with when they’d met not long ago.
“Just some old shirts going to my cleaners nearby. They’re open late,” Breslau said. “What are you on that you need that file?” Breslau wondered.
“Well, you still don’t have an ID on your Northwestway Park body, right?” Behr asked.
“You mean our parts,” Breslau corrected.
“It wasn’t all there?” Behr asked.
“It basically was. A few things were missing. But to me a body is intact, and parts is parts.”
Behr nodded. Breslau took another drink.
“We sent out DNA. We’re checking it against missing persons and hoping for a match off the national computer, but for now she’s a Jane Doe. So what are you working?”
Though he wasn’t proud of his case, which wasn’t even a case but a pathetic reward chase, Breslau had asked twice now, so Behr told him. “Kendra Gibbons. A pross who went MIA a year and a half back.”
“Oh yeah, the billboard girl,” Breslau said.
“The billboard girl.” Behr expected some mockery from Breslau, but all he got was a slight sigh and another sip of beer.
“Shit,” Breslau said, shaking his head. “Why the hell would I give you that?”
Behr was ready for the question. “Well, I imagine the family has been up the department’s ass. You don’t put up a billboard without having been by the station a few hundred dozen times, right?”
“Uh-huh …” Breslau allowed.
“If I had something like cooperation I could intimate to the Gibbons family I’m working their case as an unofficial liaison to the department. Keep ’em away from you.”
“You want to play make-believe?” Breslau said, but he sounded interested. “Gibbons isn’t mine … but it’s in my office and the supervisor would probably appreciate being left alone. The mother is difficult and the case is a mule—stubborn and smelly and not going anywhere.”
Behr let Breslau weigh the merits of his offer for a minute.
“Look, let’s say I personally don’t have a problem with you seeing the file …” Breslau said. “I also can’t be in a position, if asked, where I have to answer that I gave it to you. You understand what I’m saying?”
“I do,” Behr said. He thought for a moment about where this left him, and if there was another way he could get a look at it. But Breslau provided it.
“You know Ken Bannon?” Breslau asked. “He’s a former, like you.”
Behr knew the name. Bannon had been a detective years back. But he didn’t know him personally.
“No,” Behr said.
“What about Don Fallon?” Breslau asked. Behr thought he recognized the name of a former lieutenant who’d gone into private work. And he got where Breslau was going.
“Nope,” Behr said. “What about Gene Sasso? He was my old training officer.” It was the second time he’d thought of him within a few days.
“Oh, so he’s the one we all have to thank …”
“Right.”
“Well, him I know,” Breslau said. “Now, see, he’s an ex-cop—a friend of the department—who I wouldn’t have any trouble giving a file to for a consult. For help. What he does with it, within reason, is up to him.”
Behr nodded. He had a conduit to the information now.
“So I’ll give you Northwestway Park, and we get a gold star with the Gibbons family.”
Behr nodded. “Am I going to find anything useful in the file?”
Breslau shrugged. “She was taken apart with bladed instruments—”
“Medical grade?”
“Not quite. And power tools,” Breslau said.
Behr took a drink and allowed that to settle for a moment.
“Any perp DNA recovered?” Behr wondered.
“Nada,” Breslau said.
“Any chance I can check my girl’s DNA against the victim’s?”
Breslau looked at him. “Sure, just have the next of kin sign a release.”
“Thanks.”
“Man, we’re so at sea on this Northwestway deal, even you can’t fuck it up any worse for us.” Behr knew there was some derision coming his way, and there it was. It was just the way cops spoke to each other.
“Am I supposed to say ‘thank you’ to that?” Behr asked.
“If you do, I’ll say ‘you’re welcome,’ ” Breslau said. “Anything else you think you need?” He sounded like he was joking, but Behr wasn’t.
“Matter of fact—”
“Oh, Jesus—”
“How about related cases? Missing persons, similar settings, similar MOs.”
Breslau turned directly toward Behr before he spoke. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Do I look like a comedian?”
“Not a funny one,” Breslau said. “What do you want with ancillary cases
?”
“A slay like Northwestway may not be an isolated type of deal,” Behr said. “Maybe there’s something in another case that relates to mine. C’mon, man, I need it, and I’ll feed you anything real that I find.”
The IMPD lieutenant sat there and swilled his beer and looked miserable. “Christmas is coming, Breslau. I’ll put a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label in your stocking.”
“I don’t drink Scotch. Why did I even come here tonight?” Breslau blew out a long, weary breath and Behr knew he had him. “Check with Sasso tomorrow and knock yourself out.”
“I’ll do my best,” Behr said.
“Please do,” Breslau said. “When you get in the way shit happens.”
Breslau raised his bottle and Behr touched it with his pint glass. They drained their beers. A highlight played on the flat screens above the bar—a Mavs power forward dunked hard over his counterpart on the Pacers. The partisan crowd roared.
“I’m getting out of here before I start shooting people,” Breslau said, standing and gathering his envelope.
“I’m walking out right next to you,” Behr said, getting up. “I got this.” He put money on the bar and they left.
As they split off in different directions, Behr called after Breslau.
“What was missing?”
“Huh?” Breslau paused.
“In Northwestway. You said most of her was there. What was missing?”
“Some parts that made her a woman,” Breslau said, and continued on into the night.
16
“Mr. Behr,” Kerry Gibbons said as she exited her house and saw him. “Didn’t expect to see you for a while.”
“Frank, please,” he said,
It was a cold morning, and the ground he’d walked across was as hard underfoot as the grim mission he was on.
