Thirteen Million Dollar Pop

by David Levien

  “I was wondering whether you was gonna be twats, and now you’ve gone and done it.” For a moment the only sounds in the room were Dwyer and Blaze breathing through their noses, and the big fellow gasping wetly on the floor. “Now, do you scruts want two grand for the guns, or do you want to fucking die?”

  Moments later Dwyer stood at the trunk of his rented Lincoln Town Car with the .45 tucked in his waistband at his lower back, and put the shotgun, now wrapped in an old towel, in the spare tire well under a piece of carpet. He closed the trunk and saw Blaze and his friend framed in the doorway of the building he’d just left. They paused when they saw him there. Blaze raised his thumb and forefinger at Dwyer and mimed firing a single shot. Dwyer ignored the gesture, got in the car and on the road for Indianapolis.

  13

  Behr’s bag clinked softly as he walked through the Caro offices. He sat at the desk and set five bottles of fine wine on the corner. Half the case, minus the one he’d drunk the night before. He figured that was fair, considering what he’d done to get it. The other half case was at home, lying sideways, waiting for another day.

  “What’s this?” his coworkers asked of the bottles as they passed by his desk.

  “Client gift. Grab one,” Behr answered. There were only a few takers, a few more raised eyebrows, and by the end of the day there was still one bottle left. Maybe when it got down to one, it didn’t look like much of a display. Or maybe the office preferred drinking harder stuff.

  In between those visits Behr cranked away on his Payroll Place file. It was click, jot, scroll, and cut and paste as he got through four background checks, going alphabetically, searching databases in order to view past employment history; former residences; and credit, motor-vehicle, and criminal records. He went as fast as he could, but it took hours by the time the searches were done and the reports were written up. The last one was a killer because the employee’s name, Edward Charles, was a common one, and dozens of hits came up that had to be combed through and canceled out against his social security number. There were some speeding tickets, a DUI, a personal bankruptcy in the pool. The checks sketched in a bland picture of an employee base that didn’t tell him very much. He had dozens more to do. He was feeling buried. Each time he looked up from his work that last bottle of Harlan Estates caught his eye. And each time he tried to go back to what he was doing, it took him longer and longer. Finally he acknowledged why, picked up his desk phone, and dialed a familiar number.

  “Downtown District,” an assistant answered.

  “Lieutenant Breslau, please,” Behr said and his call was put through.

  “Breslau,” came the voice over the line. Behr was surprised he didn’t have an assistant, or maybe he or she had stepped away.

  “Frank Behr,” he said. There was a pause and some rustling of papers.

  “What can I do for you, Behr?” Breslau said in a low-effort attempt at cordiality.

  “Just wondering what’s turned up on that shoot.”

  “Well, I told you I’d let you know when something had, so obviously not much.”

  “You told me that?” Behr asked.

  “Told your boss.” Breslau sighed.

  “I see,” Behr said, about two dozen more questions rattling around in his head.

  “Love to sit and chat, but I’ve gotta—” Breslau began his signoff.

  “Uh-huh,” Behr said, cutting him off, as he felt a kernel of anger glow to life in the pit of his stomach.

  “I’ll ring you when we have something.”

  The line went dead. Behr slowly hung up the receiver, willing himself not to smash it.

  “Happy hour?” Behr heard, and looked up to see Pat Teague standing there, a finger tapping on the remaining bottle.

  “Sweepstakes giveaway,” Behr said.

  “So I heard,” Teague said.

  “Help yourself,” Behr offered.

  “Don’t mind if I do. Thanks,” Teague said and walked away with a rolling, bandy-legged gait, cradling the last bottle, like a football, in the crook of his arm.

  Just keep collecting your check and don’t think so hard, Behr told himself. But then he picked up the phone again.

  Behr walked toward the Lutheran Church on Kitley, where there was a small group clustered a few steps away from the side door taking a nicotine break. Behr recognized the tall, thin figure and salt-and-pepper hair of Neil Ratay, crime reporter for the Indy Star, getting ready for his regular meeting. Behr approached and they shook hands and moved away from the other smokers.

  “So what’s up, Frank?” Ratay asked, waving away a cloud of cigarette smoke that wafted between them. Behr hadn’t known him for long—and couldn’t call the man a friend, exactly—but the bond had been immediate when they’d met about a year back. He’d quickly identified a sense of code in Ratay, perhaps springing from the time-honored practice of reporters protecting their sources, which had led him to believe he could trust the man. And he hadn’t been proven wrong.

  “That shoot in the garage on Pierson the other night,” Behr began.

  “Kolodnik thing,” Ratay said.

  “My thing too,” Behr said.

  “That was you?”

  Behr nodded and told him how it fell, even including the bit about the wine. The reporter’s eyes grew a bit in circumference from their normal knowing slits when he heard Behr tell it.

  “The story got a single coat in your paper, barely covered the primer. My office isn’t looking into it, and whether or not the cops have anything, this hump Breslau got handed the package and won’t be sharing anything with me,” Behr said.

  “Breslau …” Ratay murmured.

  “What’s his deal?” Behr asked.

  “New breed. Got a master’s degree. Camera-ready.”

  “Started grooming him for captain before he drove his first patrol?”

  “Pretty much. So, can I take a run at it?” Ratay asked as they watched the few other smokers finish up and drift inside.

  “Yeah, give it a shot,” Behr said, “and let me know if you find out anything interesting, would ya?”

  Ratay nodded slowly three times and then glanced to the church door. “My meeting’s about to start.” They shook hands and Behr left.

  Even though he’d started his day with a brutal workout, Behr had something in him—that kernel—he still needed to burn off. He drove home, parked on the street but didn’t go inside. Instead, he pulled running gear out of his trunk, changed right there in the front seat, and set out. He looped around the neighborhood streets until he’d covered about three quarters of a mile and then set off toward Saddle Hill.

  He didn’t have his weighted vest in the trunk, so Behr focused on explosive speed as he churned up the hill. His knees kicked high and his feet pounded down on the asphalt as sweat bounced off the sides of his head.

  Why aren’t the police killing themselves following this up? he asked himself on one trip up.

  They are, they just don’t seem to have much, Behr told himself on the way down.

  Be glad it’s not your problem, he told himself the next time up.

  He jogged down the hill, filling his lungs. He’d been guarding a multimillionaire businessman who was about to become a senator.

  Money or politics, or the place the two intersected, he told himself as he raced up with chopping strides. The only question was why?

  Or was it a woman, a deal gone bad, a personal slight, or a hundred other things? he reminded himself as he made his descent.

  Just don’t ask, Frank, he urged himself as he charged up the hill three more times.

  But coming down the hill that final time, he knew he was going to.

  “You fall into a pool?” Susan asked him and laughed when Behr entered his place. “You’re soaked.” She wasn’t alone on the couch, and another gentle peal of laughter joined hers. Sitting next to Susan was a pretty girl with well-dyed blond hair who couldn’t have been twenty-five years old and looked ready to pop out a kid within a month
of Susan.

  “Just took a run,” he said.

  “We can tell by the running shoes,” the young lady said, as she and Susan stifled more laughs.

  “You two been drinking?” Behr wondered.

  “Just high on pregnancy,” Susan said, and they laughed again, though this time it was closer to a howl and the girls even shared a high five.

  “All right, what’s going on?”

  “We were down at baby care class, learning about swaddling and umbilical cords and filing tiny fingernails, and gabbing it up, I guess, when this woman in the class—”

  “This dowdy bitch,” the younger blonde volunteered, “barely seemed fertile.”

  “Says to me,” Susan continued, “ ‘Could you two keep it down? I’d like to hear what the nurse has to say about ointment,’ all snooty, but then she shifts in her seat and lets out this blast of a fart. So Gina says”—Susan pointed to her little friend—“ ‘I thought you said you wanted quiet.’ ” This brought on another high five and paroxysm of laughter. Behr could only shake his head and wait for them to finish.

  Finally, Susan’s friend said, “Sorry, Frank. I’m Gina Decker. And you know you just can’t cross a heavily pregnant woman.”

  “Nice to meet you,” he said.

  He made small talk with the women for a few minutes, and then went off to shower. When he was finished, he came out to find Gina had left. He headed into the kitchen for some water and Susan followed him in.

  “Frank, can I ask you something? It’s for Gina,” she said.

  “Sure. She seems like lots of laughs,” he said.

  “Not all fun and games.”

  “No?”

  “No. Her husband, Eddie, he’s … got issues.”

  “I see.”

  “He was in the marines. For a long time. He did a few tours—Iraq and Afghanistan, I think she said. And other places.”

  Behr said nothing.

  “Anyway, he’s been back for like a year, and he’s a cop,” Susan continued.

  “Indy?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” Susan nodded. “But it’s not going that well. He caught a thirty-day rip for beating the living shit out of some suspect who resisted.”

  “The living shit,” Behr said.

  “Gina’s words,” Susan said. “And it wasn’t his first. Anyway, she’s freaking out that the suspensions are gonna kill his career.”

  “They will.”

  “So we were—I—was wondering: Would you go talk to him, give him some advice?”

  “On how to make it permanent?” Behr asked.

  “Funny. Will you?” Susan looked up at him with wide, innocent eyes. He hoped their son would have those eyes. “For me?”

  There was nothing that seemed more miserable to him than sitting down with some angry young cop. “For you,” Behr said, “anything.” Then they started talking about dinner.

  14

  “Don’t say my name.”

  The words came through the phone low and gravelly. The accent, the tone of voice, the cheap cell connection, brought a cold bolt of surprise directly to Lowell Gantcher’s stomach. Dwyer.

  “Why would I do that?” Gantcher finally managed to answer, groping for the breezy tone of the successful real estate developer he’d once been.

  “Fuck if I know—just don’t,” the voice came back through the line. “We need to meet. About the situation.”

  Gantcher’s head dropped into his hand. He was in his godfather office, but he was no godfather. He’d just sent an e-mail to the accountant, to tap a final line of credit in order to cover operating expenses and a partial payroll down at the company. It didn’t get less godfather than that.

  “You’re in the States, then?” Gantcher asked.

  “Not only.”

  The surprise became fear. “You’re here?” Gantcher said. “In Indy?”

  “Fuckin’ ’ell.”

  “Well, where are you staying?”

  “Stand by. I’ll give you a location to meet when I decide it.”

  “Okay,” Gantcher said. His gut instinct suddenly told him not to meet. Some inner voice he didn’t hear from very often was screaming it, in fact. He didn’t know whether he should try to run, hire a bodyguard, or lawyer up and go to the police. Maybe all three.

  “When?” he asked.

  “Tomorrow night,” the voice said.

  “Tomorrow,” Gantcher said. He clicked on his calendar, having suddenly become a method actor, and saw it completely empty. “I don’t think tomorrow’s going to be possible—”

  “Tomorrow night,” the voice repeated, and the line went dead.

  15

  “John Lutz, please. Frank Behr calling,” he said into his cell phone. After a moment’s wait, a warm voice came on the line.

  “Y’ello?”

  “Mr. Lutz?”

  “Call me John,” the man said.

  “All right, John,” Behr gave him his way. Lutz was the president of Payroll Place, and at the moment, his client.

  “We’re expecting to see you in about a half hour, aren’t we?” Lutz asked. Behr couldn’t tell if others were supposed to be in the meeting or if Lutz was just a “we” kind of guy.

  “That’s what I’m calling about, sir,” Behr said. “I wanted to let you know I wasn’t going to be able to make it down today.”

  “Oh,” Lutz said, disappointment creeping into his tone.

  “I am working on your case. I’m hip-deep in background checks on your employees, as a matter of fact.”

  “I see,” Lutz said, brightening to the information. “Anything good? You have any thoughts? Any ideas?”

  “Still in the preliminary stages. I’m going to get back to you about setting up some employee interviews shortly.”

  “Okay,” Lutz said, not sounding too sure.

  “Now I’m gonna just pop into the courthouse here and get back to work on these checks. I’ll be in touch, so … Take care,” Behr said, hanging up.

  He stepped inside, but not into a courthouse. Rather, he left the sunlight behind and entered the artificially lit concrete confines of the parking garage of the office building on Pierson Street.

  The place had nearly become his crypt a few days back, but it was the start of a workday and now it was full of parked cars and slowly trolling ones looking for spaces. He walked down, deeper underground, past P2, to the P3 level where it had happened. He turned the corner and got a view of the row where the Suburban had been parked. There was no crime scene tape. No indication that anything had happened there—certainly not from a distance, anyway. The shot-up cars had been towed or otherwise moved. The light fixtures that the shooter had disabled had been repaired. The lights he had shot out had been replaced. The area was once again bathed in a symmetrical amber pattern. It was business as usual, as it would have been had he caught some of the lead. Only when Behr drew close did he see signs of the encounter: small pockmarks along the concrete wall where the shooter’s rounds had chipped away at the smooth uniformity.

  Behr squeezed in between a Toyota RAV4 and a Chrysler Pacifica and went to the wall. He ran his hand along the pattern of shots. It felt rough, like chips from a chisel point. It felt like nothing. He looked down to where he had dropped and fired, then he crossed toward where he’d tried to acquire his target. Fifty or sixty feet across the lanes where cars traveled to the next set of parked vehicles. It took him a minute, but he found his own shot pattern. His were lower, what would be right around the shooter’s midsection if he’d had any hits. His grouping wasn’t that spread out, all things considered, especially compared to his counterpart’s. But Behr had only been firing on semi, while the other guy was spraying and praying on full auto.

  After a moment Behr walked down to both ends of the garage and found doors opening onto stairwells. One smelled like urine, the other was relatively clean. Neither held shell casings or any other evidence of the shooter’s presence. As he left and made his way back toward the shooter’s route of escap
e, he considered whether there was a driver, or if the shooter drove himself, and whether he had left the car running, or the key in the ignition at the very least. Then Behr stopped and looked up. Placed at the ramp where the rows of parking jogged back to create another level was the black glass hemisphere of a security camera.

  Behr went to the booth by the exit, where monthly parkers waved a magnetic card that caused a wooden arm to rise and let them out and where visitors had to stop and pay for their time. There was an attendant in the booth, a heavyset woman who appeared to be from India or Pakistan. Behr approached her.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Lost ticket, pay maximum,” she responded. Her English was rough, the phrase rehearsed.

  “I didn’t lose my ticket,” he said.

  “Lose ticket?” she asked.

  “No ticket,” he said, attempting to wave away the topic. “Do you know about the shooting?” He made a gun out of his thumb and forefinger and mimed firing. It seemed to register and she began to nod. “Were you here? The night of the shooting?” he asked, speaking slowly but checking a pointless urge to raise his volume.

  She processed for a moment, then shook her head. “Me, night, eight o’clock …” she said, and used a hand gesture to indicate her going away.

  “Okay,” Behr said, remembering that he had had to pay in advance that night and had received an exit ticket to feed into the machine since the booth would be closed and the attendant off duty. “Security?” Behr asked, pointing to the ceiling. “Cameras,” he added. But she just shook her head. “Security? Guard?” he continued.

  “Guard. Yes.” Now she was nodding. “P one, P one.”