Thirteen Million Dollar Pop

11

C’mon, Frank, Behr urged himself, get up.

When he had woken, he hadn’t felt much like working out, but the idea of skipping two days in a row didn’t sit well with him either. He pictured the two turning into a hundred and saw himself fat and logy and permanently planted in a rocking chair or, worse, a desk chair. So he’d put on T-shirt and shorts, drank some water, and got his ass out there. Now he had a kettlebell, a cold black chunk of iron that resembled a cannonball with a handle and weighed fifty-six pounds, in his right hand and was in the middle of a set of Turkish get-ups. The exercise consisted of lying on his back, arm locked out straight overhead, and then climbing to his feet, arm still straight up, and dropping into a lunge before rolling onto his back again. And then, of course, it was rinse and repeat for twelve reps each arm. It was full-body torture that involved pushing the muscular, ligamentous, lactic acid, and cardiovascular systems to their limits. Arms, legs, core, and wind-there was nowhere to hide and there was just no way to do them fast enough so that he wasn’t doubled over and panting by the end. The bottle of expensive grape juice he’d drunk that was now rolling around in his gut didn’t help much either.

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.