Thirteen Million Dollar Pop

16

It shouldn’t be long, if what the prim, attractive secretary told him about the twenty-minute wait was true. Behr sat on a leather couch in a plush waiting area in Bernie Kolodnik’s office. There was an array of thick, glossy magazines on a well-waxed coffee table in front of him, but he was staring toward the opposite wall at a large photo of Kolodnik, dressed in golf togs, standing with Phil Mickelson in a tee box.

Behr had found the business card Kolodnik had given him in his wallet as he walked back to his car. He hadn’t called that personal number, but it had inspired him to call Kolodnik’s company and ask for a brief appointment even though he was due back at the Caro office for a marketing and client service meeting. He wasn’t too busted up over missing it, though his bosses might be if word trickled back to them that he was absent. It turned out that Kolodnik wasn’t at his downtown location but was at the company’s satellite office in the tony suburbs, so he was headed in the right direction.

Driving out, Behr had crossed a development of new town houses at 86th and North Meridian, which functioned as a border of sorts to a sleek, high-priced world of glassy business parks that seemed to house the medical practices of half the doctors in the state. Then he had passed under an arch announcing the Arts amp; Design District of Carmel, and he entered the picturesque town of low brick buildings, cobblestone crossings, and lifelike Seward Johnson-style statues of people on the sidewalks. On several corners were large churches that represented a range of Christian denominations. The surrounding thoroughfares of South Range Line and Carmel Drive were thick with chain restaurants-but the nice ones-and country clubs filled in the spaces between neighborhoods.

The town represented the good life, and he had a momentary pang when he thought of Susan and pictured her and the coming baby eating at the restaurants, shopping at the many kids’ shoe stores, going to Nordstrom’s. The place was a little sterile. That’s what she would probably say. She didn’t care much about money or material things, but he knew the life they were leading wasn’t a result of choice but of limits. He wouldn’t mind giving her the alternative. He just didn’t see how that was going to happen. Maybe after five or ten years with Caro, after moving up into the supervisory ranks and partnership, there would be a possibility. He’d be in his fifties by then … but not now.

There were plenty of big buildings going up around town, Behr noticed on his way to his destination: The Kolodnik Company, which was housed in yet another brand-new, sparkling limestone and glass pod. New developments. Ground broken. Foundations dug. Girder skeletons erected. Crane arms topping off roof pieces. The town must not have heard of the real estate crash or the wave of unemployment or the recession that had howled over the country like a tornado. Perhaps Kolodnik was responsible for all the work here. Maybe his company, with a fleet of bulldozers, was trying to turn the whole thing around single-handedly.

The left-hander of a pair of mahogany double doors swung open, and there he was, Bernie Cool himself, in crisp white shirtsleeves and silk tie. His burnished custom-made shoes shone from what looked like three thousand coats of polish in an altogether different way than Behr’s Florsheims.

“Frank, how the heck are you?” Kolodnik said, crossing to him.

Behr jumped up, they shook hands, and he saw the energetic and intelligent gleam in the man’s eyes.

“I’m under water today, but I’m really glad to have this chance to at least say hello,” Kolodnik went on.

“I’m fine, Mr. Kolodnik,” Behr said. “How are you?”

“Call me Bernie. Did you get that Harlan Estates?”

“I did and I thank you. It was unnecessary.”

“Did you try it? What did you think?”

“Good stuff.”

“They say you should lay up good wine for a while after it arrives. But I never do …” Kolodnik offered with a smile.

“I didn’t happen to wait either.”

As Behr traded the pleasantries he wondered if he was going to get invited into Kolodnik’s office where he could ask some real questions without secretaries and executives and a quartet of what were clearly his new security guys, with their blue suits and square jaws, hovering around. They were the matching set to a pair each on the front and back doors of the building outside. But it didn’t look like a private meeting was going to happen.

“So, what can I do for you?” Kolodnik wondered. “Like I said, I’m in the weeds. The Senate seat and all.” The man was unbelievably easy and affable, as if he lived in a capsule of prosperity and lubricating charm. It was something Behr had noticed the first time he’d driven Kolodnik. The shooting had momentarily punctured the capsule, but now it was clearly resealed and Kolodnik was insulated once again.

“Right, congratulations on that,” Behr said. The charm bubble made Behr somehow reluctant to roil the waters-any waters-and disrupt the serene good feeling that surrounded Kolodnik. Behr imagined the man would do well in Washington.

“Thank you. Quite an honor.” A momentary quiet fell and Kolodnik looked at him expectantly. “So I imagine you’ve got a reason for the visit?”

Behr dropped his voice. “Well, yeah, as a matter of fact. I want to find out why someone was shooting at you, because then I’ll know why someone was shooting at me.”

Kolodnik nodded mildly. “Of course,” he said, “it was very troubling. Very troubling,” but didn’t continue further, which forced Behr to.

“I was wondering if you’d heard anything about the police investigation. If anything came up on the security tapes.”

Kolodnik shook his head.

“I’ve followed up, but they’re not sharing much with me,” Behr continued.

“I have people overseeing that. They’ll brief me at such time as there’s significant progress. Obviously this is something of great concern, and I’m taking it very seriously. But right now I can’t afford to shut down the works and dwell on it. I always look ahead, no matter the trauma of the past. Even the recent past. I credit a good portion of my success to that.”

Behr felt ungrateful and unseemly for bothering the man, for continuing to ask the blunt, unattractive questions, and for so ignominiously being stuck in an earlier time. But he went ahead just the same. “It’s just the timing of it-do you have political enemies already?”

Kolodnik laughed lightly, without mockery but with genuine amusement. “Those would be the fastest enemies a politician ever gained, wouldn’t they?”

“So no idea who could have done it?” Behr asked. When interviewing victims of anonymous violence, Behr didn’t ask “Who do you think did it?” That was a limiting question, one that forced the victim to confront his attacker directly in his mind. The “could’ve” made it almost a game. Behr liked to sit them down and make a list of could’ves and assign possible motives to each person on the list, as if it were a creative exercise, and eventually the actual “who” and “did it” would often end up staring him in the face. But that took time and cooperation, and it didn’t look like Behr was going to get much of either.

There had been an arrival in the offices while they talked. Three men and two women. There were roller briefcases, computers, and an audiovisual projector.

Behr felt his little window of opportunity closing.

“Disgruntled employees? Ex-employees?” Behr had the unfortunate sensation he was peppering the man. “Business? Personal? I wonder if it would be possible to interview your staff?” Behr was hoping for a developed source, some third party that a staffer might mention, whom he could question when he or she was unprepared, in the hopes of jarring loose some information.

“Old business saying goes, ‘It’s not a deal unless both parties are sore about it.’ I’ve always gone about it the exact opposite way. It’s stood me well,” Kolodnik said. “And I’ll tell you something else, and it’s how I’ve avoided all this recent unpleasantness in the economy. I never bought into the idea of overleveraging, and I’ve tried to avoid people who do. What I’m saying is: my business life is very … balanced.”

A secretary ushered the group toward Kolodnik’s office, then leaned over to Kolodnik and said, “The Trachtenberg group, sir.” Behr couldn’t tell if they were political lobbyists, real estate developers, or from a law firm.

“Be right in,” Kolodnik said, and then turned apologetically back to Behr.

“You said you had people on this. I wonder if I could confer with them?” Behr asked.

“I asked an old senator I count as a friend for some advice when the appointment came in. You know-how to manage the demands on my time, weigh the equities, all that. And you want to know what he told me?” Kolodnik paused for emphasis. “ ‘Learn to hold it, because you’re not going to have a chance to take a squirt for the next six years …’ Well, four in my case, but you get the idea.” Kolodnik was using his folksy gentleman’s idiom to give Behr a message: he was too busy to deal with the matter further.

Just then an exceptionally well-tanned man in his mid-forties with blond hair going to gray, and a suit jacket sporting shoulder pads that were a shade too big, strode up.

“You ready to get in there?” he asked Kolodnik with great familiarity in his tone.

“Yep, right in, Shugie,” Kolodnik answered, then made the introduction. “Frank, this is Shugie Saunders, my political consultant. Shugie, this is Frank Behr, the reason you still have a client.”

“No, no, no,” Shugie corrected with a porcelain-veneered smile that creased the suntan, “the reason I still have a friend.”

Saunders shot out a manicure-soft hand, which Behr shook, as Kolodnik wrapped things up.

“You should come by the house, Frank. Not now. I’m about ready to decamp to D.C.-”

“We’re going to get the seat. We’re going to be confirmed right away,” Saunders informed.

“But at the end of the summer, Labor Day, I’ll be back for a bit,” Kolodnik continued.

“So the attempt,” Behr tried a last time.

“That’s been downgraded as a priority at the moment,” Saunders said with finality. “We appreciate all your efforts.”

What could Behr say? Especially in the face of that powerful “we” that smacked of handlers and aides and institution, of government itself. Everyone he was dealing with was plural, from his client to his company and even Kolodnik. He thought about his own “we” for a moment. All it meant-all it would ever mean-was him, Susan, and his coming son.

“Like I said, Frank, bring the wife over to the house for some tennis when I’m back in town. Do you have a wife? Do you play tennis?” Kolodnik smiled.

“Not exactly,” Behr said, and after a cordial pat on the back, Kolodnik was on the move. Saunders gave a parting nod and followed his man through the double doors into the office. The doors closed behind them and Behr was left in the waiting area empty-handed and as inanimate as the Johnson statues lining the streets of the town.