Thirteen Million Dollar Pop

20

The Wild Beaver-with its ubiquitous smell of warm beer and the low ocean roar of happy hour-was nighttime dark, thanks to its lack of windows, when Behr walked in. He wondered exactly what the hell he was doing here and what had possessed him to choose the spot over the quietude of his usual haunt, Donahue’s. His eyes cut around the bar for Decker, who wasn’t easy to miss.

Sitting alone at a two-top table, back against the wall, was a man with a military haircut, worn desert-issue combat boots resting on the opposite chair, and a pissed-off look in his eye. His jeans were well ventilated, thanks to holes at the knees; and a tight black T-shirt stretched over his frame, which was that of a small linebacker. Small for the NFL, that is. Beefy biceps, marked with some high-quality ink, hung from traps built of humping a heavy ruck and rifle over exceedingly long distances. As Behr walked up to the table he saw that Decker wore earbuds connected to a battered iPod that was encircled by corroded duct tape still crusted with what looked like desert sand.

“Hey,” Decker said, too loud, thanks to the headphones, which he pulled out as he stood and offered a hand. Behr shook what felt like a sandpaper mitt wrapped around a rock, and they both sat.

“What’re you listening to?” Behr asked.

“Pantera, Coheed and Cambria, Charred Walls of the Damned.”

“I don’t know what you just said.”

“Just a metal playlist.” Decker offered the headphones. Behr put a bud to his ear and heard guitar-driven music, guttural singing, and driving drums. “Can’t take this shit.” Decker gestured into the air at the music playing in the bar. If pressed, Behr would’ve guessed it was Prince.

“Yeah, I don’t really come here,” Behr said.

“Whatever. Two-for-one happy hour works for me.” Decker raised a pint glass of dark swill. The smell of licorice wafted to Behr across the small table.

“What are you drinking?”

“Deerslayer,” he said, taking a big gulp and waving at a waitress.

“And that is?” Behr wondered.

“Jagermeister, Wild Turkey, and Coke, chilled and strained. Technically it’s a black deerslayer. They usually make ’em with Sprite.”

A chubby strawberry blonde with a bright smile and a pink T-shirt that was two sizes too small arrived at Behr’s shoulder. “Hiya, what can I get you?” she said.

“Holly, get us another round of these,” Decker said, then turned toward Behr. “Unless you have a regular drink.”

“Sure, I’ll try that,” Behr said, and Holly went off toward the bar.

“Holly?” Behr said.

“What can I say, I’m a friendly guy.” Decker shrugged, and nudged a pint glass, the second of his two-for-one, toward Behr.

“Thanks.” Behr took a slug. “I’ve had better tasting gasoline,” he said through the fumes.

“We drank these when we came off detail,” Decker said, finishing the last few ounces in his glass. “When the object was to get as fucked up as possible as quickly as possible. It became a habit. You don’t notice the taste after a while.”

Behr appraised what sat across from him. Decker sported several-days-off stubble and though he couldn’t have been much past twenty-six, there was an aged quality about him. But it was what was in Decker’s eyes that spooked him, and Behr wasn’t someone who spooked: nothing. There was just a depthless black that conveyed great familiarity with pain, violence, and death.

“So the girls are friends,” Behr said, leaning back.

“Yep. Gina loves Susan like hell.” Decker nodded.

“Seemed like they were having a good time when I saw ’em together,” Behr said. “How long you been back?”

“Less than a year.”

“Army?”

“Marines. Third Recon,” Decker said. Behr recognized it as an elite unit.

“Regular infantry?”

“Scout sniper.” Decker tapped on the rim of his empty glass for a moment before Holly arrived with the next round.

“Reload,” she said in a singsong voice.

“Thank you, darling,” Decker said as she left, and took a big swig of his drink.

“And now the IPD,” Behr said.

“Only the dinosaurs still call it that.”

“Guilty,” Behr said and raised his glass.

“Brass hates that shit. Department-wide mandate to call it IMPD only. You were on the job for a while, I hear,” Decker said.

“I was, and that was a long while ago.”

“What happened?” Decker asked.

“Didn’t work out,” Behr said.

“I can see how that could happen.” Decker drank again. For a moment Behr felt they were near the topic he’d been sent to discuss, but Decker moved them away quickly with a question. “And now?”

“Working at a place called Caro,” Behr said.

“Oh ho”-Decker nodded-“explains the suit. Thought maybe you’d gone to law school or something. That’s a plushy kind of high-dollar job, isn’t it?”

“It can be. I’ve only been there for a little while,” Behr said. “So were you an officer? Ever consider making a full career of it?”

“Gunnery sergeant,” Decker said, waving it away. “It’s all in the DD-two fourteen.”

They sat there for a moment, sipping. “Had enough of the Marines, then?”

“It was fun while it lasted,” Decker said, then continued with effort, “but you get to a point when your contract’s up, and you realize it’s in or out for life.”

Behr caught Decker rubbing a small tattoo on the inner surface of his drinking arm. It was a skull with a rictus grin against a bloodred background. The words celer, silens, mortalis forming a triangle around the graphic. Behr wasn’t a Latin scholar but he knew the phrase: swift, silent, deadly.

“So you left?” Behr pressed on. After all, he was here for a purpose.

Decker sighed, shifted in his seat. “Like I said, it’s all in my DD-two fourteen, I’ll send it over if you feel like doing some light reading.”

There had been a labored quality to the conversation from the start, and now this. Usually Behr could blame himself for the awkward pauses, but in this case he had plenty of help. “Look, man, you just tell me what you want me to know and we’ll leave it at that. I don’t need to check your military record.”

“Fair enough,” Decker said, the closest thing to a smile yet briefly creasing his lips.

“How’d you end up here?”

“India-no-place?”

“Yeah. I came out after college because the department was hiring,” Behr told him. “You live in Indy before you joined up?”

“I was born in Missouri. Spent some time near Springfield growing up. Then Parris Island, Camp Lejeune, a few other fun places and points east.”

“The folks still down in Springfield?” Behr wondered.

“No,” Decker said as more black seemed to flood into those eyes of his and more light squeezed out, if that was even possible, before he continued, “grandparents. They raised me.”

Five words over two sentences, an impressive average, even by Behr’s standards.

Well, that’s that, he thought.

The favor was to come, but he didn’t guarantee results.

“Okay,” Behr said, casting his eyes around the room, disengaging from the Decker project. As he watched pockets of office girls getting chatted up by snappily dressed guys, he spotted an attractive brunette by the bar, and noticed a worried, rather than sociable, expression on her face. He followed her gaze and saw a familiar looking young man next to her. Behr recognized the silver-framed aviators with smoked gray lenses, and, more than that, the attitude required to wear sunglasses indoors. It was Susan’s little pecker-head friend Chad. And his back was currently pressed up against the bar, the forearm of a large man wedged against his throat. The geometry of the situation was pretty clear, even from a distance.

Behr zeroed in and watched it for a moment over the rim of his glass. The large man’s face was purple with anger. Behr couldn’t deny having pictured himself taking similar action in the past, but he’d never really considered it because of Susan. Chad was doing his best to stand firm, but white fear was leaking out from behind his spray-on tan. Things got worse when another solid-looking dude leaned into the fray at Chad’s shoulder, clearly backing the first big guy. Behr turned toward Decker, put his drink down, and stood.

“ ’Scuse me one sec,” he said, and crossed the bar.

“Back door,” Behr heard the second-to-arrive side of beef suggest to his friend, grabbing one of Chad’s arms with a wrenching grip. The first florid-faced fellow caught hold of Chad’s other arm and they practically frog-marched him along the length of the bar toward the rear. Chad’s feet only occasionally touched the ground as he stumbled along, struggling in a growing panic that wasn’t doing any good. A pair of girl bartenders in leather pants were head down and pouring drinks, oblivious to the situation. There were no bouncers in sight.

Behr moved around a pool table and interrupted the group’s progress.

“Hold up,” he said, putting enough bark in his voice to stop the procession.

The first man turned, let go of Chad, and fronted Behr.

“Move,” he said.

“No,” Behr said back.

“What’s that?” red face asked, his words a wave of incipient violence and beer breath.

“What are you doing?” Behr demanded.

“None of your business-” the helper chimed in.

“Shut up,” Behr said low and mean into the helper’s face. It had the nearly physical effect of knocking him back a step, and it disengaged his hands from Chad’s arm. Loose, Chad moved a few feet down the bar in a desperate attempt to escape further notice.

“Why don’t you go back to your drinking,” Behr suggested.

“Because this smart-ass motherfucker”-a thumb went in Chad’s general direction-“fucked my girl”-the thumb now waved in the worried brunette’s vicinity-“or tried to fuck my girl-”

“I’m not your girl, Bill,” the brunette chimed in, “anymore.”

Pain and rage flared in Bill’s eyes. “Some shit went down. And I’m gonna push in his pretty boy face.”

“If something gets pushed in, it’s not gonna be that,” Behr told him. Now Bill squared toward him, and Behr took in his thick neck, pimpled with razor burn and ingrown hairs.

“No? How come? You want to fuck him?” the man said.

Behr heard laughter around him and felt black anger in his gut. “Go file some tax returns or whatever the fuck it is you do and get out of my face, old guy,” Bill spat, getting close and grabbing a handful of Behr’s tie.

Lots of men in security work and law enforcement wore clip-on ties in contemplation of this very situation-for instead of a choking handle, which is what a regularly knotted necktie amounted to, the otherwise unfashionable clip-on will come off in an attacker’s hand. Behr was one of these men. And it was what happened to Bill. The tie disengaged. Bill glanced at the length of faux silk in his hand, momentarily confused. But contact had been made and Behr didn’t waste the opening.

He clapped a hand behind Bill’s neck and drove a knee into his groin. The air went out of him with a gasp, and Behr felt him sag forward. He stepped back and let Bill crumple to the ground, but then he felt the thick arms of Bill’s helper wrap around him from behind. Glancing down, Behr saw the canvas Converse All Stars that were considered so stylish by the kids these days.

Wrong footwear for the occasion, Behr thought and drove the rock-solid heel of his size thirteen Florsheim down onto the top of the helper’s foot.

Behr felt the myriad small bones of said foot turn to pulp under his stomp, and the man’s grip broke as he howled and shuffled in pain onto his remaining good foot. Behr spun him, and it took very little force for an ankle sweep to the man’s weighted leg to deposit him on his ass with a thud next to his friend, who was curled up and drooling. Silence had fallen, besides the music, which Behr recognized as the old Pearl Jam song “Even Flow.” All activity in the bar had ceased, as attention was directed toward the altercation.

“Are we done here?” Behr asked the pair on the ground.

Then there was a crashing noise behind him, and Behr whipped his head around to see a third big guy rolling around on the ground holding his throat, a pool cue loose on the floor behind him. Decker was just stepping back from the man, melting into the crowd of onlookers. Behr straightened. It was clear enough what had happened: Behr was about to get cold blasted, and then he didn’t. A moment ago, on his way into the fray, he’d seen what looked like the remainder of the offensive line at a standee table, but stupidly hadn’t clocked them as friends of the pair that was giving Chad the bum’s rush. A pool cue shot to the back of his head could’ve really ruined his evening. Behr looked to Decker, who just shrugged.

Behr turned to Chad, who was wide-eyed and shrinking back against the bar. “Maybe you should call it a night.”

Chad just nodded.

They stood in the dark, in the cool evening air, and were about ready to head for their cars. Decker had badged the lone happy hour bouncer, who had finally trundled up to the fracas, and the guy was plenty happy to let the three of them leave. Chad had at last gone on his way after an uncomfortable profusion of thanks. His mien-equal parts rattled, humiliated, and beholden-was almost more off-putting than his usual self-satisfied buoyancy.

“Well, that was interesting,” Behr said, feeling like a high schooler on a date, when he and Decker were finally standing there alone.

“At least the music picked up there at the end,” Decker added. Only the sound of passing cars filled the silence.

“Look, I don’t know if I accomplished what I was supposed to here, so if you’re up for it, and want to do it again …”

“Yeah, sure,” Decker said, “you’re lots of fun.”

They went their separate ways, and Behr returned home to find Susan on the living room floor, organizing little blankets and clothing and other baby gear.

“How was it?” she asked.

“Fine. That Decker’s a real handy guy,” Behr said.

“Thanks for doing it, Frank. I know it was a big favor.”

“Favors are my business,” he said, heading off to take a shower.