Where the dead lay

EIGHTEEN

Behr was on his way out first thing in the morning when he saw them. Two men, sitting in a silver Crown Vic that had his car boxed in. He stopped in his tracks when he made out who was behind the wheel. It was Police Captain Pomeroy, his former boss. Last time they had spoken it had not been a pleasant conversation. Now the pair saw him and got out of their car. The second man was a few years older than Pomeroy and was beefier by thirty-five pounds. He was florid faced already, with the heat of the day still a long way off.

“Behr. Looking quite the winner today,” Pomeroy said. “Didn’t have you for a churcher.”

Behr was dressed in his blue blazer and tie again. “Memorial service, Captain,” he answered, looking at his old boss. Time didn’t seem to change the man. His nose bone was still sharp as a hawk’s beak and his black eyes as pitiless.

“The department could use a favor,” Pomeroy said.

“Really?” Behr asked, mainly to check the rough thrill that ran through him at the words. He’d heard of ex-cops doing outside work for the force, at times when it was something so mundane it wasn’t worth the department’s time, and others when it was a situation so sensitive the cops couldn’t afford to be around it. Either way, Behr had never been on the ask list. “Near Northside stuff?” he guessed, thinking of the amount of drugs and drug violence that existed there.

“Not exactly-,” the other man said, speaking for the first time.

“Jerry…,” Pomeroy interrupted, silencing him.

“Who’s this?” Behr wondered of “Jerry.”

“City attorney,” Pomeroy answered, and didn’t add any last name.

“So is this official?” Behr asked.

“Officially unofficial,” Pomeroy said.

“What does that mean?”

“He’s having this conversation on behalf of the department,” Pomeroy said.

More confidentiality, Behr realized. He wondered if lawyers were the new must-have accessory around town.

“What’s it about?” Behr asked.

“I want you to reconsider the Caro job,” Pomeroy said.

“You want me to help with that?” Behr asked.

Both Pomeroy and “Jerry” nodded.

Potempa must have reached out, Behr realized. “But you ran me…,” he blurted, confused and remembering how it had ended for him with the police years ago. Pomeroy had sighted in on him and pushed and pushed until he was done and all Behr had left was a quarter pension and his old tin. It was personal. The sickening feeling of failure, of being discarded, revisited the pit of his stomach.

“That’s right. And now I need someone who knows what he’s doing,” Pomeroy said. “Who can go places where the official asky-asky nicey-nicey won’t work. Who doesn’t matter.”

“I guess we’re being honest this morning,” Behr said. The city attorney made a sound, a half snuffle, half cough that connoted both amusement and disgust.

“You weren’t incompetent, I just didn’t like you.” An early morning silence stretched out for a moment between Pomeroy’s words. “But I know what you were able to do on that thing a while back.”

Behr said nothing.

“I’m hoping for a similar result here. This is a situation you’d be paid an hourly. Off the books. Not by us. Beyond that, it’d be considered a contribution to the department. A serious contribution. It’ll be noticed and remembered if it’s done right. It can change the future of the doer. You want to hear it?”

Behr looked at Pomeroy, then to Jerry. Their faces were scowling and serious. He heard what they were saying, what he was being offered. He knew it was a real chance. “There’s something I’d want up front in return,” Behr said.

“Really?” Pomeroy asked. “What’s that?”

“Flow through on your investigation into the Santos murder.”

“The judo guy?” Pomeroy said.

“Brazilian jiu-jitsu, but yeah,” Behr answered, wondering why he felt it so imperative to be specific.

Pomeroy shrugged. “That’s doable.”

Behr nodded. “Caro wanted me to locate some of their boys, but they wouldn’t even give me a hint. I can’t do it unless I know the whole story.”

“Of course.” Pomeroy handed him a folder. “It’s not only about their boys.”

The other man practically lunged into the conversation. “There’s someone out there-some group or crew making jerk-offs out of the department taking down shake houses-”

“Thanks, Jerry,” Pomeroy cut him off. Then he turned to Behr and spoke more quietly. “What do you know about pea-shake houses?”

“Same as everybody. Lottery-style betting parlors. Drawings done several times a day with numbers written on balls. There’s an editorial every six months calling them the scourge of the city or else suggesting they be legalized and taxed.” That wasn’t all he knew. He also knew that the occasional bust of a shake house was the old standby photo op for the police. Department scandal? “Police Raid Pea-Shake House” would be on the front page of the paper. Teen gang violence? “Shake House Taken Down” would be the lead story on the evening news. It was like a joke that everyone was in on. But this was a whole different approach.

“You know how much illegal gambling money they represent?” Jerry piped up.

“How can anybody?” Behr wondered.

“We know-” Jerry said.

“That’s not the point,” Pomeroy cut him off again. Jerry fell silent, tugging at his collar, which had irritated his neck to the color and texture of tenderized meat. “The point is, by tomorrow night, the next morning if we can’t hold it off, there’s gonna be a story in the news about a city inspector looking to condemn a place and turning up a few bodies in a shake house out on Everly.”

“Who are they?” Behr asked.

“Couple of Peruvian fellas running it. And let’s just say they weren’t fresh.” Pomeroy sighed and took a pause. “It’s not the first time it’s happened.”

“How many times?” Behr asked.

“One other body, two months back. And seven or eight instances of players getting terrorized and the guys running the shakes getting beat down. Bad. In the past three months. Those are the ones we’ve heard of. There must be more we haven’t.”

“Christ. You’ve sat on houses waiting for the crew?” Behr asked.

“The shakers move their locations, so does the crew. We never know which one will be next, so we keep missing,” Jerry said. Behr turned to Pomeroy, who looked annoyed but nodded.

“Seems like CIs could be developed who would-,” Behr started.

“That’s been tried. We never even get a reliable description. No one’s talking,” Pomeroy said.

“Someone always talks.” Behr had never seen a case when a confidential informant couldn’t be developed or paid or leveraged into giving up a key piece of information.

“Everybody’s scared shit. That’s the problem. You’ll see.” Pomeroy sniffed and then spit. “I want this crew, and I want it before we have a war, or the Feds, up my nuts. It’s what Caro was after, they just didn’t say it to you.”

Behr took it in. “And if I find something-a who, when, or where?”

“You let us know,” Pomeroy said.

“Simple as that? These guys are leaving behind corpses, so if I stumble into something and I need a little help and have to call for backup?” he asked.

“Don’t.” Pomeroy said. Jerry just shook his head and fought with his collar some more.

Don’t stumble, or don’t call for backup. Behr wasn’t sure. But the point was clear: there was no room for fucking up in this.

“You still wear that wheel gun?”

“Sometimes,” Behr shrugged.

“Start carrying it.”

This gave Behr pause. A police captain telling him to carry while pursuing an off-the-record case was no small deal, but then again the comment fell under attorney-client privilege, so it couldn’t come back on Pomeroy. After a long moment Behr nodded.

“Keep our communication limited and outside of regular channels. That means don’t call my office,” Pomeroy said.

“Got it,” Behr answered. He watched as Pomeroy and Jerry climbed back into their car.

“And those Caro boys-Bigby and Schmidt?”

“Let me know if you find ’em,” Pomeroy said, and then drove away.

So that was it. Behr was suddenly standing there alone thumbing the folder he’d been given. He was back inside the ring ropes. He might only be on the undercard, but at least he had a new chance at the main event.