Where the dead lay

TWENTY-ONE

Darkness had fallen gunmetal blue over the city by the time Behr reached Donohue’s. It had been a long day, a long weekend, a long week, but it wasn’t going to be over until he worked his Caro case at least a little. He wanted a beer and he needed information, and he didn’t know a better place to get those things than Donohue’s. He cracked the door and the amber light spilled onto him. Business was quiet, and the half-dozen drinkers at the bar kept half an eye on an Indians game playing on the elevated corner television. Behr saw Pal Murphy, crisp in his white dress shirt and gold-framed shades, sitting in his owner’s booth and going over some paperwork. It would’ve been bad form for him to go rushing over there, so Behr pulled up at the corner of the bar and raised a finger to Arch Currey, who nodded and moved toward the taps. During the fall and winter that finger meant Beck’s Dark; since it was summer it meant Oberon Ale.

“Thanks,” Behr said, feeling the ale’s cold bite. “I could use a minute with the man when he’s ready.”

“Sure, hang out,” Arch said, then crossed out from under the bar to Pal. They had a muted exchange and Pal nodded before Arch returned to his post.

“He says, sure, hang out,” Arch said as he climbed back under the bar.

“Will do. How’re things?”

“Quiet enough,” Arch said, and then began wiping down bottles.

Behr nodded hello to Kaitlin, with her pen behind one ear, wispy strands of dyed blond hair behind the other, who stood on the service side of the bar leafing through a tabloid magazine.

Behr had just received his second Oberon when he glanced over at Pal, who pushed aside his papers and gave him the nod.

Behr slid into the booth across from Pal Murphy and they shook hands. Pal’s exact age was difficult to determine-Behr pegged him somewhere between sixty-five and eighty. Pal’s skin had a desiccated, parchment quality to it, and laugh crinkles cut deep at the corners of his eyes, though they must’ve been pretty ancient because in the twelve years Behr had been coming to Donohue’s, he couldn’t recall Pal laughing.

“So, Frank,” Pal said, gravel under his voice.

“You need a drink?” Behr asked. Pal preferred small batch whiskey, if he recalled. Behr wasn’t offering to buy, it being Pal’s place, but merely get it for him.

Pal raised his half-full coffee cup in response, so Behr got to it.

“I’m working a thing,” Behr said, “and I don’t have the luxury of time.”

“Who does?”

“Someone’s making a run at the shake houses,” Behr said.

“Robbing ’em?” Pal asked.

“Not sure. Robbing ’em, squeezing ’em. Something. I need to know who, or to be at one before they get to it, not after.”

“Why’s it your problem?” Pal asked.

“It just is,” Behr said.

“Course. Dumb question, forget I asked it.”

“You didn’t. If there’s something you hear, and it’s something you can tell, I’d appreciate you passing it on,” Behr said. “For some reason it’s not information that’s been previously available.”

It was tricky with Pal. He was one of the most wired guys in the city. There were plenty of rumors about what he was into, and more about what he’d done when he was young. In a world with immigrant gangs showing up in the city each week, and truck-loads of meth and weed rumbling by on the interstates, an old-world gent like Pal, with his patronage and hookups, wasn’t often bothered by the cops. And he kept it that way by playing his every day like a chess master. Behr merely hoped his request fell into the fabric of Pal’s larger plan.

The older man’s eyes pinched, causing the skin at the corners to wrinkle, and Behr realized they were lines of thought, not laughter, and that he’d done plenty of that over the years. “Okay,” was all he said.

“I hate asking,” Behr said, “but I’ll owe you-”

“You’ve done for me. And if I can… you know, we’ll keep it going.”

Behr nodded his thanks and stood.

Terry Schlegel sat behind the wheel of his Charger and peered at the broke-ass house. It was astonishing, but half a dozen cars had arrived over the last fifteen minutes. He looked over at Knute. “You believe this motherfucker?”

Knute just shook his head. It was kind of incredible, but then again, since he’d been “inside,” and certainly since he’d been back out, nothing about human behavior really surprised him anymore. “People just act in their own self-interest, man,” he said. “Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong.”

“Well, this taco’s got it all the way wrong,” Terry said. “This was supposed to be simple. But we need to step it up, so we step it up. This is how we step it up.” He was really just tossing the words around in his mind, trying to keep his thinking linear and efficient, which was hard to do considering the dirty sonofabitch who was still open for business and farting in their faces.

Terry tried to force out the rage and focus on where he was at, and on the future. He remembered when he’d sat with Knute and Financial Gary-who was also known as “Numbers”-a few weeks after Knute’s release and presented the idea.

“I want to get into pea-shake houses,” he’d said.

“Mice nuts,” was Numbers’s response. And he was right- the take from an individual pea-shake house was meaningless on its own.

“I don’t want three of ’em, man. I want ’em all,” Terry said. There was a moment’s stunned silence, as Numbers calculated.

“All of ’em rounded up and operated together? Now that’s a huge business,” he said.

“Right,” said Terry.

“How huge?” Knute asked.

“Millions. Tens of millions. Maybe a fucking hundred,” Gary said. Terry just nodded. He was no whiz like Financial Gary, but he’d roughed out a general idea. “You want to be Starbucks…,” Gary continued, with admiration.

“Fuckin’-A,” Terry said. “Except I don’t want to round ’em up and operate ’em.”

“No?” Numbers asked.

“No, because we’ll get skimmed and beat and ratted on. It just won’t work. What I want is to close ’em down, kill the business city-wide-”

Numbers nodded, excited now. “Create a vacuum-”

“That’s right, create a vacuum, and then open our own to fill it,” Terry finished.

Knute shook his head wearily, the practical little bastard. “That’s gonna be a lot of work. A lot of work.”

“Yep,” Terry had said. “You think you were gonna get out and relax? You were supposed to rest inside.”

So they’d gotten started. The pea-shake houses run by white dudes had fallen like dominoes. They knew half the guys operating those joints, and they were willing, if not happy to close for a while and agreed to let the Schlegels take over later rather than face the alternative. A roughneck out by Speedway held fast but reconsidered after he’d had his dental work rearranged by Terry’s boys. That turned out to be good advertising anyway.

When they moved into the Latin market, word was already spreading. A pair of hard cases out by the fairgrounds had stood up and had to be dealt with-fucking immigrants had a lot more sack than real Americans these days-but that was it. The gangs supposedly had a piece of some of the houses, but they hadn’t come forward to claim them. And if they had, the Newt had some connections from Michigan City he could work out a deal with. The converts and closures started coming fast. Before long, any houses that were still shaking were too small to get on their radar. One place was so accommodating when they showed up that they decided to just leave it open to get a better idea of the take. “Beta testing” Numbers Gary had called it. But that had turned to shit in its own special way, for Dean anyhow. Maybe showing a little lenience and mercy had been a mistake, because now there was this current stubborn prick… But that would be ending tonight. Once the Latin ones went, they’d start hammering the black-run houses. They expected some opposition there, which is why they saved them for last. Terry wanted them to feel like the odds were stacked against them, like they were in the Alamo and surrounded.

Then, when the darkies had gone down they’d reopen big-time to fill the void. The players would come in droves once word got out that it was safe. Between him and Knute and the boys, and other guys they knew, they had all the right personnel to operate fewer but more profitable houses city-wide.

“It can’t last forever,” Knute had said.

“Don’t have to. We only need to be up for a month or so, show some returns, before we sell,” Terry responded, and the others had gotten it.

Now, Knute nodded in the car. It was easy enough for him to follow the disjointed statement. After they were open and were pea shake in town, for all intents and purposes, buyers from Chicago, or maybe Campbell Doray locally, would take them out lump sum, buying the infrastructure for cash, and the Schlegels would stay on in management for a cut, under the umbrella of protection, of course. It actually mirrored standard mergers and acquisition procedure, according to Numbers Gary.

An electronic beep punctured the quiet of the car. Kenny and the boys had just arrived, and his voice blared over the walkie-talkie feature of his phone. “You believe this dumb fucking cholo?” Kenny said.

“Shut your phone off,” Terry answered, trading a look with Knute, and then shut off his own. A moment later the back door of Charlie’s Durango opened and Kenny came running back to the driver’s window.

Terry lowered his window. “You want the cops to be able to triangulate our whereabouts by cell records-,” he began.

“Sorry, Pop-,” Kenny cut in.

“Why don’t you send ’em a text message while you’re at it?”

“All right. Good idea. I’ll set up a Web cam, too-”

“Enough,” Terry said, and Kenny shut up. “Where have you been?”

“Training. So what’s the play?” Kenny asked. “We go in storm trooper?”

“Not this time,” Terry said. “You guys tried to make your point, and this fucker missed it. Get back in the truck and wait till all the players leave. Tell Dean to come over here.”

Kenny’s eyes went serious. He nodded and walked back to the Durango.

Behr left Donohue’s and was headed home when his car seemed to develop a mind of its own and he found himself parked in front of the building on Schultz Park. He went to the door and buzzed but got no answer. He had turned and was walking back to his car when an early ’90s silver Honda Accord rolled down the street and parked. A tall, black-haired woman got out and started for the building. Behr felt himself hitch and process something unconscious. He slowed his step as he reached his car, turned and moved quietly back for the door. She was putting her key in the lock when he spoke.

“I’ve been trying to reach you,” he said, noticing her shoulders jerk upward in surprise. “I think…” He let her face him before he said more, and when she did, he was struck by her beauty. Her skin was creamy and mocha colored, her lips full, her eyes dark. “Flavia Inez, right? My name is Frank Behr,” he said.

“Frank Behr?” she asked.

“I’m a private investigator. I left you messages regarding Aurelio Santos,” he said, flat and sure, leaving her no room to maneuver. She processed it quickly and nodded.

“Yes, of course.” There was the slightest of Latin accents under her words. “Would you like to come in?”

I found the girlfriend, Behr thought.

Her apartment was dark, and when she flipped the switch it was still mostly dark, because all the lights were on dimmers. There was a faint whiff of sandalwood incense in the air. A large piece of batik fabric functioning as a shade flapped in the slight breeze coming through an open window. There was a white slipcovered couch and chair that appeared to have come in a set, and a dark wood coffee table covered with crystal figurines of dolphins. The kitchen was new-a stainless steel fridge and range, granite countertops and cherrywood cabinets. Even if it was a rental, the place cost some money.

“So you heard what happened to Aurelio?” Behr said as she tossed her keys on the counter.

“I did. How terrible,” she said plainly. “Would you like some water?”

“No thanks,” Behr answered. “How come you weren’t at the memorial?”

“I couldn’t make it. I really wanted to, but I had an appointment.”

“I see,” Behr said, wondering at the cool temperature of her voice.

“He was such a nice guy…,” she said, as if recalling a grade-school friend she hadn’t seen for years.

“You were his girlfriend…?” Behr half asked.

“Me? No.”

“No?” There was a moment of silence as she shook her head. Her smooth hair shushed over her shoulders when she did. Behr forced his eyes from her and glanced at some framed photos on a shelf. He saw none of Aurelio. There were shots of Flavia out with girlfriends, and others of an older couple-her parents it seemed-and one of an even older couple, likely her grandparents.

“He was a good-looking guy, but I just got out of something and wanted a break.”

Behr thought of Ezra’s condition back at her prior building. “I think your ex roughed up your old building manager.”

“Ezra?” she said, concerned, her hand coming to her mouth. “Is he all right?”

“A little banged up, but okay.”

She pouted over it for a moment and then moved on. “He told you where to find me?”

“Let’s just leave it at I found you,” Behr said. “How’d you know Aurelio?”

“He was my teacher.”

“He was teaching you jiu-jitsu?” Behr asked. She didn’t seem the type. But that was the thing about martial arts, especially a grappling style; it brought in all kinds. “I never saw you at the school. What class did you usually take?”

“I was taking private lessons. I don’t like to go to classes in a group. I learn better on my own,” she said, and Behr felt himself nodding in agreement.

“Nice place you’ve got here,” he said.

“I’ve been doing pretty well lately.”

“What do you do? You don’t mind my asking…”

“I’m a hairstylist,” she said.

“Must have some good clients.” He did his best to sound light.

“Yeah, a lot pay in cash. Don’t tell the government on me.” She hit him with a mischievous smile.

“I won’t,” he said. He found it difficult to imagine anyone acting against her wishes. But even she had managed to find some son of a bitch who had caused her to run for it and cover her tracks when she went. “So how did you meet him, by the way?”

She made a scissor-cutting motion with her fingers. “Of course,” Behr said. “When was this?”

“A couple, three months back,” she said, and then she unzipped and peeled off her sweatshirt down to a tight-fitting tank top that revealed her inviting figure. She carried an extra five pounds down by her hips where her velour pants sat. Somehow the extra weight suited her though, and the color of the thong panties that rode up at her lower back made Behr think of mangoes before he realized his mind had wandered.

“He came into your shop?” Behr asked, racking his brain for any recollection of Aurelio sporting a memorable haircut. How good a job would she really have to do to keep you coming back? Behr thought to himself.

“I’ve been between places for a while,” she smiled. “It was a referral. It must’ve been.”

“Who?” Behr asked, not pleased at all by the bald interrogatories he was tossing around.

Her shoulders went up and down in an I don’t know, and she yawned in a way that made Behr feel old and lame for concerning himself with such trivialities. “Mr…?”

“Behr,” he said. “Call me Frank.”

“Frank. I’m tired, can we…”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll get out of here,” he said, heading for the door, then pausing. “So, nothing between you and Aurelio?”

“We joked about going out after all the rolling around on the mat. It didn’t happen. Like I said.”

“Right. Your ex.”

“Yeah. Never happen now.” A slight shadow of sadness passed over her eyes, and Behr found himself on the other side of the door. “I don’t know if you write reports or who else you’ll be talking to, but could you leave my name and address out? I’m in a place in my life where I just want to be under the radar, you know?”

That ex must be some peach, Behr thought, then nodded. “Okay, shouldn’t be a problem,” he said.

“Give me a call if you want a haircut.” She treated him to a last, heavy-lidded smile.

“I will,” he said, and the door closed.

• • •

They went in through the front door, loaded. Terry was first, then Knute, Charlie, and Kenny. Dean was already inside. The dude running the place didn’t know him, so he’d slipped in as a player. Deanie was to spread fifty dollars, and when the shake was over and the other players were leaving, go into the bathroom. When it sounded quiet, he was to emerge and unlock the front door for them. They had seen the people exiting the house and the cars starting to leave the street. When everyone had gone, they pulled in close, pointing their vehicles east, the direction they wanted to go when it was done, and left them running. Then they went around back of the Durango and armed up. Kenny took his pipe, and Knute the bat. Charlie had his gun and offered the flashlight to Terry, who passed on it and instead chose a machete that had been sharpened on a grinder at the shop and had duct tape wrapped around the handle until it was as comfortable to hold as a tennis racquet. Then they went single file toward the house.

As they reached the door they heard the muffled pop from a small-caliber handgun from inside.

“Is your brother carrying a piece?” Terry asked, moving quickly.

“Uh-uh,” Charlie said.

Terry tried the knob. It turned and the door swung open. Deanie had done his job. They stepped inside to see him wrestling with the little spic pea shaker, numbered plastic balls rolling all over the floor around them.

Terry crossed the living room in two steps and grabbed the Latin man by the hair, wrenching his head back.

“He’s got a gun,” Dean yelled when he saw them.

“Are you shot?” Terry asked.

“No,” Dean grunted. Terry saw that Dean had both hands locked around the Latin man’s wrist, immobilizing a piece of shit silver. 32. Terry hit the man in the side of the head with the butt of the machete and wrenched the gun out of his hand.

“You little fucking asshole,” Terry seethed. He stepped down on the man’s back with most of his weight, pinning him to the floor and allowing Dean to get up. “Good job, Deanie,” Terry said.

“Fuckin’-A, bro,” Charlie said.

Dean climbed to his feet, a little shocked, and rubbed the powder burn on the underside of his wrist. “Shit,” he said.

They all grabbed a part of the pea shaker-his arms, his legs, his neck-and gang carried him toward the back bedroom.

How have things gone so malo for the Nogeros so quickly? Hector wondered, fear surging through him like a current. He’d been in the hospital all day with Chaco, sitting beside the bed of his father, who lay in a coma, then he’d bought the gun in the alley behind a criolla restaurant, and when he’d returned for the evening shake and found Austin was a no-show, he had no time to replace him. So when the tall, shaggy-haired man he’d never seen before showed up, there was little he could do to stop it, short of pulling his new gun and clearing the house. Instead, he’d let him in to play, taken the fifty-dollar bill, and set up the shake. Hector was doing it all on his own now, since the girl also hadn’t come back after the attack. When the drawing and the payouts were finished, all the players started to leave, and he’d lost track of the new man. Then, when the house had gone quiet, Hector saw him emerge from the bathroom and move toward the front door. Instead of leaving, the man turned the lock.

“What the hell?” Hector said, wasting no time in pulling his new gun.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the new man said, raising his hands. “I was just taking a piss…”

But when Hector came close, to throw him out and lock the door behind him, the new man lunged at him and tackled him to the ground. Hector managed to fire a shot, but it must’ve gone into the floor because the new man didn’t lose strength. In fact, he was strong as a bull, Hector realized with dismay. Then he heard footsteps and voices inside the house and felt the blow to his head. Hector saw the ceiling rush by as he was carried down the hall, before his vision went black and blurry from what he knew must be blood running into his eyes.

Hector felt himself tossed down onto the sheetless bed and managed to get a hand loose. He wiped his eyes to see them. He recognized three of them from the last time. And there was another man, older than the rest, but resembling them-the father he felt-leaning over him. He thought of Chaco and knew his boy would be hiding in his cabinet in the den. The thought gave him the force to fight, and he ripped a foot loose, kicking up into the face of the youngest. The young man barely flinched.

“Cocksucker,” he said, and spit down on Hector.

“All right, hold him,” the father said, the cords in his neck standing out like high-voltage wires, and Hector felt himself held still. The air went thick with the finality of it, even before it happened.

“No,” Hector said. Then he felt his head jerked back by the hair and his throat exposed. He saw the father loom over him and raise a machete, his black eyes devoid of light. Chaco, flashed through Hector’s mind, Papa. The blade came down toward him.