Where the dead lay

FORTY-THREE

The shit had truly hit the fan. The Schlegels had been blown up and burned the fuck down. Terry done, Dean done, Vicky locked down, and Kenny and Charlie apparently lit out for the territories. Knute Bohgen had just lost all the friends he currently had, along with the only thing in his life that passed for a semblance of family. He no longer had an income stream, or any real ideas on how to open a new one.

He had sat in his car down the street from Rubber House watching the police activity and calling guys he knew who worked there. Rumors were flying thick and furious already. SWAT had taken the place down. Terry had wasted a handful of them before they got him. An ex-cop had shot him. They’d surrounded the place, and after they lobbed in gas, Terry ate his gun.

Knute didn’t know the truth, and he didn’t much care to at this point. There was really only one thing on his mind, and that was getting a piece of payback for all of them.

The Tip-Over Tap Room was not currently open. Besides Terry, Knute was the only one with a set of keys, so it’d be a perfect place to meet with the Chicago guys, whom he’d called and told to hang back for a while until the cops had dispersed. After having a drink and seeing what was in the safe to pay them with, Knute would call the Chicago guys again, have them come in, and give them the assignment of punching this Frank Behr’s ticket. Even if there was nothing in the safe, Knute felt pretty sure he could talk them into doing it on a payment plan. After all, their asses were riding on the outcome, too.

The building was dark and locked, as it should have been. That’s why it was such a goddamned surprise to Knute when he walked into the back office and saw they were already there.

“What the fuck’s up, guys?” Knute said, reaching into his pocket and coming out with a slip of paper that had Behr’s address on it. “You’re early.”

Tino nodded and kicked the office door shut behind Knute, who felt the air change in the room, just like out on the yard at ISP before someone got offed. It just changed. It got cold or dark or somehow unfamiliar and indistinct. Whatever it was, Knute didn’t have much time to weigh it, because the quiet one, Petey wrapped him up in a bear hug and lifted him straight off the floor. The guy was strong as fuck, and all of a sudden Knute felt weak as diner coffee…

When he’d recall it later, Petey wouldn’t remember the man with the pink scar on his face fighting very hard, but then again, when it finally comes, there’s not much use in fighting it. Before long it was over and they’d wrapped him in a blue plastic tarpaulin. They considered whether or not they should drop him in the same place they’d done the dumping the last time, but that spot hadn’t seemed to hold up very well. Bobby B. figured he knew another one that was a lot closer and easier. Knute Bohgen never made it beyond the parking lot-specifically his own trunk. Petey remembered to pick up the slip of paper that Bohgen had dropped. Add-on jobs were not the way you stayed out of jail in their line of work. Eliminating the nexus was. Petey burned the paper before they made their way out, back to Chicago.