Thirteen Million Dollar Pop Read online

  “How you doing?” Behr asked.

  “Good. I’m all right,” Kolodnik said.

  “So, an armored SUV …” Behr said, leaving it out there.

  “We have a project coming up, a big development in Mexico. Between the drug wars and the kidnappings down there, we thought we might need a half dozen for the executives and the project managers. The company in New York we ordered them from sent us this one to try, to see how it performed.”

  “Performs pretty good, I’d say,” Behr remarked, and they shared a jagged laugh. Then there was a moment’s quiet rippled only by radio calls as the cops all looked at the ground or crawled around on it. They’d found eighteen of Behr’s shell casings but were having a heck of a time locating the other two, as the things had a tendency to roll.

  “Thank you, Frank,” Kolodnik said, clearing his throat. “I mean it. What you did … That was … I really don’t know what to …”

  “Just glad how it came out,” Behr said. “Believe me.”

  Kolodnik handed Behr a business card, just his name and a telephone number engraved on heavy ivory stock. “That’s my personal number. You call me if you ever need anything.”

  Behr nodded and went back to watching the cops work, when the squealing of tires on the cement announced the arrival of another vehicle. It was a blue Cadillac STS adding its headlights to the party. Behr recognized the car as belonging to Karl Potempa, the head of Caro’s Indianapolis office. The Caddy jerked to a stop, and out jumped Potempa, looking oddly casual in a velour tracksuit with an FBI crest on the left breast. Behr had never seen the man without a necktie, but the absence of a business suit didn’t diminish his authority any, and his silver gray hair was perfectly combed. After just a handful of months on the job and no real interaction, Behr wasn’t close with Karl Potempa but knew him well enough to see he was shaken.

  “Karl,” Kolodnik said.

  “Bernie, Jesus H.” Potempa crossed to Kolodnik and wrapped him in a brief but intense embrace. “I’ve got a team reporting here, and another on your house right now. Cops were already there—all’s quiet.”

  “Good, good,” Kolodnik murmured.

  “Why don’t you wait in my car,” Potempa suggested, and Kolodnik made his way toward the Cadillac. “I’ll drive you home myself.”

  “Find any blood trail over there?” Behr asked Breslau as the lieutenant rejoined him.

  “Nope,” Breslau answered. “So twenty rounds, no confirmed hits.” It hung in the air like an allegation.

  “You notice there were none on our side either,” Behr said, indicating that he and Kolodnik were standing there, healthy as hogs, “dumb ass,” Behr finished, half under his breath. Even as it came out of his mouth, he wished he hadn’t spoken.

  “What’d you say?” Breslau demanded, his gum finally stopping for a moment.

  Behr quartered toward him. “I guess you heard me or you wouldn’t be asking.”

  “It wasn’t ducks on a pond here, Gary,” Potempa jumped in, using his command voice, a varnished baritone, as he strode closer to Breslau.

  “I know, I know,” the lieutenant said. Potempa shook Breslau’s hand in greeting, then he turned to Behr and pumped his hand with vigor.

  “Congratulations, Frank. Hell of a job tonight.”

  Behr just nodded.

  Breslau, brow knit, was already on to the next topic on his mind. “No casings on the shooter’s side. What do you make of that?”

  “Brass catcher,” Behr said flatly.

  Breslau nodded quickly. He’d either had the same thought or was quick at looking like he had.

  “Brass catcher and a flash suppressor. That’s a tactical weapon. Military,” Behr added.

  “Well …” Breslau said, “let’s not get too excited. It might be. Might be something jerry-rigged at home, too.”

  “Is that right?” Behr said.

  “I’m looking at the shot patterns here, and I’m not reading ‘professional.’ ” Behr glanced at the Toyota and the door of the Suburban and the wall behind it. Breslau wasn’t wrong: it had been some messy shooting, and he was alive thanks to it. Breslau put a hand on Potempa’s shoulder and steered him away into the police activity. “We’re pulling up security tapes and entry tickets on the garage …”

  Behr remained standing there, alone.

  3

  The bloody cunts in America had bollixed it. One of ’em was even sicked up and crying over there now.

  The Welshman, Wadsworth Dwyer, circled with his training partner, his mind far away from what he was doing. But he didn’t need to think in order to grapple. He’d been doing it for too long. He held black belts in judo and Japanese jujitsu—the kind the samurai had invented to use when the battle was to the death and the sword had been lost—and that’s how Waddy Dwyer used it. But that was just the beginning of his schooling. He’d been a striker growing up in the pubs in Merthyr and had learned military hand-to-hand at Hereford, before practicing it in piss-smelling beer holes the world over. He’d studied sambo when he was “working” in Russia just after the wall came down and liked it for its similarities to legitimate grappling. He’d quickly moved in and out of systema specnaz—the mystical and supposedly deadly art they taught to Russian Special Forces—when he’d choked out the teacher with a simple guillotine. He tried Krav Maga when he was on loan to Israeli intelligence, and liked it for its aggressive mind-set, but realized he didn’t need it much after he broke the instructor’s jaw the third day when he’d been feeling mean and homesick. That’s when he knew it was time to get out and come back to Wales.

  Wales. He must be some kind of arsehole, because he loved the weather here, cold and rainy most of the time, even in the summer, up on the top of the mountain in the Cambrians where he lived now.

  His training partner shot for a single leg takedown, and the Welshman sprawled, leaving a knee behind to clock the boy on the top of his head for his trouble. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been taken down. At five foot seven, fourteen stone, it was like toppling over a fireplug. His training partner got back up a bit slowly after the knee to the head, so Dwyer took his own shot. His was a double, and he wrapped his arms around both his training partner’s thighs and cranked to the side like he was turning a lorry’s steering wheel, dumping the boy on his head onto the hard mats.

  Bloody fucking ’ell, he thought as he leaped on top of his training partner and worked a crucifix, catching one of the boy’s arms between his legs and hyperextending it, and doing the same to the other using his hands. I’m gonna have to go to America.

  The training partner was stretched out and helpless but didn’t say “tap,” so the Welshman gave him a rap across the mouth, causing blood to run red over the boy’s teeth.

  “Fuck’s sake, Waddy!” the training partner said.

  Wadsworth Dwyer got up, certain as fuckall he hated leaving his mountaintop.

  4

  Behr sat down at the kitchen table before 7:00 A.M. and appreciated the morning light coming through the window in a slanted shaft. He hadn’t gone to bed until near 4:00, and hadn’t slept much before waking unrested but automatically around 6:00 to a day that could easily have never come for him. He couldn’t help but savor his coffee, the sweet sugar underneath the slight bitterness of the roast.

  It hadn’t been a single team that had arrived in the garage late the night before but a wave of Caro boys who flooded in after the call had gone out and word spread.

  To do what? Behr wondered. It wasn’t clear. To help with the investigation, perhaps. To herd up and feel the numbers of the organization standing strong against an outside threat. Or maybe it was simply to tack man-hours onto Kolodnik’s bill. Behr had caught a ride with one of them to his car, which was parked back at Kolodnik’s office, and had then driven home.

  “Hi,” Susan had said when he’d walked in, looking up from the body pillow she hugged, aware of how late it was. The television was on in the bedroom.

  “What’s this?
” he asked. She often fell asleep to the TV, and she’d been sleeping not watching, but a glance gave her the answer.

  “Women Behind Bars. Mostly wives who killed their husbands.”

  Susan was a fan of true crime and reality shows. “You thinking about bumping me off?” Behr asked. “Studying where they slipped up?”

  “We’d have to be married first for that,” she said.

  “Right.”

  “Why are you so late?” she asked.

  He’d sat down on the edge of the bed and after catching a look at the large swell of her belly beneath the bedsheets, told her everything, trying to make it sound as routine as possible, which it wasn’t, and she knew it.

  Behr went for his second cup of coffee. His shoulders and neck and his knees and wrists felt raw this morning. It wasn’t a question of injury, but as if all the adrenaline that had fired through his system, the absolute tensing of every muscle, had an effect similar to a full body workout. He didn’t mind it. He didn’t have a problem with anything that reminded him he wasn’t dead right about now.

  He looked down at the morning paper to find they had the story. But they’d missed most of the details due to how late the deal had gone down. No names of the players were mentioned, just that two men had been fired upon in a downtown parking garage, that the shooter or shooters had gotten away, that no one had been killed.

  Susan entered the kitchen and looked at him, noticing his shirt and tie, and the suit jacket hanging over the back of his chair.

  “You’re going in to the office?” she asked, surprised.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. “What else am I gonna do?”

  “No workout today?” she wondered. Almost every morning around 5:30 or so he’d be at it—running or weights, various other types of strength training, hitting the heavy bag or rolling Brazilian jujitsu. Not today though. After last night, there was something about it that seemed superfluous.

  “I took a holiday on account of being alive,” he said, smiling, trying to sound light.

  “Seems like a good reason,” she said, going to get a mug for the one cup of coffee a day her obstetrician allowed. “I didn’t even hear you get up. I’m sleeping like someone dropped a cinder block on my head these days.” Susan was complaining a lot about how tired she was, which was unusual for her—both the complaining and the fatigue. Her customary state was one of vivacious energy. “Have I mentioned that being pregnant isn’t much fun?”

  “You might’ve, once or twice,” he said. “A couple more weeks, then it’s lounging around and bonbon time,” he said, alluding to the start of her upcoming maternity leave.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard newborns are easy,” she said. “You want to go look at that place over on Guilford after work?” They’d given up Susan’s apartment three months back. It was nicer than his but small, while his had the extra bedroom that, though currently serving as a storage space, could be set up for the baby. But since his steady Caro money had been rolling in, they’d been seriously considering moving somewhere nicer. There were some new town houses over in Broad Ripple that would be a clean, fresh place to raise a child.

  “Sure,” he said, “shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll let you know if they’re going to keep me late.”

  5

  Morning had stolen in like a secret, and the big house was still and empty and quiet around Lowell Gantcher. Nancy and the kids were away in lake country for the month and he wasn’t doing well alone. He’d spent the night checking the paper’s Web page every minute for updates and had quickly begun to feel like he was playing the starring role in an unfolding nightmare. At first there’d been no information. Then there’d been a brief bulletin at around 4:30 A.M. He had kept checking incessantly, waiting for further details, but they didn’t come. The starkly worded initial report was all there was for hours.

  He’d taken to pacing around the house. Ten thousand square feet of living space, plus three thousand more in the finished basement that included screening, workout, and poker rooms, probably was a bit much. It hadn’t seemed so when he and Nancy had been buying it and tricking it out, but it was a real bull market house. That was only two and a half, three years ago, but it seemed a lot longer. Hell, they hadn’t even gotten the place fully furnished yet.

  He sat in the study, which was dark and silent, and wrapped in oak paneling. The only light in the room was the early sunlight bleeding through the closed slats of the horizontal blinds, which were also made of oak. This room was furnished. It was done up to the nines. His hands rested on a massive mahogany partners desk. There were matching leather couches and armchairs in a lustrous tobacco color, silver frames and leather-bound books on the shelves around a wet bar. Over the marble fireplace hung a plasma television that was so large it could serve as the scoreboard in a minor-league baseball park. It was the first room that had been done once the master and the kids’ bedrooms had been made livable. When they’d been walking around the newly built house, it was the study that had practically sold the place. The Realtor drifted away, leaving them alone, and Nancy had turned to him and said, “Let’s buy it. You’ll be like Don Corleone in here.”

  “Yeah?” he said, hesitating for a moment.

  “Yes, Lo. Every man needs a Godfather room.” And she gave him that smile that inspired him to greatness, that made him feel he was able to do anything, and they’d bought the place. But Don Corleone was a grave and powerful man, restrained and effective. Lowell was an aspirational real estate developer who had fed on times of easy credit until he’d practically turned into white dough. He even felt pale and washed out sitting there. The phrase “nouveau riche” was one he’d just recently learned.

  It seemed simple once, to sit at the brand-new partners desk, going over statements that outlined the take of each machine and table and the casino’s total. How could there be trouble in the world? he’d wondered back then.

  But now he was staring at a B rating on his venture. B. When he was in college a B would’ve been a welcome sight on his transcript. But now, because ratings started at AAA, a single, measly B was six classes down the quality scale; and once an investment had ticked south out of the A’s, it started to stink worse than a road-killed skunk. With a tumble from even BBB, there was no chance of rescue investors coming in now. No chance at all.

  A report had recently landed on his desktop full of projections that intimated the state’s casino business had hit a high-water mark. That was more bad news. Adding to the gloomy forecast was out-of-state competition, the specter of those sausage eaters in Chicago passing gaming downtown, and the god-blessed Indians opening up all over the place with their tax-sheltered free rolls. A housing slump, a credit crunch, and record unemployment sucking disposable income out the customers’ pockets were the final grim strokes to the ugly picture. There was only one hope, and that was abatement by the state on the 75-million-dollar-per-year gaming license tax.

  He heard tires on gravel. It was the sound he’d been waiting for. He hurried to the door to see a battered Honda Civic driving away, and the morning paper resting in its pink plastic sleeve at the end of the driveway. He hurried barefoot to get it, the sharp gravel digging into the soles of his feet. He bent and picked up the paper, tearing the plastic away, and scanned with his eyes while he hop-ran back to the house. What he read confirmed what he’d seen online. He didn’t make it back to the house. He collapsed to his knees on the pebbled ground, as if he’d been hit in the gut with an ax handle. Powerful, ungodly, tearless sobs shook his chest. It was all going to end.

  6

  Behr walked through the walnut doors into the Caro Group office well before 9:00, but there were nearly a dozen investigators and clerical staff already there, and when they saw him they started clapping. He didn’t know what to do with himself, so he stood there dumbly for a moment, until the applause and a single whistle subsided.

  When he headed for his desk, Joanne, the new receptionist, smiled and wished him good morning as if he were the mayor.r />
  “Frank Behr in … Bulletproof!” a mock announcer’s voice rang out as Behr put his stuff down. It was a pair of investigators, Reidy and Malick, who pumped his hand and gave him a few whacks on the shoulder.

  “You get a look at the shooter?” Reidy wondered.

  “Didn’t get a look at anything,” Behr said.

  “You put any in him, you think?” Malick asked.

  “Don’t know. Doubt it,” Behr answered. “They didn’t find any blood.”

  “Don’t mean he wasn’t hit,” Reidy opined.

  “It was dark.” Behr shrugged and after a moment the investigators drifted on and Behr went to pour himself a coffee.

  He was in the break room filling up, when Pat Teague walked in looking rumpled around the edges as usual.

  “Holy Christ, Frank, I knew that was a shit detail when I asked you to switch,” he set in, forcing a laugh.

  “Sure was,” Behr said, giving him back a smile.

  “How the hell are you?” Teague asked and didn’t wait for an answer. “When my BlackBerry binged and I saw the e-mail that went around, I almost crapped myself. Couldn’t sleep the rest of the night. I e-mailed you, did you get it?”

  Behr nodded. An e-mail from Teague inquiring about his health had come through, but he hadn’t bothered responding.

  “I would’ve called too, if it wasn’t so late,” Teague continued. “I mean, shit, Frank, it should’ve been me out there …”

  “Don’t worry about it, Pat, luck of the draw,” Behr said. “How was the game, anyway?”

  “Oh, it was fine. Forget that—I’m just glad everyone’s still using up some air here.”

  “You and me both,” Frank said.

  “Some shit detail,” Teague said again. That’s when Karl Potempa, hair locked down, and razor sharp in a blue pinstripe, appeared in the doorway.