that the mat had been cleansed of Aurelio’s blood. He had also seen a few people with dark hair and caramel complexion moving around inside, setting up coffee and pastries. The family, he surmised. But he wasn’t ready to go face-to-face with them yet, and he walked away from the window. Instead, he visited the rest of the businesses in the strip center. The check-cashing place was closed, and would be until Monday at 9:00 A.M. according to an hours sign hanging on the door. He visited the dry cleaner, the sandwich shop, and the shoe store, which were all open despite it being a Sunday. The current economy was not one that allowed many businesses the luxury of a day off. He ran his questions with the owners and employees: Was anybody at work here that morning? Did you see anyone suspicious in the area in the days before it happened? Do you have exterior security cameras? Do your interior security cameras pick up anything outside through the windows? All he got in response was “no,” “no,” and “no,” as well as “we already told this to the cops and who, exactly, are you?”
After a while Behr noticed cars showing up and a stream of people, some of them students and instructors he recognized, heading into the academy. It was time.
Behr entered to find the place four times as crowded as he’d ever seen it. Besides the regular members of the school, many others were arriving. Aurelio was something of a legend in mixed martial arts, and lots of trainers, aficionados, and fighters, past and present, were entering, some even famous. Behr could only wonder at the attendance had the memorial been held in Las Vegas or Los Angeles. Things were more cramped than they would have been, because the mat where Aurelio had been found was taped off, and the proceedings were held in the waiting and warm-up area.
Snuffling, coughing, and wiping of tears had already begun even though people were only milling about and speaking informally. A framed and prominently displayed thirty-inch photo of Aurelio in his prime, smiling, his hands raised in victory as he straddled the cage wall after a fight, was enough to break them all down. A ring of votive candles burned around the photo, and soulful Brazilian guitar music played softly out of a boom box. Behr walked past the massive and impressive display of Aurelio’s trophies, belts, and awards. He felt awkward, attired as he was in blazer and tie. Most of the others, especially the Brazilians, were dressed much more casually. He greeted several instructors and a few of the students he knew.
He also noted the IMPD detective on the case, there clocking those in attendance, based on the old saw that the killer often can’t stop himself from going to the funeral, Behr supposed. He didn’t know the guy, who was trying to blend in by the coffee machine, but it was clear enough who he was-after all, he was wearing a blazer and tie just like Behr. Behr gave him a nod across the room. Nothing came back.
Despite today’s turnout, the school was still small, Behr realized, perhaps three more years from really starting to grow and needing a larger space. Aurelio had left Brazil a decade ago, but he had first gone to New York, where he had trained out of a cousin’s gym. After he had finished the main body of his career as a fighter, he had decided to find a new city in which to establish his own training center and had moved to Indianapolis. This was the way Brazilian jiu-jitsu spread-families and friends built their schools in loose association with more established ones. They used their reputations to make inroads into new markets. Eventually, as the original students, the ones who hung in, started to earn their brown and black belts, took on some of the teaching duties, and began competing and winning in local and regional matches, a school really sunk its roots and grew. Aurelio’s was just on the cusp of that kind of success. Now there was a real question as to whether or not the place would survive without him.
As he moved through the crowd, Behr lightly grabbed elbows of the locals and doled out business cards, asking people to e-mail him so he could be in touch. Those who knew him, and what he did for a living, asked him if he’d heard anything. This was a bad sign. A lot of the time people didn’t know how much they actually knew, and he believed there must be something out there, but he already felt like a jackal scavenging for scraps of information during a time of mourning. He couldn’t take it much further at the moment. The other bad sign was that the police had turned the location back over to the family after only a few days. After their initial processing of the crime scene, they must not have felt there was any more hope of physical evidence.
Behr steeled himself and moved through a maze of folding chairs and a din of English, broken English, and Portuguese, toward the family in its place of honor.
“Mr. and Mrs. Santos? Frank Behr. I was a student. My condolences.” He wasn’t sure if they spoke English, and after they nodded their thanks, he still wasn’t. He moved past them to two men in their late twenties or early thirties. Curly haired, heavy featured, and fit, they were clearly Aurelio’s brothers. They flanked a dark-haired, grief-stricken young woman with red-rimmed eyes whom Behr pegged as a sister.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Behr said to them, shaking their hands between both of his.
“You train with my brother?” the older one asked. “I’m Alberto.”
“Yeah, Frank Behr. I was taking private-”
“Oh, sure, ’Elio told us about you. He say you will be a pain in the ass to submit one day soon. He say you forget you only training.”
“I’m stupid like that,” Behr said. He glanced over at the other brother, who seemed to be listening.
“Rory don’t speak English,” Alberto said. Then Alberto spoke Portuguese and Behr heard his name. Then Rory said a few words including “detetive.”
Alberto turned to him. “You are a detective?”
Behr nodded.
“The police say there is nothing so far. You can maybe find something about what happened?” he asked. The desperation Behr saw in such a strong man’s eyes made it all the more unbearable.
“I’ll try. I am trying,” Behr said.
Rory, who’d been following the exchange in silence, stood up. He crossed to a table where perhaps a dozen Brazilian flags were folded. Rory took one and handed it to Behr and then spoke in Portuguese.
“These are the flags he wear into the ring,” Alberto translated. Behr knew that Aurelio’s practice was to drape one around his shoulders when entering, and he waved them and held them aloft to the crowd after a win. “We want to give them to the special students. To remember.”
Behr felt the green flag, smooth and shiny under his fingers, and stood there for a moment unable to speak. He finally nodded his thanks and scratched out an “Obrigado… obrigado.” He looked up and saw that Alberto’s eyes were moist, but he wore a smile so close to Aurelio’s they might have shared the one.
“Your accent is good,” he said. “So tell me, I don’t see the new girl. You know her?”
“Girl…?” Behr began.
“The one he start with maybe six weeks ago,” Alberto said. “I don’t speak to him much in these days, he so busy. So busy with her. He don’t tell me her name, just that there is a new girl.”
Five hours a week alone with the guy, and he didn’t know something as basic as his new girlfriend. Behr marveled at his own anti-people skills, his ability to not connect. Before the conversation could continue, Aurelio’s father stood and cleared his throat.
“We talk again after, I translate for my father now,” Alberto said. Behr nodded and moved toward the door where there were still one or two empty seats.
Aurelio’s father began in halting, emotional Portuguese for a time and then allowed his son to speak his words to the room. “My son Aurelio love the jiu-jitsu. My father taught me. I teach Aurelio. And even though he don’t have a son, he love the people he teach. He do it from when he was five year old and it is his life…” The father spoke again for a few moments and Behr’s mind ran back over some of the many things Aurelio had taught him, and taught him the hard way-by using them on him. The guillotine, the reverse guillotine, front headlock choke, omaplata, gogoplata, knee bar, ankle lock, the Western, the stocks, kimura, jujigitame-arm bar-of all stripes, triangle choke, arm triangle, bolt cutter, a nasty one called the crucifix. The list went on and on. The variety and combination of the moves was an endless and fluid stream from Aurelio, but then it had stopped in the abrupt, graceless way that only death could bring.
Behr had a reason for choosing his seat near the door: as inappropriate as it was to walk out on a friend’s memorial, Behr knew it was his last best chance to get into Aurelio’s house. The family, if they were staying at his place, as he assumed they were, would all be at the school for the next little while. When the ceremony was over it was likely they would go back and begin packing his personal effects, and Behr would lose the chance for good. He only hoped the police wouldn’t still be sitting on the house, or that he’d have the good judgment not to go in anyway.
The father paused in his words and then Alberto took over once more. “My son have a special way with the people. He always compete with the most respect,” he said. “He never try to make someone feel small, he always try to lift up when he teach,” Behr raised his eyes and scanned the room. Several of the fighters were nodding.
