much care for it. He took a glance over Big Boy’s shoulder and was struck anew by just how many tough young bastards there were out there pursuing the fight game. Here alone, on a Sunday evening, in a little corner of nowhere, were eight rugged bucks spanning the weight classes. Most of them had short, spiky hair or were shaved clean. All of them wore ink. Some sported tribal tats, or barbed-wire rings around their biceps, colorful pictures, or professionally done prison-style black Gothic lettering, like the jacked, shirtless kid on the end with “RTD” on his upper chest. And the thing about the game now was that it promised big money to those who studied the science. Most weren’t just brawlers anymore, though they were that, too. Besides striking and kicking, they also worked takedowns and takedown defense and could go to the ground and apply submissions. It was a nasty business indeed out there with the kids these days.
“When’s Francovic in?” Behr asked.
“I’m not his secretary,” Big Boy said. “What’s it about?”
“I want to talk to him personally,” Behr said, already tired of the interaction.
“Whyn’t you tell me who you are and I’ll let him know you came by,” Big Boy said, rolling his shoulders and loosening his neck.
“I’ll cover that when I see him,” Behr said, not wanting to tip Francovic to anything in advance, hoping to get a cold reaction from the man when they spoke.
“You come walking in here asking questions, and you won’t say who you are?” Big Boy said, his eyes going flat and angry.
“Pretty much,” Behr said, causing Big Boy’s eyes to flare outright this time.
“All right then, spiffy, have it your way,” Big Boy said, flipping Behr’s tie up in the air.
Now Behr felt his own eyes flicker in anger. He seethed for a moment but reined it in. “I’ll come back,” Behr said when he could unclench his jaw.
“You do that,” Big Boy said. They turned from each other to see the team watching the exchange.
“I said keep ’em going, Tink…,” Big Boy called out, turning to rejoin them. “All right, frog hops, motherfuckers.” Behr saw them begin the exercise, and then as he neared the door he heard something muttered, at his expense no doubt, and then there was laughter. Behr got outside, took a big suck of the cooling evening air, and got in his car.
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.
