“You all right?” Behr asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, “you know, just geeked.”
“Geeked over what?” Behr asked, but got no answer, save a nervous giggle from Kid. A tremorlike sideways twitch of the head was starting to develop in him, too. Behr looked deep into his eyes. There was a lot of sparkle, but not enough coherence. “What are you on?” Behr demanded.
“Nothing,” Kid said.
“No?”
“No, man,” Kid pleaded, looking hurt. “Just geeked to be helping-”
“’Cause I won’t deal with you if you’re on something,” Behr said flatly, trying to figure out what it was-coke, meth, pills-or whether he was just a freak.
“I had a few Beam and Cokes and a few of these,” he pointed at a half-killed pint of the black that had lost its head.
“What’s a few?”
“Just a few. Don’t worry, after my last tour I could probably drink a gallon of Beam and not even feel it.”
“Congratulations,” Behr said, standing and lifting a diamond-shaped piece of pizza, half of which he ate with a single bite. “So where are we headed?”
The answer was Fionn MacCool’s, an Irish pub out in Fishers. The brick building tried to re-create the Dublin effect and housed a bar, tables, a dance floor, and a small stage where live music and toe dancing were performed. The place was popular with the young smart set, and around St. Patrick’s Day was sure to be full of “Drunk Me I’m Irish” T-shirts and green beer puke running in the street. Behr wasn’t a regular. Tonight there was no live band, but he and Kid McMurphy entered on loud music playing from the sound system and a pretty good crowd of drinkers, and Behr quickly saw that he was with a local celebrity. McMurphy greeted about three-quarters of the patrons with handshakes and hugs for the guys and double kisses in the European style for the girls. Behr heard more than a few requests for McMurphy to do some shots, play a song on the stage, or come “smoke up later.” What they didn’t encounter was the guy they’d come looking for. After scouting around for a while, McMurphy flagged down a passing waitress.
“Yo, you seen Austin around?” he asked.
“Austin Tuck?” she wondered.
“Yeah.”
“He’s out on the deck with Davey Veln,” she said. McMurphy led the way toward the side door that led onto the outdoor space.
“He’s probably playing cornhole,” McMurphy said. “He’s freaking awesome at cornhole.”
The deck was more crowded than inside. Music was pumping out there as well, and groups of drinkers, mainly blond-haired post-college girls, were standing jammed around tables, while players, mainly big-boned farm boys, were clustered around two cornhole pitches. Slanted wooden boxes were placed bottom up about ten yards apart while two-man teams tossed fabric bags filled with corn kernels at small holes cut into the tops of them. It was the kind of game that was only likely to catch on in agricultural country, and copious drinking certainly enhanced its amusements. Three points were scored for every bag that went in the hole, and one point for every bag that landed on the board but didn’t go in, if Behr recalled. He’d only played once or twice. It just wasn’t in his blood, he guessed.
“There he is,” McMurphy said, and pointed at a pair of young men standing by the far rail. One was tall and husky, with a shaved head and the sloping shoulders and overdeveloped traps of a college wrestler. The other was midsized but showing some lean muscle under his tank top. He had several tattoos covering his arms and creeping up his neck, and also sported some big-gauge hole earrings in his earlobes.
“Which one?” Behr asked.
“Guy with the shaved dome.”
“Well, come on.”
“Right, right,” McMurphy said, and walked toward the pair, who each held a pint of beer and flipped around a beanbag while they waited for their turn at the game.
“Hey, Austin,” McMurphy said, and the big man turned and tried to focus.
“What up, Kid,” Austin said. The other man, Davey Veln, nodded as well. They didn’t seem to notice Behr.
“This guy needs to talk to you,” McMurphy said. Only now did the pair register Behr’s presence. “Remember the thing I mentioned, about the money…?”
“What about?” Austin said, turning toward Behr. He might have been a big guy, gym muscled, but there was no will in this Austin. Behr could see that right away. Behr could also see he was powerfully drunk. His eyes were glassy and distant.
“About your old job,” Behr said.
“No thanks-,” Austin began, trying for defiant cool, but just sounding hesitant.
“Look, bro, we’re next up for cornhole, so you can either wait… or better yet, buzz off,” Veln said, squaring with Behr. So Austin was the bigger of the two, but Veln was dominant, Behr realized.
“I’m not talking to you,” Behr said, then angled toward Austin. “You’ll play later. Let’s go.”
“You don’t get it, dude. These are the qualies for the big tourney, so he can’t play later,” Veln said with menace. “And he’s also not fucking interested.”
Behr’s hand shot up and his finger found its way through the gauge in Veln’s right ear. He grabbed on tight and yanked down, doubling the man over.
“Ahh, shit!” Veln yelped in surprise and pain.
“I said I wasn’t talking to you,” Behr snarled, grabbing the man’s hair with his other hand and cocking his head back. “Now if you want to keep your goddamned ear-and I’m not talking about the lobe, because I’m not gonna pull down, I’m gonna pull up and take the whole damn thing-you’ll head to the bar for another drink and get the hell out of my face,” Behr said, and twisted hard for good measure.
“Fuck! All right, all right,” Veln almost whined. Behr let him go and he straightened. Behr glared at him, the guy’s eyes as wide as saucers with shock. “Fuck,” he said again, and hurried to the bar through a small crowd of onlookers who had noticed the confrontation.
Behr took the glass and beanbag out of Austin’s hands and shoved them at McMurphy. Then Behr closed the space, backing Austin into a corner formed by the wrought-iron rails of the patio.
“What the hell is this about? What are you doing to me here, Kid?” Austin said, stunned by the violence.
“Don’t talk to him. Talk to me,” Behr said, putting his face close enough to see Austin’s big, dirty pores.
“Okay. You want to know? You know already. I did some security…”
“At a pea-shake house?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“And some shit went down. So I quit and I never went back. And that’s it.”
“That’s not enough.”
“That’s all you’re getting.”
“And where was this?”
“I’m not saying.”
“The fuck you’re not.”
“Said too much already.”
Behr shook his head and looked at this Austin. The guy was scared. Too scared to talk. There were a lot of ways to go about interrogating someone and developing information. Army Field Manual 2-22.3: Human Intelligence Collector Operations, suggests that people tend to want to talk when under stress, and respond to kindness.” That worked better for the police, who had a stressful setting at their disposal, and Behr wasn’t about to hand out any kindness. There was the “Mutt and Jeff,” more currently known as “good cop-bad cop.” But he worked alone. There was the “we know all.” Again, it was tough to pull off solo. There was “rapid-fire questioning,” which could produce inconsistencies that he could then challenge, but this wasn’t yielding much at the moment. It was too late for “ego up,” that is, flattering to create a bond. “False flag,” in which he would pretend he had the same interests as the person in question, just didn’t apply. Methods got more complicated from there. The truth was, Behr had to manufacture his own stressful situation to cause the subject to be afraid not to talk, and he needed to do it in a
