hurry. Do what the cops can’t, he thought.
“You’re gonna give me what you know,” Behr said.
“Or what, you gonna grab my ear? You can’t fucking touch me. Here or anywhere else. Come on, you know you can’t do anything that’ll make me tell you any-fucking-thing,” Austin stated, making his stand. The attitude pushed Behr right into the red zone. He felt McMurphy staring at him. When he was a cop he’d had to put a guy away clean and according to Hoyle. If a cop puts a guy away wrong, and the guy does a stretch of years, then the cop has a problem. Every bench press that guy does while he’s away has that cop’s name on it, saving it until he’s out and comes looking. But he wasn’t a cop.
Do what the cops can’t.
“More than three grams,” Behr said.
“What?” Austin asked, his drunken eyes pinching in concentration.
“More than three grams,” Behr repeated.
A blank look is all that came back at him. Good, silence was a first step.
“One day-and you won’t know when-you’ll go to get in your car and the cops will roll up on you and take you down. And you know what? They’re gonna find more than three grams of Charlie or rock in the dash, or the spare, or somewhere,” Behr said. “It doesn’t matter which. Because more than three grams of it makes it a Class C felony-”
“You’re gonna fuckin’ flake me?” Austin asked, his eyes focused in understanding now.
“Oh yeah. But guess what? It won’t just be some lame Class C beat that nets you four years. Because when it goes down you’ll happen to be parked within a thousand feet of a school, or park, or housing project-”
“Fuck-”
“That’s Class B automatic. But how hard will it be for the prosecutor to make the leap to Class A? After all, they’ll find a wad of five-dollar bills and vials and balloons and some other shit that makes it clear your intent is to deal. That’s twenty to fifty, the presumptive sentence being thirty years,” Behr said. “Thirty years in the state pen getting banged in the pants… well, that’ll probably stop after about ten years when you’re too old.” He grabbed a fistful of Austin’s shirt. “Maybe you think I won’t do it. Do I sound like I won’t do it?”
Austin’s face turned to bread dough. The man looked positively sick. “Fine. The fuck do I care. Get me a drink and I’ll tell you.”
“Get him one, Kid,” Behr instructed, and McMurphy scampered off for the bar. Austin’s gaze followed him.
“Fucking Kid. He told me you’d pay me for info. I knew it was bullshit, that’s why I changed my mind-”
“Forget that. What happened?”
“I was working for a guy. Keeping order. Collecting the money. Guarding the payouts. It was the easiest job ever. Nobody stirred up dick. They just wanted to play. Tons of money was rolling in.”
“And then?”
“Then one day the house got taken down. Some thick-neck bastards came through the back door and whacked the dude’s father.”
“Whacked him like killed him?”
“Whacked him with a pipe or a flashlight or something. They were all carrying weapons. Might’ve killed the old guy.”
“How many?”
“Three. Two were young, the other was older.”
“White, black, Latino?”
“White,” Austin said, seeming to relive some unpleasant moments in his mind. “Soon as I saw it, I beat feet out of there, on account of what I knew. Chilled over Louisville for a couple of weeks with a cousin.”
“Did you?” Behr asked. “What exactly did you know?”
Before Austin could answer, Kid McMurphy showed up again, empty-handed. “Waitress is bringing it,” he said.
Then Austin spoke again. “I’d heard that freelance shaking was over in this town. That a group of guys-a family-was making a play to incorporate it. I heard they were killing anybody got in their way.”
“Killing people?” Behr asked. He knew he was involved in a serious deal, but he wasn’t in the mood to be fed an urban myth.
“That’s what I heard-that they’re like a murder machine. And people are believing it. Nobody’s saying fuck-all or getting in their way.” Austin paused, as a waitress with three tall cola drinks on her tray stepped over with the pinch-toed walk of a second-rate stripper in her tall shoes.
“Thanks, Rose,” McMurphy said, took one glass and handed one to Austin. Rose looked scared, like she knew something heavy was going on. “I didn’t know what you drank, so I got you a double Beam and Coke, just like us,” McMurphy told him. Behr gestured to McMurphy that he should take the remaining glass, and that’s what Kid did.
“Who are these guys, this family?” Behr asked, when the waitress had drifted away.
“I don’t know. Some brothers and a father or uncle.”
“Name?”
“The people who are whispering aren’t whispering that.” Austin turned into the glare on Behr’s face. “So go ahead and fill my car with weight if you want, I’m telling you I don’t know,” he said, and drank down half his drink.
“Who was your boss?”
“Name is Hector.”
“Hector who? He’s Latin?”
“Yeah, Hector. He’s a Honduran. Never caught his last name. I was only with him two months and we never exchanged business cards.”
“That’s great,” Behr said. “I want to talk to him. He still around?”
“Not if he’s smart-and he was pretty smart. Tough little bastard, too. I heard he kept shaking afterward. Even managed to keep some players. Then I heard he stopped. Then I quit asking and quit listening. I think he split. Shut down the spot.”
“I’ll ask him myself,” Behr said. Austin drained his drink, then he took the extra off McMurphy and started in on it.
“Would’ve been a different deal that day if I’d been packing,” Austin said, mostly to himself. “Next time I work security, I go heavy-”
“Better yet, why don’t you find a different field?” Behr said.
“I guess…,” Austin breathed, the last of the defiance going out of his sagging shoulders.
“I’ll just need that address,” Behr said. Austin gave it to him and Behr made to leave.
“Hey, man…,” McMurphy said, “could I grab a ride?”
Behr stopped. “You just want to help, right?” he asked. Kid McMurphy nodded. “Get yourself home, that’ll help,” Behr said, and headed for the door.
THIRTY
Behr felt like he was walking on a dirt cloud as he moved across the hardpan lot toward the house on Traub. It was a location that hadn’t previously been mentioned in Ratay’s stories, nor was it on the Caro list. Thick humid air ringed halos around the few working streetlamps in the vicinity, diffusing their glow. Besides that, the house and those immediately around it were dark. When he reached the structure, he saw the windows remained intact. It wasn’t vacant, as Austin thought, or somehow the scavengers had steered clear of the place so far, the way hyenas avoided the carcass of an animal that had died of disease. Behr pulled out his Mini Maglite and turned it on as he reached the house. There was a marshal’s sticker on the front door warning that seizure proceedings would be conducted within the next thirty days. He shined the flashlight into the windows and saw a front room that was empty save for a couch, a couple of chairs, and a table. He knocked on the door and waited, but was greeted only by silence. Behr stepped down off the porch and continued around the house in a loop, peeping in the windows
