sensation in his gut and suddenly needed to get his gun back and get out of there. He tried to measure his breathing before he spoke.
“You know what, why don’t we forget about it?” Behr said.
“Yeah?” Bustamante asked, eyeing him.
“Yeah. Misunderstanding, spilt milk,” he said as evenly as he could. “There won’t be a next time, but maybe I come back one day, they’ll be a little more friendly, we’ll all have a drink.”
“There you go. Now you’re thinking. Save me some paperwork and I appreciate it.” Behr put his hand out and Bustamante gingerly placed the gun onto his palm. Behr reholstered it just as gingerly. He peered into the darkness of the bar and felt those hate-black eyes staring back at him as he exited. The adrenaline was leaving him, and a dizzy head and a ringing in his ear took its place. He made his way to his car on unsteady feet and turned for one last look at the place. His eyes found the white light floating over the building. It wasn’t the moon he was looking at, but the white illuminated sign over the door to the bar that featured a tilted-martini-glass-toasting-with-a- beer-mug logo. The Tip-Over Tap Room. Then it came to him. Schmidt, the Caro boy, had a pack of matches with the same logo in his room at the Valu-Stay. What was that? He’d picked up the matches someplace? Someone had given them to him? Or had he been to the bar? It didn’t mean much, in itself, a simple book of matches. But Behr’s head began to reel, as a long slow tremor of recognition snaked through him.
He was working one case, not two.
THIRTY-THREE
Terry Schlegel sat on the weight bench in the back office of Rubber House. They were all crammed in-Knute, Charlie, Dean, Kenny, and Larry Bustamante-and between the heat and the adrenaline of what had just passed, the room smelled like bulls.
“The guy’s name is Frank Behr,” Bustamante told them. “He was a cop. His kid died-shot himself with Behr’s gun and the guy came apart, boozing and pissing people off until he got run. This was back eight, nine years ago. He’s a goddamn hump and a loser now. People don’t like him. He drinks down the bar from real cops, if they even let him in the door.”
The boys seemed to jump all over this description, to eat it up, and Terry saw how it boosted their confidence, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t want them getting comfortable. Not now.
“You said ‘hump,’ but not a fuckup or an idiot,” Terry said.
“No. Well, he might’ve been kind of a fuckup-”
“Or maybe people are a little afraid of him ’cause he’s got nothing to fucking lose.”
“Maybe.” Bustamante shrugged.
Now silence, concerned and edgy, fell over the room. It was what Terry wanted, because concern made people careful.
How the hell could Larry and Vicky even be related? he wondered of his brother-in-law, who was the furthest thing from careful. The dark, swarthy guy was all short and bulbous, while Vicky was blond and still lanky and had been truly lithe when she was young. He’d never seen a brother and sister like them. Vicky said they had the same feet and the same space between the nose and lip, but the hell if Terry could see it.
“The question is, how did he end up here?” Terry asked the room.
“We told you,” Charlie spoke for the boys. “Dean was at the girl’s old place, the guy showed up and followed him here-”
The literal thinking was only going to get them so far. They needed to get philosophical. “I know that. I mean how did he end up here. Why’s he in it?” Terry said. Now Charlie shrugged.
“Maybe Larry can find something out?” Knute suggested.
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Bustamante said, sounding as weak as a politician.
“Yeah, I’m sure it’s a good fucking idea,” Terry barked.
“Maybe you should cool out for a minute. I mean if Dean hadn’t given me a call, this thing could’ve turned into a real mess.”
“Fuckin’-A it would’ve,” Terry said. “We’d be mopping out the front now, instead of sitting here.”
“No, I mean a real mess. The guy was packing-”
“Find something out, Larry. And you,” Terry turned to Dean, “stay the hell away from the damn girl-”
“I don’t even know where she is-”
“Stop looking!” Terry yelled. “If you’d have been focused on business, we wouldn’t have this problem. We gotta get these shakes open now, start some money flowing. You got your people in place?” Terry asked Knute.
He nodded. “Most of ’em. The rest are getting in place.”
“Good. We’ve come too far, done too much work to let anything fuck us up.”
“So what do we do about this asshole Behr?” Kenny asked.
“Steer clear,” Terry said, “for now. If he shows his face again, we do him up like Lyman Bostock.” There was a moment’s quiet agreement. Even Kenny, the youngest, had heard the story, though it had happened more than a decade before he was born, of the professional baseball player from Gary who got blasted in the head by some psycho with a. 410.
Terry stood. “Call Pam back in. Let’s reopen the place, keep up appearances. Besides, I need a drink.”
They stood and the meet broke. Bustamante exited first, followed by the boys. Knute hung back and looked to Terry, who spoke quietly. “You’re gonna have to get me back in touch with the guys from Chicago,” he said.
Knute just nodded.
THIRTY-FOUR
He had seen the monster in that man’s pig-iron black eyes. He’d seen it and he couldn’t un-see it, and the man was now in his path and Behr would have to deal with that. Behr pounded on Ezra’s door, and when it swung open, he nearly staggered inside. His car was parked cockeyed, still running, in the lot out front.
“You all right, Mr. Behr?” Ezra asked after taking one look at him.
“I didn’t catch the guy,” Behr said, and then sought a place to sit down. Ezra helped him to the plaid sofa, pushing away a pile of newspapers, and Behr told him what had happened.
“You need some Anacin?” Ezra asked.
Behr nodded and the older man went off into a kitchenette and returned with the pills and water and a can of frozen orange juice concentrate, which Behr pressed against the base of his skull. Behr swallowed down the pills and used some water on his fingers to clear the blood from his mouth. Then he turned to Ezra. “I won’t be coming back here again. I’ve got to leave you out of this. But I need to know
… that cop, the lieutenant who came by when you were assaulted. What’d he look like?”
“Well,” Ezra said, scratching his chin, “he was a white guy. Medium height. Forties. Mustache.”
“Ezra, you just described three-quarters of the cops in America.”
“It wasn’t a mustache like yours. It was longer, black, like one of them cowboy ones.”
“A handlebar?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“Was he stocky?”
“A bit, yeah.”
“Was his name Bustamante?”
“Could’ve been.”
“Did another cop call him anything?”
“Just ‘Lieutenant.’”
Things were colliding in Behr’s head, and he struggled to keep them straight. When Ezra called, he’d come to follow up on someone only tangentially related to Aurelio’s world, and he’d followed it up, and he’d found a
