little scars along her arms, like she was trying to erase herself but not all at once, was like a time machine. They’d shared a bottle he had in his desk after he’d shown her a GTO that was getting a full makeover. He’d stuck his dick in her mouth that night and she’d bounced her face on it like some kind of lobotomized mental patient. He’d been fairly sick about it for a week, and then he’d forgotten it. He didn’t expect her back, but here she was.
“Thanks, Raul,” Terry said. “I want you guys closing up early today. I’ve got something I’ve gotta do and I may need the space.”
“Sure, boss,” Raul said. The foreman and the rest of the guys all knew that they’d be paid in full despite the short hours. Raul turned to spread the good news to the others and left Terry with the girl.
“Kathy,” Terry smiled, “what can I help you with?”
“Hi, Mr… I mean, Terry,” she said, and smiled.
As he drove, Behr felt like a locomotive hurtling toward a tunnel.
I can’t stop.
It seemed clear enough.
I should stop, just pull over and turn off the car and wait for the police… I probably have enough to jam the Schlegels up all the way…
But something had tripped in him and it pushed him on. He couldn’t let it set. He’d been training his whole life, he realized, for some fight, hoping like hell he’d be strong enough and ready when it came. It wasn’t the one in the bar, or the one in Francovic’s place, or any other scrap he’d been in-that was clear to him now. He thought of Susan, of the baby she carried, and the fact that they-the Schlegels and their scumbag friends-knew who she was, and that she was in this thing, and suddenly he knew what he was fighting for.
He drove into the parking lot of the Rubber House, the body and tire shop that Schlegel owned, and saw that he had gotten there before the police. The place looked closed; only a Dodge Charger was parked around the side. His immediate concern, as he nosed into a spot right near the door, was that he was too late and had missed Schlegel and wouldn’t be able to find him. He crossed to the door of the building, looking and listening but not seeing any sign of activity. The front door was unlocked when he tried it, and he bit back on the saliva in his mouth and went in.
Inside, the waiting room was shadowy. Behr felt his pupils draw wide and pull for light as they adjusted to the half darkness. He continued past the counter into the first work area, where the repair bays were dimly lit and quiet. He was aware of the noise of his shoes and the heavy thud of his steps as he made his way across the cement floor. He stopped and tried to calm his breathing and thought he heard voices coming from the back. He moved toward them, hoping not to disturb the speakers and to hear what they were saying. Then the low grinding noise of a bay door rolling up somewhere deep in the building washed the voices away. He continued toward the noise, picking up his pace now, using the sound as cover for his movement. He rounded the corner toward a back loading dock where afternoon light spilled in through the gap and bathed the garage in yellow. There was a moment’s pause as the door finished its journey, and then a male figure emerged from an office and headed for the open door. Following a step behind was a teenage girl. She saw Behr first, and stopped.
“Ter,” she said, and the man stopped, too. Even in silhouette Behr recognized him from the Tip-Over Tap Room. Then the man turned and stepped away from the backlight toward him, and Behr saw those dark malevolent eyes, flat as flint. It was him.
“Schlegel,” Behr called out, part statement, part warning, part war cry.
A stainless and black automatic was clutched in Schlegel’s hand as it rose from his belt. Behr felt the air go out of him as he bent his knees and lunged forward and to the right and reached for the small of his back. He had an angle as his gun jumped into his hand. It wasn’t at all like the time he’d pulled it at Francovic’s gym, deliberate and slow. This was instinct, survival. The taste of metal came to the back of his throat. A familiar cold darkness squeezed his chest that he was unable to breathe through.
Schlegel pulled the trigger and his gun bucked while Behr was still raising his weapon. Behr felt an overwhelming impulse to fire back as fast as he could and for as long as he could until he’d gone empty. Giving in to it would mean his death. He saw Schlegel’s gun jerk again. More rounds were coming his way, and worse, he realized his eyes were locked on his opponent. With an effort as physical and demanding as any he’d ever put forth, Behr held fire as he leveled his weapon and hunched down over the sights and focused only on the front blade. It grew sharp in his vision-Schlegel’s body a mere blur ten yards away-and he fired twice. Behr raised his weapon to put a third round into his target’s head, to finish the Mozambique, but there was nothing in his sight picture- Schlegel was down.
A cold wave of adrenaline hit Behr like a six-foot breaker. He started to shake as noise and color rushed back in around him. He felt his chest heaving and became aware of a high-pitched screech and looked to the girl who was crouched down in a tiny ball not far from Schlegel. She was screaming. Behr took a step forward and extended his left hand toward her.
“Stay… stay right there,” he said, not hearing the words clearly, as his ears were ringing from firing in the enclosed space without ear protection. The girl broke off her scream and looked up at him. Then she rose and bolted for the open loading dock door. “Hey,” Behr said feebly, but he didn’t consider going after her. She stumbled and fell as she jumped the three feet from the dock to the parking lot, but got to her feet and darted away with the speed, if not the grace, of a cat.
Behr moved toward the fallen man, cautious, his gun raised ahead of him and saw that Schlegel was hit twice, about two inches apart, in the chest, just left of center mass. The slow, heavy rounds of the big-bore revolver had done their work. A coarse, bronchial grating noise accompanied Schlegel’s breaths, followed by the telltale bubbling of a sucking chest wound. Blood and urine pooled beneath his body. The silver automatic rested five feet from his hand, and it was clear he’d never touch it again.
Behr dropped to a knee right next to Schlegel. “Aurelio Santos. Was it you?” he asked.
After a moment, Schlegel issued a weak nod. “It was all of us…”
“You, your sons, and that partner?”
Another weak nod came from Schlegel. “And the Chicago guys,” he added.
“Who?” Behr demanded, a cold chill running through him.
“Bobby B… some guy Tino… a quiet one.”
“Pros?”
A third, almost imperceptible nod came from Schlegel. “Had to. Couldn’t handle the guy.”
“You wanted to know where he’d put the girl?” Behr asked, but Schlegel’s eyes got glassy. Behr slapped him a little, trying to bring him around.
“Who pulled the trigger? Was it you?” A feeble hand came up and waved at Behr. He couldn’t tell if it was Schlegel saying no or a pointless attempt to shoo him away. No more details came forth. Behr realized he was as close as he’d ever likely be to knowing exactly how it went down that night-and that he was headed to Chicago.
Then he asked the pointless question, the one cops, detectives, and investigators rarely profited from. The one for which he both already had the answer and also never would. Not a satisfactory one anyway. “Why?”
“We shouldn’t have never even been there,” Schlegel rasped. “The fucking skank. My son…” A wheeze was followed by a gurgle, and then all sound stopped.
Terry Schlegel had ceased being. Behr sat down on the cement floor next to the body to wait.
FORTY-TWO
Behr drove south on I-65 toward Seymour as he slowly came out of the haze in which he’d spent the last several hours. The cops had gotten there within moments. A pair of uniformed Speedway officers, then a second pair of Northwest District boys stormed the place before the brass arrived. Behr had his weapon holstered and sitting on the ground next to him and had his wallet held open so they could see his tin when they walked in. It was the last conscious thing he’d done before he was overcome by shock at what had happened, and why tiny hurtling bits of metal had stopped another man, but had passed him by and left him alive. Nobody did much talking until Pomeroy walked in. Behr was vaguely aware that they’d locked down the building and the surrounding block. Paramedics and medical examiners and crime-scene photographers dealt with Schlegel’s body. Numbered evidence
