and gabbing it up, I guess, when this
“This dowdy bitch,” the younger blonde volunteered, “barely seemed fertile.”
“Says to me,” Susan continued, “ ‘Could you two keep it down? I’d like to hear what the nurse has to say about ointment,’ all snooty, but then she shifts in her seat and lets out this blast of a fart. So Gina says”-Susan pointed to her little friend-“ ‘I thought you said you wanted quiet.’ ” This brought on another high five and paroxysm of laughter. Behr could only shake his head and wait for them to finish.
Finally, Susan’s friend said, “Sorry, Frank. I’m Gina Decker. And you know you just can’t cross a heavily pregnant woman.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said.
He made small talk with the women for a few minutes, and then went off to shower. When he was finished, he came out to find Gina had left. He headed into the kitchen for some water and Susan followed him in.
“Frank, can I ask you something? It’s for Gina,” she said.
“Sure. She seems like lots of laughs,” he said.
“Not all fun and games.”
“No?”
“No. Her husband, Eddie, he’s … got issues.”
“I see.”
“He was in the marines. For a long time. He did a few tours-Iraq and Afghanistan, I think she said. And other places.”
Behr said nothing.
“Anyway, he’s been back for like a year, and he’s a cop,” Susan continued.
“Indy?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Susan nodded. “But it’s not going that well. He caught a thirty-day rip for beating the living shit out of some suspect who resisted.”
“The living shit,” Behr said.
“Gina’s words,” Susan said. “And it wasn’t his first. Anyway, she’s freaking out that the suspensions are gonna kill his career.”
“They will.”
“So we were-I-was wondering: Would you go talk to him, give him some advice?”
“On how to make it permanent?” Behr asked.
“Funny. Will you?” Susan looked up at him with wide, innocent eyes. He hoped their son would have those eyes. “For me?”
There was nothing that seemed more miserable to him than sitting down with some angry young cop. “For you,” Behr said, “anything.” Then they started talking about dinner.
14
“Don’t say my name.”
The words came through the phone low and gravelly. The accent, the tone of voice, the cheap cell connection, brought a cold bolt of surprise directly to Lowell Gantcher’s stomach.
“Why would I do that?” Gantcher finally managed to answer, groping for the breezy tone of the successful real estate developer he’d once been.
“Fuck if I know-just don’t,” the voice came back through the line. “We need to meet. About the situation.”
Gantcher’s head dropped into his hand. He was in his godfather office, but he was no godfather. He’d just sent an e-mail to the accountant, to tap a final line of credit in order to cover operating expenses and a partial payroll down at the company. It didn’t get less godfather than that.
“You’re in the States, then?” Gantcher asked.
“Not only.”
The surprise became fear. “You’re
“Fuckin’ ’ell.”
“Well, where are you staying?”
“Stand by. I’ll give you a location to meet when I decide it.”
“Okay,” Gantcher said. His gut instinct suddenly told him not to meet. Some inner voice he didn’t hear from very often was screaming it, in fact. He didn’t know whether he should try to run, hire a bodyguard, or lawyer up and go to the police. Maybe all three.
“When?” he asked.
“Tomorrow night,” the voice said.
“Tomorrow,” Gantcher said. He clicked on his calendar, having suddenly become a method actor, and saw it completely empty. “I don’t think tomorrow’s going to be possible-”
“Tomorrow night,” the voice repeated, and the line went dead.
15
“John Lutz, please. Frank Behr calling,” he said into his cell phone. After a moment’s wait, a warm voice came on the line.
“Y’ello?”
“Mr. Lutz?”
“Call me John,” the man said.
“All right, John,” Behr gave him his way. Lutz was the president of Payroll Place, and at the moment, his client.
“We’re expecting to see you in about a half hour, aren’t we?” Lutz asked. Behr couldn’t tell if others were supposed to be in the meeting or if Lutz was just a “we” kind of guy.
“That’s what I’m calling about, sir,” Behr said. “I wanted to let you know I wasn’t going to be able to make it down today.”
“Oh,” Lutz said, disappointment creeping into his tone.
“I am working on your case. I’m hip-deep in background checks on your employees, as a matter of fact.”
“I see,” Lutz said, brightening to the information. “Anything good? You have any thoughts? Any ideas?”
“Still in the preliminary stages. I’m going to get back to you about setting up some employee interviews shortly.”
“Okay,” Lutz said, not sounding too sure.
“Now I’m gonna just pop into the courthouse here and get back to work on these checks. I’ll be in touch, so … Take care,” Behr said, hanging up.
He stepped inside, but not into a courthouse. Rather, he left the sunlight behind and entered the artificially lit concrete confines of the parking garage of the office building on Pierson Street.
The place had nearly become his crypt a few days back, but it was the start of a workday and now it was full of parked cars and slowly trolling ones looking for spaces. He walked down, deeper underground, past P2, to the P3 level where it had happened. He turned the corner and got a view of the row where the Suburban had been parked. There was no crime scene tape. No indication that anything had happened there-certainly not from a distance, anyway. The shot-up cars had been towed or otherwise moved. The light fixtures that the shooter had disabled had been repaired. The lights he had shot out had been replaced. The area was once again bathed in a symmetrical amber pattern. It was business as usual, as it would have been had he caught some of the lead. Only when Behr drew close did he see signs of the encounter: small pockmarks along the concrete wall where the shooter’s rounds had chipped away at the smooth uniformity.
