Thirteen Million Dollar Pop

as the width was occasionally adjusted, by remote, Behr assumed.

It’s the sleazy guy from the meeting. If Behr had to hazard one, that would be his guess. The faceless man, tattoos of Far Eastern characters covering his forearms, “T-Bone” stitched across his abdomen in gothic script, pulled out his genitals, also groomed, and the girl serviced him with her mouth. Then the couple had sex, first in missionary position, her legs up, moaning and groaning into the camera. Next, she turned around and opened herself to the lens and he continued from behind in a three-quarter profiling shot, everything above his shoulder still out of frame.

The scene went on and on, and though Behr was tempted to speed the frame rate, he didn’t. He needed to scan the whole disk so he didn’t miss anything, like specific names being mentioned or any other important piece of conversation, or other people joining in. Nothing like that occurred, but the thoroughness paid off at about the seven-minute mark. That’s when Behr began to realize there were edits, cuts to different angles, close-ups from below the genitalia known euphemistically in the porn world as scuba shots. The camera came off the tripod and started to move. All of it told Behr that there had to be at least one other person in the room, if not more, which meant that unlike some victims of spy cam setups, the girl had to know she was being filmed.

The whole thing was nineteen minutes and twelve seconds long. It was a clip like tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands or millions, all over DVDs in porn shops and on Internet sites. But Potempa had been reaching for this one. Finally the girl went to her knees and the man finished in her face in a close-up. That’s when Behr was able to finally recognize her. It was why his boss had been so interested in the envelope. Though she had her hair dyed blond now, the girl was Potempa’s daughter.

24

Dwyer sat quietly in the back corner of La Pasion, the Latin restaurant his lead shooter supposedly favored, spooning black beans and rice into his mouth and watching the place unfold in front of him. It was a small, local spot, undecorated save tables and chairs and a cerveza calendar next to the cash register, so it was a bit unusual for him to be there. He’d sat and ordered, and after a while they had forgotten about him more or less. He saw that most of their business was takeaway. There were a few mothers with children who chatted in Spanish with the counter girl, who was also the waitress. She was a pleasant eighteen-year-old who spoke good English and had gone a little plump from too much comida criolla. There was a wizened old cook, his whites food stained and sweat soaked, who appeared from time to time in the kitchen doorway in the back. Dwyer asked a young, wiry busboy for a refill of his water and noticed a jailhouse tattoo of three teardrops near the webbing of his thumb and a scar on his face. The tattoo was gang or prison code, either of membership or signifying he’d killed. Dwyer didn’t know whether the three represented a first killing or a total number of victims. Of course the kid could’ve been some aspirant who’d done the inking himself.

The waitress had come by to see if he needed anything and he’d asked for hot sauce. When she brought it to him, he’d made a little show of how hot it was, saying “caliente” and waving a hand in front of his mouth. It amused her and bought him some goodwill and an extra half hour of sitting there watching. Even so, he was at the limit of how long he could reasonably stay and hadn’t yet spotted his angle, besides possibly the busboy, when two stout men in their early forties entered. In tight T-shirts that stretched over their arms and hard, round bellies, they might have been brothers or cousins. The larger of the two moved behind the counter and hugged the waitress warmly. It was clear from the indulgent nature of the embrace that she was not his daughter. The other man sat on a stool at the counter and waited. The waitress made him a cafe con leche, while the larger bloke popped the till drawer, removed a stack of bills, counted and split it, and handed over half to the coffee drinker.

Dwyer saw them notice him in the corner, size him up, and disregard him. He sized them up as well, and while they didn’t seem like they’d provide much of a problem, they probably wouldn’t volunteer whether or not they knew a Jose Campos just because he’d asked. He didn’t see much point in getting into it in the middle of their restaurant during business hours though, so Dwyer stood.

“La cuenta, por favor,” he said, amusing the counter girl once again with his poor Spanish. He was just a novel fucking fellow. He paid his check, mildly overtipped, and exited. He got back in his car and took up a position where he could watch the men and follow them when they left. It was almost fiesta time.

25

Behr didn’t sleep much that night. He’d driven by Potempa’s house, and seen him through a bay window in his kitchen having dinner with his wife. He’d watched him go back and forth to the freezer for ice and refill his drink many times. He’d considered walking up to the door and knocking and telling Potempa what he knew. But he didn’t. He just sat there thinking, wondering what Potempa, and his daughter, were caught up in, rolling the permutations around in his mind like a Rubik’s Cube.

In the end, he didn’t approach. He sat there until the house went dark, and he imagined Potempa sleeping, or at least in bed, lying there sleepless despite the alcohol. Behr’s mind wouldn’t feed him any answers, so he drove himself home to find Susan already down for the night. He slid into bed, envying her slumber. It was the body-the tiny one she was growing inside her-that demanded the rest, because he knew that by day her mind was filled with the anxiety of the coming child. The responsibility of it weighed heavy on her, as it did on him. She worried with a new mother’s determined optimism. He envied her that, too.

For his part, he put up a futile struggle not to hope for everything to turn out well, as if his daring to wish for it would cause the universe to deny him that simple relief. He knew too well the blind corners and murky alleyways that came along with being a father. It seemed to be his sole area of expertise. He spent the rest of the night on his back in bed, between the worlds of the dormant and the waking, pricked by the knowledge that whoever he was hoping to track down probably wasn’t at rest. He would rise early and be out the door before Susan stirred.

26

Waddy Dwyer couldn’t believe how easy it had been.

It was as if the Americans built with bloody kindling materials.

The night had already been a hell of a busy one, and sleep wasn’t going to be a part of it for him. The first piece had gone well, he thought, sniffing the intoxicating odors of gasoline and lacquer thinner coming off his shirt and skin.

As a matter of fact it was a thing of roaring orange beauty.

He pulled over behind a small grocery store and slathered his hands and lower arms in hand sanitizer. Then he stripped off his shirt, put on a fresh one, and stuffed the rank one in a Dumpster. No one of consequence knew he was in town or fuckall about what he was doing, but that was no reason to let the attention to detail drop. He got in his car for the drive through dark farmlands back to the city.

The second part of the evening promised to be more of a challenge. After all, the caballeros he needed to talk to could be pros or ex-pros, or could generally turn out to be a handful, so he’d need to be creative to get what he wanted from them.

Ah, just be a bit friendly, he thought, putting the car in gear and nosing it onto the main road, and generous of course.

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