Thirteen Million Dollar Pop

“Why don’t you wait in my car,” Potempa suggested, and Kolodnik made his way toward the Cadillac. “I’ll drive you home myself.”

“Find any blood trail over there?” Behr asked Breslau as the lieutenant rejoined him.

“Nope,” Breslau answered. “So twenty rounds, no confirmed hits.” It hung in the air like an allegation.

“You notice there were none on our side either,” Behr said, indicating that he and Kolodnik were standing there, healthy as hogs, “dumb ass,” Behr finished, half under his breath. Even as it came out of his mouth, he wished he hadn’t spoken.

“What’d you say?” Breslau demanded, his gum finally stopping for a moment.

Behr quartered toward him. “I guess you heard me or you wouldn’t be asking.”

“It wasn’t ducks on a pond here, Gary,” Potempa jumped in, using his command voice, a varnished baritone, as he strode closer to Breslau.

“I know, I know,” the lieutenant said. Potempa shook Breslau’s hand in greeting, then he turned to Behr and pumped his hand with vigor.

“Congratulations, Frank. Hell of a job tonight.”

Behr just nodded.

Breslau, brow knit, was already on to the next topic on his mind. “No casings on the shooter’s side. What do you make of that?”

“Brass catcher,” Behr said flatly.

Breslau nodded quickly. He’d either had the same thought or was quick at looking like he had.

“Brass catcher and a flash suppressor. That’s a tactical weapon. Military,” Behr added.

“Well …” Breslau said, “let’s not get too excited. It might be. Might be something jerry-rigged at home, too.”

“Is that right?” Behr said.

“I’m looking at the shot patterns here, and I’m not reading ‘professional.’ ” Behr glanced at the Toyota and the door of the Suburban and the wall behind it. Breslau wasn’t wrong: it had been some messy shooting, and he was alive thanks to it. Breslau put a hand on Potempa’s shoulder and steered him away into the police activity. “We’re pulling up security tapes and entry tickets on the garage …”

Behr remained standing there, alone.

3

The bloody cunts in America had bollixed it. One of ’em was even sicked up and crying over there now.

The Welshman, Wadsworth Dwyer, circled with his training partner, his mind far away from what he was doing. But he didn’t need to think in order to grapple. He’d been doing it for too long. He held black belts in judo and Japanese jujitsu-the kind the samurai had invented to use when the battle was to the death and the sword had been lost-and that’s how Waddy Dwyer used it. But that was just the beginning of his schooling. He’d been a striker growing up in the pubs in Merthyr and had learned military hand-to-hand at Hereford, before practicing it in piss- smelling beer holes the world over. He’d studied sambo when he was “working” in Russia just after the wall came down and liked it for its similarities to legitimate grappling. He’d quickly moved in and out of systema specnaz-the mystical and supposedly deadly art they taught to Russian Special Forces-when he’d choked out the teacher with a simple guillotine. He tried Krav Maga when he was on loan to Israeli intelligence, and liked it for its aggressive mind-set, but realized he didn’t need it much after he broke the instructor’s jaw the third day when he’d been feeling mean and homesick. That’s when he knew it was time to get out and come back to Wales.

Wales. He must be some kind of arsehole, because he loved the weather here, cold and rainy most of the time, even in the summer, up on the top of the mountain in the Cambrians where he lived now.

His training partner shot for a single leg takedown, and the Welshman sprawled, leaving a knee behind to clock the boy on the top of his head for his trouble. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been taken down. At five foot seven, fourteen stone, it was like toppling over a fireplug. His training partner got back up a bit slowly after the knee to the head, so Dwyer took his own shot. His was a double, and he wrapped his arms around both his training partner’s thighs and cranked to the side like he was turning a lorry’s steering wheel, dumping the boy on his head onto the hard mats.

Bloody fucking ’ell, he thought as he leaped on top of his training partner and worked a crucifix, catching one of the boy’s arms between his legs and hyperextending it, and doing the same to the other using his hands. I’m gonna have to go to America.

The training partner was stretched out and helpless but didn’t say “tap,” so the Welshman gave him a rap across the mouth, causing blood to run red over the boy’s teeth.

“Fuck’s sake, Waddy!” the training partner said.

Wadsworth Dwyer got up, certain as fuckall he hated leaving his mountaintop.

4

Behr sat down at the kitchen table before 7:00 A.M. and appreciated the morning light coming through the window in a slanted shaft. He hadn’t gone to bed until near 4:00, and hadn’t slept much before waking unrested but automatically around 6:00 to a day that could easily have never come for him. He couldn’t help but savor his coffee, the sweet sugar underneath the slight bitterness of the roast.

It hadn’t been a single team that had arrived in the garage late the night before but a wave of Caro boys who flooded in after the call had gone out and word spread.

To do what? Behr wondered. It wasn’t clear. To help with the investigation, perhaps. To herd up and feel the numbers of the organization standing strong against an outside threat. Or maybe it was simply to tack man-hours onto Kolodnik’s bill. Behr had caught a ride with one of them to his car, which was parked back at Kolodnik’s office, and had then driven home.

“Hi,” Susan had said when he’d walked in, looking up from the body pillow she hugged, aware of how late it was. The television was on in the bedroom.

“What’s this?” he asked. She often fell asleep to the TV, and she’d been sleeping not watching, but a glance gave her the answer.

“Women Behind Bars. Mostly wives who killed their husbands.”

Susan was a fan of true crime and reality shows. “You thinking about bumping me off?” Behr asked. “Studying where they slipped up?”

“We’d have to be married first for that,” she said.

“Right.”

“Why are you so late?” she asked.

He’d sat down on the edge of the bed and after catching a look at the large swell of her belly beneath the bedsheets, told her everything, trying to make it sound as routine as possible, which it wasn’t, and she knew it.

Behr went for his second cup of coffee. His shoulders and neck and his knees and wrists felt raw this morning. It wasn’t a question of injury, but as if all the adrenaline that had fired through his system, the absolute tensing of every muscle, had an effect similar to a full body workout. He didn’t mind it. He didn’t have a problem with anything that reminded him he wasn’t dead right about now.

He looked down at the morning paper to find they had the story. But they’d missed most of the details due to how late the deal had gone down. No names of the players were mentioned, just that two men had been fired upon in a downtown parking garage, that the shooter or shooters had gotten away, that no one had been killed.