Thirteen Million Dollar Pop

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He squared with Teague, who feinted high, then changed levels and swung the weapon again, this time low at Behr’s thigh. Behr tried to check it as he would a leg kick, by raising his shin and turning it toward the blow, but took the shot across the outside of his kneecap. A white-hot bolt of pain lit through him, but he managed to deliver a looping overhand right that caught Teague high on the side of the head. Teague stumbled back, and Behr closed the distance, collared him behind the head in a sort of Muay Thai clinch and gained an over hook that took the baton out of play, before it eventually got knocked to the floor.

Tied up as they were, they did the dance, and Behr felt in Teague the balance of an ex-lineman. They staggered into a piece of furniture that was coat and hat rack and mirror. Baseball caps scattered and the glass cracked. A potted plant was knocked on its side and dirt spilled across the foyer floor. After a minute, Behr found he couldn’t take the man down, and neither could Teague him, so the dirty boxing commenced. Fists, elbows, and shoulders flew across the tight span between the men. At that range more landed than missed. It became a question of chins and will.

Behr heard Teague’s breathing begin to go ragged and labored. He knew the older man hadn’t put in the gym time and road-work he had, and he pressed the advantage, upping the speed and the output. Behr’s blows began landing more cleanly, thumping Teague’s head back. Teague threw a knee to the body, his desperation growing. But Behr leaned into it and stuffed it, and his abs held like a retaining wall, and then he felt Teague sag.

Wrapping an arm behind Teague’s neck, Behr doubled him over, landing a standing guillotine choke that he closed but didn’t finish. Instead, Behr dropped his weight over the man, cranking Teague’s neck, and dished out a set of three knees to the body, the last of which found the liver and deposited Teague on his broad ass.

He gasped and keeled for a moment before Behr grabbed him by his matted, curly hair and turned up his bile- and puke-streaked face.

“What did you know?”

“Nothing,” Teague began. Behr drew his fist back and blasted Teague in the ear, which burst red with blood.

“What did you know?”

“Nothing,” Teague said again, but when he saw Behr rear his fist back once more, quickly continued, “nothing clear. Nothing for sure.”

Teague sucked in a breath and went on. “Most of this shit’s way above my pay grade, man, but suffice it to say not everyone loves Bernie Cool.”

Behr drilled a punch into Teague’s mouth. “Start getting specific or I’m gonna start getting ugly.”

Teague gave a sickly smile. Blood ran over his teeth and he spit it on the floor. “What do you call this?”

“The warm-up lap,” Behr said, and kicked Teague in the floating rib with the point of his shoe. He put some leg into it, enough for a thirty-yard field goal. Teague groaned and doubled over into the dirt from the fallen plant. When he finally caught some air, he pushed himself up, leaning on one hand.

“Okay. Okay. Shit, your stand-up game is tight … SB-5373X.”

“SB, what’s that?”

“Senate bill. Proposing a tax break on the racinos.”

Behr had read about it when he was researching Indy Flats. It was the massive relief bill that would allow the Indiana racinos to survive and compete with those in Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois.

“What does it have to do with Kolodnik?” Behr asked. “He’s out of his piece of the casino interest, and that’s a state senate vote anyway,” he said.

“Everyone knows the senators out of Washington tell the state legislature which hand to wipe with,” Teague said, rubbing his side.

“Kolodnik wasn’t going to be senator until five minutes ago,” Behr said.

“Well, best as I can tell it’s a story of eighteen months. That’s when Kolodnik’s ex-partner-”

“Gantcher,” Behr said.

“Yeah, Gantcher. That’s when he broke ground on the hotel. Then the business went into the dumper. They’re losing six figures a day, man. It’s a bloodbath.”

“What’s it connect to?” Behr was writing now, his swollen knuckles clenched around his pen.

“About a year back Gantcher and some others in the state gambling business request a special assembly so they can propose SB-5373X.”

“I read about it. The legislature told them kiss off,” Behr said.

“That’s right. But with that kind of money on the line, they’re not just going to walk away. So about seven months ago Gantcher goes to Kolodnik, even though he’s out of it, to get him to use his juice to get a special assembly, you know, to safeguard the economic engine that is the racino business. Bernie Cool’s a stand-up guy, so he asks. But they reject the request.”

Teague pulled himself heavily into a more upright seated position. He wasn’t going anywhere, though. He was talking now.

“This worries Gantcher, big-time. Same with his competitors-the other racino and casino owners in the state-who are now quickly becoming his asshole buddies. They all get together and have a meeting with Kolodnik where they fucking tell him to go to the governor and demand an assembly. They figured he and the gov are so tight he can do it.”

“What happened?” Behr asked. He fought to keep writing and to resist the urge to just let the information wash over him.

“I don’t know. I suppose the meeting didn’t go well. Kolodnik didn’t go along. He’s not the kind of guy to be pushed, and I guess that’s when he decided he needed security.”

“This is what, six months ago, when he hired Caro?”

Teague nodded.

“How’d he decide on Caro?”

“How’d he decide?” Teague laughed. “He didn’t. It was decided for him. See, there was this thing I was working for Potempa on the quiet-”

“The daughter,” Behr said.

“Yeah, that fucking wild-child daughter of his-”

“I know about her. I’ve seen the video,” Behr said.

“Fuck me! You’ve seen the video? I never got that far on it. Man, I wouldn’t mind getting a look-”

“Shut up,” Behr said. “Where’d it lead?”

What couldn’t I get out of Potempa? Behr wondered.

“So he asked me to sort this thing for him, since we go back the furthest, and I’m on it, talking to this jackwad Barnes trying to work it out-”

“Lenny Barnes, daughter’s boyfriend,” Behr said.

“Yeah. He and the daughter want to leave town. They want to move to Hawaii or something and open a business. The guy’s looking for fifty grand from Potempa …”

An agonized look crossed Teague’s face, probably from a cracked rib. That pain comes on slow and builds.

“Look, I’ve known Karl Potempa a long fucking time. I can read when a man’s in the shit. And that’s where he was. He don’t have leaks-like gambling or liquor-but on this, I saw he was weak … he was wide-open. So I’m in there, working out leverage on how I’m going to squeeze Barnes, make him walk away or take him down on pandering-I’m just trying to keep the video squelched, you know, for Karl-”

“Yeah, yeah. Father to father,” Behr said.

“Right. And I get called to this apartment to meet, and Barnes has got this girl he runs there with him, and this douche bag of a john is there too, drooling all over her, with an idea on how we can all make a lot of money.”

“The john was Shugie Saunders,” Behr stated.

“Yeah. Damn, you’ve gotten a lot.” Teague’s hand found his bleeding ear, as if just discovering it wasn’t working right, but he went on. “And Saunders says he has a prominent client for us, a guy he advises that needs some special services, yada yada-”

“What the fuck is ‘yada yada’?” Behr said.

“Nothing. ‘Special services.’ That’s all he said then. We go out and have dinner and talk about the services