Thirteen Million Dollar Pop

“Fucking doctor of rocket science, ain’t ya?” Dwyer said. “Come on, let’s be waiting when he gets back home.”

A good hour and a half had passed since Dwyer and Rickie had entered Teague’s house. Things had finally gotten quiet back in the bedroom, where Rickie was. Dwyer was doing a little stretching in the living room when he heard the garage door start to open and it was on. He moved quickly into the kitchen, where the door from the garage let in. After a moment he heard the car door slam and saw the knob turn. He let Teague step in past him before he burst from the wall and hit the man across the back of the head with the blunt side of his newly purchased hand ax. Teague went down and Dwyer dragged him by the hair and collar into the family room where he shoved the looped detective into a chair. After a few minutes spent with his head lolling about, Teague came around and stared across at Dwyer, who had the Ceska in his hand.

“You’re him …” Teague said, slowly putting things together. “There is no Carrolton.”

“No, Carrolton exists, but I’m me,” Dwyer said.

“Ah, shit, this isn’t my day,” Teague said. Then he looked around, assessing his own home, and asked, “Where’s my wife?”

“She’s not home,” Dwyer said.

It had been a bit of a surprise when she’d arrived while they were waiting, as based on the call they’d intercepted they didn’t expect her until later. But they’d improvised.

“Why’s her car in the garage?”

“Don’t know,” Dwyer said. “She parked and then went off on foot. Lucky all around.”

Teague nodded and glanced over Dwyer’s shoulder toward the bedroom.

“Who decorated your face?” Dwyer asked.

“Some asshole from work,” Teague said.

“Wouldn’t be Frank Behr, would it?” Dwyer said, planting a look of shock in Teague’s eyes.

“Who?” Teague said, doing his best to fall back on his training that had been too long neglected.

“Look, man,” Dwyer said, “you should drop the counter interrogation, and then I won’t need to use counter resistance, and we can just move things along. Otherwise I’ll go pull the battery out of your car and we’ll get to it.”

Teague nodded warily.

“Who have you told, and what have you told them?” Dwyer asked.

“Nothing to no one,” Teague said. “I thought you were a pro. Hire you, the job gets done, and everybody’s insulated. That’s what they all said.”

“We try,” Dwyer said, tamping down his fury at the criticism, “but life’s full of imperfections, ain’t it?”

“I haven’t told anyone anything,” Teague repeated, looking over Dwyer’s shoulder toward his bedroom once more.

“Try again,” Dwyer said.

“No one who didn’t know already,” Teague said. “Behr found out some of it, all right? Some of the basics. How it got started. But nothing about you.”

“Nothing about me?” Dwyer said. “That’s good fucking news. Why am I supposed to believe it?”

Teague looked over Dwyer’s shoulder again. Did he see something there? Dwyer wondered. Was it unusual for the bedroom door to be shut?

“Who are you meeting tomorrow morning?” Dwyer asked.

“How the hell do you-”

“Does it matter?” Dwyer cut him off. “Who?”

Teague didn’t answer. Instead he looked back at the bedroom door yet again. Then his face changed, and whatever semblance of professionalism he’d been holding onto started to give way.

“I really need to know my wife is okay,” he said.

“Come on now. Focus. Who are you meeting tomorrow?”

Teague shook his head. Dwyer saw the transition as the wondering got to the man and his face crumbled and he sobbed. “Oh, Margie …”

“Don’t you do it, man,” Dwyer warned. “Steady.”

But it was too late. Teague was cracked. He went for his hip. But he was hopelessly slow. Dwyer gave him a double tap to the sternum. The report of the shots was muffled, short and sharp in the small room, like dry wood cracking in a fire. Teague fell forward out of the chair onto his face. His shirt rode up and revealed he was wearing a gun. Dwyer stood and fired once more into the back of his head. The door to the bedroom was open now, as Rickie came out to check what was happening, and the sight Teague had been so afraid to see was now finally visible. A leg hung heavily from the edge of the bed, a loose sock dangling limply off the end of the foot.

“How’s mum?” Dwyer asked, bending to pick up his brass shell casings.

“She had her fun, but now she’s done, the old girl,” Rickie said. The kid was really quite amazing.

“We’re getting busy,” Dwyer said, standing. “We’ve gotta get you your own banger.”

Then they started to wipe down surfaces.

60

The attempt to get face-to-face with Gantcher at his downtown office started off just as easily as the foray at the casino but went wrong just as quickly. Many office buildings in Indianapolis don’t have lobby security, and Behr was happy to find that Gantcher’s was one of them. He went straight to the elevators and rode up to the eighth floor where the company was housed. A left turn out of the elevator put him in front of a set of large glass doors etched with the initials “LGE,” and behind them was the anteroom of Lowell Gantcher Entertainment. A pair of receptionists sat inside, and two things became immediately clear to Behr: that Gantcher was in there too, and that he wasn’t getting in. The reason being that a professional security force was camped out right in front. While Behr didn’t see the men he’d tangled with at the casino, he spotted four operatives milling around, using the phone, talking to the receptionists, and sitting on the guest chairs. He slowed as much as seemed natural as he passed by and considered the likelihood that there were at least another one or two inside the work area, if not many more. He thought about running a pretext in order to talk his way in-real estate appraiser, mortgage broker, Web site builder-but it seemed like a long shot he’d get past the bunch of pros hanging around, especially in the jeans and T-shirt he was now wearing, so he continued on past, eyes front, without breaking stride until he reached the fire stairs and descended. A repeat scuffle in an effort to get to Gantcher wasn’t going to do him any good.

Once outside the office building he made for his car and sat there for a long time, staring out the window at the street, thinking. He needed to interrogate Lowell Gantcher, but he couldn’t get to him. He also wanted to get a hold of Kolodnik’s adviser Shug Saunders, but Behr could practically picture him on Capitol Hill, overtan, slickly dressed, and cozying up to the boss he was involved in trying to remove. He dialed Kolodnik’s office anyway, hoping he could get some information out of the secretary or book an appointment. It’d be worth a drive to Washington.

“Shug Saunders please,” Behr said.

“He’s not in, but I’ll connect you to his office,” a receptionist’s voice cooed. After a few rings an automated voice mail picked up and offered him the chance to leave a message, which, pointless as it was, he took.

“Hello, Shug,” he said. “This is Frank Behr. We met a little while ago over at your offices and I was hoping to talk to you about something important, so please give me a call.” Behr left his number and hung up.

He was stuck and frustrated and without direction or answers. Hikers lost in the mountains are advised to stop and stay still and wait to be rescued, but Behr knew no one was coming to find him. Only his experience told him not to give up, that if he could just look at the situation with focus for long enough, an angle would present itself and he would finally see it. He flipped pages in his notebook, scanning his notes, when something caught in his mind and stopped him. It was a question he’d asked and gotten a response to, but it was not an answer he should’ve accepted.

Who did the hiring? he’d asked Pat Teague.

I don’t have a clue. Not a damn clue, is what Teague had told him. Behr pictured