David Levien - Thirteen Million Dollar Pop

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 the man’s face, sweaty and beaten. His eyes, glazed in anger and defeat, had flashed downward. And Behr’s own rage, his indignation at being set up, had caused him to careen ahead without probing further. That was the moment, and he’d missed it. Whoever it was that had supplied the money-Shugie Saunders or Lowell Gantcher or the two of them together-and whichever one of them had initiated the plot, who involved was most likely to know how to hire a professional contractor? It was Teague all the way.

Goddammit , Behr hissed, already dialing. But he got no answer from Pat Teague. Behr let it ring and ring, and then he put his car in gear. He was going to have to drive out to Thorntown again.

The man has money, but he lives like absolute swine , Dwyer thought. He was standing in Shugie Saunders’s walk-in closet in front of a row of expensive but garish suits. There was another row of dress shirts, many with sweat rings around the collar and armpits that laundering had only faded but didn’t remove. The enclosed space smelled like feet, thanks to the pile of cheap shoes on the floor, many with their soles and heels worn to the uppers. Dwyer had been over the place with painstaking detail, from the dirty dishes in the sink to towels piled on the bathroom floor. First he’d called, then waited in front of the building for a couple of fruitless hours until he was convinced that the man wasn’t home and was probably off in Washington, before making entry. The building had an external fire stairway and Dwyer was able to jump from it to a neighboring balcony, cross two more, and reach Saunders’s. A six-inch lockout tool easily popped the glass slider and he was in.

What he hadn’t found was a safe, but neither had he come upon any documents implicating him and Shugie. Dwyer had found a checkbook with a balance of $62,000, and this was in his pocket. Three months earlier there had been more than $100,000 in the account, so the man was on a bit of a spending spree.

Dwyer took in the apartment, which he’d thoroughly tossed, a final time. He wasn’t sure why, but he now had the feeling Saunders hadn’t left town permanently for D.C., but that he must be staying elsewhere. No discernible amount of clothing and toiletries were missing-there were several large pieces of luggage in the top of a hall closet-so it was likely a short trip if Dwyer was right in the first place. As tempting as it was to wait out Saunders’s possible return for another hour or day, Dwyer and Rickie had agreed to rally back at the shite hole after their respective actions. One never knew if one’s partner in the field might need support, so he had to keep discipline and make the meet. Dwyer did a quick wipe down of the doorknobs and let himself out the front door.

A piece of storm cloud snaked its way into Behr’s belly when he reached the head of Teague’s street. There were police cars and an ambulance and neighbors lining the block, and like a funnel of bad news it all led to Teague’s door. Behr parked as close as he could and advanced through the onlookers toward the house and was just in time to see a stretcher bearing a loaded body bag being carried out.

“What happened?” Behr asked those in his general vicinity.

A woman with a tearstained face didn’t turn toward him, but just kept her eyes on the stretcher as she spoke. “Someone killed the Teagues.”

“All of them?” Behr asked, sick with the knowledge that Pat had four children.

“Both of them,” a man in a checked shirt said, rubbing the back of his brush cut head. “Pat and his wife. The kids weren’t home …”

“Thank god,” the woman said with a half sob, “those poor babies …”

There was assorted talk about who could’ve done the crime in this quiet community, and the quick consensus was gangbangers down from the city looking for easy drug money via robbery.

“Son of a bitches,” the man in the checked shirt said through gritted teeth. “I’ve got a Remington twelve gauge’s gonna be waiting by my bed if them junkies want to try this town again.”

Behr wondered if any of the neighbors had seen him coming or going earlier, or if Teague had told any friends of their runin and he was the one headed for a police interview room. He drifted away from the group and moved closer to the house and found a spot near some officers by the door where he listened to fragments of their radio chatter.