David Levien - Where the dead lay

“You know how much illegal gambling money they represent?” Jerry piped up.

“How can anybody?” Behr wondered.

“We know-” Jerry said.

“That’s not the point,” Pomeroy cut him off again. Jerry fell silent, tugging at his collar, which had irritated his neck to the color and texture of tenderized meat. “The point is, by tomorrow night, the next morning if we can’t hold it off, there’s gonna be a story in the news about a city inspector looking to condemn a place and turning up a few bodies in a shake house out on Everly.”

“Who are they?” Behr asked.

“Couple of Peruvian fellas running it. And let’s just say they weren’t fresh.” Pomeroy sighed and took a pause. “It’s not the first time it’s happened.”

“How many times?” Behr asked.

“One other body, two months back. And seven or eight instances of players getting terrorized and the guys running the shakes getting beat down. Bad. In the past three months. Those are the ones we’ve heard of. There must be more we haven’t.”

“Christ. You’ve sat on houses waiting for the crew?” Behr asked.

“The shakers move their locations, so does the crew. We never know which one will be next, so we keep missing,” Jerry said. Behr turned to Pomeroy, who looked annoyed but nodded.

“Seems like CIs could be developed who would-,” Behr started.

“That’s been tried. We never even get a reliable description. No one’s talking,” Pomeroy said.

“Someone always talks.” Behr had never seen a case when a confidential informant couldn’t be developed or paid or leveraged into giving up a key piece of information.

“Everybody’s scared shit. That’s the problem. You’ll see.” Pomeroy sniffed and then spit. “I want this crew, and I want it before we have a war, or the Feds, up my nuts. It’s what Caro was after, they just didn’t say it to you.”

Behr took it in. “And if I find something-a who, when, or where?”

“You let us know,” Pomeroy said.

“Simple as that? These guys are leaving behind corpses, so if I stumble into something and I need a little help and have to call for backup?” he asked.

“Don’t.” Pomeroy said. Jerry just shook his head and fought with his collar some more.

Don’t stumble, or don’t call for backup. Behr wasn’t sure. But the point was clear: there was no room for fucking up in this.

“You still wear that wheel gun?”

“Sometimes,” Behr shrugged.

“Start carrying it.”

This gave Behr pause. A police captain telling him to carry while pursuing an off-the-record case was no small deal, but then again the comment fell under attorney-client privilege, so it couldn’t come back on Pomeroy. After a long moment Behr nodded.

“Keep our communication limited and outside of regular channels. That means don’t call my office,” Pomeroy said.

“Got it,” Behr answered. He watched as Pomeroy and Jerry climbed back into their car.

“And those Caro boys-Bigby and Schmidt?”

“Let me know if you find ’em,” Pomeroy said, and then drove away.

So that was it. Behr was suddenly standing there alone thumbing the folder he’d been given. He was back inside the ring ropes. He might only be on the undercard, but at least he had a new chance at the main event.

The academy was usually a place of joyful, spirited effort. Today it was hushed and somber. Behr had arrived early, right after his little chat and long before the memorial was to begin. He had glanced in the window and seen that the mat had been cleansed of Aurelio’s blood. He had also seen a few people with dark hair and caramel complexion moving around inside, setting up coffee and pastries. The family, he surmised. But he wasn’t ready to go face-to-face with them yet, and he walked away from the window. Instead, he visited the rest of the businesses in the strip center. The check-cashing place was closed, and would be until Monday at 9:00 A.M. according to an hours sign hanging on the door. He visited the dry cleaner, the sandwich shop, and the shoe store, which were all open despite it being a Sunday. The current economy was not one that allowed many businesses the luxury of a day off. He ran his questions with the owners and employees: Was anybody at work here that morning? Did you see anyone suspicious in the area in the days before it happened? Do you have exterior security cameras? Do your interior security cameras pick up anything outside through the windows? All he got in response was “no,” “no,” and “no,” as well as “we already told this to the cops and who, exactly, are you?”

After a while Behr noticed cars showing up and a stream of people, some of them students and instructors he recognized, heading into the academy. It was time.

Behr entered to find the place four times as crowded as he’d ever seen it. Besides the regular members of the school, many others were arriving. Aurelio was something of a legend in mixed martial arts, and lots of trainers, aficionados, and fighters, past and present, were entering, some even famous. Behr could only wonder at the attendance had the memorial been held in Las Vegas or Los Angeles. Things were more cramped than they would have been, because the mat where Aurelio had been found was taped off, and the proceedings were held in the waiting and warm-up area.

Snuffling, coughing, and wiping of tears had already begun even though people were only milling about and speaking informally. A framed and prominently displayed thirty-inch photo of Aurelio in his prime, smiling, his hands raised in victory as he straddled the cage wall after a fight, was enough to break them all down. A ring of votive candles burned around the photo, and soulful Brazilian guitar music played softly out of a boom box. Behr walked past the massive and impressive display of Aurelio’s trophies, belts, and awards. He felt awkward, attired as he was in blazer and tie. Most of the others, especially the Brazilians, were dressed much more casually. He greeted several instructors and a few of the students he knew.

He also noted the IMPD detective on the case, there clocking those in attendance, based on the old saw that the killer often can’t stop himself from going to the funeral, Behr supposed. He didn’t know the guy, who was trying to blend in by the coffee machine, but it was clear enough who he was-after all, he was wearing a blazer and tie just like Behr. Behr gave him a nod across the room. Nothing came back.

Despite today’s turnout, the school was still small, Behr realized, perhaps three more years from really starting to grow and needing a larger space. Aurelio had left Brazil a decade ago, but he had first gone to New York, where he had trained out of a cousin’s gym. After he had finished the main body of his career as a fighter, he had decided to find a new city in which to establish his own training center and had moved to Indianapolis. This was the way Brazilian jiu-jitsu spread-families and friends built their schools in loose association with more established ones. They used their reputations to make inroads into new markets. Eventually, as the original students, the ones who hung in, started to earn their brown and black belts, took on some of the teaching duties, and began competing and winning in local and regional matches, a school really sunk its roots and grew. Aurelio’s was just on the cusp of that kind of success. Now there was a real question as to whether or not the place would survive without him.

As he moved through the crowd, Behr lightly grabbed elbows of the locals and doled out business cards, asking people to e-mail him so he could be in touch. Those who knew him, and what he did for a living, asked him if he’d heard anything. This was a bad sign. A lot of the time people didn’t know how much they actually knew, and he believed there must be something out there, but he already felt like a jackal scavenging for scraps of information during a time of mourning. He couldn’t take it much further at the moment. The other bad sign was that the police had turned the location back over to the family after only a few days. After their initial processing of the crime scene, they must not have felt there was any more hope of physical evidence.