David Levien: Where the dead lay

“Nah. There was none,” Regan said. “Why, you thinking robbery?”

Behr shrugged. He wasn’t in the mood to volunteer it, but Aurelio wore a thick gold rope chain around his neck that held a figurine of Christ the Redeemer, like the one up on the Corcovado in Rio. He only took it off when he went out on the mat, but like the cop said, it wasn’t there. The EMT finished and exited. The detectives would be showing up within minutes and it would be better if he wasn’t around when they did, especially with a piece of evidence tucked into his waistband.

Behr kneeled, almost in communion, near Aurelio’s feet, and the room got quiet. Even Dominic gave him the respect. Behr made a final, silent promise, then stood and headed for the door.

The spare was out and leaning against the rear quarter panel even though none of the tires were flat. Bobby Brodax stood by the Gran Fury parked on the side of South White River Parkway and smoked. He had a. 45 ACP in his hand and tucked under his crossed arms inside his sport jacket. If a passing motorist even slowed, it was coming out.

He looked down the slope toward the railroad tracks and the curve of the White River and beyond. Tino and Petey were taking their sweet fucking time. It seemed that way at least. Brodax checked his watch. It had only been ten minutes, he saw, and they did have a hell of a heavy load.

Brodax’s thoughts drifted to his employers. These Indy boys were not pros; they’d made a pretty decent mess a few weeks back, and that had led to him getting the call this time, but they were sitting on a real good thing, and they could afford to hire pros. Which is better? Brodax had to ask himself. Being one or being able to hire one?

Brodax could still taste last night’s bourbon. It had taken a lot to finally catch those fancy black-shoed suckers speccing out their lie. But he’d done it, and that was that.

Tino and Petey humped and dragged along the riverside. They could feel their quads burning, and sweat was running down the sides of their faces, matting their hair.

“This fucking mud’s trying to pull my shoes off,” Tino said.

“Don’t lose a shoe. You lose one, stop and find it,” Pete answered.

“I just said it was trying. I didn’t lose my fucking shoe.” The bags were heavy, the plastic stretching and cutting against their fingers, which were already raw from the shovel handles. They tried switching hands, but the bags were fairly equal in weight. There was no respite. And the heat, even though it was the crack of dawn, was beating down thick and meaty. Sometimes the summer sucked.

“Those guys said the reeds past where it gets marshy, right?” Tino asked.

“They said the marsh. Where it’s reedy.” Pete sounded sure. The fact was, the tall grass they were slogging through stretched for a few hundred yards, and then there was some even taller grass ahead. Tino let the bags drop, straightened, and pulled up for a blow.

Pete heard the wheezing and also stopped for a breather, looking back.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Tino asked. Pete shrugged, looked around, and started for some thick growth in the shadow of the berm under the train tracks.

“Over here,” Pete said.

“I goddamn love working with you, Petey,” Tino said and hoisted his load for the last time.

• • •

If we leave about now, we’ll be on I-70 over to 65 north and back in Chicago by the morning rush, Brodax thought. But at least we’ll be back, and rid of the car by noon. He flicked away a second cigarette when he saw them coming. Sweating like barnyard hogs, the two of them. Especially Tino. Their shoes, and their pants up to their calves, were smeared in red-yellow clay like they’d waded through sick baby shit.

“Done, Bob B.!” Tino wheezed, climbing up onto the road surface, pushing a hand down on Pete’s shoulder to get a leg over the guardrail. Pete’s lips pressing together in effort was his only protest. They reached the car. Brodax looked to Pete, who slapped his hands together like he was dusting off crumbs.

“Good,” Brodax said. He pulled a garbage-can liner out of his pocket, snapped it open, and in went their muddy shoes.

Ooh-ah, ooh-ah,” the little blonde moaned as Kenny Schlegel rode her. The “ooh” was the down stroke, which she was enjoying plenty, the “ah” caused by the impact of his new necklace banging into her chin on each thrust. He wasn’t so much nailing her as trying to bounce that thing off her face like it was some kind of carnival game. Kenny would’ve won the smaller prizes and traded all the way up to the jumbo for how good he was getting at it. It had him totally distracted from how tight the little blonde’s body was, and that had made him last at least thirty or forty minutes now.

“Ooh-ah, ooh-ah, ooh-oh.” Though they were just taps, the repetition of it was going to leave a bruise on her face, he realized with satisfaction. But she wasn’t complaining none, the dirty little thing. What was she gonna say anyhow? Little sophomore bitch. Nice of her to wait around all night for him, too. She was pretty cranked up from the day before, so what else did she have to do? Her breath smelled like beer, and her pits reeked a little from the zoot. But in a good way. He put his face into one and took a deep sniff.

“Oh yeah, Kelly, you ready for some skeet?” He looked to her eyes, which opened and flashed because he knew her name was Kathy. That’s why he’d called her Kelly. But she didn’t hit him as he’d hoped. She just upped the tempo. Maybe it was for the best, considering the big-ass bruise he had spreading all over his own cheek. He took another deep whiff, then reared back, ripped off the jimmy hat, and gave her an eight-roper across the belly. She moaned and groaned like some porn she must have seen, and as it subsided, all he could think about was last night, and breakfast.

Aurelio Santos keys his way into his studio in the predawn gloom. He wears a warm-up suit and track shoes. He’s thinking about riding his motorcycle along Copacabana beach and how glad he is that the Indiana winter is over, when they come at him. Three masked assailants appear from around the building and do a push-in. The first one shoves him from behind, but Aurelio quickly recovers his balance, gets hold of the shover’s arm, and shoulder-throws him into the wall, caving in a chunk of it. Aurelio squares, swings, and lands a punch to the jaw of the second attacker, who goes down to the floor, toppling table and chair on his way. Aurelio moves to foot-stomp his face, when the third man racks a shotgun. Merda! Aurelio freezes, then raises his hands. He slowly backs across the mat…

Is that what you did, Aurelio? Behr wondered. Is that the way it went down? Behr drove around, barely paying attention to where, or to the zoing and boing of morning radio playing low in the car. After a half hour or so the streets began filling up with the morning rush around him. There wasn’t much of it. Three cars in a row seemed like traffic in Indianapolis most of the time. But it was enough to slow him down and piss him off.

First thing Behr had done after he had exited the academy was to go around the back of the building to look for anything with meaning. The rear door was closed and locked, which, as it was a fire door, it did automatically. There were old cigarette butts and a few broken bottles among the weeds growing up through cracks in the pavement, but the pieces looked too small to hold prints, and besides, they seemed like they’d been there for a long time. The windows were undisturbed and there was no way to get on the roof short of bringing your own ladder. Just like inside the academy: he had a big pile of nothing.