David Levien - Where the dead lay

“Brody, no!” Behr heard one of the black belts yell. Brody was tapping out. He was too well schooled, it seemed. Under stress, most men do what they’ve done repeatedly in training, and when it was over and one was beaten in the civilized confines of the gym, everyone stopped and reset. Now that response had taken over in Brody at the worst possible moment, for Behr wasn’t operating under those rules of engagement. And he sure wasn’t feeling sporting. Behr caught Brody’s gi in a cross-collar choke and slammed him down onto the mat. He reared up and drove his knee pistonlike into Brody’s skull, two then three times, blanking him out. It was an illegal move in organized competition, but that’s not where he was. Behr sucked air and jumped to his feet. He spat right on their mat, in disgust and disrespect, as he faced the rest of the school. The black belts paused for a moment, seeing the biggest of their lot laid out. Then they began to move slowly toward him. Behr considered the consequences of reaching for the Bulldog. 44 jammed in the small of his back and then did it, keeping the muzzle pointed down. They stopped as a unit when they saw the gun. There was a long, tense moment of quiet while everyone decided on what they would do next, and then stepping out of his office came Francovic.

Thick necked, with veins popping, he walked out onto the edge of the mat and stood between his black belts and the gun, which Behr had to admire.

“That’s not how we settle our beefs here,” Francovic said with a sandpaper voice. He approached Behr, another few steps, rolling that bull neck, ready to fight. Behr raised the gun and Francovic stopped.

“Don’t try and save face with me now. I’m a private investigator and I came here to talk, until this fuckwad started in.” Brody was flopping around on the mat now, coming out of it.

“So let’s talk,” Francovic said, showing some real jiu-jitsu and taking a confrontation in which he was at a disadvantage in another direction. He gestured to his office. After a moment Behr nodded and Francovic started walking toward it. Behr lowered the gun and followed.

They sat across from each other, Francovic’s desk between them. Behr had moved his chair so his back wasn’t to the door. For the moment, though, it seemed the other fighters had forgotten about him. One of the black belts had brought a bag of ice to Brody, and another, the jacked kid with a wiseass spiky haircut whom Behr had seen there before, had helped him out of the gym. To the doctor, Behr supposed. The rest of the group had gone back to training.

“Sorry about Brody,” Francovic began. “He’s a good kid. He was just being loyal.”

“Stupid is what he is,” Behr said.

Francovic nodded slightly at this. “Nasty move with the fingers-there goes his piano career. He needs to clean up his technique. Should’ve had his head tighter on yours.”

“Yeah,” Behr allowed, sick with himself for drawing his gun, for the fight, for ending up in the situation and not much in the mood for a postmortem review.

A moment of charged silence stretched between them before Francovic spoke. “What’s this about?”

“Aurelio Santos.”

“What-”

“Don’t fucking say, ‘What about him?’” Behr said.

“Take it easy-,” Francovic started.

“You take it easy,” Behr flung back, the residual adrenaline from the confrontation washing through him.

“You’ve got the gun.” Francovic shrugged and sat back.

“I’m looking into what happened to Aurelio,” Behr said after a moment.

“You trained with him,” Francovic figured it. Behr nodded. “That makes sense, the way you handled yourself with Brody.”

“Tell me what you know.”

“I don’t know a thing. Don’t know what he’d been up to, don’t know with who. Hell, all I do is teach and train and fight.”

“You managed to find time to do some talking too, didn’t you? You and your camera crew…”

Francovic folded his arms. “It was no crew, just one guy with a video camera. The promoter suggested it, said it’d be good hype for a potential rematch. So I did it. You ever do anything stupid?”

“Yeah, plenty,” Behr said.

A picture of Francovic was coming together quickly, and it was different than what Behr had expected. Behr had watched the clips of the man wresting the microphone from ring announcers to call out other fighters after a win and storming around the ring roaring like a rabid beast after delivering a brutal knockout, the black mouth guard across his teeth making him appear inhuman. But here he was, fairly soft-spoken, almost thoughtful. That very morning Behr had gone on You Tube and rewatched the footage of Francovic’s fight with Aurelio two years earlier, in which he’d been choked out with thirty seconds to go in the fifth round. The fight was a bit before Behr had started training and turned out to be Aurelio’s last before he retired. Despite being around the same age, Francovic hadn’t shut it down. He’d fought three or four times since, laying waste to all his opponents, mostly with ground and pound knock outs, and had been talking a lot on his web page about going again with Aurelio.

“So you weren’t done with him.”

“No, we weren’t done. Not by a long shot. He caught me in that choke… But, hell, anybody can get caught. You know that.”

“Sure,” Behr said.

“But I hadn’t shown what I could really do against him. I was going to if he agreed to it…” Francovic drifted away, deep in thought. “A loss like that… they just don’t shake off. I learned him in that first fight. The next one was gonna be a war.” Behr tried to imagine it-the first one had been a war.

“But he was done. Maybe you got frustrated with that. You couldn’t live with the loss, so you showed up one night to call him out, with some guys, with a gun…,” Behr said. Francovic shook his head. “… And it went wrong. It went wrong and now we’re here.” It was a hell of a suggestion, and Behr gripped the handle of his gun, which was still in his hand. He knew Francovic wouldn’t go tapping out with a few broken fingers.

“You think it was a battle between sensei, like The Karate Kid or some shit?”

Behr shrugged. “I don’t know how it was. You tell me.”

Francovic shook his head again. The resignation in the gesture persuaded Behr of his innocence. In order to be this convincing, Francovic would have to be in the lying business. Instead, like he said, he was just in the fighting and teaching business.

“Only thing you’re right about is not being able to live with it,” Francovic said. “But he would’ve come out and given me another one. I know it.”

Behr looked at him doubtfully. As far as he knew, Aurelio was actually retired, not just temporarily like most fighters. Francovic caught the look.

“I’m telling you, he would’ve come out and given me another one. Eventually. I know it in my bones. You spend twenty-five long minutes with someone like that-it’s a lifetime. You get to know him all the way through. I threw everything I had at that mother for five rounds and he was right there with me. He was a warrior. He understood…” As Francovic’s words trailed off, his eyes got watery. “I’m not saying I would’ve won if we did it again. I think I would’ve. I’m just saying I would’ve gotten a chance to… answer those questions. For myself. Now, I won’t ever have the chance.”

Behr let that clear before he spoke.

“While I’m here, why don’t you tell me where you were the night before and the morning it happened,” Behr said.

“I’ll tell you what I told the police: I was camping with my kid’s Cub Scout troop. They checked it.”

“You were camping with fucking Cub Scouts?” Behr said, incredulous, but also pleased the police had been thorough enough to check Francovic out in the first place. The fighter just lifted and dropped his shoulders.