Читать онлайн «Thirteen Million Dollar Pop»
Автор Дэвид Левин
David Levien
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David Levien
Thirteen Million Dollar Pop
1
Frank Behr walked two steps ahead of the principal toward the blacked-out Chevy Suburban. The winter had cracked a few weeks earlier, and the night air swirling around them had lost its bite. The report of their hard shoes on concrete reverberated off the walls of the underground parking garage of the Pierson Street office building. The principal was half a foot shorter than he was, so looking back, Behr had a clean view of the amber-lit geometric rows, now mostly devoid of cars due to the late hour, that spread out around them.
“Yeah … yes,” the principal said into his cell phone, “it’s going to happen. Tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon latest. Shugie’s just getting the press conference together. ”
The principal was Bernard Kolodnik, a prominent businessman with a real estate and property development background who was so smooth and successful in his dealings that he was admiringly known around greater Indianapolis, and throughout the Midwest, as “Bernie Cool. ” Fit at fifty, Kolodnik had a strong jaw, blue-gray eyes, and hair the color of steel-cut wheat.
“What? What?” Kolodnik said, fighting reception that was growing choppy as they got farther underground. “You’re crapping out on me, Ted … Ted?” He clicked off the call.
“Damn things,” Kolodnik muttered to himself of the cell phone, and began walking more quickly. Behr, in turn, stepped up his pace.
Executive protection.
It wasn’t an area in which Behr was expert. He was pinch-hitting for Pat Teague, who had approached his desk at 6:15, when he’d been about done for the day, and asked him to fill in. Teague was an involved father apparently, and had a few kids playing several sports or vice versa. Either way, there were a lot of games for him to go to, as Behr had gotten similar requests a few other times over the past six months he’d been at the Caro Group, the private investigation and security company that was as close as it got to a white-shoe firm in the field.The job was an uneasy fit for Behr. Working for someone else-along with the starched collars, the suits and ties, and the stiff and shiny black Florsheim wingtips he was required to wear-rubbed him the wrong way. In fact, the outfit chafed his feet and neck raw for the first couple of weeks. But with Susan near nine months pregnant he found himself doing what he had to to earn a living, and trying to make his peace with it.
Behr had been reluctant about filling in for Teague the first time he was asked, not being professionally trained as a body man. But Teague assured him he was up to it without any advance preparation, that Kolodnik was a low-maintenance client who just wanted someone to organize his table at restaurants and to keep away “wakeboppers”-his term for business aspirants hoping to make contact and gain by the association. There was nothing against the switch in company policy, so Behr had asked a few questions, read some tactical guidance in the archives, and gone ahead in order to collect the extra money. He soon learned he was basically meant to be a hybrid of chauffeur and babysitter.
