High Chicago (16 page)

A
vi’s house didn’t look like much from the outside—the brick facade needed some tuck-and-point work and the paint on the porch was coming off in strips—but that didn’t reflect the interior at all. The ground floor had been fully renovated into an open-concept space with a huge island kitchen and spacious living and dining rooms separated by wooden French doors.

“When we bought the place, we gutted it and opened it up but we didn’t put a nickel into the outside,” Avi told me. “It only makes you more of a target for thieves. When you want to sell, that’s when you worry about curb appeal.”

He introduced me to his wife, Adele, a thin woman with dry, wispy brown hair and angry red patches of psoriasis on her elbows. Her hand felt like chicken bones when we shook and she barely made eye contact. Avi then took me down to the finished basement so I could meet his children. Noah was six, Benji was four and Emily was two. They were watching cartoons on a big-screen TV and barely acknowledged me or their father.

I said, “Every two years, eh? When’s the next one due?” “Three was it for me. Had myself fixed after Emmy.” We went back upstairs where Adele had poured us each a glass of chilled white wine.

“Nothing for you?” I asked.

“It gives me a headache,” she said.

At her insistence, we took our drinks into the living room while she stayed in the kitchen to finish dinner.

“Check this out,” Avi said, kneeling in front of a glassed-in cabinet that held a stack of stereo components. He loaded a CD into the player and pushed play. It was R.E.M. again, this time the album
Automatic for the People
. He must have had it on shuffle, because the first tune up wasn’t “Drive”—it was “Everybody Hurts.” Michael Stipe had written the lyrics in reaction to a rash of suicide among young people. And here I was listening to it, on a leg of a journey that began with the supposed suicide of Maya Cantor.

“Avi, please!” Adele called from the kitchen.

“Sorry, hon,” he said, and lowered the volume before settling his bulk into a black leather recliner that faced the leather sofa I sat on. “She gets headaches,” he said to me. “A lot of headaches.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Not as sorry as me.”

“The kids look great,” I said.

“They are,” he smiled. “They’re a lot of fun, most days. Their problems are still little problems—scrapes and spats and arguments over what show to watch. But it’s draining sometimes, especially when Adele is—when she’s not at the top of her game. And they eat into my salary like termites. And wait till all three are in private school. And summer camp. I’ll be out on the street with a sign that says, ‘Will sue for food.’”

“You look like you’re doing all right.”

“Yeah,” he said. “All right is what I’m doing.”

“So,” I said, “were you able to find out anything about Simon Birk that would help me?”

“I did make a call or two,” he said. “And I think it’s safe to say some of his business practises have raised eyebrows in the
building community. He’s known as an extremely tough negotiator, a real balls-to-the-walls bastard, according to my friend. His word is as good as his bond, only his bond isn’t worth shit. He doesn’t give a damn about his investors, his employees, his residents or anyone but Simon Birk. He’s litigious as hell. He sues everyone sooner or later: business partners, journalists, competitors. And he’s been sued more times than I could count. But there is nothing to suggest he’s ever been involved in anything overtly criminal, Jonah. And certainly not murder. Not even a hint of it in thirty-odd years.”

“Doesn’t mean he didn’t take it up.”

Avi shrugged. I took that as a sign he remained unconvinced.

“Let me ask you something else,” I said. “You’ve heard about the home invasion at Birk’s two years ago?”

“Sure,” Avi said. “He and his wife were both beaten up. Crooks got away with a ton of art.”

“What do you think of the possibility that he set it up himself? Anyone you could ask about that?”

“Jesus, Jonah. Is there anything you think he’s not guilty of?”

“He was on the verge of going broke, then collected millions in insurance and the sale of his home.”

“And he and his wife almost got killed. She’s never recovered, from what I heard.”

“I’m not the only one who thinks he could have done it.”

“Who else?” he asked.

“A reporter.”

“I’ve never seen that accusation in print.”

“He hasn’t written it yet.”

“Because he has no more proof than you. You’re going to need a lot more than these off-the-wall theories to convince anyone in authority.”

“I’m still sure about the killings in Toronto.”

“Yeah? Why do you think he’s guilty and not this partner of his, this Cantor?”

“Because that’s what Cantor told me and I believe him.” “What were his words?”

“Birk assured him he’d take care of distractions.” “So you’re making yourself into another distraction, and if he murders you, you’ll have your answer?” “That’s not my exact plan.” “You have an exact plan?” “To enjoy this glass of wine. After that, it’s all up in the air.”

Dinner was fast and furious. Adele tended to the children, who had hot dogs cut up in baked beans, guiding spoonfuls into two-year-old Emily’s mouth and cajoling the other two to eat, while eating almost nothing herself. The grown-ups had baked salmon fillets, roasted asparagus and wild rice. Avi and I finished the bottle of wine. Adele had sparkling water. After dessert—applesauce for the kids, frozen yogourt for us—she bade us good night and marshalled the kids upstairs for baths and books. Avi led me into the living room and turned on a flat-screen plasma TV mounted to the wall.

“You have to see this,” he said, popping in a DVD. “A little blast from the past.”

It was a concert film: David Broza and friends at Masada, the two-thousand-year-old mountaintop fortress in the Israeli desert. Once King Herod’s winter palace, better remembered as the place where Jewish zealots held off Roman troops until a long siege led to their mass suicide. A mesmerizing guitarist who had been trained in flamenco, and also absorbed folk, jazz, rock and blues into his style, Broza has been variously referred to as Israel’s Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Bruce Springsteen—pretty much everybody but Yngwie Malmsteen. Every year he hosted a sunrise concert in an amphitheatre on the west side of Masada, singing songs in Hebrew, English and Spanish. The DVD Avi played was a more recent event, but it still took me back to 1995, when Avi, Dalia
and I, along with others from our kibbutz, went to hear him play. We ascended the mountain in the middle of the night—because of the searing heat, which often topped fifty degrees, the concert started at a quarter to four. Some four thousand people were there, singing along with Broza, swaying in each other’s arms, especially when he played “Yihyeh Tov (Things Will Get Better),” a peace anthem he wrote when Israel and Egypt signed their historic treaty in 1979. We watched in awe as he punished his guitar with manic fingers, its surface scarred and practically worn through. By the end of the concert, we were as sweaty and exhausted as Broza himself, but some of us walked up the Roman Ramp to watch the sun come up over the faraway hills of Jordan, the mountains turning purple and rose in the new light of day. It felt like a time when peace might actually be at hand. We had no way of knowing that our kibbutz, Har Milah, would soon be bombarded by Katyusha rockets from Lebanon, and that one of them would end Dalia’s life.

The DVD ended, as Broza concerts always did, with “Yihyeh Tov.” I watched the footage knowing that good things had not come. Peace had not come, then or now. I felt tears fill my eyes and tried to wipe them away discreetly. Then I stole a glance at Avi Stern and saw that he was crying too.

I
was up by six, unable to sleep after a vague but disturbing dream about Dalia in which we had gone to the cemetery on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem and got caught in a downpour without an umbrella. Why did Avi have to show me that DVD? Yes, Broza’s Masada concert had been a great moment in our young lives, but watching the film had only stirred up intense feelings in both of us. Surprisingly intense, in Avi’s case. He had brushed it off afterward, saying he was tired, saying he missed all the people he’d known on the kibbutz, missed the happy, crazy passion of life in Israel before the bombardment of Har Milah.

I made myself a cup of coffee, taking it black instead of using the powdered whitening product that came with it, then went to the hotel’s fitness centre, where I put myself through an intense hour-long workout: thirty minutes on a treadmill, a hundred push-ups—okay, four sets of twenty-five each—and sit-ups until my abs cried
No more
. After a shower, I checked the hotel restaurant’s menu and decided no breakfast was worth twenty bucks, even if it was Rob Cantor’s money.

I walked over to Dearborn and found an agreeable diner where they piled on eggs, ham and home fries for six dollars and change. Three men at a table behind me got to talking with
a group of four at the next table and soon they were comparing their military service. It started with one spotting a screaming eagle tattoo on another’s arm, and asking, “Is that for real? You a Marine? Hey, me too.” All but one of the seven had been in the army or Marine Corps. None had been in Iraq—they were all in their thirties and forties—but some had seen action in Desert Storm. Soon they were high-fiving each other and offering to buy drinks come evening.

That was one conversation you’d never get in Toronto, where the closest most people get to military service is protesting outside the U.S. Consulate.

I walked back to the Hilton, pondering my first move of the day. A sign outside Birk’s old house said that security was provided by a company called Eye-Con. Maybe someone there would be able to tell me how the home invaders had circumvented the system without being seen.

As I walked up the circular drive, a man stepped out of a black Lincoln Town Car parked in front of the lobby doors and said, “Good morning.”

He was around six-three and thin but I was betting there was a lot of lean muscle under his black suit. His head was shaved—no, not shaved: hairless. Not one hair on his head, no eyebrows, no sign that he had to shave his face. Alopecia. It made his eyes seem huge, like he was an amphibian of some kind, a Gollum who’d been living in an underwater cave.

“You’ve been inquiring about Simon Birk?” he said.

There was nothing in his hands. No one else in the car. I said, “Yes.”

“He’d like to meet you,” the man said.

“Where?”

“His office, of course. He gets to work early.”

I hesitated. I wanted to meet Birk, but had no guarantee that’s where this man would take me.

“It’s up to you,” he said, looking at his watch. “He’s
offered to make time for you. But he doesn’t have all the time in the world.”

“You his chauffeur?”

“I provide a range of services to Mr. Birk. Collecting you is what I’m doing now.”

I said, “You mind opening your jacket?”

He smiled without showing any teeth and unbuttoned his jacket. No gun in the waistband, no holster under the arm.

“Backside too?” he asked.

“Please.”

He pirouetted. Nothing in the back of his pants. “It’s a one-time offer, pal.”

“You have a name?” I asked.

“I have several,” he said.

“Which should I use?”

“Curry.”

You get into a stranger’s car, there’s always a chance you won’t come back, or not all in one piece. But I had come to Chicago to meet Simon Birk himself, so I got into the car and fastened my seat belt, hoping it wouldn’t be too bumpy a ride.

The Birkshire Riverfront was on West Wacker Drive, on the south side of the Chicago River, overlooking the LaSalle Street bridge. My hairless escort parked between signs that said No Parking and No Stopping. I followed him into an opulent two-storey lobby with travertine floors and water bubbling through beds of stone. Chandeliers formed of opaque cylinders hung over a semicircular desk where two uniformed guards watched feeds from a dozen security cameras. Curry flipped his car keys to one of them then led me to a bank of elevators whose brass doors were so highly polished I could see my reflection in perfect detail.

There were no buttons to push for the penthouse level; access was by key only. Curry produced a ring of keys, chose
one that looked like it was for a bike lock, inserted it and twisted. The elevator rose swiftly enough to make my stomach lurch, and reached the sixtieth floor in less than a minute.

The elevator doors opened directly into a reception area with cherry-wood panelling and the same travertine flooring as in the lobby. The woman behind the desk said, “He’s waiting,” and reached under her desk to press a button that unlocked the door into the inner sanctum of Simon Birk.

His office wasn’t much bigger than a soccer pitch, with windows on two sides offering a fabulous view of the Chicago skyline across the river—the white Gothic stone of the Wrigley and Tribune buildings; the Hancock with its spires like the horns of a gazelle. The third wall had framed photos of Birk’s buildings around the world, all taken at night. Surrounding his desk like chess pieces were knee-high scale versions of his best-known towers in Manhattan, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dubai, London, Macau and Rio. Birk could walk among them for inspiration, bestride them like a colossus, all five-foot-five of him.

The man himself was standing behind the mahogany desk, hands clasped behind him, looking out at the city. He kept his back to me as he said, “Chicago is a tough city to build in, Mr. Geller. Toughest in the world. You’ve seen some of the crap going up in Toronto. I assume you have travelled to other cities. Chicago will not stand for inferior buildings, certainly not among its major projects. Skyscrapers were born here—not in New York, as most people think—and the best architects and developers of our time have come to make their mark here. When you build in Chicago,” he said, “you’re competing against past and present. And if you wish not only to compete, but to stand out? You know going in that there will be challenges. Hurdles and snags. Every project has them. But this one, Geller … this one has been a trial. Every step of the way, there have been problems. First the old bones. Then the crane
falling. Month after month I’ve had to wait for it to get back on track and now it is, finally. You were there yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Watching it go up?”

“Yes.”

“Wishing perhaps it would come down?”

I let that one pass.

He said, “For every visionary who looks up at the sky and says, ‘Why not,’ there is a small person somewhere who’d rather tear it down. Are you one of those, Geller? Because you have to understand that after everything I’ve had to endure to keep the Millennium Skyline going, I’m not in a position, not in the mood, to brook any further delays.”

He turned to face me. His blue eyes looked like diamond chips: cold, hard, glittering. He wore a grey suit and a powder-blue shirt and a dark blue tie. Understated and seriously expensive. I could probably have paid half a year’s rent with the money he’d spent on the outfit, and that wasn’t counting the chunky Rolex on his hairy left wrist.

There were two low-slung club chairs in front of Birk’s desk, much lower than the leather chair behind it. “Please,” he said, pointing to one of them. I sat in it. Curry remained standing, leaving me the lowest person in the room.

“You’ve been asking about me,” Birk said. “First in Toronto, and now here. My job site, the Department of Buildings, the
Tribune
. Even probing legal circles. Making quite a lot of noise, and all on your first day in town.”

Birk was supposed to know I’d been at the Skyline site and the DOB. How did he know I’d been at the
Tribune
, or when I had arrived in Chicago? How had he known about the lawyers Avi called?

“It’s my job to know things that concern me,” he said, reading my mind. “And to be frank, Mr. Geller, one thing that’s beginning to concern me is you. My work, you have to
understand, is highly complex. It requires great attention to detail—from the ground up, so to speak. I’m a very hands-on guy, which means I am involved in every aspect: site procurement and preparation, design and construction, right through to the final fittings and fixtures in every building. I choose the stone, the glass, the lights, the rugs, the fabrics and flooring. I even decide the temperature of the swimming pools. I monitor labour contracts, currency exchanges, legal files, requests for proposals and quotations, gambling statutes, food and beverage trends. The point I’m making, and I do hope I’m making it clearly, is that I have enough on my plate without some pissant private investigator making public scenes and dragging my name through the mud.”

“I’ve inconvenienced you?”

“Yes.”

“Not a good idea?”

“No.”

“Because you’re busy and important and lord of all you survey.”

“You should take what I’m telling you seriously,” he said.

“Or what? I’ll end up like Martin Glenn? Like Will Sterling?”

Birk did a nice job of furrowing his bushy eyebrows as if the names meant nothing. “And who might they be?”

“Corpses now,” I said. “Before that, one of them was an engineer on the Harbourview job, and the other found evidence of how polluted that land is.”

“And you think I had something to do with their deaths?”

“You said it yourself, you’re a hands-on guy.”

Birk set his cup down on its saucer and leaned across his desk. I could see a bend in his nose where the home invaders had broken it. “I’ll admit I’m not completely up on Canadian law,” he said, “but the U.S. system offers people like me considerable protection against libel and slander. Make one more
unfounded accusation about me in any public forum, and I’ll bury you under a ton of legal paper.”

“Isn’t truth a defence down here?”

“There is no truth to it!” he said. “None.”

“You didn’t tell Rob Cantor you’d take care of Glenn and Sterling?”

“What I tell Cantor or anyone else is none of your business, understand?” His face was growing dark with anger. He wasn’t used to people talking back to him—suing him, maybe, or playing hardball in negotiations, but not giving him lip in his own office. “None of this is your business. You’re a nobody, Geller. Especially in Chicago. You have no standing of any kind here. You’re a pipsqueak. You’re a shit stain on a sidewalk. I’ve got six thousand people working for me. I’ve got enough lawyers to ruin you, your partner, your brother and anyone else who crosses me. So here’s the plan. Francis will take you back to your hotel,” he said, indicating the man who called himself Curry. “He’ll wait while you pack your things and he’ll drive you to O’Hare. You’ll get on the first plane back to Toronto. You’ll stop poking your nose into my affairs and quit making bizarre accusations.”

“You haven’t even heard them all,” I said. “In fact, forget Will Sterling. Forget Martin Glenn. Some of my best accusations are yet to come.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means poking holes in your bullshit home invasion story.”

He slammed his fist down on his desk, rattling his cup and saucer, spilling droplets of coffee. His hands formed fists and his jacket bunched around his thick arms and shoulders. Francis Curry walked languidly toward me. I think he was trying to look menacing. It might have worked better if he used an eyebrow pencil.

I said, “Don’t try me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. He reached into his pocket and dangled his keys. “But you’ll need these to get back to ground level. Unless you want to save everyone some trouble and jump out a window.”

“Like Maya Cantor?”

He said, “Who?”

Cut from the same cloth as his boss.

On the ride down, I said, “You’re not just a driver.”

“No.”

“Ex-cop?”

“Ex a lot of things,” he said.

I said, “I think I’ll walk back to my hotel, Francis. Every-thing’s walking distance here, right? Got to love that about a city.”

He said, “You not going to take Mr. Birk’s advice?”

“No.”

“You should.”

“What can I say? Chicago is too great a town. It’s everything they say it is. I am having far too much fun to go home.”

“What’s that?” he said. “You giving me your Bill Murray? Having a little fun with me? Okay. Have as much fun as you want. Rack up the laughs. Whoop it up on the streets of Chicago.”

“And while I am doing that?”

“I’ll be covering Simon Birk’s ass,” he said. “Who’ll be covering yours?”