Dirty Fire (8 page)

Lake Tower is a diverse community—or at least it had become one, sharing in the explosive growth fueled by the exodus from city to suburb that marked every American metropolitan area since the 1950s. The difference was that it had started rich, an enclave of the affluent founded by and for the beneficiaries of late 19th-century industrialism.

Unlike many of the instant cities that evolved from small-town roots, Lake Tower had both the forethought and the resources to plan much of its own destiny.

To maintain a solid tax base without overly taxing the residents themselves, Lake Tower nurtured growth, courting corporations with various incentives to construct new campuses on what was then greenfield outskirts of town. Later, when developers began scouting sites for sprawling shopping centers, Lake Tower readily expanded the incentives to embrace the malls and collect the hefty sales tax revenues they provided.

This served as a beacon to both ends of the economic spectrum. The ranks of the well -off were swelled by newcomers who sought both the status traditionally associated with the enclave of older money and the surprisingly low property taxes on their substantial homes; housing developments —many of them as tasteful as they were distant from the affluent neighborhoods— drew middle and upper-middle homeowners.

A tradition of WASP-ishness gradually moderated as growth pushed the city borders closer to traditionally Jewish and Catholic areas and an inevitable cross-fertilization. In the mid-1980s, the profits available in lower-income multi-family housing further democratized Lake Tower, though carefully controlled through zoning and construction permits.

In sum, all this contributed to a proven equation for success, though one with inverse properties. In Lake Tower, wealth begat prosperity, which in turn begat more wealth.

I was in the passenger seat and Terry Posson was driving, heading east on a busy thoroughfare that was alive with the kind of shops and shoppers that were the logical extension of the mathematics of wealth. Trees in the parkway were already green with foliage; it reminded me of Chaz Trombetta’s painstakingly landscaped yard. We had seen each other several times since that day—rather, I had seen Chaz, who had looked straight through me without a word or sign of recognition. It was a warmhearted enthusiasm compared to the looks and occasional muttered comments I was receiving from other former colleagues on the Lake Tower police force.

I shook off the memory and tried to concentrate on the early afternoon April sunlight, warm on my right arm where it rested on the open window frame.

It was time to get to work.

“So, Terry,” I said, conversationally, “how long have you been on the job here?”

She drove with both hands on the wheel at two and ten o’clock, just like they taught in high school driver’s ed. “Year, come June,” she said. “I was on the force in Seattle before I moved to Illinois.”

“You and Bird work together before this case?”

She nodded. “We’ve been partnered up since I came on board. Mel’s an okay guy.”

I checked the sign at the next corner. It was as good a place as any.

“What
is
it with this case? I mean, you two actually have been working it, right? Full-time, since January?”

“We were assigned to the case right after you were arrested,” she said, her voice level. “About a week after the fire. So it was February, if you want to be accurate.”

“Sure, yeah—February. I want to be accurate, all right. So tell me: how’d you two pick your interview subjects? Did you look in a phone book, or just stop people at random on the street?”

Posson shot a glance at me. I smiled politely, showing more teeth than usual.

“We talked to a couple of dozen people who had a connection to the victims in one way or another,” she said, in a tone so without emotion that it signaled something radically different. “We followed the leads we had and took them to where they led. You know how some cases are—you drill a lot of dry holes along the way.”

“A
lot
of dry holes,” I agreed. “Everything just seems to have ended up a dead end, hasn’t it?”

“You got something on your mind, just say it.” She drove like somebody who had a lot of experience on the street. I watched her eyes tracking regularly between the road ahead, both sets of mirrors and the activity on the sidewalks we passed. Only the fixed set of her lips and the knuckle-tight two-handed grip she had on the steering wheel signaled just how furious she was.

“How long were you on the force in Seattle?”

“Five years,” she said. “Two in uniform, a year on a tac unit, and the rest in plainclothes investigations. Vice and narcotics, mainly.”

“You run many investigations out there?” I kept my voice neutral. “Head them up, I mean.”

“A few,” she said, and I noted her struggle not to sound defensive. “What’s your point?”

“So you come to Lake Tower, you’re on the force less than a year—and you’re assigned lead investigator on a double homicide?”

I waited a second or two for a response. “C’mon, Terry—I read your jacket. It’s your first homicide case here. Tell me if I’m wrong; this is your first homicide investigation, period. Didn’t you wonder why you caught this case? Didn’t it occur to you that there must have been a half-dozen guys with gold shields —
real
detectives, with tons more experience—that should have gotten a case as high profile as this?”

She shrugged, eyes locked on road. “And we used some of ‘em. Look, a lot of people have logged hours on this case. Even Nederlander put in time on it, particularly the first couple of weeks. If you want to know why I’m still on it, ask him. Maybe he liked the work Bird and I did.”

I laughed, intentionally making it harsh and ugly.

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, a girl’s got to start somewhere—but
you
, Terry, you started right at the top. They didn’t even partner you up with somebody a little more…seasoned. Somebody who could, say, show you the ropes.” I grinned, wide and insinuatingly. “Lead investigator. You find it hard to sell that one? Probably not, eh?—not with a randy old boy like Nederlander. ”

Posson’s lower lip curled, and she nodded. “Uh-huh. Now we get down to it, right? ‘Who’s she sleeping with?’ That’s original as hell.”

She turned to face me directly, and her eyes burned into mine. “Well, fuck
you
.” She returned to her driving. “Get this straight. I didn’t ask for this case: I was assigned to it. Yeah, I was glad to get on it. Yeah, I got lead—but that was assigned to me, too. I didn’t ask anybody for any favors on this.”

“Oh, I see,” I said lightly. “This is one of those affirmative action things. This is where we make up for years of oppression in the name of all those women blocked out of police work by sexist pigs. Strike a blow for sisterhood united.”

I made a show of looking out the window. “Of course, it also meant three wasted months of investigation, didn’t it? That’s a hell of an on-the-job training program. Cheap at the price, don’t you think? I’ll bet Kathleen Levinstein would have been proud to be part of your personal campaign to break through the glass ceiling.”

I felt Posson’s eyes burning into the back of my head; I turned to take them head-on. Her lips were a tight thin line and the muscles on one side of her jaw twitched furiously.

“I don’t know you,” she said evenly. “But it’s a cold day in hell that I have to put up with crap from somebody who sold his ass and that gold shield you’re so proud of, just for a few bucks from a couple of low-life car thieves.”

She pulled to the curb and stopped.

“It’s your goddam interview, and you don’t need any help from me. Find a taxi. Or just start walking,” Posson said. Her tone was the one taught by the better police training academies for use in explosive situations. “But you want to get out—right
now!
”

I stepped out and closed the door, then started to lean in to deliver what would have been a final stinging exit line. Instead, the car surged forward from under the hand I still had on the door handle. I concentrated on delivering my toes away from the spinning wheels.

I stood on the curb and watched her turn the corner. Above the other traffic noises, I heard her tires squeal in protest.

I flagged down the second of two empty cabs that passed in the next few minutes. The first had slowed at my gesture. Then it had continued on, the driver studiously avoiding my eye.

The second cab pulled up for the red light, and I climbed in. In the mirror, I saw the driver look at me with a flash of irritation, and I realized that I had slammed the door much too hard.

Years ago in Chicago, long before I had met Ellen, I dated an actress from the Goodman Theater. Like most performers, she enjoyed talking about her profession almost as much as she enjoyed talking about herself. The secret of being persuading in any role, she had told me, is simple: you just convince yourself that you’re not acting.

I looked at my reflection in the mirror, and saw a man whose face was still flushed an angry red. My former girlfriend would have been proud.

I had been convincing enough to keep Terry Posson from coming along to our appointment at B’nai Abraham, and accomplished it in a way she would think was her own choice.

All by being, for lack of a better term, a flaming asshole.

It’s easy,
I told myself, though my smile was grim.
I haven’t done it for a while, but it’s good to know I still remember how.

Temple B’nai Abraham was a large white brick complex located well back from the busy thoroughfare it borders in Highland Park. The white-striped parking lot would have done justice to a medium-sized shopping mall. But on this midweek midafternoon, only a half-dozen cars were parked randomly near the main entrance.

Rabbi Bernard Jerome was a surprise. He was younger than I had expected, a trim man in his early thirties whose black hair had probably started to recede when he was in high school. He dressed casually —a Clan Stuart plaid wool sports jacket and dark slacks— and his shirt was open at the collar.

On the wood-paneled wall behind his walnut desk hung framed photographs, many of them featuring politicians or celebrities I recognized from newspapers and magazines. Jerome was the common denominator in all of them, the varying degrees of formality or intimacy gauged by the handshakes or the arms draped over shoulders.

We were sipping very good coffee. It had been served in surprisingly delicate china cups by a white-haired secretary in expensive Pierre Odrulain glasses. They gave her the eyes of a startled cat.

For the past half hour, we had examined the Levinsteins from every angle I could conceive. The results were scarcely worthy of the effort. I knew nothing more than what I had at the start, and was nearing the end of my list.

I leaned over the desk, checking the remaining tape supply on my recorder. It was a Sony, voice activated and miniaturized to the size of a cigarette pack.

Sensing the interview was nearing its end, Jerome offered to have Cat Lady call a cab.

“We were all devastated when we heard about Stan and Kathleen,” the rabbi continued. “It was a tragedy—in addition to being members of our congregation, they were my friends.”

“Did Stanley Levinstein have any hobbies, any interests you know about?” I pressed. “For instance, I’ve heard some talk about an art collection. Did he ever discuss it with you?”

The rabbi looked puzzled. “I didn’t even know he had one.”

“What about Mrs. Levinstein? Do you know if she had an interest in art? Did she ever mention pieces she might have bought—the artist, or where she bought them?”

“No, not that I recall.” He paused, considering. “No…but that doesn’t mean she didn’t collect. I mean, they clearly could have afforded to buy anything they wanted. Stan was a very successful businessman, and she had money of her own. I understand she came from people who were quite well off.”

“Really?”

“So I understand. I’m afraid I don’t know a lot about her background. Kathleen was very quiet. But I know that she was Stan’s source of strength,” Jerome said. “Really, I think it was the same for Stan; the two of them were dedicated to each other. They were childless, you know.”

“Were the Levinsteins active? In your temple, I mean.”

“Stan was very active,” Jerome replied. “Kathleen less so—she had converted to Judaism when they married, and I think she attended temple only because of Stan.

“But Stan—he took his religion very seriously, like many of our members, and he actively supported a lot of our initiatives. The thing about Stan, he did more than just contribute money.”

Jerome turned to the wall and carefully lifted one of the framed photos off its attachment. He handed it to me.

It showed a very young Jerome wearing a M-65 field jacket, one shoulder bearing the yellow-and-black crest of the First Cavalry Division. He was leaning, aggressively, over a blue police barricade. Though the photo was cropped to focus on the young man, a discerning eye could also see that he was surrounded by mostly older men dressed in an eclectic variety of military attire. In the photo, their faces were tight and their eyes hard.

Jerome’s own face was contorted, his hands cupped around his opened mouth. Passing closely in the foreground, in blurry focus, I could make out a figure wearing a white, pointed cowl and hood that covered the face.

“You probably remember back—oh, six or seven years ago? The Klan and the American Nazi Party got a permit to march over in Skokie. Stan worked around the clock to try to get that parade permit canceled. When that didn’t happen, he organized a group of veterans from the synagogue to show up for a counter-demonstration. He told everybody to wear their old military uniforms.”

Jerome chuckled. “Truth be told, Stan was one of the few who could still fit in his. He had been a combat infantryman in Korea, you know.”

“He sounds like a man who liked to get involved.”

The rabbi nodded vigorously. “Very much so. As they say, Stanley Levinstein didn’t just talk the talk—he walked the walk, all the way.”

I handed the photo across the desk, and Jerome carefully returned it to its place. The rabbi took exceptional care, I noticed, to align the frame perfectly level.

“Did a lot of your people show up in Skokie?” I asked, wondering how he would react. He glance he shot me was thoughtful and penetrating, in equal measure. But his tone, when he spoke, was mild.

“Oh, sure. You have to remember, a lot of people at B’nai Abraham lost family members in the Holocaust,” Jerome explained. “We have almost a dozen actual survivors of the camps in our congregation. For some of our older members especially, what happened to the Jews in the ‘30s and ‘40s isn’t a part of history—it’s what they and their families lived through. Stan Levinstein just didn’t want to let the world forget the horror. Or the injustice.”

He tented his fingers and frowned in concentration.

“Let me give you an idea what kind of guy Stan was,” he said. “This was before I took the appointment here, back in the bad old days of the Soviet Union. B’nai Abraham sponsored the emigration of a pretty substantial number of Russian Jews. The temple formed a lot of committees, raised funds and put together a letter-writing campaign to urge the Soviets to let their Jews go to Israel.

“Well, Stan didn’t believe in committee work or writing letters,” Jerome smiled. “So the son of a gun packed his bags and went over there himself. He spent weeks at a time in Moscow, working and making deals with the Russians to let those people leave for Israel. Then he’d go to Israel to help arrange for their resettlement. The infrastructure he set up is still operating, I understand.”

Jerome leaned forward, in the manner of someone passing along a confidence.

“Just between you and me, I’ve heard he found some unofficial channels that he used too.”

He gave me a significant look and pressed a forefinger against the side of his nose. It was a gesture I had seen only in movies, and I choked back my smile when I saw the rabbi was serious.

“Russian gangsters, I mean,” Jerome nodded, solemnly. “For every Jew who he got out with a passport stamped by the Russians, he smuggled another half dozen out in the back of some unmarked truck, probably.” The rabbi sat back in his chair, a satisfied smile on his face.

“So you see, Stan liked the, uh…
direct
approach,” Jerome said. “For him, it worked. And let me tell you, a lot of people have good reason to be grateful. You know the old Hebrew saying? ‘Whoever saves one life saves the entire world.’ That’s what ‘never again’ meant to Stan. I miss his fire and dedication. He was always…oh, ‘creative’ is a good word for it. The man could always surprise you.”

Unexpectedly, the young rabbi grinned. “I have to wonder what he’d be doing today, with all the furor over the Swiss gold.”

I raised my eyebrows politely. “I thought all that had been resolved. Didn’t the Swiss banks agree to pay some kind of reimbursement?”

“You’re talking about the fund the Swiss banks set up,” Jerome said, with a dismissive movement of his hands. “A little more than a billion dollars to reimburse Holocaust survivors who held accounts that that predated 1939. Rather, in most cases, pay off their heirs. Of course, you know this story?”

His lips twisted in derision, and he did not wait for a response.

“The majority of the ‘missing’ depositors died in the extermination camps. Then the Swiss would declare the accounts ‘dormant.’ Effectively, they confiscated the funds. So what else is new? With the Swiss, it’s always about money. They laundered gold for the Nazis throughout the war—gold stolen from treasuries of countries they occupied, melted down from looted art objects and jewelry—even pulled from the mouths of Jews they murdered. Many historians believe the war would have ended before 1943 had the Nazis not had the financial resources of the Swiss to fuel their war machine.”

Jerome threw up his hands in disgust.

“So for decades, they stonewalled any attempt by the heirs to claim the accounts—denying they have any records, usually. But a couple of years ago in Zurich, some bank employee with a conscience looked in a bag full of paper just before it went to the shredder. What do you know? They were full of documentation on Jewish property.”

The rabbi shook his head in outraged disbelief. “Still, the Swiss resisted. It took class-action lawsuits, sanctions against them by cities and states, even the threat of action against them by the Senate Banking Committee before they finally agreed to the billion-dollar settlement in 1998.”

“So you won,” I said. Without being obvious, I glanced at the wall clock behind the rabbi’s head.

Jerome shrugged.

“One battle in a much larger war,” the rabbi replied. “Important as they were, these private accounts are only the tip of the iceberg. The real issue is much, much bigger. It’s about all the property—some of it Jewish, much of it not—that’s still ‘missing’ from World War II. One of our members—she’s a professor of art history at Northwestern University—spoke to the congregation on this a year ago. I tell you, sir, it’s
staggering!
”

He aimed a finger at me as if addressing a reluctant student in his history class.

“The fact is that confiscated property, worth tens of billions in today’s dollars, never went to the proper owners or heirs. After the war, the Allied Powers appropriated a lot of this stuff for themselves. Especially the Soviet Union. The Russians took all the Nazi loot they could get their hands on—gold, statutes, paintings, even the drapes from German houses. They carried it back home and called it ‘war reparations.’”

“Kind of hard to blame them,“ I ventured, this time openly looking at my wristwatch. “As I recall my history classes, the Germans killed millions of Russians. Devastated their country.”

“What does it make you when you steal from a thief?” Jerome asked, his tone making the question anything but rhetorical. “You’re still a thief if you don’t return it to the rightful owners. And the scale of this particular theft is enormous, Mr. Davey. You are interested in collections of artwork? The Russians won’t even admit to all the works of art they’re still hiding—famous pieces, some of them, lost to the world.”

“And quite valuable, I guess.”

“You want a conservative estimate? The artwork alone is worth perhaps ten times, perhaps
twenty
times all the gold that was stolen. Perhaps even more. I’ve seen estimates of $140 billion.”

“In artwork,” I repeated, and my attention was no longer on the clock.

Jerome’s voice turned scornful. “Of course, all this was addressed in 1998—oh, so fully and completely. There was an international conference in Washington, D.C., a very impressive gathering of more than forty nations hosted by our government. During this meeting, our former secretary of state—a very sincere lady, I am certain—announced a ‘breakthrough.’ The Russians, she said, had agreed to return all art that could be proven to belong to Holocaust victims.”

Jerome looked at me expectantly for several seconds, his expression that of a man waiting for someone else to supply the punch line.

“
Proven
, Mr. Davey—as it turned out, that was the key word,” he said. “The Russians made a great show of pledging cooperation, and all the conference delegates were very excited. So excited that they failed to listen to the rest of what Moscow’s representative was saying. The gentleman cautioned the conference that it would be quite difficult to separate ‘victim art’ from the rest of the so-called ‘reparation art’ that the Soviets had taken from the Nazis.

“As I recall, the Russian delegate asked for what he termed ‘international research assistance’ as a first step. Of course, nothing substantive could be done in the interim.”

He snorted loudly and derisively.

“It turned out to be typical Russian stonewalling,” Jerome said. “Purely for the purpose of manipulating public opinion. It was no coincidence. The same day their pledge was made to the art conference
—the very same day, sir!—
the head of the International Monetary Fund was in Moscow. Russia wanted immediate aid. Remember? They were in their worst economic crisis since Communist rule ended.”

The rabbi smiled coldly. “Modern Russia has become quite adept at public relations. If the looted artwork is a barricade to getting IMF cash, defuse the issue! Promises are cheap. Much cheaper than surrendering billions in real assets. ”

“And it worked?” I asked.

“It worked,” Jerome said. “It’s working today. Look at the headlines. The Russians still lurch from financial crisis to the next; the West is still holding the purse strings. The Russians hold perhaps a hundred billion dollars in stolen art, like a kidnapper demanding a ransom. At the same time, the conservatives in the Russian Duma have passed a law that officially claims the ‘confiscated’ art as Russian national treasure. And aside from a few minor art pieces turned over to the heirs of Holocaust survivors, the ‘research’ is still unfinished. My guess—it won’t be finished in my lifetime. Failing something dramatic, that is.”

The intercom buzzed. “That’ll be your taxi,” Jerome said. “I’ll walk you out.”

I snapped off the tape recorder and dropped it in my pocket.

We passed the white-haired secretary’s sentry post in silence. I was about to break the silence when Jerome seized me by the arm, startling me with the strength of his grip.

“So there you have the real outrage, sir,” Jerome said. “The Russians are still hiding many billions of dollars’ worth of stolen art, a lot of it taken from Jews. Everybody knows it, but nobody has ever been able to present any legal proof. And for political purposes, no Western government has ever had the courage to demand a real accounting. Even the United States prefers to maintain the fiction. To say that this artwork was destroyed in the war or is simply ‘missing.’ It’s moral cowardice on an international scale.”