I read it all. I needed a three-dimensional image of the man, a weakness to probe, a gap in the armour, somewhere to stick in a crowbar and heave.
He was a teetotaller, according to press reports. Never touched a drop, not even champagne to toast a new deal. I imagined a sixteen-year old boy, pledging through tears that he would never taste the poisons that had killed his mother.
He had a brilliant mind for numbers, according to both friends and enemies. "He's unbelievable," a former director of construction told the Tribune. "It's not just that he can calculate them faster than a machine, which he can, he also grasps the context at the same time. You put a thirty-page prospectus in front of him, he scans it like a dinner menu, and then asks all the right questions, as if he'd had all the time in the world to study it."
He had a gift for languages: at last count, he spoke fluent French, Italian, Spanish and German, and could acquit himself reasonably well in two or three other tongues.
He was an arrogant sonofabitch. An advisor had once prefaced a remark with "If I were you, Simon," and before he got another word out, Birk had retorted: "If you were me, Thomas, it would signify the largest single jump up the evolutionary ladder since the first amphibian crawled onto a beach."
He did not suffer fools gladly. According to a Tribune story by Hale, Birk fired a long-time employee who mistakenly calculated an offer in Canadian dollars instead of American, even though the mistake wound up making Birk money.
He told the Vanity Fair profiler that Jack London had been his favourite author as a young boy. "But I always favoured Call of the Wild over White Fang," he had said. "Far more interesting to see a house dog turn into a dominant beast than to see a wolf tamed to a house dog, don't you think?"
He was married to Joyce Mulhearn, fifty-four, if you could call theirs a marriage. She had been in an irreversible coma for more than two years and was currently housed in an extended-care facility called Nova Place. If he dated other women, no one had written about it.
He and his wife had owned a home on North Astor Street, a Georgian masterpiece designed by David Adler, filled with art collected by Mrs. Birk, whose tastes leaned toward Impressionists, neo-Impressionists, Fauvists and art deco-stuck in the early twentieth century. Both Mr. and Mrs. Birk had been savagely beaten during a home invasion, in which the house was looted of some of its most valuable art and jewellery. Joyce had suffered grievous head injuries-the cause of her comatose state-and Birk's nose, collarbone and right hand had been broken.
Birk sold the house not long after the attack and moved to the Birkshire Riverfront, where he already had his offices on the upper floors, overlooking the winding Chicago River and the many bridges that crossed it in the downtown area. Though he stood just five-five, he was considered strong for his size and had been an avid boxer in his younger days, and he worked out daily in his private gym.
His net worth was roughly $1.5 billion. Not exactly Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, but you weren't going to see him sleeping on a sewer grate either.
He gave donations to both the Democratic and Republican parties.
He built casinos but never played in them. "I save my gambling for business," he had said, "because in real estate, I have the longest arms in the house."
He had something like six thousand people working for him, or 5,999 more than I did.
Taken together, his holdings amounted to sixty million square feet, which was probably sixty thousand apartments like mine.
He held season tickets for the White Sox, the Blackhawks and the Bears. "I would have bought Cubs tickets too," he had said, "but in this town you go with one ball club or the other and I'm not much for underdogs."
Birk had no children. No heirs to the empire. Finally, a tally I could match.
So: I wasn't going to beat him by getting him drunk, outfoxing him on numbers, conning him in any of the Romance languages, outspending him or being a bigger prick. I couldn't hire him, then fire him. Couldn't get to him through his wife or kids. I could outbox him, but there'd be the small matter of getting him to agree to put on the gloves. I might prove his equal in Blackhawks trivia-does hockey not course through the blood of every Canadian? — but I had to assume he'd have me beat on the Sox or the Bears, or even the lowly Cubs, for whom he professed no love.
Maybe I'd just have to beat him senseless with a golf club, throw him in the trunk of a cab and tell the driver, "Canada-and hurry." At ten-thirty, I turned off my laptop and got my suitcase out of the hall closet. I packed enough clothes to last a week and added hats, scarves and accessories I might need for surveillance. I threw in an extra sweater, in case the famous wind off Lake Michigan began blowing as advertised.
I did not pack my Beretta Cougar, much as I might have liked to. No point in starting my trip with a strip search.
Before I went to bed, I went out onto the balcony and stared out at the stunning skyline and thought, Take that, Simon Birk. My view's just as good as yours. I'm working late at the office, alone, when there's a knock at the door. Just shave-and-a-haircut. No two bits.
I know that knock. I've always known it.
I rush to the door and fling it open and there he is. My father, Buddy Geller, looking the way he did the year before he died. Black hair gleaming, flashing a smile that Willy Loman would have envied on his best day. I open my arms for a hug but he holds out his hand for a shake instead.
"Mr. Geller," he says. "I'm glad you could see me. You won't regret it, I can promise you that."
"Please, Dad," I say. "Call me Jonah."
"Why, thank you," he says. "Jonah it is. That's a good start. Now, Jonah, I have a proposition for you and I think-I know-you're going to like it, so hear me out."
"Of course, Dad."
"I need you to write me a cheque. Not a big one, just a G-note. Wait. Did I say a grand? Better make it two and I'll tell you why. Because I want you, Jonah Geller, to profit on this every bit as handsomely as me. How profitable, you're asking yourself? How about a twenty-to-one payoff? Maybe even better by post time."
"Aw, Dad, not a horse."
"A horse, you say, like it's any horse. Look at the name. Take a good look." He pulls a racing form from his pocket. The name is circled in a great flourish of ink. Chicago Fire.
"Huh?" he says. "Is that not a sign? Tell me you're in, Jonah. A thousand for you and a thousand for me. And if you're not interested for yourself, then at least the thousand for me. Please. I don't ask you for much, do I?"
I have to admit that's true. I write him a cheque-but just for his thousand.
"You're sure?" he says.
"I'm sure, Dad."
"Not the gambling type?"
"Not tonight."
Next thing I know we're at the track. He signs the cheque over to a teller, holding down a fedora against the wind. I don't remember him wearing a hat at my office. Now it's all he can do to keep it on his head. We find our seats and await the start of the race. Then they announce that Chicago Fire is missing, gone from his paddock without a word. His trainer is frantic, his owner demanding an investigation.
"You find him!" my father shouts.
So off I go into the windy night, searching hospitals, police stations, drunk tanks and detox centres. No sign of the horse.
I go into every bar I can find, from upscale piano bars to raunchy gay bars to sleazy country-and-western dives where last week's beer is still stuck to the floor. I show pictures of the horse to bartenders, drinkers, hustlers, house band players. Nothing.
When I get back to the track, my father is slumped in his seat, tears mixing with a cold rain that's falling hard on the open grandstand. His thousand-my thousand-is gone and he's too ashamed to speak to me.