"Well, fortunately for me, it's Developer Services you want," the clerk said. "They process applications for high-rise buildings. Did you have an appointment?"
"Do I need one?"
"Oh, yeah. If you're asking, I'm guessing you don't have one."
"No."
"You can make one now, or apply for one online, which is probably quicker."
"I'm visiting from Toronto," I said. "Is there any way I could just speak to someone-"
"Sugar, it doesn't matter if you're visiting from Tobago."
"So who would I make the appointment with? Who's the most familiar with Birk's new project?"
"The Millennium Skyline?" She had long pink fingernails decorated with glittering pinwheel-shaped swirls. She tapped her keyboard and said, "The project administrator on that was Peter Stemko."
"Can't I just-"
"No."
"What if I-"
"No! Not without an appointment. And Mr. Stemko's only going to tell you what I'm going to tell you: there's not much you can get without a freedom of information request, and that you will not get overnight."
"What if I had information about safety violations?"
Her look was entirely skeptical, but the crane collapse, and the death of three workers, was too recent an incident for her to ignore me. "You said you wanted information. Now all of a sudden you got some?"
"I do. I can say for a fact that a violation occurred not an hour ago."
"What violation?"
"A man on site without proper equipment. No hard hat, no boots, nothing."
"That's not something we handle." She looked over my shoulder and called out, "Next person in line."
There was only one thing left to do in this situation. Get loud.
"Is it because he's Simon Birk?" I said, my voice rising. Other clerks at the counter looked our way-exactly the reaction I was hoping for. "People have died because of him. And not just those poor workmen."
"Sir?" she said. "There's no need to raise your voice with me."
"The name is Geller," I said. "Jonah Geller. And this department should be looking very closely at Simon Birk. He abuses the environment. His employees. The families of the men who died building his tower. The very process that-"
"Please lower your voice!"
"Lower it!" I thundered. "I'll raise the roof if I have to."
"Kid has a set of pipes on him," a man behind me said.
Everyone was looking our way now. Clerks, other employees, the people sitting and waiting their turn.
"Simon Birk," I bellowed, "is getting away with murder, just because he's rich."
"Hear, hear," an older woman said. "I never did care for his attitude."
The clerk was on the phone now, calling security, no doubt.
I put up my hands in surrender and walked to the elevator. People gave me a wide berth. "All right," I said. "I'm going. But Simon Birk better look over his shoulder because I won't rest until he pays for everything he's done. Jonah Geller is not giving up on this. Jonah Geller never gives up."
When the elevator came, I stepped into it. No one else from the ninth floor got in with me.
As the doors closed, I heard an elderly man say, "I know Simon Birk from the newspapers. But who the hell's this Geller?"
CHAPTER 29
The Chicago Tribune building is inlaid at eye level with stones liberated from some of the world's most recognizable buildings and structures by intrepid Tribune correspondents of days gone by. A tile from the Taj Mahal. Stones from the Berlin Wall, the Great Wall of China and the Alamo. Souvenirs of Notre Dame and Westminster Abbey and Lincoln's Tomb. A twisted bit of metal from the World Trade Center next to a stone from the Mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent. Even chunks of the Pyramids and the Parthenon-the ruined temple, not the nightclub.
The Tribune newsroom is on the fourth floor. Somehow I'd expected a scene out of The Front Page: a clamorous, smoky room filled with hard-bitten Chicago newsmen pounding out copy on clacking typewriters, phones jangling like alarm bells, flasks of whisky at the ready. Instead, the place was strangely quiet. Soft tapping on computer keyboards. Phones burring discreetly. No cigarettes, no cigars, no pipes, no booze. No copy boys running the gauntlet from writers to editors, no pneumatic tubes whooshing stories over to rewrite. It could have been an insurance office or a call centre, except for one glassed-in area where police scanners squawked.
Jericho Hale was a tall, lean black man about my age, which is mid-thirties. His head was cleanly shaved, which somehow makes black men look cool and white men unemployable. His eyes were focused on the screen in front of him as his fingers thrummed quickly over the keyboard, lips pursed as if he were about to plant a kiss on someone. The man was in a zone. I stood there watching him for several minutes until he stopped typing and without looking up said, "You had some information about Simon Birk."
I said, "Yes."
He said, "Wait."
He resumed typing, his eyes moving from the screen to a document on the desk next to him and back, until he was satisfied with whatever he had written. He saved his copy, then pushed back from his computer and took me in.
He said, "Birk."
I said, "Yes."
He said, "Sit." Hale had been writing about Simon Birk for years. He slid open a file drawer and showed me files jammed into hanging holders. "And that's just one drawer," Hale said. "The man has been something of a boon to me. I'm like one of those birds that ride around on the back of a rhinoceros."
"Better above him than below," I said.
"True enough. So what brings an investigator here from Toronto?"
"I'm looking for information on Birk."
"And you came to me?"
"You've written more about him than anyone else."
Hale smiled. "That's because people give me information. Not because I give it to them."
"Maybe we can help each other."
"I know I can help you. What I'm not seeing is how you can help me."
I said, "Birk's putting up a building in Toronto."
"He puts up buildings everywhere."
"This one is called the Harbourview."
"I know. I watched the groundbreaking ceremony on TV."
"It's dirty," I said.
"How dirty?"
"Dirty enough to put Birk in jail for the rest of his life."
Hale picked up a spiral notebook and a pen. Said, "You have my full attention."
"But this is quid pro quo, right? We trade information?"
"You give me the quid," he said, "then we'll see about the quo."
I told him about the deadly Aroclor 1242 that had been found on the site. He took notes without looking down at the pad. I told him how Birk had made Rob Cantor cover it up.
"Because he couldn't afford to have it cleaned?" he asked.
"Yes."
"That's according to Cantor?"
"Yes."
"What else?"
I told him Birk had ordered the deaths of three people to keep the project going.
He stopped taking notes and leaned his long body closer toward me. "Are you shitting me? What three people?"
"Before I get into specifics-"
"Uh-oh. Here it comes."
"Here comes what?"
"The part where you tell me you have no proof of this."
"Not directly, no."
"Nothing? No other sources who'd back you up? Police, say?"
"Not officially. Not yet."
He said, "Are you fucking with me?"
"No."
"'Cause this is a newsroom, and we get a lot of nutbars come in here with crazy stories. They're emissaries from another planet. The mayor's bugging their houses. The CIA wants them dead. The country is being run by reptiles from space."
"I'm pretty sure that one's true," I said.
"Look, I got deadlines. I got real stories I'm working on, the kind that come with sources, witnesses, documents. The kind of stuff I can write without getting my ass sued."