"You don't think Birk is capable of this?"
"What I think isn't worth a damn," he said. "I'm not an editorial writer. I am a reporter, and the company pays me to write factual stories that I can back up, line by line, under the scrutiny of the legal department if necessary and I hate when those people review my copy. If they're not space reptiles, they're first cousins. Now if the police in Toronto consider Birk a murder suspect, and someone there is willing to go on the record, I can report that. If Rob Cantor makes some kind of public statement about the Aroclor, I can report that. Until then, you are a guy who came in off the street with a mouthful of cotton candy."
"It's not bullshit," I said.
I had given Hale my investigator's licence when I arrived. He picked it up off his desk and looked at it closely. He said, "You seem halfway normal to me. But even if I believe you-even if my gut tells me that you are telling the truth-"
"Does it?"
"Doesn't matter. I still can't expose my paper to a libel suit, which happens to be one of Simon Birk's hobbies, and which would get me fired or bumped back to rewriting wire copy."
"I'm not asking you to write anything. Yet. Just hear me out."
"Which I've been doing, despite certain time constraints piling up on my ass."
"And help me understand Birk a little better."
"The quo to your quid? All right," he said. "Let's get to the murders. Who is he supposed to have killed?"
"The engineer who was responsible for cleaning the site. He was beaten to death two-no, three days ago. The environmental studies major who found the Aroclor was shot the next day."
"And the third?"
"Rob Cantor's daughter."
"Jesus. What happened to her?"
I told him about Maya's apparent suicide and the evidence we had found that it had been staged.
When I was done, he gave me a long look, tapping his pencil against his pad, his lips pursed again-his thinking face.
"You're not throwing me out," I said.
"No."
"You're thinking it could be true."
"Yes."
"Because you know Birk."
"Because I know-or at least I think I know-things about him I've never been able to print."
"What things?"
He handed me back my ID and said, "Let's get some air." Two years ago, Hale told me, two men forced their way into Birk's house, beat Birk and his wife unconscious, and made off with a fortune in cash, jewellery and art.
"Joyce was the collector," he told me. "Birk's idea of great art would probably be a portrait of himself. But she put together one of the best private collections in the city. Everything from the Impressionists onward. The cash the thieves got away with was negligible, maybe ten thousand from a safe. The jewellery not so negligible. Joyce had expensive taste and there were at least two or three pieces worth a hundred thousand or more. Each. But the artwork-man, I think the estimate was fifteen to twenty million."
"None of it ever recovered?"
"Not a sketch."
We were standing on the bridge that crossed the river at Michigan Street, looking out at a boat taking tourists on an architectural tour. We could hear the voice of the guide calling out the names of landmark buildings, the Tribune Tower among them.
"So what was it that you couldn't print?" I asked.
"Put it this way," Hale said. "That robbery couldn't have happened at a better time."
Now it was my turn to say, "You have my full attention."
"Birk was going through hell. They had just started excavating the Skyline site when some old bones were found. There was plenty of excitement because they were thought to be from the first white settlers."
"I read your piece on that."
"Then you know everything came to a screeching halt. And stayed there. At the same time, there was a strike by pipefitters that stopped construction on his building in New York. A casino he built in Macau was basically washed away in a typhoon. The tower crane right here snapped. Kind of a perfect shitstorm for Simon Birk. There were rumours that he was financially constrained before the robbery, but not so much after. The insurance payout was huge. And he sold the house, which netted him a little over ten million. The market was pretty hot at the time. And that all came to him, not his company."
"Are you saying the robbery was his idea?"
"Now we're getting into your territory," he said, grinning at me, "where I might think something but I can't prove it. All I know is what my gut tells me, which is it was too damn convenient. Simon cashed in big time, enough to float his boat until he could start building again."
"But he got the shit beaten out of him. And his wife…"
"There's something else that bothered me," he said. "His injuries were bad, but not one of them was even close to life-threatening. Broken hand. Collarbone. Nose. Six weeks later, he was all the way back. Every blow Joyce took was to the head. They beat her fucking senseless with a crowbar or something. Her heart stopped three times before the medics stabilized her."
"You think he wanted her dead?"
"I started out as a crime reporter. And one of the first things cops ask at the scene of a crime is, Who benefits? Whether the home invasion was Birk's idea or not, it left him free and clear of a whole bunch of things. He rose like a phoenix out of those ashes-maybe not as pretty as he'd been, but with shitloads of new cash. He moved himself into his own building, which doesn't cost him a dime, and his only expense is keeping Joyce in a nursing home. Ten, fifteen grand a month max. She used to spend ten times that much without buying a single piece of art."
"Did you float this idea past the cops?"
"I asked whether the evidence pointed to anything but a crime perpetrated by persons unknown."
"And?"
"The lead cop on the case looked at me like I was some kind of ghoul for even asking."
"And that's where it ended?" I asked.
"Let me clue you in on a fact or three about the state of news gathering these days. Circulation is declining every year. Ownership is not happy about said decline. And good investigative journalism is the most expensive kind there is. Sometimes you invest days, weeks, months on something that might not pan out."
"Fortunately," I said, "I have no such constraints."
"Knock yourself out, m'man."
"You remember the cop's name?"
"Tom Barnett."
"Where's he work out of?"
"Bureau of Investigative Services. Detective Division. You planning on talking to him?" he smiled.
"Why not?"
The smile got bigger. "Be interesting to see if he likes private investigators any better than he likes reporters."
CHAPTER 30
Once I was checked into my room, I called Jenn and gave her the rundown on my day.
"You think Birk's ears are burning yet?" she asked.
"I'd bet on it. If the site manager didn't call him, Peter Stemko probably did."
"I'm sorry I missed your act," Jenn said. "You being careful?"
"I'm watching my back while hoping he tries something," I said. "Because so far we've got nothing to hang him with. But there is something you could check."
"What?"
"You have good contacts in the art world?"
"I'm gay, Jonah. I can't go to a party without bumping into four gallery owners."
"Good. Simon Birk's house was looted two years ago."
"I remember. It was in the package I put together for you."
I told her what Jericho Hale had said about the convenient timing of the robbery, and his suspicion that Birk might have engineered it himself.
"Jesus. Is there nothing he won't stoop to?"
"For a change," I said, "there's no proof."
"So what can I do?"
"I'm emailing you an article that lists the main items taken. Find out what they would have been worth on the black market. Ask if any have surfaced. I'll speak to the insurance company and see if they had any doubts."