"I'm on it," she said. "So… your friend Avi help you at all?"
"He said he'd make some calls," I said. "I'm going there for dinner tonight, so maybe he'll have something for me."
"It's good you have a friend there."
"Yes."
"What's he like?"
"Very different than he was in Israel-much more corporate-but I guess I'm different too."
"But some things never change," she said. "I'm sure you have more in common than you think."
"We'll see."
"Anything else?"
"That's it for now. Except…"
"Except what?"
"Maybe you ought to work from home while I'm away."
"Why? You think more goons might come around?"
"It's possible."
"And you think I can't take care of myself?"
"Don't take it the wrong way."
"I'm not supposed to worry about you but you can worry about me? Of all the sexist crap."
"It has nothing to do with sex, Jenn."
"Then what?"
I was struggling to find the right way to express what I was feeling-how much she meant to me as a friend and partner-when I heard a loud snort and a peal of laughter and realized I'd been had. "Gotcha," she giggled.
"You witch," I said.
"Guilty," she said.
"A guy tries to show concern…"
"I'm touched, Jonah."
"In the head, you're touched."
"I'm also at home."
"What?"
"I felt creeped out at the office after what happened. So I forwarded the phones to home and I've been working here all day. In my jammies."
"And still you give me shit."
"I was a little bored here."
"You're toast when I get back," I said. "You know that, don't you?"
"So get back in one piece," she said. "Then you can give me all the shit you want." I hailed a cab in front of the hotel, the interior ripe with the smell of curry, and told the Sikh driver I wanted to go to West Montana Street-via the Gold Coast.
I could see his face light up in his mirror at the thought of the higher fare a roundabout trip would bring. "Of course," he said.
I gave him the address of Birk's old house on North Astor Street. He took Lake Shore north along Lake Michigan until Division, where he turned left and drove past North Astor to State. "Astor's a one-way south so I must go around this way," the driver explained. The houses grew grander in size and more grandiose in design, hundred-year-old mansions in all the styles popular at the turn of the century: Queen Anne, Georgian, Romanesque. The people who built these houses once ran the city: the publisher of the Tribune, the Wrigleys, the mayor, the guys who made money in steel, lumber, real estate and beer. Not many were family homes anymore. Like the mansions that lined the streets of the Annex back home, they were apartments or condos now, or museums or clubs. The biggest of all was the red sandstone home of the Archdiocese of Chicago; the second biggest, the old Playboy mansion.
When we got to the former Birk residence, I asked the driver to wait.
"Take all the time you need, sir," he said.
The house was spectacular. A four-storey Georgian master-piece built of grey stone, with arched windows on the ground floor and Juliet balconies along the top. Footlights bathed the stone in a soft pink light. There were security cameras at either end of the front gate, one aimed at the front door, one at the street. They weren't new-their black casings showed frills of rust along their edges-and had surely been there in Birk's time. The north side of the house was built up against its neighbour, barely a foot between them, and that gap was well covered by old-growth ivy that was dying against a trellis, dry brown twigs and leaves curling into themselves. On the south side, a driveway went halfway to the back of the house, ending at a side door covered by a small white portico. A camera there too. I assumed there were cameras at the back of the house as well.
I got back into the cab wondering how the thieves had pulled off their robbery without being caught on tape.
CHAPTER 31
Avi'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?"