"Sure," Avi said. "He and his wife were both beaten up. Crooks got away with a ton of art."
"What do you think of the possibility that he set it up himself? Anyone you could ask about that?"
"Jesus, Jonah. Is there anything you think he's not guilty of?"
"He was on the verge of going broke, then collected millions in insurance and the sale of his home."
"And he and his wife almost got killed. She's never recovered, from what I heard."
"I'm not the only one who thinks he could have done it."
"Who else?" he asked.
"A reporter."
"I've never seen that accusation in print."
"He hasn't written it yet."
"Because he has no more proof than you. You're going to need a lot more than these off-the-wall theories to convince anyone in authority."
"I'm still sure about the killings in Toronto."
"Yeah? Why do you think he's guilty and not this partner of his, this Cantor?"
"Because that's what Cantor told me and I believe him." "What were his words?"
"Birk assured him he'd take care of distractions." "So you're making yourself into another distraction, and if he murders you, you'll have your answer?" "That's not my exact plan." "You have an exact plan?" "To enjoy this glass of wine. After that, it's all up in the air." Dinner was fast and furious. Adele tended to the children, who had hot dogs cut up in baked beans, guiding spoonfuls into two-year-old Emily's mouth and cajoling the other two to eat, while eating almost nothing herself. The grown-ups had baked salmon fillets, roasted asparagus and wild rice. Avi and I finished the bottle of wine. Adele had sparkling water. After dessert-applesauce for the kids, frozen yogourt for us-she bade us good night and marshalled the kids upstairs for baths and books. Avi led me into the living room and turned on a flat-screen plasma TV mounted to the wall.
"You have to see this," he said, popping in a DVD. "A little blast from the past."
It was a concert film: David Broza and friends at Masada, the two-thousand-year-old mountaintop fortress in the Israeli desert. Once King Herod's winter palace, better remembered as the place where Jewish zealots held off Roman troops until a long siege led to their mass suicide. A mesmerizing guitarist who had been trained in flamenco, and also absorbed folk, jazz, rock and blues into his style, Broza has been variously referred to as Israel's Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Bruce Springsteen-pretty much everybody but Yngwie Malmsteen. Every year he hosted a sunrise concert in an amphitheatre on the west side of Masada, singing songs in Hebrew, English and Spanish. The DVD Avi played was a more recent event, but it still took me back to 1995, when Avi, Dalia and I, along with others from our kibbutz, went to hear him play. We ascended the mountain in the middle of the night-because of the searing heat, which often topped fifty degrees, the concert started at a quarter to four. Some four thousand people were there, singing along with Broza, swaying in each other's arms, especially when he played "Yihyeh Tov (Things Will Get Better)," a peace anthem he wrote when Israel and Egypt signed their historic treaty in 1979. We watched in awe as he punished his guitar with manic fingers, its surface scarred and practically worn through. By the end of the concert, we were as sweaty and exhausted as Broza himself, but some of us walked up the Roman Ramp to watch the sun come up over the faraway hills of Jordan, the mountains turning purple and rose in the new light of day. It felt like a time when peace might actually be at hand. We had no way of knowing that our kibbutz, Har Milah, would soon be bombarded by Katyusha rockets from Lebanon, and that one of them would end Dalia's life.
The DVD ended, as Broza concerts always did, with "Yihyeh Tov." I watched the footage knowing that good things had not come. Peace had not come, then or now. I felt tears fill my eyes and tried to wipe them away discreetly. Then I stole a glance at Avi Stern and saw that he was crying too.
CHAPTER 32
I was up by six, unable to sleep after a vague but disturbing dream about Dalia in which we had gone to the cemetery on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem and got caught in a downpour without an umbrella. Why did Avi have to show me that DVD? Yes, Broza's Masada concert had been a great moment in our young lives, but watching the film had only stirred up intense feelings in both of us. Surprisingly intense, in Avi's case. He had brushed it off afterward, saying he was tired, saying he missed all the people he'd known on the kibbutz, missed the happy, crazy passion of life in Israel before the bombardment of Har Milah.
I made myself a cup of coffee, taking it black instead of using the powdered whitening product that came with it, then went to the hotel's fitness centre, where I put myself through an intense hour-long workout: thirty minutes on a treadmill, a hundred push-ups-okay, four sets of twenty-five each-and sit-ups until my abs cried No more. After a shower, I checked the hotel restaurant's menu and decided no breakfast was worth twenty bucks, even if it was Rob Cantor's money.
I walked over to Dearborn and found an agreeable diner where they piled on eggs, ham and home fries for six dollars and change. Three men at a table behind me got to talking with a group of four at the next table and soon they were comparing their military service. It started with one spotting a screaming eagle tattoo on another's arm, and asking, "Is that for real? You a Marine? Hey, me too." All but one of the seven had been in the army or Marine Corps. None had been in Iraq-they were all in their thirties and forties-but some had seen action in Desert Storm. Soon they were high-fiving each other and offering to buy drinks come evening.
That was one conversation you'd never get in Toronto, where the closest most people get to military service is protesting outside the U.S. Consulate.
I walked back to the Hilton, pondering my first move of the day. A sign outside Birk's old house said that security was provided by a company called Eye-Con. Maybe someone there would be able to tell me how the home invaders had circumvented the system without being seen.
As I walked up the circular drive, a man stepped out of a black Lincoln Town Car parked in front of the lobby doors and said, "Good morning."
He was around six-three and thin but I was betting there was a lot of lean muscle under his black suit. His head was shaved-no, not shaved: hairless. Not one hair on his head, no eyebrows, no sign that he had to shave his face. Alopecia. It made his eyes seem huge, like he was an amphibian of some kind, a Gollum who'd been living in an underwater cave.
"You've been inquiring about Simon Birk?" he said.
There was nothing in his hands. No one else in the car. I said, "Yes."
"He'd like to meet you," the man said.
"Where?"
"His office, of course. He gets to work early."
I hesitated. I wanted to meet Birk, but had no guarantee that's where this man would take me.
"It's up to you," he said, looking at his watch. "He's offered to make time for you. But he doesn't have all the time in the world."
"You his chauffeur?"
"I provide a range of services to Mr. Birk. Collecting you is what I'm doing now."
I said, "You mind opening your jacket?"
He smiled without showing any teeth and unbuttoned his jacket. No gun in the waistband, no holster under the arm.
"Backside too?" he asked.
"Please."
He pirouetted. Nothing in the back of his pants. "It's a one-time offer, pal."
"You have a name?" I asked.
"I have several," he said.
"Which should I use?"
"Curry."
You get into a stranger's car, there's always a chance you won't come back, or not all in one piece. But I had come to Chicago to meet Simon Birk himself, so I got into the car and fastened my seat belt, hoping it wouldn't be too bumpy a ride. The Birkshire Riverfront was on West Wacker Drive, on the south side of the Chicago River, overlooking the LaSalle Street bridge. My hairless escort parked between signs that said No Parking and No Stopping. I followed him into an opulent two-storey lobby with travertine floors and water bubbling through beds of stone. Chandeliers formed of opaque cylinders hung over a semicircular desk where two uniformed guards watched feeds from a dozen security cameras. Curry flipped his car keys to one of them then led me to a bank of elevators whose brass doors were so highly polished I could see my reflection in perfect detail.