by Wally Duff
I’d been rattled by Kerry’s near-catastrophe, and I’d neglected to ask Hannah for her address or cell phone number. If I were interested in her personal story, my publisher Gayle Nystrom and my Lakeview readers might be too. When I returned home, I would go online to find out more about Dr. Hannah Eisenberg and follow that with an interview.
And working it won’t take much time.
To my right, I heard a vehicle engine fire up. A black Cadillac Escalade pulled out of a parking place on West Barry, a one-way street like all the streets around Hamlin Park. The luxury SUV rolled to a stop at the playground gate where Hannah and her children stood.
A slender, bearded young man jumped out of the driver’s side. He took one last drag on his cigarette before he flipped it onto the street and walked around to the passenger’s side. He resembled the two men in the alley and the passenger in the Mercedes at Whole Foods, but I couldn’t be sure if he was one of them.
Opening the front door, he assisted Hannah up into the passenger’s seat. Jason, her oldest child, did the same thing with the rear door allowing his siblings to pile in. The two older kids climbed into the third row of seats. The man buckled the two youngest ones into their seats in the second row. He was quick and efficient, evidence he’d done it before.
He climbed into the driver’s seat, and the SUV accelerated to the corner. He stopped at the stop sign and turned left, driving south.
License plate?
My cell phone sat in the wood chips. I picked it up to snap a picture, but the park’s main building now obscured my view of the SUV. As I strapped Kerry into her stroller, I silently berated myself for my negligence with her and then for losing my reporter’s focus on Hannah. Another car zoomed past on West Barry.
A one-way street.
I pushed Kerry and her stroller through the park’s exit gate and sprinted east toward the corner of North Damen and West Barry. If Hannah lived in our neighborhood, the driver had the option of returning to her house by driving the SUV around the park on the one-way streets. The only new neighbor I knew was the bad-mannered man across the street from us. Could he be Hannah’s husband? Was the man at Whole Foods or either of the two men in the white truck one of her drivers?
Hurry up!
Nearing the corner, I saw the Escalade moving north along North Damen. He had driven around the park. I hid in the shadows of the trees as the SUV passed West Barry allowing me time to snap a picture of the SUV’s rear plate. I now had a second way to research Hannah and find out if she lived across the street from me.
27
When we arrived home, the full impact of what had happened with Kerry hit me. I didn’t want to put her down for her nap, instead choosing to hold her close to me where I could monitor her breathing.
After one book, she fell asleep in my arms. I carried her downstairs to our office and placed her in the pink portable bed on the floor next to my computer. Letting her sleep upstairs two floors away from me wasn’t an option, even with the baby monitor.
Booting up my computer, I entered the license plate number of the Escalade. The DMV registration came up. The Hannah Eisenberg Trust at the Wells Fargo Bank in New York City owned the SUV, not the Arun Corporation.
Huh? Maybe she doesn’t live across the street.
I needed Hannah’s history. Using her name, her profession, the names of her children, and where they lived before moving to Chicago, I began digging. I discovered a link to her medical career and was able to backtrack into her life.
When I had it all, I called Linda who was in New York with Howard and Sandra visiting his family. I hated to bother her, but I needed to talk to my BFF. But I didn’t tell her what had happened to Kerry at the park. I would never tell anyone about that.
“Sorry to bother you, but I met a woman at Hamlin,” I said. “She just moved here and has four kids.”
“So far that doesn’t really grab my attention as a potential story,” Linda said.
“I’m not sure about that.”
“Okay, convince me.”
“Her name is Hannah Eisenberg. She grew up in Manhattan, the only child of unfathomably wealthy parents. She went to Harvard as an undergrad. During her junior year, her parents died in a private jet crash, leaving her tub loads of money.”
“Love that. Money always interests me. What else?”
“She graduated from Harvard Medical School and did a residency in pediatrics at Columbia. For one of her clinical rotations, she traveled to Israel, where she met — and then married — another physician named Micah Mittelman. After she finished her training, she joined a group medical practice in Tel Aviv.”
“What about the children?”
“Two girls, five and six, and two boys, eight and twelve. She had the first three while she worked full-time. Two years before the birth of her last one, she stopped practicing.”
“I thought you said she has lots of money.”
“I did.”
“Why didn’t she hire a nanny or two and keep working?”
“No clue, but she has a driver.”
“There or here?”
“I don’t know about there, but she has one here. And he looks like he might be an Israeli.”
“He could have come to the U.S. with her and her family,” she said. “With her money, I’ll bet he’s a bodyguard too.”
“In our neighborhood?” I asked.
“I traveled a lot in Israel. We always had a driver and a bodyguard. And my parents have one here too.”
“Why?”
“In some parts of Chicago? Do I need to list the reasons?”
“Guess you’re right, but nothing dangerous or exciting ever happens in our neighborhood.”
“If it did, you wouldn’t be writing a fluff column in the Lakeview Times.”
28
“What about her husband?” Linda asked.
“Dr. Micah Mittelman is a native-born Israeli,” I said. “He trained in England for his undergraduate, medical school, and an OB/GYN residency. He was at the top of his class at each level. After returning to Israel, he established a private practice in Tel Aviv, where he met and married Hannah, who is five years younger than he is.”
“Smart guy, but a doctor in private practice? Boring.”
“Initially, that was my take, too, until I read that seven years ago, at the same time Hannah hung up her stethoscope, he closed his practice and became chief of a huge IVF clinic in Tel Aviv.”
“IVF is more interesting, but I’m still not buying into this story.”
“His move to Chicago sixteen months ago coincided with the opening of a lab here where he’s now doing research with three doctors at Northwestern.”
“What kind of research?”
“Embryonic stem cell.”
“Now, you got me. This could be interesting. What else do you have on him?”
“He has all the proper professional medical licenses to work in Illinois and a driver’s license for our state,” I said. “The same address is listed on his medical and driver’s licenses, but it’s in an industrial area about twenty minutes from our front door.”
“Probably his lab,” she said.
“That would be my guess because I can’t find any listing of a purchase agreement for their residential house.”
“Did you run her car plate?”
“Her Escalade is owned by the Hannah Eisenberg Trust at Wells Fargo.”
“Do you think the man across the street is her husband?”
“I was kind of hoping so, but why would the Arun Corporation own the house and the two cars when her trust owns the Escalade? And where does she park it?”
“Hard to argue with that.”
“Now you know why I called,” I said. “I need your help to prove that she and her family are, or are not, in some way connected to the guy across the street.”
“She goes by Eisenberg, not Mittelman, right?” she asked.
“Uh-huh, she used her maiden name when she practiced. He
r medical license is still in that name.”
“I’ll begin with her trust fund.”
“And I’ll keep running in the neighborhood trying to somehow find her again.”
29
July third is the fifth anniversary of my horrific event in Arlington Women’s Clinic. If I had listened to FBI agent Wiles and not entered the building, I wouldn’t have been blown up. But the good news was that Carter visited me daily in the hospital. When I was discharged, he acted as my support group of one to help me deal with my burgeoning PTSD attacks. That led to a few dinners, and months later, we fell in love, making that day an offbeat celebration for us.
Monday night, Carter had been late coming home after editing a breaking story, but we still had time to go to a movie. We then walked hand-in-hand to the Volo Restaurant and Wine Bar in Roscoe Village.
The restaurant is located on West Roscoe, close to North Damen. It has succulent food, and in the summer, we love sitting outside on the cabana patio. Carter ordered the three-glass Spanish red wine tasting flight to go with steak tartare. I asked for the manchego, Montchevre and Grana Padano cheese plate and a roasted beet salad. But when the heavenly smell of their famous b.m.g. flatbread with a rendered slab of Berkshire bacon, shiitake mushrooms, and goat cheese drifted over me, I ordered it, too, along with the same red wine flight.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
“The movie?”
He nodded.
The movie was a mesmerizing tale about reporters at the Boston Globe who collaborated on the Pulitzer Prize-winning series of stories about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. It was an amazingly accurate portrayal of what it’s like in the newsroom.
“It made me realize how much I miss working on a compelling story, especially with other reporters,” I said.
He sipped his wine. “You know it’s not always exciting. Most of the time here in Chicago it’s just one shooting after another.”
“But your reporters get to bounce ideas off each other and discuss the stories they’re writing. I can’t do that at home with a toddler.”
“What we need to do is find a safe — but still challenging — story for you.”
“I might have one, and I would like your advice about it,” I said.
I recounted the same information I’d told Linda about Hannah, her husband Micah, his research, and their four children. Once again, I omitted the near-disaster with Kerry and the wood chips.
Carter stared at me a few seconds before he spoke. “Did you say his research involves embryonic stem cells?”
“I did.”
“Do you know much about it?”
“Nothing more than it’s very expensive, and Molly had IVF with her first child. Why?”
“I assume your female readers would prefer a column about a personal story rather than a dull scientific research piece. My take on this would be to focus on the doctor’s wife and her transition in moving to Chicago and compare it to living in a country virtually at war all of the time.”
“But Hannah wouldn’t talk to me,” I said. “She was pretty firm about not discussing any details of her life.”
“That’s never stopped you before,” he said.
You’re so right.
All I had to do was figure out a way to get her to talk to me.
30
On the Fourth of July, we picnicked at Hamlin Park and then hung out at the pool. Carter found a pickup softball game to join. That night, I told my hubby I was too exhausted to drive to Lake Michigan and watch the fireworks.
This was partly true, but my recent PTSD attack proved my trauma in Arlington still lingered below the surface of my psyche. After Kerry went to bed, we watched the DVDs of two of our favorite Fourth of July classics: James Cagney dancing in Yankee Doodle Dandy and the shark gobbling up people in Jaws.
Wednesday morning, our lives were back to normal. Before I could gather up Kerry and go down to the computer room to access the GPS data, my landline rang. One of Lyndell’s sons, and his wife and two children, had come to stay at her home for the holiday. This was the first time she’d had an opportunity to call me.
I played with Kerry in the family room as I filled Lyndell in on the events she had missed. I began with my encounter with Hannah at Hamlin Park, but again, I avoided mentioning Kerry’s near disaster with the wood chips.
We discussed Hannah and Micah as a possible story, but I saved the best for last: hiding the GPS transponder on the neighbor’s Mercedes and the revelation that he had a passenger in the car with him.
“There’s another man?” Lyndell asked. “Do you think he lives in the house too?”
“That’s a possibility, and don’t forget the two men I saw in the alley,” I said. “They could live there too. But until one of us sees any of them enter or leave his house on a regular basis, it’s only an assumption. I don’t write my stories based on that.”
“Did you recheck the pictures of those two men? Could either of them be the other man you saw?”
“I did, but I can’t tell for sure.”
“What have you found from the tracker?”
“I was going to download the information when you called. I’ll let you know.”
“Please do. In addition to watching the house, I’ll keep an eye out for the two doctors and their kids.” She paused. “And the leprechaun.”
“Excuse me?”
“This morning, a man ran past my front window, and he bore a striking resemblance to a leprechaun. I think it would be a fabulous story for your column. I can see the headline now: ‘A Leprechaun in Lakeview.’ ”
Aw, man.
“It does have a nice sound to it. I’ll watch out for him too.”
Lyndell was such a dear, sweet person. If nothing else came out of my recent story efforts, she enjoyed helping with the research. But maybe she was trying too hard to create a story, or — even worse — perhaps she was beginning to mentally slide downhill and I wouldn’t be able to count on her.
“Oh, and did Cox Cable fix your problem?” she asked.
“We have a constant problem with Cox,” I said. “Did you see them?”
“Him. While you were at Hamlin on the Fourth, a cute young man knocked on your front door and then walked around to your backyard.”
“Thanks for letting me know Cox is on the job,” I said.
And you are too.
Snooping is a big part of her life, even with family visiting her on a holiday. She is better than expensive security cameras.
Wait. Holiday?
Why would a Cox repairman be working on a holiday?
I spent the next two hours on the phone waiting to talk to a Cox representative about the visit and ran out of time to check on the GPS tracking data. And I never did speak to a human.
Was something else going on in our lives or, like Lyndell with her leprechaun, was I pushing too hard to invent a story about Cox and their man working on the holiday?
If I found time, I would call Cox again.
But is it worth it?
31
After breakfast on Thursday, Kerry and I went down to the computer room. I did a puzzle with her while I waited for the readout from the GPS recordings to be printed.
When the machine clicked off, I pulled the sheets from the tray. The evaluation didn’t take long. Since Monday morning, the Mercedes had been driven to surprisingly few places, one of which I could have anticipated: Whole Foods.
“Kerry, Momma has to run an errand. Let’s go for a ride.”
“No!” she screamed. “Wanna pway with Elmo!”
Bribes usually work.
“Do you want to go to Scooter’s first?”
“Yay! I wuv ice queam!”
Scooter’s Frozen Custard Shop, one of our local favorites, is on the corner of West Belmont and North Paulina, a block from our home. Kerry held my hand as we walked there and shared a vanilla milk shake.
Fifteen minutes later, we went on a reconnaissance mission i
n our mommy van. I’d brought the read-out listing the addresses where the Mercedes had gone, as well as the dates and times of day.
Skipping Whole Foods, I drove to an address on North Greenview and pulled up in front of the North Side Mosque of Lakeview. According to the tracking sheet, the car had arrived there around sunset on Monday, the day I attached the transponder to the Mercedes.
Tuesday at sunrise, at noon, and then once more at sunset, the car stopped there for over an hour each time. The neighbor might be a Middle Easterner and possibly a Muslim who attended services at the mosque. But I couldn’t discount that he might be watching the mosque for more heinous reasons.
The mosque had security cameras scanning the neighborhood, and the readout indicated the car usually parked directly in front. If he planned to perform an evil act, he wasn’t hiding his location while he scouted the premises.
I backtracked toward our neighborhood to check out two more addresses on the sheets: one on West Belmont and another on North Lincoln. Arriving at the first location, I found a hole-in-the-wall Middle Eastern restaurant. I drove to the second stop: another Middle Eastern restaurant, smaller than the first one.
One final address was twenty-five minutes south and east of Lakeview. The Mercedes was located there each night from around 9 p.m. until 2 a.m.
It might be where he works.
Hold it, Tina.
I was out of practice. A good investigative journalist never accepts assumptions as facts. I needed to gather all the data and go from there. Only a rookie reporter would make that mistake.
The mid-morning traffic was heavier than I had anticipated, and it took thirty-five minutes to get there. I stopped the van in the same place the Mercedes had been parked the night before. I found myself sitting in front of a freestanding, one-story, windowless building. Standing upright on the roof was a sign of a naked woman gyrating around a pole and the word “Twenties.”
The sign was off.
It was a strip club.
A Muslim possibly connected to a strip club? Didn’t see that one coming.