High Chicago jg-1

by Howard Shrier

  "You can't fire me, Daniel. I'm working for Marilyn Cantor."

  "On my recommendation, which I greatly regret."

  "Doesn't matter. She hired us. She wrote us the cheque."

  "Tear it up."

  "Piss off, Daniel."

  "What did you say?"

  "You heard me."

  "Jonah, I am warning you. Call Marilyn and tell her you are done."

  "Or what? You going to call Mom and tell on me?"

  He sighed loudly into my ear. "You are such a baby sometimes. You have no idea how the real world works."

  "But you do."

  "Of course I do."

  It occurred to me then that there might be another reason behind Daniel's call. "Are you involved in the Birkshire Harbourview project?" I asked.

  "What does that have to do with anything?"

  "You are, aren't you?"

  "My clients are none of your business."

  "Yeah? What if Maya died because she knew something about the building site that she wasn't supposed to know?"

  "That is totally irresponsible of you to say. Unless you have concrete evidence-"

  "But what if she did, Daniel?"

  "What the hell are you implying? That Rob Cantor would kill his own daughter to protect his investment?"

  "It's a big investment."

  "Only someone without children could come up with something like that. You're losing it, little brother. You are completely and totally losing your mind."

  "So maybe he didn't do it," I conceded. "It doesn't mean that someone else didn't."

  "Like who?" he scoffed.

  "When I find out, you'll be the first to know." I hung up before he could say anything more.

  CHAPTER 15

  "Wow," Jenn said, looking at the bruise on my arm.

  "You live with a nurse and 'wow' is the best you can do?"

  "She's a nurse practitioner, boss, and I'm pretty sure 'wow' would be her reaction too. I trust this Perry looks worse than you do."

  "Much."

  "Good. You want a painkiller?"

  "I'd rather hear something new about Martin Glenn."

  "All right," she said, flipping her notebook open. "I spoke to a guy named Ian Kinross at the Ministry of the Environment. He worked with Glenn for years, until Glenn left to start his consulting business. He says Glenn was as straight an arrow as you could find. Ran everything by the book. He said, and I quote, 'If Martin told us a site was clean, that meant it was clean as a whistle.' He'd never had a Record of Site Condition revoked."

  "Did Kinross audit the report on the Harbourview site? They're supposed to do that before approval to build is granted."

  "Supposed to being the operative words. With the number of new buildings going up, they're totally swamped."

  "Do we know if Glenn himself did the tests at Harbourview, or could it have been an employee?"

  "There are no employees. EcoSys is a one-man show."

  "What? How is that possible?"

  "Glenn subcontracted the work. Tests were done by an independent lab. If soil had to be dug out and treated, he hired a firm that specializes in that. Same with building underground barriers. He was basically a consultant for hire. His biggest advantage was being able to squire his clients through the bureaucracy."

  "Well, something was bugging him about the project," I said.

  "Kinross didn't know about it."

  "I know someone who might."

  "Who?"

  I pointed to the last paragraph of the Clarion story. "His long-time companion." The apartment Martin Glenn had shared with Eric Fisk was on the top floor of a pink limestone Victorian townhouse in Cabbagetown, an old east-end working-class neighbourhood that had been revitalized in the eighties. The rooms had been opened up to let in more light; drywall torn away to expose brick walls. The floors were wide oak panels, sanded down and polished until they gleamed. Colourful framed photos of exquisitely prepared food hung on the walls, each illuminated with baby spotlights. There were cut flowers in vases everywhere: gladioli, snapdragons, birds of paradise and others I couldn't name.

  Fisk was about five-foot-five and weighed little more than a hundred pounds. His head was shaved and his slight body wrapped in a heavy grey wool sweater. His jeans were cinched at the waist so they wouldn't slide down his hips, held by a belt that had had extra holes punched in it.

  The front room had an electric fireplace whose false coals glowed behind an ornate metal grille. We sat in white upholstered chairs draped with cloths that looked Mexican or Central American, striped with the brightest shades of colour in the spectrum.

  Fisk wiped his red-rimmed eyes and asked if we had any more news about Martin.

  "What have the police told you so far?" Jenn asked.

  "Just that he was beaten, and that it happened somewhere else. The woman who interviewed me, she was very nice, but the man with her… he suggested Martin had been out cruising. Cruising, like it was nineteen-fucking-eighty or something."

  "McDonough," I said to Jenn.

  "I got the feeling he thought Martin… that he deserved what he got," Fisk said. "Who could even think that? Being beaten to death… It's the worst way to die I can think of. Someone hitting you and hitting you. And until you go unconscious, you'd be thinking, If they just stop now. If this is the last blow. Or this one." Tears ran down his face and he wiped them with a tissue and then coughed into it: a dry racking cough that shook his body.

  "Excuse me," he said, when he could catch his breath again.

  "Eric," I asked. "How much do you know about Martin's business?"

  "Only how hard he worked."

  "Did he ever talk about the man he was working for?"

  "Mr. Cantor?"

  "Yes."

  "I know he was very excited about landing the contract. Working with Mr. Cantor-and a celebrity like Simon Birk-we were both kind of thrilled about that."

  "Did he stay thrilled?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Did it seem like the relationship had soured at all of late?"

  Fisk thought about it for a moment. "Martin did seem tense lately. He didn't talk about work much. And I didn't ask. Engineering wasn't my thing, to be honest. I'm a chef," he said, waving his hand in the direction of the photos on the wall. "Or was, I should say. I can't really work anymore. I haven't for over two years. Once I started to become symptomatic… People I worked with were nice to me and all, very sympathetic, but the bottom line was they didn't want someone HIV-positive working in the kitchen. Even doing beauty shots for magazines, food no one was ever going to eat. It's not like I blame them. I probably wouldn't have wanted me there either. But it was very hard going from two incomes to one. And now without Martin-my God, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'll be just like him, waiting for the next blow to land."

  I looked at Jenn then back at the man seated across from us, huddled in his sweater.

  "How long since you were diagnosed?" I asked.

  "A little over six years. But it's only been for the last two years or so that my health has really started to decline."

  "How bad?" Jenn asked.

  "Pneumonia, thrush, uncontrollable diarrhea, you name it. Once your CD4 count gets below two hundred, you're a sucker for every opportunistic infection out there. I was taking anti-retroviral therapy, which helped a little, but it was a cocktail of drugs, three of them, all of which kicked the shit out of me. The side effects were so bad, sometimes, that death seemed the least worst option. But then Martin…"

  "What?" I asked.

  "They've just come out with a new experimental drug in New York. What's called a highly active anti-retroviral treatment-only one pill a day, and a lot fewer side effects-but it hasn't been approved in Ontario yet. Fucking Health Ministry. The Hell Ministry, I call it. So we were arranging to bring it in on the sly through friends in New York. But the cost, my God! Over three thousand dollars a month. I didn't know how Martin was going to manage it but he promised he would."
>
  "Eric, did Martin keep any papers here?"

  "Like bills and things?"

  "More related to the project he was on."

  "No," he said. "Everything was at his office and the police took it. There's nothing here. Nothing anywhere. Nothing left of my useless fucking life."

  He started to cry and this time the sobs shook his small frame so hard I thought his bones would break. "What am I going to do?" he moaned over and over again, rocking back and forth as though in prayer.

  Neither of us had an answer for him. All I could think of was to wish him good luck; Jenn, being Jenn, put a hand on his shoulder and then hugged him and told him we'd find out who killed Martin.

  Walking out his door, I almost wished Perry would spring out and attack me again, so I could hit something-someone-anyone.

  CHAPTER 16

  "Homicide."

  "Only you can make that word sound good."

  There was a pause and then she said, "Hey, there." Not exactly warm, but not black ice either. She said, "I'm sorry about last night. Maybe I jumped to conclusions too fast, but you really threw me."

  "I know. You feel any different today?"

  "Not different enough."

  "I was hoping I could buy you a coffee."

  "I told you I'd call you. Anyway, I'm on a murder, and you know what they say about the first twenty-four hours."

  "What if I can help you with it?"

  "How?"

  "Your victim. Martin Glenn. I know something that you should know."

  "Like what?"

  "A motive."

  "On the level? This isn't some bullshit way of getting us together?"

  "I happened to see him in a screaming match with someone a few hours before he was killed."

  "Who?"

  "You'll buy the coffee?"

  "Jonah, you better not be messing with me."

  "I'll be there in twenty minutes. You can decide for yourself." We met in the lobby of police headquarters at 4 °College Street, at the same coffee bar where I'd first looked into those eyes last June, when the cases we were working on converged. We'd agreed to meet here, instead of her office, to escape the prying eyes of her partner, whose dislike for private investigators in general was exceeded only by his antipathy for me in particular.

  "Martin Glenn was working for a company called Cantor Development," I said. "They're putting up condo towers in the port lands and his company was cleaning the site."

  "But?"

  "Something went wrong. I'm not sure what exactly, but I think he was being asked-or paid-to sign off on something that wasn't kosher."

  "Details, please."

  "Like I said, a screaming match yesterday afternoon with the developer, Rob Cantor."

  "You witnessed this?"

  "I did. Cantor was warning him, telling him to think about Eric before he did anything rash."

  "That being Eric Fisk?"

  "I assume."

  "What else?"

  "Eric needed money. A lot of it, more than Glenn could afford on his regular consulting fees."

  "For what?"

  "You saw him."

  "I did."

  "He needs an anti-retroviral treatment that's available in New York but hasn't been approved here yet. He'd have to pay cash for it-thirty-five, forty thousand a year."

  "So you think Cantor was paying Glenn to look the other way on something to do with the building site."

  "Yes."

  "But aside from the spat you witnessed, I don't suppose you have proof?"

  First my brother, now Hollinger. What was it with people and their need for evidence?

  "I don't have the authority or the means to search Glenn's home or office," I said. "You do."

  "We've started on that already," she said. "But this might help narrow our focus."

  I said, "You're welcome," just as a loud voice behind me cackled, "Well, if it isn't the cupcake."

  Crap. Of all the coffee joints in all the police stations in the world, Gregg McDonough had to walk into this one.

  "I was providing information to your vastly superior officer," I said.

  "About what?"

  "About Martin Glenn," Hollinger said.

  McDonough lost a little of his swagger. "What would he know about Glenn?"

  "Enough to make it worth listening."

  "You know the listening thing?" I asked. "It's when you shut your mouth long enough to hear what other people say."

  He was a big redhead and his complexion got redder, like a mercury thermometer heating up. "You know, Geller, I liked you last summer," he said.

  "You hid it well."

  "For a couple of murders, I mean. Maybe the Super has closed the books on them. Doesn't mean I have." And off he went to join the lineup at the coffee bar.

  "How do you work with that lunkhead?" I asked Hollinger.

  "I roll my eyes a lot. I sigh occasionally. Once in a while, I snap a pencil."

  "There's something else I should tell you," I said.

  "About Glenn?"

  "Not directly. A couple of weeks ago, the developer's daughter, Maya Cantor, supposedly killed herself."

  "Supposedly?"

  "I don't think she did, Kate. She went off the balcony of a high-rise and I'm pretty sure someone helped her over."

  "I don't suppose you have proof of that either?"

  "There's proof she had plans for the next day."

  "I doubt that will be enough to open an investigation. Have you seen the coroner's report on her death?"

  "I'd like to. Think you could call their office for me?"

  "I can call," she said. "But it's really a family member you need to make the request."

  "Her mother will," I said.

  And then McDonough was back at our table. "I'll be upstairs, boss. Working. Whenever you're ready to get back to it." Then he laid a paper plate down in front of me and walked away.

  On it was a cupcake. With vanilla icing and sprinkles.

  Hollinger rolled her eyes and sighed. If she didn't snap a pencil, it was probably because she didn't have one.

  "You'll talk to the coroner?" I asked.

  "Yes." Then she paused, looked into my eyes and smiled.

  I said, "What?"

  "One last question."

  "What?"

  "You don't have to answer."

  "Try me."

  "You going to eat that cupcake?"

  CHAPTER 17

  The Office of the Chief Coroner was located behind police headquarters on Grenville Street, in the same building that housed the Centre of Forensic Sciences. The phone was ringing at reception just as I arrived. The receptionist gave me the one finger/one minute sign, said "Uh-huh" a few times and jotted a few notes down on a pink telephone slip. She said, "All right then. You have a nice day too," hung up and smiled at me. I showed her my ID and told her Detective Sergeant Hollinger might have called on my behalf.

  "Well, isn't your timing perfect," she said. "That was her calling. And a Marilyn Cantor called as well. Have a seat and I'll check which coroner handled the post-mortem exam."

  I sat in a grey padded chair, under a framed motto that said, "We speak for the dead to protect the living." I was afraid to even look at the magazines on the table. What would be on display: Canadian Autopsy? Bone Saw Monthly? Better Hose and Table?

  About ten minutes passed before the door opened and a tall, white-haired man in his sixties peered down at me. He had a smooth, kindly looking face and a firm handshake. "I'm Brian Morrison. I understand you have a question about one of our cases."

  "A young woman named Maya Cantor."

  "Normally, we require an access to information request to disclose the results of a post-mortem exam," he said. "But I spoke to the mother of the girl just now. And I understand a homicide detective called as well."

  "Will that suffice?"

  "I asked Mrs. Cantor to fax a signed request. Meantime, come on back and we'll see what we can do."

  He led me t
hrough a quiet, carpeted hallway to an office that was too small and too hot for comfort. The bookshelves were packed so tightly with binders and books that he probably couldn't have squeezed one more sheet of paper into them. Piles of papers were stacked knee-high around the perimeter of the room. A human skeleton hung from a planter's hook in the ceiling, twisting ever so slowly in the current of air coming from the HVAC system.

  Dr. Morrison opened a file cabinet and thumbed through files beginning with the letter C. "One day," he said, "this will all be computerized. Until then, the floors shall groan under the weight of all this paper. Ah, here we are. Cantor, Maya Arielle. Lovely name. Lovely young woman, as I recall. Or was before the fall. So unfortunate. So young to have taken her own life. You have to wonder what goes through their minds these days. One would think they'd find the world as exciting a place as we did in our twenties."

  Personally, my world had been too exciting at that age. I was twenty-three, just a year older than Maya, when Dalia was killed by a Hezbollah rocket. Twenty-three when I enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces in a misguided search for revenge.

  "What was your question, Mr. Geller?"

  "Was there anything to suggest a finding other than suicide?"

  He frowned. "Well, we discounted accidental death from the start. Her tox results showed the presence of alcohol, but she was well below the legal limit of impairment. And given the height of the balcony wall, it didn't seem possible that she could have fallen over. So the question then became suicide or homicide."

  "How do you make that determination?"

  "We look at several things. The injury pattern, of course. Placement of the body in relation to the takeoff point. Presence of a note or other communications at the scene."

  "You examined her apartment?"

  "The Coroner's Act gives us that authority. There was no note found in this case. No signs that violence or any sort of struggle took place."

  "What about her injuries?"

  "You have to understand, when a body falls from that height, the trauma of the impact is so severe, so widespread, that it's almost impossible to determine whether there were ante-mortem injuries. But there has been some notable research in the field of kinetic motion analysis of late."