High Chicago jg-1

by Howard Shrier

  "We can come to some kind of agreement," Birk gasped. He was shivering. Whether from cold or fear, I didn't care. It looked good on him. "I know we can. I negotiate every day."

  "There's nothing to negotiate."

  "I can compensate you-"

  "I'm not the one who needs compensation."

  "Then these supposed victims of yours. Their families."

  "Which victims?"

  "The ones you mentioned. The ones you think I killed."

  "The ones you ordered killed."

  "No!"

  "Walk," I said.

  "Please!"

  "One foot, then the other."

  I cocked my throwing arm. He inched out onto the beam.

  "My advice?" I said. "Don't look down."

  "Jesus Christ, you're making a mistake."

  "Keep going."

  "I can pay you, Geller. Millions! Tens of millions."

  "It wouldn't be enough. Everything you have wouldn't be enough."

  "You can't do this."

  "I'm already doing it," I said.

  "Francis did it!" he said. "All of it."

  "Shut your mouth," Curry said.

  "Let's hear it," I said to Birk. I looked at Avi. He turned his recorder on and pointed it at Birk. "Loud and clear."

  Birk started in off the beam but I stopped him. "Not yet," I said. "Let's hear it all first."

  "All right! Rob Cantor called me," Birk said. "He told me his engineer was making noise about the land. About having to have it all cleaned again. I told him we couldn't. The hole was already dug. The caissons were already sunk. Starting over would have ruined everything."

  "Ruined you, you mean."

  "It's a precarious business we're in. And I was overstretched, I admit it. Too many buildings going up and too many things going wrong. Acts of God, acts of war, sabotage, unions-one disaster after another. I couldn't handle one more, so I told Francis to take care of it. I never told him to kill the man. I just thought he'd…"

  "He'd what?"

  "Make it go away somehow. Bribe him. Threaten him. Then Francis went to Toronto and came back and all he told me was it was fixed. I swear I didn't know Glenn was dead until it was already done."

  "And Will Sterling?"

  "Who?"

  "The student who discovered the Aroclor on the property."

  "Same thing," Birk panted. "It was Francis who shot him."

  "On your orders."

  "Not explicitly," he insisted. "I didn't say kill the boy. I didn't say shoot him. I just said we had a problem, that's all."

  "And you had no idea how Francis eliminates problems."

  "None!"

  Curry laughed harshly and spat out the words "You lying piece of shit." His white shirt was spattered with blood but unlike Birk, he showed no sign of being cold. Maybe he was just colder inside. "He knew everything. Every step of the way."

  "No," Birk said. "I was blind to it. Wilfully, perhaps, but I never knew the details, I swear."

  "What about Maya Cantor?" I asked.

  "What about her? She killed herself."

  "No," I said. "She didn't. And anyone who says she did is pissing on her grave."

  "I swear I had nothing to do with that. Maybe Francis did, ask him, but not me."

  "She called your office the day she died."

  "If she did, I never spoke to her. No one gets through to me if I don't know them. Even people I know don't get through."

  "Someone picked that girl up and threw her off her balcony."

  "Why?"

  Why. Why had someone killed Maya? The simplest of questions. And not one I'd expected him to ask. He seemed genuinely in the dark about it.

  "She was helping Will Sterling. Looking for evidence that her father was covering up the Aroclor."

  "Then ask her father. Ask Francis."

  Curry said, "Don't look at me. I wasn't in Toronto when she died."

  "It doesn't mean you didn't contract it out."

  "A double negative," he smirked. "That shit won't get you far."

  "Should I hit him some more?" Ryan asked. "It gives his face character."

  "Save it for now. What about the robbery?" I asked Birk.

  "What about it?"

  "Take five steps out."

  "I can't!"

  "Do it!"

  "Why?"

  I yelled, "Because I said so," and flung the bolt at him. He ducked and lost his footing and almost fell off the beam. He grabbed it with both hands and stayed in a squatting position. "Five steps," I said. "Or the next one drills you in the head."

  He shuffled back five steps on his hands and knees. Avi was looking at me like I was crazy. Luckily for me, he was a lawyer, not a shrink, so I didn't have to pay it much mind.

  "The robbery," I said.

  "What about it?"

  I looked around for a bolt. Ryan found one first. As soon as he picked it up, Birk said quickly, "All right! The robbery!"

  "It was a fraud, from beginning to end."

  "Yes," he whispered.

  "Louder."

  "Yes!"

  "You planned it."

  "Yes."

  "You, not Francis."

  "Yes."

  "You circumvented your own security system and let Francis in?"

  "Yes."

  "And Chuck Belkin too."

  Birk's eyes widened, as if he'd just seen a ghost. I glanced at Curry. He had taken note too. Birk said, "How do you know about Belkin?"

  "For the record," I said, pitching my voice toward Avi and his recorder, "Chuck Belkin was found shot to death a few weeks after the robbery."

  "So many people get shot in Chicago," Curry said. "It's hard to keep track of them all."

  I ignored him. "So you let Francis and Belkin in the house and they took out all the artwork you subsequently reported stolen?"

  "Yes," Birk said.

  "Then what? You sold it privately?"

  "Yes," he admitted. "Not for full value, of course. But there are always people who will buy art even if they can't display it publicly. They want to own it for the sake of owning it."

  "Then you defrauded Great Midwestern Life for the full value."

  "Yes." He glanced over at Avi, at the recorder glinting in the moonlight. "No one is going to admit this as evidence, you know. Surely your lawyer friend told you that."

  "He tried," I said. "I didn't listen."

  "You should have."

  "You want to go back another five steps?"

  "No!"

  "Then forget the law and keep talking. Tell me about the beating. That was planned too?"

  "Yes. They were supposed to rough us up, to make the robbery more convincing," Birk said. "They got carried away. Especially Belkin. He wouldn't stop hitting Joyce."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know. He went a little crazy."

  "And you couldn't stop him?"

  "No."

  "And Francis couldn't?"

  "No! I don't-I was already unconscious."

  Until then, I believed, he'd been telling the truth. But all my instincts now told me he was lying. It was as if a surge of emotion had welled up inside him, and he was using every ounce of his will to suppress it. But the pitch of his voice had changed, and his body had tensed. In the dim light cast by nearby buildings, I could see his eyes flutter slowly before they blinked.

  I held out my hand and asked Ryan for the bolt.

  "What are you doing?" Birk shouted.

  "You lied," I said.

  "No," Birk cried, cowering as he gripped the beam with his hands and his knees. "Why would I-"

  "You're lying!"

  "Francis did it!" Birk said. "He beat her."

  "Bullshit!" Curry said.

  "I only said it was Belkin because he's already dead, but it was Francis."

  "Why would he do that? Unless you ordered him to."

  "No! I loved my wife." Birk was clutching the beam he was on like it was a bucking bull he was about to ride.

&nb
sp; "Yeah," Curry laughed. "True love. You can see it on the tape."

  "What tape?" I asked.

  "The one of him beating her head in."

  CHAPTER 48

  The way Curry told it, Birk had wanted his wife dead from the outset. He didn't love her. He hated the way she spent his money on paintings that made no sense to him, sculptures that looked like scrap. Vases and rugs he could have bought for a tenth of the price. Like many rich men, he was tight with a dollar. He might spend thousands on a Rolex, millions on a private jet, but he begrudged the expenses Joyce piled up.

  "Even this home she's in now is peanuts compared to what she used to spend, right, Simon?" Curry sneered.

  "He's making it up," Birk insisted. "He's trying to save his own neck."

  "You had your chance," I told him. "Let Curry talk."

  Curry told us Birk had come up with the idea after seeing a news report on a fraudulent home invasion in Connecticut. He approached Curry with the plan, went over all the security systems with him, lined up buyers for the artwork in Switzerland, Japan and Russia.

  "The inside camera, the one in the foyer, was supposed to be disconnected," Curry said. "But I needed insurance, in case Simon tried to pin it on me. I knew he wouldn't hold up if the police brought any heat on him. So I kept it rolling, and it's a fucking beauty. Nice crisp images of Simon taking a tire iron to his beloved wife. And you know what else? Belkin was supposed to do it. I was going to break a couple of Simon's bones and Chuck was going to do his wife. The story would be she resisted, kicked him in the nuts or something, and he lost it on her. But Simon insisted on doing it himself. Didn't you, boss? He took the tire iron and looked her right in the eye. Then whack, whack, whack. Six, seven times in the head. She only saw the first one coming, but what an image to take to your grave. Your own husband doing you in, in the home you made together."

  "How did she survive?"

  "We thought she was dead. Christ, you could see through her skull right to her brain. And we were running out of time. We had to get Simon cleaned up-he was covered in blood-and we still had to get all the shit out to the van. We were all surprised she made it. The wonders of modern medicine. Personally, I think she would have been better off dead, because she's got no life now. But in her own way, she contributed. As long as I have that recording-and I have plenty of copies-I have a job for life. Simon can't fire me, kill me or say anything to the cops."

  "Why worry about that?" I asked. "You have Tom Barnett on your side."

  "I wasn't sure Tommy would go along with it. He was a pretty good cop once. Even that thing-the one that got me kicked off the force-he didn't have much to do with that. Lucky for us he needed money to help his kid get off dope. What they charge for rehab programs, he wasn't going to make as a cop."

  "You getting all this?" I said to Avi.

  "Yes." He looked deathly pale. I guess corporate law didn't prepare you for sordid tales like this one.

  I paged Jenn on the walkie-talkie: "Everything cool down there?"

  "We're good," she said. "One car stopped here a minute ago but it moved on."

  "Okay. We'll be down in five."

  I told Birk he could come in off the beam now. He crawled forward until he reached the metal deck.

  "What now?" he asked.

  "Francis is going to tell us where that tape is. Then we're going to retrieve it. Then we're going to have you charged with the attempted murder of your wife, plus whatever other counts a U.S. attorney can come up with. Even Barnett won't be able to save you this time."

  "How do you know that tape even exists? That it's not something Francis made up to put the blame on me?"

  "Because he's still alive and working for you. Without it, I don't think that would be the case. Right, Francis?"

  Curry nodded.

  I called Avi over and asked him for the recorder. I rewound it briefly and hit play. Heard Curry's voice: "… money to help his kid get off dope. What they charge for rehab programs, he wasn't going to make as a cop."

  I pressed stop and handed it back to Avi.

  "I heard you like to box," I said to Birk, squaring up with him, my hands clenched.

  "You're thirty years younger than me."

  "Your wife was younger," I said. "And I don't have a tire iron. In fact, I have one pretty useless hand and the other hurts to make a fist."

  He kept his hands down at his sides. "Go ahead," he said. "Hit me. Hit me all you want. The worse I look, the more people will believe this so-called confession is bullshit."

  I wanted to crush his nose, make him taste his own blood. Break his jaw so he'd have to take meals through a straw for a month. Give him a taste of what his wife had endured when the tire iron had descended on her. But I let my hands drop. "Fuck it," I said. "Let's take them down. Avi, let me have that recorder till we can make copies."

  Avi said no. I looked at him, wondering why he'd say that, then stopped wondering. He had an automatic pistol pointed at Dante Ryan. "Lower your gun," he told Ryan. "Or I'll shoot you and Jonah both."

  "Avi?" I said.

  "Do it now," he said.

  Ryan set his weapon gently on the ground. Curry went to pick it up but Avi told him to stay where he was. He stooped to pick up the gun himself, then slipped it into his trench coat pocket. "I'm going to keep it for the time being," he said. "If it's the gun you used on those other people, like Jonah says, it'll make for good insurance."

  "What insurance?" Birk said. "We have a deal."

  "I know what a deal means to you," Avi said. "The gun and the tape are worth a lot more than you're paying me."

  Suddenly it was all clear: how Birk had been aware of my every move since I had arrived in Chicago. It was Avi Stern who had sold me out.

  "Your gun, Jonah. Set it down and slide it over to me."

  I did as he asked. I watched him pick it up, smiling at me with his even white teeth, wondering what Birk could have offered him to betray me. But there was no way he would have known the connection. Which meant Avi had approached him. Which meant it wasn't the money. He was living well enough legitimately and would certainly have all the money he needed by mid-life. It had to have been something else. Then I recalled the image of him in his den, crying as we watched the Broza concert at Masada. And I had my answer.

  Dalia.

  CHAPTER 49

  He had loved her from the moment he met her at Har Milah. An awkward sweaty kid from Chicago with thick glasses and a mulish laugh, he was immediately struck by her grace, her beauty, her bright blue eyes and mass of black curls. He'd been too shy to approach her as a lover and had settled for being a pal, but each day spent near her, with her, persuaded him he was inching closer to his dream. One more day, he'd tell himself, one more night of singing and laughing and dreaming together, and she'd be his.

  "Then you showed up," Avi said, pointing my own gun at me. "Jonah Geller, fit and funny, not an ounce of fat on you, not a wrong move. You didn't sweat just getting out of bed. You were even from her hometown. And from then on, I had to watch the two of you together, holding hands, stealing kisses, sneaking out to the greenhouse. Stealing her from me by the hour."

  "This is all fascinating," Simon Birk said. "Maybe you should save it for your memoirs."

  Avi swivelled, put the gun on Birk.

  "Or not," Birk said.

  "Hanging out with the two of you, going to the concert, into Kiryat Shmona, a happy little trio, right? Except I was dying inside. I remember David Broza singing 'Yihyeh Tov' at Masada, and we all had our arms around each other. I finally had my arm around Dalia, and she had hers around me, and it didn't matter how much I was sweating because we were all soaked through from dancing all night. It would have been perfect, but you were there on her other side. I looked over and she had her hand in the back pocket of your jeans. Fucking feeling your ass. Not me, not mine, no, just her hand on my waist. Barely touching it, like she was my sister. I hated you, Jonah. I wanted to pitch you off the side of the goddamn mountain, th
e way the zealots threw themselves off at the end of the siege."

  "But she died, Avi. You were there when she died. You saw what-"

  "Maybe she wouldn't have!" he yelled. "Maybe we would have left Har Milah and come back to Chicago and I could have been married to her instead of Adele."

  "Don't do this," I said. I took a step toward him but he stepped back and told me to stay where I was.

  "So I get Adele instead. She lives from headache to headache. Music's too loud? A headache. One of the kids cries? A headache. A glass of wine, the lights too bright, the lights too dim-a headache. And God forbid Avi wants a little action. Major headache time."

  "You going to shoot me, Avi?"

  "No. But someone will."

  Curry said, "The line starts here."

  "He'll kill you too," I said to Avi. "Curry will kill all of us."

  "I don't think so," he said. "Not with my insurance policy." He patted his coat pocket.

  "Why don't you give me one of the guns?" Curry said. "Doesn't have to be mine. Keep that if it makes you feel better."

  "I don't think so," Avi said.

  "The girl down there, she has a gun too."

  "I'll deal with her when we get down there. I think she'll give up her gun before she lets Jonah get shot."

  "Have it your way," Curry said. "You ready?"

  "Yes."

  "You, Simon?"

  Birk said yes.

  We all walked over to the side of the building where the hoist waited.

  "There's just one more thing to do before we go down," Curry said.

  "What?" I asked.

  He didn't answer. He just grabbed Simon Birk by the shirt collar and belt and threw him screaming off the side of the building.

  CHAPTER 50

  "What the fuck!" Avi yelled. He didn't know who to point the gun at now. He finally settled on Curry.

  "Everyone needs insurance," Curry said. His hairless, bulbous head looked pale and rubbery as an unpeeled garlic clove. "You have yours, right in your pocket," he said.

  "Birk was mine for a long time."

  "Then why did you-"