The Big Score

by Kilian, Michael;

  “What did he spend it on?”

  “Anything and everything that entered his mind. God, he’s still buying rare books.”

  “Did he pay Mother’s medical bills?”

  Christian drank again. “They were taken care of.”

  “What about the firm?”

  “The firm. Curland and Associates. Architects extraordinaire. The firm is infirm, big brother. Father hasn’t been to the office in more than a year. Henderson’s long gone. Our young genius took a job in Miami, where they’re still building buildings. He finished that shopping mall job, though. Hideous thing. He hired two college graduates from IIT. One of them is still with us, though he’s looking. The other comes around from time to time, in the vain hope, I think, of back pay. We had to move the office to cheaper quarters, one of those ‘historic’ Louis Sullivan-era buildings in the south Loop that’s always looking for tenants. I’m not sure how much longer they’ll want to keep us. Something about rent. This recession hit Chicago rather bad.”

  “No clients?”

  “Not recently.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You’ve had enough problems. Especially with money.”

  Even coming from his brother, the observation embarrassed Matthias.

  “And Grandfather’s museum?” he asked.

  Christian finished his drink, then took a pint bottle of vodka from the glove compartment and poured some into his glass.

  “It’s all right? The museum?” Matthias asked again.

  “Yes, yes. Just as Grandfather left it, God damn it to hell,” he said. “Every dusty painting in its place, just as his lunatic will commanded. But think of it, all those paintings. If we sold just one or two this nightmare would be over. There’s a Schonfeld in there that must be worth two million.”

  “You know we can’t touch it.”

  “It’s just a will. There are lawyers. There are judges. This is Chicago, big brother.”

  “We’ve been through this, many times.”

  “I only open the museum to the public by appointment now. Saves on expenses. The tax people will doubtless be on us one day for that. Jill Langley left us, you know. Took a job at Larry Train’s gallery for twice the salary.”

  “She wrote me about it.”

  “You and Jill were writing?”

  “For a while. We stopped.”

  “She was in love with you.”

  “I know.” Matthias didn’t want to talk about that. Not at all. “Did you keep my sailboat?”

  “So to speak. I leased it to someone with an option to buy. You’ll have a chance to get it back at the end of the year. Otherwise, it’s his if he wants to pay for it. I told him I’d want twenty thousand, which is a lot for a boat that old. I let him register it under his name.”

  “Was that necessary?”

  “You said I should do it if I thought it was.”

  “Did he change the boat’s name?”

  “No, it’s still the Hillary. I think he likes the nice Waspy sound of it. He’s a dentist. Named Meyerson.”

  Christian had a number of disagreeable qualities, and his lingering anti-Semitism was one of them.

  “Jill wasn’t very happy about my leasing the boat,” Christian said.

  “I told her she could use it whenever she wanted.”

  “She was with you when you won the Mackinac race, wasn’t she?”

  “It wasn’t the Mackinac. It was the Chicago to Menominee.”

  “There’s the girl you should have married, big brother. Jill wouldn’t have made you move to New York. You would have stayed here and prospered. We’d all have been a lot happier. Especially Jill. She was really quite nuts about you.”

  “I was married when Jill came along.”

  “You haven’t been for two years.”

  “Did you invite her to the funeral?”

  “I … no. That would really be cruel, wouldn’t it? After the way you treated her.”

  “Shut up, Chris.”

  “Sally Phillips is still in town.”

  Dark hair. Skin the color of the purest ivory. Prussian blue eyes. A kiss outside the Drake Hotel by Oak Street beach on a cold winter night. It was the last time Matthias had seen her. She’d been married, too.

  “I’m not surprised. Her husband’s one of the richest men in Chicago.”

  “They’re divorced now.”

  They were nearing the Glencoe exit. Almost there.

  “Divorced.”

  “Do you want to hear about it?”

  “No.”

  Ignoring FAA regulations, Peter Poe dropped his helicopter down low over the water once they were above Lake Michigan, tilting the aircraft to a steeper forward angle and increasing his speed to near maximum as he turned onto a course for the south. It was a calm night with an early moon, and the water’s surface shimmered all the way to the eastern horizon.

  Poe excelled as a pilot, just as he excelled at everything he set his mind and hand to. He was certificated to fly jets, choppers, multiengine aircraft, and carry passengers for hire—an amusing idea for a man believed to have $1.2 billion in assets.

  He flew relaxed, his hand loosely holding the control column, his mind on the next day. It would be a busy one—endless phone calls, meetings, important social engagements—like every day of the year, every day of his life. He had promised his wife, Diandra, a holiday at their country place on the shore of Wisconsin’s Lake Geneva. He had come up to join her the night before but had become edgy and irritable and impatient to get back to the city. He’d insisted on their returning now. There was a very major party on Lake Shore Drive the following night, and he wanted Diandra in attendance. She was a spectacular-looking woman, a good five inches taller than he and magazine-cover beautiful. He always felt uncomfortable without her, as uncomfortable as he’d be without his $2,000 Gieves and Hawkes suits and Piaget watch. He took her everywhere, even to businessmen’s luncheon club meetings.

  She was in the passenger compartment behind him, along with Poe’s former Bears tackle bodyguard, Lenny Krasowski, reading some book by a small cabin light.

  Poe had followed a course southeast from his Lake Geneva house, crossing the Lake Michigan shoreline just north of Waukegan. The night was clear enough for him to pick up the distant lights of downtown Chicago.

  The silhouette of a two-masted sailboat—a yawl or ketch; Poe could never remember which was which—appeared dead ahead. He swung the helicopter off to the left, not wanting to startle the occupants with too close a pass at such a low altitude. He studied the boat as he flew by, admiring its size and gracefulness. Poe owned one of the largest motor yachts on the Great Lakes, but it was beginning to bore him. It was time he got himself a big sailboat. Donald Trump never had a sailboat. Ted Turner did, and had once won the America’s Cup.

  Poe would see about acquiring a boat that week. He would pay cash. The interest on his capital debt was costing him some $35 million more a year than his various enterprises were taking in, but he’d not let that become a problem. It was other people’s money. He’d built his entire empire with other people’s money. There was more to be had.

  They were skimming alongside the Outer Drive now—tiny headlights moving to their right, high-rise apartment buildings dotted with lighted windows standing invitingly beyond the dark greensward of Lincoln Park. Ahead, the tower of the Hancock Center, a band of light shining eerily around its top, stood like a sentinel, guarding the Gold Coast.

  Poe steered left, gaining altitude, until he could see Lake Point Tower and the long rectangle of Meigs Field, the city’s lakefront airport, popular with fliers and air commuters, disliked by most everyone else as an infringement on the holy lake shore. Then he clicked on his microphone, reporting his position and approach plan to Meigs’ tower. A friendly voice responded. Poe used the field so frequently his call letters were almost as well known as his name.

  As he neared the airport, its flashing strobe lights visible at the end of the runwa
y, he slowed the helicopter and hovered a moment, taking in the jutting mass of buildings that filled the city center. Only one of the tallest there was his, an office-apartment tower on Michigan Avenue. It was distinctive, the red cupola on top brilliantly floodlit, glowing in the night skyline like an ember, but it was far from dominating. No one building dominated the Chicago skyline anymore.

  Poe came down along the center of the runway, then fluttered right, bringing the craft to rest just short of the terminal. He killed the chopper’s powerful turbo engine and sat back, stretching his arms and fingers as the big rotor blades whined and shuddered to a stop.

  His secretary, Mango Bellini, was waiting for him on the tarmac, her long dark hair whipped about by the turbulence from the rotor blade. Behind her was one of Poe’s trademark red stretch limousines, with waiting chauffeur.

  “Hi, boss,” she said as he stepped out.

  “Everything all right?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Poe nodded. Diandra said nothing to the woman. Inside the small terminal building, Poe stopped at the general aviation counter to sign the log book.

  “Nice trip, Mr. Poe?” said the man behind the counter.

  “Fine, Jimmy,” said Poe, who had made a point of learning the man’s name. He smiled. Poe had an M.O., a trademark—rare for a major money man. He was a nice guy. He treated everyone like a pal, whenever possible, using first names.

  “Did you make a flight last night?”

  “Yeah. Went up to Lake Geneva. It’s in the logs. What about it?”

  “Did you have some trouble or something?”

  “Trouble?”

  “Someone reported a chopper down low over the lake. We thought it might be you, in trouble.”

  “No trouble, Jimmy. I just take awhile to get to altitude sometimes.”

  “Gotta be careful, Mr. Poe. The boaters complain sometimes.”

  Poe smiled again. “Good night, Jimmy.”

  “Good night, Mr. Poe.”

  Poe’s chauffeur had the stretch’s engine running. Krasowski loaded their few bags in the trunk, then took his seat beside the driver. Mango took one of the jump seats. Diandra sat beside Poe in the rear, saying nothing, looking tired, or at least unhappy. She had really wanted to stay at Lake Geneva.

  “Poe Place first,” said Poe. “Then take Mango home.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  Mango gave him a dark look. She had probably figured on coming back to Poe’s penthouse with him—for some late work. Mango’s birth certificate name was Rose Scalzetti, but she had assumed the Mango Bellini when she had begun her not-too-successful career as a saloon singer, taking the name after a cocktail she’d been served in a celebrity haunt she liked in New York.

  Mango wasn’t much of a singer, but customers liked to look at her. Poe had hired her for a six-week run in the lounge of a casino he used to own in Atlantic City as a favor to the man to whom she had then belonged. After a week, he’d promoted her to his personal staff and quite different duties. He’d continued to promote her. The simple title “secretary” was grossly inadequate for the role she now played in his life and business affairs. The man she’d belonged to hadn’t much liked any of this, but he was no longer around to complain.

  She was bright, as smart as she was good-looking. A little broad in the behind, maybe, but the rest of her was wonderful—showgirl legs, a trim waist, good shoulders, and spectacular breasts that had been mostly responsible for what success she had enjoyed as a professional singer. She had olive skin that tanned when she walked under a street lamp, enormous dark eyes, and thick, black curly hair she wore down to her back. If she had been a call girl—and she insisted she had never been that—she could have made herself rich.

  Working for Poe, she was getting a lot richer.

  Mango had once been into cocaine and all-day booze, like so many in her trade, but Poe had had no difficulty in persuading her to give up both, after telling her her job depended on it. His wife, however, was beginning to drink a little early in the day and a little long into the night. It bothered him.

  Diandra was an altogether different kind of lady, indeed, a real lady, a graduate of Michigan State who had planned on a career in advertising until someone had turned her to modeling. She was nearly six feet tall and thin as a pole, but coolly, classically beautiful. Her eyes were an odd blue-gray color that sometimes seemed hazel and sometimes pale green, in any case complementing her flame-colored hair. She didn’t always photograph well, though she’d been much prized in the fashion industry as a runway model. He’d met her at a fashion show at one of his hotels. They were married within six months. She’d refused him at first, returning all his presents. Then, mysteriously, just as he was giving up on her, she’d accepted. Poe hadn’t yet figured what it was about him that finally attracted her. He let her model from time to time, mostly at society, ladies-who-lunch charity fashion shows. She was much in demand for these, though the city’s social elite had yet to invite her to join any of their exclusive boards and benefit committees.

  Diandra didn’t like Mango, but had come to accept her. They had learned to stay out of each other’s way.

  Mango lighted a cigarette. Poe hadn’t been able to get her off those.

  “Did you get the newspapers?”

  Krasowski handed copies of the Tribune and the Sun-Times through the open divider. They were early editions of the next day’s papers.

  Poe thanked him and quickly skimmed through them, the Tribune main news and metropolitan sections first, then the Times. He read only the headlines, and was done by the time the stretch reached Michigan Avenue. There was no news of any great consequence.

  There were only four of them for dinner at the Lake Forest house—Matthias and Christian, their sister Annelise, and her husband Paul, a suburban banker and Presbyterian elder who had long disapproved of the way the Curlands lived and squandered their money. Paul was an essentially nice man, who suffered Annelise’s dominating manner with some dignity and, in his straitlaced, dour way, seemed to love her deeply. But he was an improbable mate for the bluff, outspoken, often boistrous Annelise. The marriage only made sense when you considered their mutual fondness for dogs.

  The men were in black tie, Annelise in a long black gown. It had long been a family idiosyncracy to dress for dinner when at the Lake Forest house, a custom largely unknown to their generation even among their truly rich neighbors. Their father had insisted upon it for this unhappy reunion, though in the end he never came to the table, remaining in the sanctuary of the library.

  At table, the conversation was surprisingly cheerful at first, carried along mostly by Christian, who was full of ribald, gossipy anecdotes about social life in Chicago during Matthias’s absence. They did not talk about their mother, and the subject of money was not once broached, though clearly it was the only one that interested Paul.

  He was far fonder of dogs than he was of Matthias and Christian. The former he considered a feckless intellectual dreamer, the latter, a self-indulgent hedonist; the both of them useless, unproductive sinners woefully in need of redemption. Paul sat morosely through Christian’s breezy discourse, looking pained during Christian’s more salacious stories.

  The wine, which Matthias declined and Annelise and Paul barely touched, took its toll of Christian, and the stories became vague and then incoherent. At length, Christian abruptly stopped talking and stared bleakly at his dessert plate. Matthias feared he might topple over were he to lean back in his chair.

  Annelise pushed back her own. She had the family blond hair and ice-gray eyes and, like her brothers, was quite tall. She might have been a strikingly lovely woman, had she worked at it, but after she had safely married Paul, she had lost all interest in that. Life was all dogs, horses, her country place in Barrington, and her two children. Her years spent daily in the midwestern outdoors left their mark. She didn’t care.

  “All right, Matt, let’s get it over with,” she said, and rose. “Time for the lion’
s den.”

  Annelise led the way, pushing open the door of the library. Their father had changed into a dinner jacket, but was in the same corner leather chair where Matthias had found him upon arriving.

  “Well, Father,” she said, with booming voice, for his hearing was failing badly. “You’ve done it again.”

  The balding, white-haired old man, sitting bent over a large book, looked up and smiled. He had a very charming, ingratiating smile, as effective with the ladies as Christian’s, and he used it reflexively for every occasion, sparing himself the effort of working up a more appropriate expression.

  “What? What have I done?”

  “Missed dinner,” said Annelise, towering over him as she came to his side. She looked disapprovingly at the large glass of brandy on the lamp table. “Do you ever eat?”

  “Oh, yes. Had lunch. I’m fine, fine.” He sneaked a glance at the page before him, as if trying to gobble up a few more words. “Sorry about dinner. Got distracted. Lost all sense of time. But I’m fine.”

  He began to cough. There was a cigarette smoldering in the ashtray. His doctor had forbidden smoking and drinking.

  The cough consumed him, shaking his bent, fragile body. They all waited for it to pass, none more impatiently than he.

  “Are you all right?” Matthias said finally.

  “Fine, fine,” said his father, sputtering. “Good to have you home, Matthias. Sorry your mother’s not here.”

  Brother and sister exchanged a look. Annelise shook her head.

  “Sorry to disturb you, Father. Matt and I are going to have a little talk now. Don’t stay up too late.” She leaned to kiss him.

  “Of course not.” He flashed the ladies’ man smile again, then greedily returned to his book.

  Matthias put his hand on his father’s shoulder, but the old man paid him no further mind.