The Big Score

by Kilian, Michael;

  Gibson was a lawyer, quite possibly the smartest man Matthias knew in Chicago. They’d first met when they were beginning their careers, Gibson the attorney in a minor real estate project for which the Curland family firm had been hired as architects. Gibson was a country boy, the son of a well-to-do soybean and corn farmer out near Sycamore, the family holdings also including a small cannery and a fuel oil distributorship. A graduate of Northwestern and Yale Law, Gibson had switched from real estate to bonds, moving from law firm to law firm until now, at a remarkably young age, he was managing partner of one of Chicago’s largest. His clients included a very major bank. Matthias had a fair idea of what he wanted to talk about, and why he was in such a hurry to meet.

  At Gibson’s request, they were given a table off to the side, out of earshot of the others in the dining room, which was fairly full.

  “Martini,” Gibson said to the waiter, then looked to Matthias. “Two?”

  “Just a glass of white wine.” Christian’s talk about role reversal had unnerved him.

  “Of course,” Gibson said. “You’re an artist now. Wine, bread, and cheese, right?”

  “I’m just not drinking much anymore. Most of the time.”

  Gibson gave him an odd look. He always kept himself extremely well informed, about business, politics, scandals, people’s personal problems. If he hadn’t been so bent on making money, he would have been a superb journalist.

  His appearance was deceiving. He had a farm boy’s face. His suits were expensive now, but they always looked rumpled on him. The tie he wore was a little askew and the point of one of his shirt collars was bent. But Gibson masterminded deals that ran to a hundred million dollars or more. His personal income was probably close to three million dollars a year. He’d married a rich woman, but his own wealth now exceeded her family’s. Ruth was a college professor much involved in civic causes, and served as chairman of one of the mayor’s citizens commissions. They represented the new establishment that had taken over from the old families who had still been running the city when Matthias was a child. The Gibsons weren’t Social Register—Ruth was Jewish, and the snooty Register seemed to frown upon that—but the Gibsons didn’t care about such trivialities. They deeply loved the city in which they were so much involved. Some of the rougher political types considered them do-gooders, but that didn’t bother them, either.

  “I heard you were back in town,” Gibson said, “but I thought it was just for your mother’s funeral. Would have been there, but I was in Washington. Had some business with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Couldn’t wait. I wish I’d been there. Sorry, Matt.”

  Matthias’s mother had disapproved of Gibson. They’d been unable to disabuse her of the notion that his father drove a tractor for a living, though the man sometimes had done that, just for fun.

  “I appreciate the thought, but you did well to skip it. An awkward business. We were glad to get it over.”

  “I hear you’ve been helping your father out, getting the firm back on its feet before going back to France.”

  “Something like that.”

  Gibson had very innocent brown eyes, the effect enhanced by large horn-rimmed glasses. Adversaries who took him for a naive rube, however, often found their back against the bottom of a ditch, as had once been said about another sharp Illinois corporate attorney of rustic mein—Abraham Lincoln.

  “You’ve landed a pretty big client,” Gibson said.

  “Peter Poe.”

  “The very fellow.”

  The drinks came. Gibson lifted his in toast, then took a quick sip. “Saw your picture in the Trib at the wheel of his boat. Guess you’re pretty good chums.”

  “Just a client.”

  Gibson grinned. He sipped again, then set the glass aside. As memory served, he probably wouldn’t finish it.

  “I really meant to call you,” he continued, “even before I heard about you and Poe. Just been so damned busy. Out of town half the time. But when I read about that fire on his boat, I didn’t want to wait any longer.” He looked at the bandages on Matthias’s left hand. “Maybe I waited too long.”

  Curland raised the hand and turned it, moving his fingers. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  “People talk about getting their fingers burned in a business deal. This is the first time I’ve actually seen it happen.”

  They both smiled. Gibson sat back, blinking at Matthias. In a way, he reminded Curland of the Michigan police chief Rawlings.

  “Matt,” he said after a moment. “We think he has ties to the mob. That’s why the bank I represent won’t do business with him. I won’t let them.”

  Matthias stared at his wine, then drank. He’d been harboring that same dark suspicion himself. As he sat all those hours in the waiting room of Cindy’s hospital in Wisconsin, the thought had returned to him repeatedly as he’d sought a logical explanation for what had happened to Poe’s boat.

  But suspicions were not proof. Was his friend Douglas now providing that? If so, would it make a difference? Mob money was everywhere in Chicago. He could point to a dozen buildings that stood as monuments to it.

  “My brother has become something of a friend of Poe’s,” he said finally. “He hasn’t said a word about anything like that. I don’t suppose you’d hold Christian up as a man of great virtue, but criminals aren’t exactly his set. He’d drop Poe in an instant if he thought what you’re saying might be true.”

  “Christian wouldn’t know. Few people do. I’m not talking about the Chicago mob. It’s an East Coast outfit. We don’t have any proof. Nothing I’d go to the government with. But enough to want to stay clear of him. When I heard what happened to his boat up there, I was scared to death about you.”

  “I talked to his wife about it. All she’d tell me is that he thinks it might have been the work of ‘business rivals.’ She said he isn’t terribly worried about it.”

  “He wasn’t on the boat.”

  “He might have been. If it was the crime syndicate, wouldn’t he be afraid, wouldn’t he get out of town, or whatever one does?”

  “I didn’t say the guy didn’t have guts. He must, the way he throws other people’s money around.”

  “He has a lot of respectable people associated with him.”

  “Including you. Are you going to stick with him?”

  “Haven’t decided.” He kept saying that. Every time he did it seemed to have less meaning.

  “Matt, I don’t want to pry into your business, or intrude on a client relationship, if you still have one, but Poe plans to put up a monster high-rise on that Cabrini Green tract, isn’t that right? That’s the project you’ve been working on?”

  “I haven’t signed a contract, but I’ve done some drawings for him.”

  “I do deals, Matt. That’s how I earn my living. I haven’t gone near a courtroom in years. I’ve done big ones and small ones, winners and losers. But I’ve never seen as big a loser as this one shows every prospect of becoming. It makes no sense at all. I wouldn’t put a dime into it.”

  “Poe’s what you’d call a high roller. He likes to take risks.”

  “Standing on the edge of a cliff is taking a risk. This fellow is taking a running leap. No matter what he has in mind for that property, in that neighborhood, he’ll be lucky to open with a ten percent occupancy rate, even if he gives space away. The location is insane. Townhouses maybe. Low-rise condos. But offices, luxury apartments. A monster tower. It’s absolutely nuts.”

  “He views the project as a self-fulfilling prophesy. Put up the building, and the neighborhood changes. It’s already beginning to. A project like this would be a fantastic anchor. Other developers would come running. Sandburg Village brought back the Near North Side that way. This would be much the same thing. Whatever you think of the man, he’s certainly a visionary. It was people like him who built Chicago, people like my great-grandfather.”

  “Sandburg Village was residential, a lot of it low-rise, and right next to the Gold
Coast. Arthur Rubloff was no fool. He was one of the most conservative developers this city’s ever seen. He was dead sure Sandburg Village would work.”

  “I’m just an architect, Doug. My last big client here went bankrupt, but the building’s still there. Anyway, imminent bankruptcy doesn’t seem to be one of Mr. Poe’s problems.”

  “We hear the money for this deal is coming from Japan.”

  Matthias shrugged.

  “They’re not fools, either,” Gibson said. “Anything but. What the hell do they know that the rest of us don’t?”

  “They know that Peter Poe has made a lot of money with everything he’s done.”

  Gibson always knew when to retreat from a point. He took another line of attack. “These aren’t the most wonderful times for architects. A lot of the big firms have let people go. But you’re one of the best I know—I say that friendship aside. We have clients who are still building, Matt. There are brand-new cities going up in the suburbs. They’re part of that. I’d be happy to put you together with some of our people—if you decide to back away from Poe.”

  “Sterile office parks and sprawling shopping centers don’t make cities, Douglas. Chicago’s special.”

  “Well, consider it a standing offer. And, Matt, if you get into any more trouble with that guy, you call me at once, all right?”

  As he expected, Zany was out of a job. After his short, unhappy talk with Mayor Braunmeister, he left his police car at the municipal building, parked with the keys in it, and walked home despite the hot summer day. His service revolver was his own property, and he had it in his briefcase, but he’d left his badge on his desk, which was now George Hejmal’s. His former sergeant had offered to try to get Zany hired back as a detective, after things quieted down, but neither man knew when that might be. Zany didn’t count that among his prospects.

  His wife had closed the beach shop for a few days and was waiting for him at the house. She brought him a cold beer and one for herself. They sat on the screened-in porch and looked out at the lake. Around them was everything they thought they had wanted, or needed.

  “Were they bastards about it, our town fathers?” she asked, when she got around to speaking.

  “They were very generous. Six months’ pay.”

  “Six months can come and go in a hurry.”

  “It could have been worse.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Well, I suppose I could always go back to the Chicago P.D. Hang in long enough to get a pension. Then we could come back here.”

  “You’d hate that. So would I.”

  He took a swig. He was surprised at how content he felt, how confident. It might be delusion, but he felt wonderfully free.

  “You know,” his wife said. “There are things besides law enforcement. We have land enough to add a motel or something to the beach store. Maybe a real restaurant. Or marine supplies.”

  “That’s a thought. Maybe a bar.”

  “Not a bar. But you’re really willing to give up being a cop?”

  “Not entirely.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He shrugged.

  “You’re not still thinking about that damned murder case?” she asked.

  “Just a little.”

  “Well, don’t.”

  Zany smiled. “Anyway, I’ve got the day off. If I weren’t so tired, I’d go fishing.” He stood up, finishing his beer as he gazed off to the west.

  “Why don’t you take a nap?”

  “Might. Right now, I think I’ll fool around with my computer for a while.”

  Matthias went directly to Sally’s apartment as soon as he guessed she might be home, not wanting to put things off any longer. She was fixing dinner for her daughter. While she busied herself with that, he played with her little girl in the living room, helping her cut out some paper dolls. The daughter was already as pretty as her mother, and very charming. She was one of the big pluses in the equation. Matthias’s wife had not wanted any children. Jill Langley had, but that was another matter, another sorrow.

  Sally took the little girl into the kitchen, then returned.

  “I don’t have a lot of time for you,” she said. “I’ve a party to go to tonight.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  She seated herself in an armchair. She’d bought some new furniture recently. A few of the pieces looked to be valuable antiques.

  Her steady, unhappy gaze was her answer.

  “What’s wrong, Sally?”

  She looked away, her brow very furrowed. “I’ll be blunt. Are you and Diandra Poe having an affair?”

  “Sally, for God’s sake. We were in a fire together. She just came by to see how I was doing.”

  “I’m not just talking about her being there last night. I’m talking about what I see in your face every time you look at her.”

  “She’s very striking, very graceful. I’m fascinated by the way she moves.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “It has nothing to do with us, with what we have between us.”

  “Did you sleep with her up in Wisconsin? That was your first chance at her, right?”

  “Sally …”

  “Be honest with me, damn it! I was honest with you about Christian! You asked me that humiliating question and I answered you. All our lives we’ve told the truth to each other.”

  “All right,” he said, looking down at his hands, hating himself for being such a coward. “The answer is yes. But it’s not something that’s going to happen again.”

  “Except for late-night visits to your pied à terre on Schiller Street.”

  “She was just about to leave when you came. She’d only been there a few minutes.”

  He was trying to give her every chance to stay with him. He didn’t want to cast her back into her lonely misery. But he knew for certain that marriage to her would not and could never be what they had imagined. That he didn’t want it. That he’d cruelly deluded himself—and her—in thinking that they could go back to what once was. But he didn’t want any more guilt. There had to be something noble in all this, something selfless.

  “I was worried sick about you, and you didn’t even call. Not from Wisconsin, not when you got home.”

  “I was exhausted, a complete mess. I was very upset about Cindy Ellison. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t invite her over. I was asleep.”

  “Matt, I know what Christian is. I chose him for my disastrous extramarital adventure because I knew it wouldn’t mean anything to him, that there’d be no complications with him, that it was all the same to him as taking me out to dinner. But I can’t be married to a man like that. I was once, and I hated it. I won’t be made a fool of, Matt. Not in my city. I’ve been humiliated enough.”

  “I’m not like my brother.” He’d said it again. He’d been telling himself that all day. In the same circumstance, Christian would leave Sally in a trice, on a whim. He never would have asked Sally to marry him in the first place, certainly not out of any feeling of obligation. Christian lived only for himself.

  Sally folded her arms. “That’s all I have to say.”

  “I was going to ask you if you’d like to have my mother’s engagement ring.”

  “Under the circumstances, I think that would be very inappropriate.”

  “You’re absolutely sure?”

  “I’ll be honest again. I’m not absolutely sure. I love you. I always have. In the fantasy world I’ve spent so much time in, I want to be married to you. I want us to have all the things we should have had in the beginning. But reality’s different. I’m not sixteen anymore, am I? The truthful answer is that, yes, the possibility exists that I might change my mind, sometime. But it’s a very slight possibility. The very large probability is that I won’t. I’m not angry. I cried a lot last night, but I got over it. I should have known that what happened was going to happen, the way people who buy lottery tickets should know they’re not going to win. What I feel is em
pty, deflated. Cheated by life again. The price I keep having to pay for caving in to my mother about you.”

  He rose, and started to come toward her.

  “No, Matt, don’t.”

  He stood awkwardly. “Do you want me to go?”

  “Yes. I don’t think we should see each other—not for a while, a damn long while—unless it’s unavoidable. I’ll explain it somehow to my friends.”

  “I think you’re making a mistake. The same mistake you made when you turned me down the first time.”

  “You’re not telling me the truth, Matt. I can face up to the truth. I’m a lot wiser than I used to be, when I let my mother always decide what was best. You learn a few things after a while. I know I’m not making a mistake.”

  “At least think about it.” He’d give her every last chance. He’d leave the door open the tiniest inch. But he longed now for her to slam it shut, as he had slammed it shut on Jill, in what was probably the biggest mistake he’d ever made since leaving Chicago.

  “I’ll think about it. I’ll be doing that the rest of my life.” She got to her feet, the hostess preparing to see her guest to the door. “There’s something else I want, Matthias. I want to keep this job with Peter Poe. I don’t know where it will lead me. I’m certainly not in it for the long haul. But it got me out of that horrible pit I was in, and I don’t want to fall back in. I don’t want to go back to that store.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be very glad to have you.”

  “Well, you just see to it. You and Diandra. You owe me that much.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Bobby Mann looked like a corpse. Poe had never seen skin that gray on a living human being. He stood up, gesturing Mann to a chair set squarely in front of his desk.

  “Hiya, Bobby.”

  Mann sat down, his eyes looking like those of a rat caught in the light. He didn’t say hiya back.

  “I was surprised to find you still here, Bobby. I thought you might be taking a vacation, somewhere far away.”

  “I was told not to,” he said, almost in a whisper. “Your friends.”

  “Nice to have friends, isn’t it. Always looking out for you. And they’re right. The middle of our busy season is no time to take off. You’re needed here.”