The Big Score

by Kilian, Michael;

  His flashlight went out just as he was going out the back door.

  Annelise and her husband were unusually circumspect at dinner, content to talk about trivial matters—Paul Blucher saying little at all. Over coffee afterward, however, they finally got around to the subject that had brought them together for the first time since his mother’s funeral.

  “So the family fortunes are improving,” Annelise said.

  “I think it’s safe to say there’s no longer a pressing emergency,” Matthias said. “Father can stay on in the Lake Forest house for the immediate future, though we’re not yet in the black. I’m working on that.”

  “You mean when Father isn’t making a bloody fool of himself at Park District meetings.”

  “I had nothing to do with that.”

  “But you and Christian truly are taking care of everything? There’s nothing more for us to worry about?”

  “For now.”

  “Sounds too good to be true,” Annelise said.

  Her husband cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Would you mind if I looked at the books?”

  “That’s not necessary, Paul,” said Annelise. “If we can’t take Matt at his word, there’s no point in being here. It’s obvious the bills are being paid. Give it a rest.”

  Blucher looked away, in discomfort. For all the recurring rancor in the Curland family, he would never be as close to Annelise as her brothers were.

  He brushed a few crumbs off his tie. The dressing for dinner ritual was not observed in the Schiller Street house. Annelise, a formidable, even elegant figure when in black evening gown, was wearing the kind of frumpy dress one might expect on a lady dog breeder from Barrington. Her husband was dressed in a drab blue banker’s suit. Matthias was in his habitual old blazer.

  “All this money is coming from Peter Poe?” Annelise asked.

  “I’m on his retainer, for the time being. Yes. But Christian has been helping out, much more than you think. He’s making a serious thing of his painting.”

  “You said ‘for the time being.’ Aren’t you doing this monstrous new building of Poe’s?”

  “I’ve done some drawings. He likes the concept. Whether I stay on the project … we shook hands on it. I’d be going against my word if I turned him down. I suppose I’m ninety-nine percent sure I’ll do it, if he keeps his word to me about a few things.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you, that this is the only kind of work you can get as an architect?” Paul said.

  Matthias colored. “This ‘work’ is probably the most extensive development project Chicago has ever seen—at least in a single structure. The building could become the most famous in the world. I’m not ashamed of it. The Civic Opera Building, I might remind you, was built by one of the country’s leading swindlers. Poe’s hardly that.”

  “I wouldn’t be too quick with that assertion,” Annelise responded. “Some say he’s involved with crooks.”

  “I heard that, too. He broached the subject to me himself. He said people like that were trying to move into his casino business and he wouldn’t let them. That’s why they set fire to his boat, or so he thinks.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “It’s the most logical explanation for what happened—a rather compelling form of proof. He was supposed to come back with us on that boat.”

  “It’s proof that you’re stark, staring mad to be working for the man.”

  “In any event, I won’t be sailing for him any more.”

  “Will you part company with him when the building’s done?”

  “It’s a long way from that.”

  “I just don’t know, Matt. I’m happy for you that you’re back working again, but, this man … I feel it in my bones. He’s bad. He’s wrong. He’s the sort of person Grandfather loathed, the sort he blamed for all the troubles in the world.”

  “A person very much like Great-Grandfather, whom we have to thank for most everything we have—including the Albrecht Collection. This great-families-of-Chicago nonsense gets a little sickening when you consider the greed and corruption and insensible cruelty that produced the money in the first place. Manfred Albrecht ruined hundreds of people. No one’s ever accused Peter Poe of doing anything like that. He’s put people to work.”

  They sat without speaking further, like three strangers in a public room.

  “We have a long drive,” Annelise said finally. “We’d better be going.”

  “I’ve a favor to ask first,” said Matthias, looking directly at his sister, excluding her husband from his invitation. “I’d like you to look at my design—for Poe’s building.”

  “After all I’ve said?”

  “All I want is your honest opinion. You’ve never given me any less than that.”

  This wasn’t entirely true. Annelise had always tended to gush over his paintings, even those Matthias knew painfully well were mediocre.

  She looked about as pleased as if he’d asked her to do the dishes.

  “It’ll only take a minute,” he promised. “The renderings are right upstairs.”

  “All right.”

  She looked at each of his depictions with intent and dutiful care, refraining from any comment until she’d pondered every one. He guessed that she’d made her judgment quickly, but was taking time to find the words to express it.

  “I’ll grant you this, Matt,” she said at last. “It’s very beautiful, very graceful—a wonderful and original idea. I can see what you see—how it would reflect the changing light. It’s the kind of thing they’d be writing about in architectual textbook, long after we’re dead. Maybe in a class with Frank Lloyd Wright, or Harry Weese.”

  She was gushing again. “And?”

  “But I don’t like it.”

  He was stung. “Why?”

  “How high is that tower?”

  “As proposed, a hundred and fifty stories. Though we’re not making that public yet.”

  “And the sail part then would be, what—a hundred and fifty stories long?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I find that grotesque, Matt. It would dwarf everything else in the city.”

  “But it’s going up at Cabrini Green. There’s nothing there.”

  “It’s too damn big. It’s Godzilla. It’s a shameless, self-indulgent example of the worst kind of look-at-me ego gratification. It’s what you might expect to find in that godawful Houston—or Los Angeles. This is Chicago—like you always say, a very special place.”

  “Thank you.” The words came out woodenly. “I appreciate your candor, but I think you’re prejudiced because it’s Poe’s building.”

  “The ego I was talking about, Matt, is yours.”

  After they’d gone, he sat for a long while in the living room, searching his mind desperately for a rational way to discount her harsh verdict. Aside from her dislike of Poe, could it have anything to do with her being a woman? For all its grace, this would be a very powerful, manly structure. That was its appeal to Poe. Christian had thought it marvelous. Chicago was a masculine city. What had Carl Sandburg written?

  “City of the big shoulders.”

  He’d taken that brawling strength and worked it into a thing of beauty, created a structure that would quiver with might and power and yet not present a single hard or ugly edge.

  Glass in hand, Matthias got up and paced about the room, thinking about all he’d ever heard in his architecture classes, or read in any book on the subject. The world’s cities were full of stark, square, forbidding Miesian boxes. Many of them had won awards and praise. He’d created something entirely different. That was the rub. Annelise, like so many of her background, was just too conservative, too worshipping of sameness, of the past.

  He went into his study, full of sudden purpose. One bookcase was devoted to architectural works and texts. He plucked out one of his favorites, turning to a chapter about a building that had revolutionized architecture, transformed cities beyond the grandest plan of the venerated D
aniel Burnham, excited the imagination of modern man far more than even the most ingenius works of the highly focused, rectangle-obsessed Frank Lloyd Wright.

  Not Burnham’s triangular Flatiron Building, as memorable a silhouette as that might be—a 1903 design that had in fact inspired his own concept for the pyramid of the Halsman Tower. Not the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building or Chicago’s similarly Art Deco Palmolive Building, which, with its revolving beacon and sentrylike position at the northern end of Michigan Avenue, had once been the principal wonderment of the Chicago skyline.

  These were among his most enduring favorites, but what energized him now was a structure that few ever thought of any more in the modern era of sleek, sky-high towers—though it had presaged them.

  It was New York’s Woolworth Building, a Beaux-Arts master-piece by Cass Gilbert. Completed in 1913, it still stood on its downtown lower Broadway site, commanding respect among all the latter-day giants that had sprung up around it. Twenty-nine stories and 792 feet tall, it had a broad, U-shaped base that consumed half its height, surmounted by a thrusting, slightly set-back tower with a Gothic peak. For a generation, it had been Manhattan’s greatest building. It was massive even in modern-day terms, but despite its bulk, despite the then obligatory gargoyles that encrusted its peak and corners, it was the most profound vertical expression that any architect in that era had ever conceived, let alone achieved. Its shooting, fluted lines carried its majesty up to its very pinnacle. It was a true tower, expressing not merely height but greatness and grandeur and grace, as the cathedrals of Europe had done for so many centuries.

  Many had derided it when it had gone up, calling it grotesque, and—like Annelise—too big. A newspaper cartoon of the time had ridiculed it by envisioning a future New York that was a convoluted, interlocking jungle of oversized, preposterous towers.

  Not far off the mark, as prescient satire went, considering what eventually had happened to Manhattan, but it was an inappropriate criticism of Gilbert’s achievement. For the time it was allowed to stand alone, to be appreciated as something unique and entire, the Woolworth Building was a symbol of triumph, of civilization at its most noble and reaching.

  That is what Matthias intended for Chicago with his huge sailboat, and he would not be swayed—not by his family’s notions of business respectability, not by his doubts about Peter Poe’s character, not by the opinions of his friends and the Chicago establishment, not by any personal consideration, save his own creative urgings. He would see this thing done. The building was paramount. He had created it. Now he must see to it that it was given life. He’d let events and fears and his own confused emotions get in the way, almost to the point of his abandoning it. He must not let that happen again.

  Whether as painter or architect, he truly was an artist. It didn’t matter what went into a work of art—some of the greatest masterpieces in history had been born of the most sordid miseries and horrors. What mattered was the art. Only the art.

  His phone rang. He was infuriated by the intrusion. There was no one he wanted to talk to at this extraordinary moment, when for the first time in years—perhaps all his life—he found himself utterly consumed and motivated by certainty and resolve.

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Curland? This is Zane Rawlings, from Michigan?”

  “Yes, what is it?” For days he had thought of calling this policeman, to enlist his aid in getting at whoever had put Cindy in the hospital. Now all that seemed completely irrelevant. If Poe was right, the persons responsible had more than paid the price. Beyond Cindy’s recovery, he simply didn’t care anymore.

  “I need to see you, Mr. Curland. I have something that might be of interest to you. You said you determined that Kirchner in your vault is genuine? Well, I have reason to believe that more paintings from your museum—copies, maybe originals—can be found in Laurence Train’s gallery. In fact, one of them has come to hand. So to speak.”

  That again. Jill Langley as art thief. Let that notion, as Christian had suggested, be buried with her in her grave.

  “I’ve checked the paintings in my vault, Chief Rawlings. I had some of them examined by experts. Everything is in order. I’ve already told you that.”

  “But this is a Kirchner. Same kind of smiling woman. I’d like to show it to you.”

  “I don’t care if it’s a Michelangelo.”

  “Mr. Curland. This is a homicide investigation.”

  “You keep saying that. But you’re not getting anywhere. All you do is make annoying phone calls.”

  “I think you should go over to Train’s gallery and take a look.”

  “Why don’t you do that? You’re the policeman. I’m extremely busy now. I’ve no time for distractions. If you want to pursue your theories about art fraud, go see Larry Train; go to the Chicago police. There’s nothing I can do for you.”

  “Well, think about it. If you change your mind, call me.”

  “Fine.”

  Matthias hung up. He stood perfectly still for a long moment, then started upstairs. He had an idea for one more rendering—a view of the new building much as Poe had described it out on the Montrose breakwater, as Jill had envisioned such a creation that long-ago evening when they’d been sailing along the lakefront at sunset.

  He’d show the new building as it might be seen from far out in the lake. There’d be a thin line of horizon, the three downtown supertowers rising pencillike above it. And there, just to the north, would be the magnificent sail, its glass curtain wall ablaze with reflected sunlight.

  Then everyone might understand.

  CHAPTER 17

  Among the many things Poe had neglected in all his travails were his household accounts. He was rudely reminded of them by a morning call from Yeats, who rang up just as Poe was finishing reading through the newspapers.

  “A minor problem, Peter,” he said, his voice full of lawyerly tact. “I just heard from the bank. They want some money.”

  “You told me all the debt service payments were made. A little late, but paid.”

  “And so they were. I’m not talking millions here; just thousands. It’s your personal checking account. There have been some overdrafts, and you’re twenty-eight thousand over your credit card line.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Irritating, no doubt. But not ridiculous. The way you spend money, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d said two hundred and eighty thousand. I’ve got the statements right in front of me. I meant to mention it to you some time ago, but it seemed kind of trivial, what with all your other concerns. Only now they’re being very pointed about it.”

  Trivial? It was fucking bullshit. Poe wondered if someone in the banking establishment was trying to harass him.

  “Well, transfer some funds from another account. You have my power of attorney to do that.”

  “Your other accounts are kinda close to red line this month, too. The only one that’s flush is the casino’s.”

  “I don’t want to touch that.”

  “You want these guys to start dropping gossip about Chapter Eleven over lunch at their club?”

  “That would be a load of crap.”

  “It wouldn’t stop ’em.”

  Poe drummed his fingers on his desk top. “All right. Use the casino account. I’ll make the amount good soon. A matter of days.”

  “May I ask with what?”

  “I’ll put some more paintings up for sale.”

  “You must have an inexhaustible supply.”

  “Just do as I say, Bill. I don’t pay you a fucking fortune to make smart-ass remarks.”

  “Yassuh, boss.”

  Poe managed to hang up first. If the bastard didn’t know so much about his business, he’d fire him.

  There were in fact some household bills in a big manila envelope on his desk. As he did periodically, he’d had the office send them over so he could check on Diandra’s spending. She’d been playing the nutsy shopper again—as she often did
when she was unhappy about something.

  The bill from Neiman Marcus alone was stratospheric. The crazy woman had been buying Bob Mackie gowns. They made her look terrific, but jeez.

  Aping Donald Trump, he’d once told her she could buy all the dresses she wanted. He’d liked to brag about that at first, but this was getting painful. She wouldn’t like it, but he was going to have to put on the brakes. He might even have to get her to sell some of her old things—stuff she’d worn only once or twice. Some of those clothes she hadn’t worn at all. And shoes! A regular Imelda Marcos.

  He looked through some of the other bills. His accounts-payable people had let quite a few of them slip. He was even in arrears on his goddamn newspaper subscriptions. What if the Trib put that in its gossip column—or let that fiendish columnist Mike Royko hear about it?

  A shiver ran down his back. Had he been running this close to the edge? Why hadn’t Yeats said something before this? Maybe he had, when he’d been asked to buy the sailboat.

  Poe punched the button on his console that rang Larry Train. A girl at the gallery answered, though it was Train’s private office line.

  She said Train was down in the storeroom. He told her she had five seconds to get him to the phone.

  “Yes, Peter. What is it?” Train sounded displeased, or at least bothered by something.

  “I need some cash. I want you to dump some paintings. You know that spaghetti thing I’ve got in my living room, the one you said was worth a hundred and fifty thousand? Start with that.”

  “I thought you liked that?”

  “I hate the fucking thing. It’s Diandra who likes it.”

  “Won’t it bother her if you get rid of it?”

  “I’ll tell her it’s out for cleaning or something. You can have a copy made.”

  “We’re rather busy now, Peter. Christian Curland and I are working on his show.”

  Poe’s voice got very low. “Larry. When I want something, nobody’s busy.”

  A sigh. “I understand.”

  “And I want you to move that last shipment of Germans.”

  “Now? So soon?”

  “Yes. As soon as possible. Go for top dollar, but I’ll settle for almost any price—as long as it’s quick.”