High Chicago

by Howard Shrier

I looked over at Jenn behind Rob’s back. She shrugged.

  “Pull me up,” he pleaded. “I’ll tell you everything. I will, I swear. I’ll tell you about Martin. About Sterling.”

  “And Maya?”

  “I never touched her. She killed herself.”

  I leaned in close and said, “Rob, your daughter did not kill herself. She was murdered. She was thrown from this balcony. And if you didn’t do it, you better help us find out who did.”

  Tears ran down his smooth cheeks, and fell like rain toward the pavement. “Please pull me up,” he said softly. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  CHAPTER 24

  “This piece of land,” Rob Cantor said. “This beautiful piece of land, all south of the channel, adjacent to the park.” He cleared his throat and scowled. He’d been prodigiously sick in the bathroom after I’d hauled him up over the balcony wall and clearly still had the taste in his mouth. “From the minute the Olympics went to Beijing instead of Toronto, and I knew the city was going to put the land up for sale, I started working on it.”

  He was sitting on his daughter’s couch. Jenn and I sat across from him on kitchen chairs. He said, “People like Gordon Avrith, sore losers all of them, they all implied—hell, they damn well said I got the land under the table somehow. That I paid people off, whether at the OMB, council, Committee of Adjustment, whatever. And it’s all bullshit. What I did was what they should have done. I worked like a goddamn dog, came up with the best design—the grandest design—of anyone and made the presentation of my life. I outmanoeuvred everyone and they can’t bring themselves to admit it.”

  “No payoffs?”

  “I never had to. You know what Toronto’s like. Everyone is so ready, so desperate to be in the rank of world-class cities. But the waterfront is such an eyesore. When people saw my plans, they were impressed. And when Simon Birk came on board, they rolled over like puppies.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  “The only thing on the property—that had ever been on it—was a dairy factory. I thought, This isn’t heavy industry. This isn’t a tire manufacturer, like on the north side of Unwin. It’s not an oil refinery. Not a malting plant. It’s a place that made fucking milk.”

  “But?”

  “First there was a problem with heating oil. The tank in the factory had been leaking for years, oozing all this sludge into the ground. When I brought Martin in to test the soil and the water, he found problems right away.”

  “And you didn’t want to clean it?”

  “No! I mean yes. We did clean it. Dug up all the soil, trucked it out for treatment, brought it back. It cost a fortune, and we were only able to recoup part of the cost from the city. Worst of all, the whole park area, which we thought we could leave wild, had to be dug up and cleaned, then replanted. It took two years of site prep before we could even break ground. That’s longer than it would take to build the towers themselves. But we did it all, and by the book. A textbook example of brownfield remediation.”

  “Then what did Will find? What was freaking Martin Glenn out?” I asked.

  “When you build a tower like this, you dig way down for the foundation. Six storeys down.”

  “Plus the caissons,” I said, “which went right down to bedrock.”

  “Yes. The initial problem, the oil, had never penetrated that far down. But somehow, after we dug the caisson holes, this other substance turned up.”

  “Aroclor 1242.”

  “Yes. It was like—I don’t know, one of those Godzilla movies where you awaken some monster by blasting a hole in the ocean floor. Martin said when we excavated all that dirt, sediment must have been disturbed, and the Aroclor was released into the water table.”

  “So a site that’s supposed to be clean suddenly isn’t?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Will Sterling called you on it.”

  “Yes. He found traces of Aroclor 1242 along the shoreline and followed it to us. And I talked to Martin about what it would take to clean it up.”

  “And?”

  Rob lowered his head. “It couldn’t be done. Not without threatening the whole project. We would have had to do the remediation all over again. Go through the approval process again. It would have thrown us so far off schedule, our bankers—and our other backers—might have pulled out. He said it was out of the question. We had to keep going.”

  “Who did?” Jenn asked. “Martin?”

  He shook his head. “Not Martin. Birk.”

  “Simon Birk told you to keep going?” I said.

  “He said I had to.”

  “If anyone has enough money to cover an unforeseen expense, wouldn’t it be him?”

  Rob laughed bitterly. “You really don’t understand this, do you?”

  “Enlighten us.”

  “Simon Birk,” he said, “doesn’t put his own money into anything. Not a nickel. It’s all leveraged. All of his buildings, all his grand creations, he gets other people to put up the money. Birk doesn’t give, understand? He takes. He grabs. He milks.” He was getting flushed as he talked, loosening his tie, rubbing his mouth with the back of his hand. “When he offered to partner with us on this project, I thought it was the greatest day of my career,” he said. “Me—little Robbie Cantor, the squirt who started out as a janitor for his father—landing the great Simon Birk as a business partner. I thought God himself had reached down from the sky and patted me on the back. Well, it wasn’t God, it was Birk, and it wasn’t a pat on the back. It was a knife slipping in.”

  “What did he do?” Jenn asked.

  “Simon insists on having the best of everything even if he can’t figure out how to pay for it all. For every demand he makes that can’t be met, there’s also a promise that can’t be kept. Money flows between projects like he’s robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

  Jenn asked, “How does he do it?”

  “Financing in our business always comes in stages that match certain milestones. When you acquire the land, when plans are approved, when ground is broken, when you reach a certain percentage of occupancy. As our financing was coming in, his building in Chicago, the Millennium Skyline, was in trouble. Again. Christ, it was from the very start. You think I had problems? When they started excavating that site, they found the worst thing a developer can find, worse than PCBs.”

  “And what’s that?” I asked.

  “Bones. Old ones. Possibly from the Fort Dearborn massacre, back when settlers first came to the region. Birk had to stop construction while anthropologists sifted through the dirt like prospectors. There were huge delays, which means no money in and lots of money out. Then about three months into construction, there was an accident. A bad one. You might have read about it. Three men were killed, seven injured, when a crane dropped a load of girders on them. That brought more delays and lawsuits he might actually lose for a change. Birk started springing these accounting tricks on my financiers, moving money out of this project over to the other one. He said it would get straightened out once the Millennium Skyline was at full occupancy. And if I didn’t play along, he said he’d not only pull out, but make sure I was ruined in the process. So when this problem cropped up on our site, with the Aroclor, there was no money for a second round of remediation. I told Martin we’d have to …”

  “To what?”

  “Bury it. Forget about it. Walk away.”

  “Even though people were going to be living on top of it. Kids were going to play in that park.”

  “Look, I know it sounds bad—”

  “Sounds bad?”

  “Okay, it is bad. I can see that now. I really can. I didn’t before. I couldn’t. I was so caught up in everything. In trying to keep this dream alive.”

  “But Martin told you he wouldn’t go along with it.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you told Birk?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Will Sterling? Did you tell Birk about him too?”

  “Yes.”

  “You signed
their death warrants.”

  “If he killed them. You have no proof.”

  “They were murdered within twenty-four hours of each other,” Jenn said.

  “Even if he had something to do with it, how was I supposed to know? And Maya died more than two weeks ago. I never said a word to Birk about her. Never told him she was upset about the site.”

  “She did,” I said.

  “What!” He pushed himself up off the couch and stood above me with his hands clenched so tight they started to turn white. “When? How do you—”

  “We found his number listed in her cellphone’s outgoing calls,” Jenn said. “And we found this.”

  She handed him a copy of the email Maya had sent Will Sterling the day she died. He read it, holding the paper as if it were the only thing tethering him to earth, his blue eyes scanning quickly down and then back to the beginning.

  Jenn put her hand on his arm and said, “There is no way she killed herself. You understand that now?”

  His chin trembled and his hand went to his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Tears fell anyway. His chest heaved and his voice broke as he said, “Yes.”

  “And if she didn’t kill herself, and you didn’t do it, who else had an interest in shutting her up?”

  He barely breathed out the name: “Birk.”

  “This is what you are going to do,” I said, my voice a lot sharper than Jenn’s. “You listening?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re going to write it down,” I said. “All of it. Everything you can remember from the time you first spoke to Simon Birk until now. Every transaction, every conversation, every email. When it is all written down you are going to give a copy to Jenn. Depending on what you come up with, she can share it with the police. I’ll leave that to her discretion. Got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have a chequebook?”

  “Yes.”

  “On you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Write me a cheque for two thousand dollars.”

  “What for?”

  “Travel expenses.”

  “Travel?”

  “Yes. I’m going to Chicago and I don’t see why your wife should have to pay for it.”

  “Why would Nina—”

  “Your ex-wife, goddammit.”

  “All right, all right. I’m sorry. Two thousand, you said. To go after Birk?”

  “Somebody has to,” I said.

  He filled out a cheque and handed it over. It was for five thousand. “If he did what you say he did … if he had anything to do with my daughter’s death … then do anything,” Rob Cantor said. “Spend anything. But above all do anything to bring him down. All the way down. I don’t know you, Geller, I don’t know what boundaries you have—”

  “I’m still figuring that out myself,” I said.

  “Go farther,” he said. “If you have to. Do whatever it takes to bring him down.”

  CHAPTER 25

  I made the easy phone calls first: flight, hotel and rental car.

  Then I called my mother to let her know I’d be out of town—Jewish mothers must be kept apprised of such things—hoping to get her machine so I could keep it short and chipper, but I got her live instead and had to listen to an overlong lecture about upsetting my older brother.

  “What happened?” she said. “You were going to call Daniel and thank him for sending business your way.”

  I said, “The case he referred to me, through his assistant, the simple family matter, turned out to be not so simple. And I had to push Marilyn’s ex around a little and he complained to Daniel and Daniel butted in where he shouldn’t have.”

  “I wish the two of you would just get along better …”

  “This is not about us getting along, Ma. It’s about me finding out what happened to Maya. I don’t bill what Daniel bills, but my hours matter too. My days count.”

  “Doing what?” she said. “I don’t know what you do anymore. At least when you were with an agency I had some idea.”

  “World repairs is what I do. Like it says on the door.”

  “Which means what here on earth?”

  “Giving Marilyn her daughter back. Whether Daniel likes it or not.”

  —

  I had to take a few moments to breathe and think my way through my story before I made the next call. Marilyn Cantor had come to World Repairs to find out why her daughter had killed herself. Now she was about to learn that Maya had been murdered. Never having been a cop, only a soldier, I had no experience at breaking this kind of news—only of living it. So I started by telling her that I was going to Chicago. “But don’t worry about the expense,” I said. “Your ex-husband is paying.”

  “What does Chicago have to do with my daughter?” she said. “And why is Rob paying for you to go? He didn’t even want me giving you his number.”

  “Maybe you should come down to the office. It might be better if I explain it in person.”

  Such a smart guy: I couldn’t have thought of this before I called?

  “What is going on?” she demanded. “What have you found out?”

  “This might not be easy.”

  “I didn’t come to you for easy. Please. Spit it out.”

  I took a deep breath; deep enough for snorkelling. “Maya didn’t kill herself, Marilyn. We believe—strongly believe—that she was murdered.”

  “Murdered … who would murder my daughter? She didn’t have an enemy in the world.”

  “She made one,” I said.

  “A boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  “Then who? And what the hell does it have to do with Rob?”

  “I’m going to tell you what I know, but I need some assurance from you first.”

  “The hell you do.”

  “Please. I need to know that you’ll wait until we find enough evidence to back up our theory before you do anything about it.”

  “Do you know what happened or not?”

  “All right,” I said. “Let me explain it as best I can. Everyone we spoke to had a hard time believing Maya had killed herself. No one thought she was the type to do it.”

  “I told you that myself.”

  “I know. And the more we looked into it, the more a different scenario began to emerge.”

  “Based on what?”

  “Phone calls she had made and received before she died. An email found on her computer. A conversation I had with the coroner.”

  “He agrees she was murdered?”

  “He acknowledged that it was possible.”

  “That doesn’t sound very—”

  “I’m getting there. We know Maya and a friend named Will Sterling had serious concerns about the Birkshire Harbourview development.”

  “Oh my God. Where are you going with this?”

  “Hang on. They believed there were problems with the land itself—the level of PCBs in the soil.”

  “But Rob had all that cleaned.”

  “But a new problem cropped up that couldn’t be cleaned. Not on time or within budget.”

  There was silence on the other end. Then she said in a tight voice, “Who are you working for now? Me or Rob?”

  “You,” I said. “And only you.”

  “Then why did Rob—”

  “I’m getting to that. We talked to him today, Jenn and I. We got him to admit this problem. And that there have been casualties because of it.”

  “Casualties? What does that mean? Someone killed Maya over this?”

  “Not just Maya. We think two other people were killed over it, to keep Birk’s projects in Toronto and Chicago going.”

  “Not my husband, please,” she said. “Don’t tell me—”

  “Simon Birk is the man we believe is responsible,” I said. “That’s why I’m going to Chicago. And that’s why Rob is paying. He brought Birk into the mix. He bought into Birk’s plan to pave over the problems. And he wants Birk held accountable.”

  A loud clashing noise ra
ng painfully through my ear—the phone being dropped—and I could hear Marilyn crying on the other end. Wailing. All the anger she had been directing in at herself was seeking an outlet now, a place to lodge like an arrow. There was nothing to do but wait until she could gather herself and return to the phone. I made myself listen for moments on end as she gulped and cried and tried to speak and then cried more, apologizing to me as tears welled in my own eyes. I wanted that anger inside me when I got to Chicago. Wanted the fuel it would provide.

  When she was finally able to talk, she spat, “That idiot.”

  “Birk?”

  “My stupid fucking ex-husband, that bastard, that heartless fucking prick … I’m sorry, I shouldn’t speak like that to you.”

  “Please. I’ve heard worse.”

  “It’s all part of the same stupid need of his. Having a family and apartment buildings wasn’t enough for him. He had to have the young girl, the big phallic towers, the world-famous partner. And look where it got him. Where it got his own daughter.”

  She asked if Rob had told Andrew. I said I didn’t know. She asked what the police thought. I told her we’d been trying to make our case with Homicide. She asked how long I would be in Chicago. I said as long as it took.

  “There’s more money,” she said. “If Rob’s runs out.”

  “It won’t,” I said. “He’s on the hook for every dime.”

  “Jonah,” she said. “How sure are you he had nothing to do with it?”

  “You were married to him half your life. Does he have it in him?”

  She took her time before saying, “No. I don’t think he could. Whatever else is wrong with him, and God knows there’s a lot, he loved his children. He divorced me, not them. He’s a selfish asshole at times, maybe most of the time—and I’m trying to picture it, believe me—I think I hate him enough to want to think he did it, but I can’t. I really can’t. But if for some reason I’m wrong?”

  “Yes?”

  “If there’s any evidence at all that he had anything to do with it—anything—even if it was not knowing something he could have or should have known to prevent it, then tear up his cheque and I’ll write you a new one. I don’t care how much it costs.”