The Big Score Page 10

  Poe’s coffee was a little too hot to drink. He took a muffin and buttered it carefully, all over, as was his habit, then sat munching it as he began turning the pages of the Tribune. In the tall buildings all around him, people were doing the same thing, starting their day, their week, the rest of their lives. He wondered how many could exert as much control over the events that would confront them as could he, how many had as clear a sight of where they were going, of what they wanted to happen. The mayor was probably having his breakfast now. Poe wondered if his thoughts went much beyond the next city council meeting.

  The Trib had nothing at all about O’Rourke—not in the front news section, not in Metro, not on the obituary page. Not a goddamn word. The same for the Sun-Times. Poe leaned back in his chair and swiveled toward the windows facing the lake and the morning sun. Maybe the stuff Mango had put in the whiskey hadn’t fazed the guy; he’d just gotten up and gone home. Maybe the papers had just dismissed the tip as a crank call. Maybe the mayor had found out about the story early and shut it down.

  But that was all right. The mayor was the only one whom Poe wanted to know about the secret life of the Park District boss. The mayor tolerated a lot in his city. He had to if he was going to stay on top. You didn’t run this town by giving orders. You put together deals—on everything—and gave everyone his cut. Even the stupid Gold Coast Garden Festival was a deal. The rich bitches got a chance to show off their houses and themselves and raise a little money for their charities, and the next time the mayor wanted something from their husbands, he got it.

  What the mayor could not abide was fooling around. He’d been brought up to believe that the family was holy, that wives and mothers were to be worshipped like the Virgin Mary, that cheating on them was the worst kind of sin. All of those in his inner circle were family men, many of them from the mayor’s own neighborhood. There was not a single divorced person in the upper echelons of the administration. Poe had researched that point well. If the man in charge of the city’s parks and playgrounds was caught with a hooker in a sleazy hotel, that should be it for him. “Finito,” as Mango had put it.

  So what had happened? Mango had said “I did it!” So what gived?

  Just then, the radio station came to the end of a series of commercials and went into local news. The first story made Poe spill his coffee. The instant the announcer went on to the next Poe clicked off the radio and hit the button on his phone that automatically dialed Mango’s number. He cut her off before she could say three words.

  “Shut up,” he said. “Get dressed and go to my boat and stay there. Don’t call anybody.”

  “But, Peter …”

  “Shut up! I’ve got meetings this morning. And a lunch.”

  “I know. I made the arrangements.”

  “God damn it, Mango. I said shut up. Go to the boat. I’ll be there right after lunch. Two-thirty. We’ll deal with this then. Now do what I say.”

  He hung up. The bodies must have been discovered after whatever early hour the late editions of both papers had gone to press. Otherwise, it would have been all over the front pages.

  What a way to kick, shot full of holes with a hooker on top of you. Poe wondered if the guy had gotten any pleasure out of it before Mango had done her number. He found himself trembling a little—with fear, but also excitement, a weird thrill at having put something like that in motion. He’d reached out and, zap, a man was dead. He hadn’t ordered him dead. He hadn’t wanted him dead. He was going to make damn sure Mango hadn’t gone cuckoo on him. But there it was. God. He felt like a Mafioso.

  Matthias entered the offices of Curland and Associates feeling something of an intruder. He’d never been in this antique office building before, and had been a little disturbed by the quality of neighbors whose doors he had passed coming down the hall—a strange, obviously leftist political committee opposed to American imperialism; a divorce lawyer without partners or, apparently, many clients; the world headquarters of some psychic religious order; a massage therapist.

  Martha Heller, the now-elderly woman who had been his father’s secretary for as long as Matthias could remember, was at her desk, a cup of coffee and a Barbara Cartland romance novel on the worn blotter in front of her. He’d telephoned to tell her he was coming, so she welcomed him matter-of-factly. She probably would have done so had he walked in the door after so many years without any warning. She stood up and shook his hand.

  “You look well, Mr. Curland.”

  “You, too, Martha.”

  “Things have changed since you left.”

  “I see.”

  “Can I run downstairs and get you some coffee?”

  The woman probably hadn’t run anywhere in twenty years. “No thanks, Martha. I just want to look through things, see how things stand.”

  “Business has been a little slow, Mr. Curland.”

  Indeed. The firm had once employed more than thirty people.

  “So I understand.”

  “The new associate is out job-hunting.”

  He wondered why she wasn’t. “I don’t blame him.”

  She stepped around from behind her desk. She had something personal to say. “I must apologize for not coming to the services yesterday, Mr. Curland.”

  “That’s quite all right.”

  “I didn’t think she’d have wanted me there.”

  Martha was in her sixties. In earlier years, she’d been attractive. Matthias had always harbored curious suspicions about her and his father.

  “To be frank,” she said, “I didn’t approve of her.”

  “That’s quite all right, too.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Curland.” She seated herself, sat with hands folded for a moment, then picked up her book.

  There were only three rooms in this dingy office suite—Matthias’s father’s office, the one used by the associate, and the large reception room where Martha had her desk. Because there were offices, there was still a firm. Otherwise, it didn’t exist.

  On a table at one end of the reception area was a scale model of the small shopping mall that had been the firm’s last major project—an assemblage of elongated blocks without design frills of any sort. This cleanliness of line was a Matthias Curland trademark, but not many developers had been fond of it. On the walls of the reception room were a number of dusty, framed sketches of other buildings Matthias had done—the Halsman Tower the most prominent. In his father’s office, the pictures on the wall were of the father’s work. Nearly all were photographs or sketched designs of large houses, looking very much alike. Frank Lloyd Wright, not to speak of Harry Weese, would have been appalled by all of them—neo-classical monsters, every house someone’s personal temple.

  On his father’s enormous old desk was a silver-framed photograph of Matthias’s mother. It had been taken when she was in her late forties, and still in retention of much of her beauty. There was a vacant, dreamy look to her eyes, as if her thoughts had been miles away when the picture had been snapped. It was ironic that Matthias’s father would have chosen this particular photo for his desk. It was obvious to Matthias, and should have been to his father, that she’d been thinking of someone else.

  If this became his desk, would he have a picture of Sally Phillips in that spot? She’d called him at home in the morning, to tell him she loved him. He’d told her the same, hesitantly, but he’d said the words. He wondered how long it would be before he knew whether they were true. They certainly had been, once.

  But how would he explain this to Jill?

  It was time to get to work. Matthias went through the firm’s most current files, finding matters to be more or less as Christian had described them. There was no current business, not even any letters inviting Curland and Associates to make a bid.

  There was a locked, reinforced steel cabinet in the corner, which had always served as the office safe. Matthias had asked his brother for the combination, but Christian, reached in Lake Forest and hopelessly hung over, said he couldn’t remember
it. Martha could, of course. She had it open in a minute.

  The drawers were largely empty. The uppermost one, however, contained what he was looking for: the company books. To his surprise, Matthias found his parents’ household ledgers in there as well, stuck carelessly under a few old copies of Inland Architect magazine.

  Most households, and certainly most businesses, kept such records in computer files these days, but his father had distrusted such devices, fearing a breakdown might erase things. Matthias had bought one for the office the year before he’d moved to New York. It had probably been removed immediately after.

  He looked through both sets of books carefully, and then again, and then again. The numbers were not complete. There were some contradictory and confusing entries. But the bottom line was comprehensible enough, and startling.

  Matthias got up and went through the files again—all of them.

  “Martha,” he said.

  She came to the door, paperback novel in hand.

  “I can’t find the income tax returns. Not the state, not the federal.”

  “Oh, I think your brother has those.”

  “He does? Why?”

  “He keeps them in a safe deposit box. I think that’s what he said.”

  Matthias stood a moment, rubbing his chin. “Is Harold Steiner still the family lawyer?”

  “Oh, no. He died. More than a year ago.”

  “Well, who’s handling my mother’s will?”

  “I not quite sure, Mr. Curland. Some friend of your sister’s husband.”

  “Thank you, Martha.”

  After she went back to her desk, he quietly shut the door, then went to the phone. It took the family housekeeper nearly ten minutes to rouse Christian from his sleep and bed again.

  “What’s the problem, big brother? I thought you and I had our conversation for the day.”

  “I’ve been looking through the books down here. I have some questions.”

  “I’m sure you do. For an architect, you were always abysmal at math.”

  “I’d like your help.”

  “I’m up here, in far off Lake Forest, barely able to stand.”

  “I’m serious about this, Christian. I’d appreciate it if you’d come down here. There’s something that worries me.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about, big brother. The funeral’s over. Why don’t you just go back to your sunny Mediterranean paradise and let me go back to bed.”

  “If you can’t drive, take the train. But get down here. I’ll meet you for lunch, at my old club.”

  “The Arts Club? I’m not sure we’ve paid the dues.”

  “We have. It’s in the books. I just looked. I’ll meet you at twelve-thirty.”

  “Well, all right. Do they make a good bloody Mary there?

  “Hey, Zany, what’re you doing here? Nice day like today, you should be on the beach.”

  Lieutenant Frank Baldessari of Area Six homicide still wore purple double-knit suits, just as he had when he’d been a detective sergeant. He entered his office as breezily as something blown in by the wind and thumped down in his chair, somehow managing not to spill the cup of coffee in his hand. Up went his feet on his desk, into his mouth went a Marlboro, and, zingo, there he was just as Zany remembered him—hairline receding a little more, maybe, eyes even more like deep caves, but the same guy as always, picture perfect.

  “It’s busy on my beach these days, Frank,” Zany said. “I got a homicide.”

  “Homicide? No shit. What happened, some fisherman pop his old lady with a coho?”

  Zany opened the old metal briefcase he used to carry around in the years when he worked downstairs in burglary and took out one of the morgue photos of the dead girl from the sailboat. He’d brought two. Then he handed Frankie a typed copy of his report.

  “Gunshot,” he said. “Twice. Both through and through.”

  “Good-looking broad,” Baldessari said. “What do you got? Boyfriend? Rapist?”

  “I don’t know what I’ve got. She washed up on my beach that way in a sailboat, a sailboat out of Chicago. Two days ago.”

  Baldessari dropped his feet to the floor and swiveled his chair back to sit square with his desk. He squinted at the photograph more closely, then began giving Zany’s report a quick, cursory read.

  “This dentist’s story check out?” he said.

  Zany nodded. “I had some help from a couple of guys in the Chicago Avenue District. There was a card game, all right. The dentist was a big loser. The boat was apparently stolen. The funny thing is that the padlock on the hatch cover wasn’t broken, it was unlocked.”

  “Maybe picked? Cheap padlock?”

  Zany shrugged.

  “Well, what can we do for you, Zany? Or should I be calling you Chief Rawlings? We got a big fucking case working. I’ve got every man on it. Somebody whacked the president of the Park District and a black chippie last night while she was giving him some short time in the back of his car in Lincoln Park. Shot ’em both up like the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. Practically every round was a twofer, you know? Through and through her, through and through him, a couple right through the floorboards into the ground. Fucking Magnum. We got the piece. Dumb perp left it behind.”

  “I heard the story on the radio. I know you’re busy. I appreciate your taking the time to talk to me, Frank. What I need most is an ID on this girl in the sailboat.”

  “I’ll run it through missing persons for you. Check with the other homicide areas. It’ll take awhile. We really got our hands full here. You got any idea the girl was waxed on our side of the lake?”

  “It’s a good possibility. And the state line’s what, twenty miles out? Could be your jurisdiction.”

  “I’ll do what I can, Zany. I’ll get the marine unit on it, too. Tell you what. I’ll put a couple of guys on it from here. Maybe Mulroney and Stacek. You know them?”

  “I know Mulroney.”

  “But you gotta give me a couple of days. We’re not going to have time to go to the crapper until we turn up a lead on this park district thing. The guy was a friend of the mayor’s. Had a lot of clout. And if you think we’re busy, you should see the poor guys down in vice. Already they’re getting screams from downtown to clean out all the hookers. Can you fucking imagine that? Chicago without whores?”

  “Do you have anything at all?” Zany asked.

  The lieutenant stubbed out his cigarette and got to his feet. “Yeah. We got it narrowed down to someone in the park between ten P.M. and midnight. Can you fucking imagine that? A criminal in Lincoln Park? Come on, I’ll show you the shit we recovered from the scene.”

  He led Zany out to the squad room, where the victims’ personal effects and other objects taken from the scene had been spread out over a long table. Except for the bloodstains, it could have been from a church rummage sale.

  The lieutenant pointed to a collection of small photographs arrayed in a group. “From his wallet. He was a real family man. Look at all those kids. And this straight razor came out of her purse. If he hadn’t gotten whacked with the Magnum, he might have ended up with his throat cut.”

  “Lucky guy,” said Zany. He looked at the weapon. Even with the short barrel, it was one of the largest handguns he had ever seen.

  “There’s one funny thing,” Baldessari said. “The car doors, the weapon, the guy’s keys. They’ve all been wiped clean of prints. I never heard of a park mugger doing that.”

  “Do you think it was a professional hit?”

  Baldessari shook his head. “The piece was his. And it’s too messy. And he would have noticed if he’d been followed by another car. You kind of have to snake your way into that place where he was found. We did get one clean set of prints, though. From the leather seat, right beneath the steering wheel. What’s weird is that they’re the other way around from what you’d expect from somebody sitting in the seat. The fingers are pointing up, not down. Forensics thinks it was somebody giving him a hose job or a hand job. But they
’re not the black lady’s.”

  “Another hooker?”

  Baldessari shrugged. “Who the hell knows? Hey, Zany, you want to see the crime scene pictures? The back of that car looks like a butcher shop.”

  Zany’s pronounced aversion to the sight of bloodshed had not been forgotten.

  “Some other time,” he said.

  Downstairs in burglary, business was slower, and Detective Myron Plotnik, another old friend, had ample time to chat. He was a balding, chubby man with short-fingered hands and a fondness for fat cigars that he chewed upon nervously but never lighted. He held the unrolled painting Zany had given him without regard to the scene it depicted, as if it were merely a simple object, like a toaster or a candlestick, just another stolen item. He looked at the reverse side and even turned it upside down.

  “Sure isn’t worth much now, is it?” he said, handing it back to Zany. “You guys checked it for prints?”

  Zany nodded. “It’s got the victim’s on it, and a couple of smudged prints we can’t identify.” Carefully he rolled it up and put it back in the big cardboard tube he’d brought with him.

  “I don’t know, Zany. We haven’t had any art heists in Area Six, least not recently. But I’ll check the computer.”

  He did so with some difficulty. Zany, who could operate computer systems the way safecrackers could open other people’s safes, wanted to help, but resisted the impulse lest Plotnik think him pushy. Finally the detective called up the correct file and bright lines began filling the screen. Slowly he began to scroll through the information.

  “Wait, here’s one in Area Three,” he said, peering closer at the screen. “No, this couldn’t be it. This is a warehouse job.”

  “A warehouse full of paintings?”

  “A truckful, anyway. You remember those things, Zany. They advertise them on TV. ‘Original oil paintings,’ only $29.95? They set up at Holiday Inns and like that for a weekend and sell paintings by the truckload. Only somebody jumped this trailer out in a cartage yard. Must have pissed them off plenty to find what they got. What do you think, can those paintings be original?”