An Image of Death

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  “Jake. You’re back early.”

  “Can’t have you playing solitaire by yourself now, can I? How can you cheat?”

  Yanking his thumb in Dad’s direction, Frank looked over at me. “This from the guy who tells me that a thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.”

  Dad positioned himself behind Frank. “Yeah. Me and W.C. Fields.”

  I smiled at their tough-guy banter. My father was as likely to cheat as the Cubs were to win the World Series.

  “Slap the two of hearts on the ace,” Dad said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Frank grumbled. He looked down, moved the card, then looked at me. “And how’s Queen Eleanor tonight? You look good, honey.”

  “Thanks.” I touched his arm. “Frank, Dad says you used to work at Harrison Trust.”

  He grunted. “Thirty years. Still on the board of directors.” He flipped over three cards, placed a queen on a king, then a two of clubs on the ace. “Why? You got a banking problem?”

  “Not really.” Dad and I exchanged looks. “I just wondered what you could tell me about Max Gordon.”

  Frank looked up from his game. “The little giant?”

  I wasn’t sure if he was being facetious. I nodded.

  “Why?”

  “I shot some video for him the other day, and I—I was curious.”

  “The ground breaking downtown?”

  “That’s right. I didn’t realize he was such a big deal.”

  “Yeah, he’s a big deal.” He sounded unenthusiastic.

  “He’s not?”

  “Oh, he’s a big deal, all right.”

  “So, why—what is your take on him?”

  Frank gathered up the cards and folded them together. Then he picked up a copy of the Chicago Jewish News on the next chair and patted the seat. “What do you want to know?”

  I sat down. “Everything I read says he can’t do anything wrong. Investing in Eastern Europe. Growing the bank’s asset base at the same time. He’s a hero.”

  “You believe everything you read?” I saw a reflection of the overhead light in Frank’s glasses.

  “I shouldn’t?”

  He paused. “Let’s just say I wouldn’t call him a landsman.”

  “Landsman” is one of those Yiddish expressions people use to refer to someone from the same town or region—a neighbor of sorts. My father uses it to refer to other German Jews, who can do no wrong, as opposed to Jews from other parts of the world. But I didn’t think that’s what Frank meant.

  “You gotta wonder when a bank gets that big that fast,” he went on.

  “That’s exactly what one of the articles said.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Why, Frank? What’s the deal?”

  He shifted and picked up the cards. When he spoke, I got the feeling he was choosing his words carefully. “You hear things. On the street.”

  “What things?”

  “About depositors, how the books are handled. Things like that.”

  “And?”

  He shrugged. “He does a lot of business overseas. Always traveling. Deposits come in, deposits go out. Cash gets washed through. Suddenly he’s got huge assets on his books. But some of the depositors don’t exactly fit the profile of Fortune 500 companies.”

  My father cut in. “Are you accusing him of dummy investments? Or money laundering?”

  “I would never make those kind of allegations.” Frank smiled sweetly. “A man’s reputation is at stake.”

  I tapped my foot. “Those lists are public, aren’t they? His depositors, I mean. This isn’t Switzerland.”

  Frank shook his head. “Banks don’t have to disclose their customers, honey—unless there’s some illegality involved. And then, if you have the right lawyer.…” He grinned at my father.

  “So he could be falsifying deposits?”

  “Who knows? You can always find someone to do that kind of thing if the stakes are high enough. I could name you plenty of cases where a banker looked the other way or—God forbid—even took a kickback. Or parked the money in an offshore account for a while.”

  “But the auditors would find it, wouldn’t they? There is a lot of federal interest in all that money because of terrorism, isn’t there?”

  “That’s where it gets interesting.” Frank took off his glasses, pulled out a handkerchief, and started polishing them. “Maybe it was nothing, but a few years ago there were rumors about some audit issues at Gold Coast Trust.” He shoved the handkerchief back into his pocket. “Everyone was prepared for the worst. It was supposed to go all the way up. A really big deal. But somehow, it never did.”

  “How come?”

  Frank put his glasses back on, pushing them over the bridge of his nose. “Who knows?”

  I considered it. The governor and mayor had been at the ground-breaking ceremony. That didn’t necessarily mean anything except that Gordon had contacts at the highest levels of government. He might be able to accomplish quite a bit behind closed doors. It didn’t mean that he was using ill-gotten money to inflate his assets or bribing the necessary officials to look the other way. But even if he were, what did that have to do with the murder of the woman on the tape? It was a big jump from money laundering to murder.

  I thanked Frank. Dad and I walked down to his apartment. He took out his key. “You get what you want?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I don’t like you looking into that gonif’s business.”

  “I know.” I hugged him.

  He opened the door. “You know, the Talmud makes a distinction between a gonif and a gozel.”

  “What’s a gozel?”

  He flipped up one palm. “A gonif’s a guy with a pen.” He flipped up the other. “A gozel puts a gun to your head.” He paused. “The thing is they both get your money, one way or the other.”

  I drove home wondering which type Max Gordon was.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  I woke up to gusts of wind bleating through the window. I lay in bed imagining a storm primed to let loose with punishing force. Then the phone trilled again. I rolled over to check the time. Four a.m.: a bleak, desolate time, between night and day, but beholden to neither. No one calls at that hour unless it’s bad news. I reached for the phone, my pulse hammering.

  “Ellie, it’s Jordan Bennett.” His voice sounded taut, like a rubber band stretched to its breaking point.

  “Jordan.” I couldn’t avoid the gush of relief that flooded through me. It wasn’t Dad, Rachel, or David. I switched on the light. “What’s wrong?”

  “Can—can you meet me down at Cabrini?”

  “Right now? Why?”

  He took a shuddering breath as if he was trying to pull himself together. “Ellie, just get here, okay?”

  “Give me twenty minutes.”

  I threw on some sweats and raced down the expressway, trying not to think about what had gone wrong, but as the miles passed, I grew edgy. Just before I careened around the corner at Cabrini, I smelled the electrical burning odor, and as I turned onto the street where the apartments were, I saw the flashing lights, the fire trucks, and the police cars. The apartments were at the other end of the block, but a squad car blocked my path. I parked around the corner, then jogged back to a group of barricades that had been thrown up. A small crowd of people wearing bathrobes and pajamas with coats thrown over them had gathered.

  On the other side of the police line I counted over a dozen men: firemen winding hoses and stowing equipment, uniformed policemen standing in tiny knots. Three fire trucks, one large engine, and four police cars jutted out into the street. Someone had aimed an arc light at the building, and the blue-white glare made for a dramatic—almost surreal—contrast between light and shadow. With the crackle from the radios and the occasional shout, I felt like I was on the set of an Ingmar Bergman film.

  The odor of smoke settled into my nose and throat. The roof had partially collapsed, and two blackened, sooty walls were open to the sky. Plumes of gr
ay smoke curled up. Looking around, I didn’t see an ambulance. My stomach lurched. Had it already left for the hospital? Were any of the boys in it?

  Near the barricades in a pocket of deep shadow, Jordan Bennett crouched on the curb, his shoulders hunched against the night.

  “Jordan!” I called nervously. “What happened? Where are the boys?”

  He lifted his head wearily, and gazed at me with such a disoriented expression that I wasn’t sure he knew who I was. I ducked under one of the barricades, but an officer blocked me. “Sorry, miss, you can’t go through. There’s an investigation in progress.”

  I eyed him, then pointed to Jordan. “That’s my client.”

  “You a lawyer?”

  “Ummm.” I shot him an imperious glare. It wasn’t a total lie. He was my client. For the video.

  The officer studied me. I held my breath. He blinked. “Go ahead.”

  I dashed across the street and hunkered down. Jordan was shivering through his coat. I gripped his arm. “Jordan, was anyone hurt?”

  He shook his head. “They’re okay. Everyone got out. DCFS has them for the night.”

  I blew out a breath, then retrieved a blanket from a fireman and draped it over Jordan. As he pulled it close, his shoulders heaved, and he started to shake.

  I put my arm around him. “It’s okay,” I whispered.

  “No. It’s not.” He sobbed raggedly. “And it won’t ever be.”

  I didn’t say anything. After a few minutes, he wiped the back of his sleeve across his nose. “The smoke alarm is what saved them.” He shook off the blanket and levered himself to his feet. “Damn thing was so loud, it woke them up. They bailed out in their skivvies.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Thank God?” He looked down. “How can you say that? They lost everything.”

  “They’re alive. They’re not hurt.”

  He was about to reply when the whine of engines punctured the silence. One by one, the fire trucks and police cars retreated down the street.

  When I was a little girl, firemen would clang a bell when they left the scene of a fire; it was a signal that the fire was out and all was well. Not tonight. These vehicles slipped quietly back into the shadows of night. A red sedan and a patrol car remained at the scene.

  Jordan watched the trucks disappear around the corner. “I’m going in.”

  “You can’t. They won’t let you.”

  A determined frown spread across his face. “They have to.”

  “Why?”

  “I promised.”

  “Who?”

  “You remember Steve, the guy with the earring?” The wannabe biker. “His father died when he was six, but before he went, he gave Steve his dog tags. From ’Nam. Kid kept ’em with him all the time. It was the only thing of his dad’s he had. I promised I’d try to find them.” Jordan swallowed. “They were metal. Maybe.…”

  He intercepted a lanky man in fire regalia who’d just emerged from the building. As Jordan talked, the man pursed his lips, then shifted a clipboard from one arm to the other. He shook his head.

  Jordan’s shoulders collapsed.

  I crossed the street.

  “Look,” the man was saying. “Even if I could let you in, you’re not gonna find anything. I guarantee it. There’s nothing left.”

  Jordan didn’t answer. I started to take his arm, but he shook me off. He turned back. “You’re wrong.”

  I dropped my arm.

  “There is something left,” he said.

  The man raised his eyebrows.

  “My word. I promised the kid I’d try. Please.”

  The man studied Jordan again. “’Nam, huh?”

  Jordan nodded.

  “I was in ’Nam. Pleiku. Seventy-one.” I could tell the guy was weighing, sifting, deciding. His expression softened. Then he spoke in a quiet voice. “This never happened, understand? I’m only allowing it because the fire is out, and we have a pretty good idea of how it started. But you never did a walk-through. Got it?”

  Jordan’s face cleared.

  “Two minutes. And you follow me. No moonlighting.”

  “Thank you, Inspector…” I said.

  “Connelly.”

  We followed him through the front door, now a charred mass of wood and peeling paint. Inside, the smoke had mostly dissipated, but the acrid odor was still strong, and there was a distinct chemical overlay to the smell. We walked into what had been the living room. The roof hadn’t collapsed here, but the walls, or what was left of them, were swathed with random scorch patterns that looked like the product of some ghastly netherworld designer. Debris was strewn all over the floor, and our shoes left imprints in the sodden carpeting.

  “The sprinkler system wasn’t hooked up,” the investigator said. “Would have made a big difference.”

  “I think they just finished construction,” I offered.

  Connelly grunted. “Feldman, right?”

  “Yes.” I was surprised.

  Connelly headed into the larger bedroom. The bed coverings were burnt and shredded. Mounds of waterlogged debris covered the floor, the remains of the dressers and bureaus. The furniture had been new just a few days ago. I had video of them uncrating it.

  “Any idea where he left the tags?” Connelly asked.

  “He thought they were in the dresser nearest the wall,” Jordan said.

  Connelly shrugged his shoulders. The dresser was nothing more than a pile of rubble. I flashed back to what the Buddhist tattoo artist at Chicago Tattoo and Piercing said about the nature of fire. That when the fire is extinguished, old ideas and passions are released, thereby freeing the spirit.

  Sure.

  We followed Connelly back to the living room. My gaze moved to the pass-through to the kitchen. Two big pots and a frying pan sat on the stove. They were grimy and covered in soot, but they weren’t scorched.

  “It didn’t start in the kitchen,” I said.

  Connelly shook his head. “The point of origin was over there. The outlet.” He gestured to a V-shaped burn pattern snaking up one of the walls. I could just make out a blob of melted plastic at the nexus of the V, eight inches from the floor. An adjacent window had blown out, and shards of glass framed an empty expanse of darkness. Remnants of scorched cloth hung from a metal curtain rod dangling from the window.

  “The load was probably too much for the wires. Caused a flameout. Which set fire to the drapes. It spread fast after that,” Connelly said matter-of-factly.

  “How does that happen—that the load is too heavy for the wires? Were there too many electrical appliances?” Even as I said it, I couldn’t see how. The boys didn’t have a TV or PlayStation between them.

  A frown deepened the lines on Connelly’s forehead. He didn’t answer.

  “It wasn’t arson, was it?”

  “Oh, no,” he replied quickly. “There’s no evidence of that.”

  “But you said you have a pretty good idea what happened.”

  He hesitated. “I need to talk to the contractor. Verify what was used.”

  I started to get an uneasy feeling. “Why?”

  Connelly shook his head.

  “Look,” I said, gesturing to Jordan. “This man is my client. The building was part of a program he was running for foster kids. Kind of a halfway house for them, a chance to make it in the real world. It’s totally destroyed now. He’s gonna have to start over from scratch. Don’t you think he has the right to know what destroyed it?”

  Connelly studied both of us, then yanked a thumb. “Outside.” We followed him back out to the street. “It looks like it was substandard wiring. Should have been a sixteen-gauge wire, maybe even fourteen, but it looks like it was twenty. The breakers didn’t work right, either. Someone was trying to cut corners. Do it on the cheap.”

  I swallowed. “The contractor?”

  “I’ve seen it before.”

  A muscle in Jordan’s jaw tensed.

  “That’s it.” Connelly waved a hand. “I’
ve already told you too much. Get out of here.”

  I nodded and led the way back to the Volvo. Jordan slid into the passenger seat. I got in, turned over the engine and cranked up the heat. Fortunately, the car warmed right away. Jordan stared straight ahead, his eyes glittering in a wash of light from a streetlamp.

  “You okay?” I asked quietly.

  He took his time answering. “All this time I’ve been trying to fight my way upstream, you know?” he finally said. “I’ve taken a lot of shit, but I figured if I could get something for my kids, it was worth it. And sometimes the system did work. For a while. But then something like this happens.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Tell me, Ellie, what am I doing it for?”

  I had no answer.

  “I really thought we had it nailed this time. Chicago’s a great city, you know?” He looked through the windshield. “You get the sense that it’s still a wide-open town. That it’s not run by the old boys club. That if you have a good idea and you’re willing to work for it, you can make it happen. But then something like this happens,” He repeated, turning a haunted face to me, “and I can’t even find a pair of godamned dog tags. Did I screw up? Or is it the system?”

  ***

  Ricki Feldman found us as the streetlights winked off and a perversely beautiful dawn shot rays of pink across the horizon. When she tapped on the window, Jordan, who’d been dozing, startled awake. He bolted upright, but stiffened when he recognized her. She looked pale, and her hair was tied back in a clip. Like me, she was wearing sweats, but I doubted hers came from Target.

  Jordan opened the car door and climbed out. I got out too. Ricki threw her arms around Jordan. “Are you all right, honey?” She sounded worried.

  When Jordan didn’t return her embrace, she drew back. “I just talked to the fire inspector. He told me what happened.”

  “He told you?”

  She canted her head, as if she wasn’t quite sure why he was so cold. But Jordan either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “Why did you do it, Ricki?”

  “Do what?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Don’t play coy. The wiring, damn it! The investigator told us the fire was caused by substandard wiring. Authorized by the contractor. Which was you.”