by Ian K. Smith
“I thought it was odd that Gerrigan wasn’t the one who showed up in my office,” I said. “His wife came alone.”
“I hear he’s a tough one to read,” Burke said. “He’s like most of these gazillionaires. Sees the world only on his terms. Spends most of his time making money, but not a lot of time at those fancy charity balls downtown. His wife’s the one who gets their name cut into a lot of buildings.”
“He have any enemies?” I asked.
“Occupational hazard of being rich,” Burke said. “You can’t make that kind of money without making some enemies along the way.”
“Anyone in particular?”
“Not sure right now. We’re looking at some guys from the Spire mess.”
“He’s involved in that?”
“Up to his neck.”
“Which side of the deal?”
“Right now, the winning side. He sued and got the deed snatched from the Irish company. So, the property is his. The developers are mad as hell. They’ve sunk over fifty million into the project.”
The Spire building was the brainchild of a Spanish architect and a Chicago developer. It had been designed as a supertall skyscraper with 116 stories, including a hotel and private residences. However, soon after construction, the developer faced financial difficulties and couldn’t survive the mounting debt. He lost control of the project and was forced to sign it over to the project’s biggest creditor, Gerrigan Real Estate Corp.—GREC.
“The Spire project is buried in a blizzard of lawsuits,” Burke said.
I took a long sip of root beer. It felt heavy and icy against the back of my throat. “I need help on a Tariq ‘Chopper’ McNair.”
“Who the hell is he?” Burke said.
“The daughter’s boyfriend.” Although I hadn’t gotten much more than his name from Tinsley’s friend Hunter.
Burke tightened his eyes. “Randolph Gerrigan’s daughter was dating someone with the name of Tariq McNair?” A hint of a smile cracked the corners of his mouth.
“Love is blind,” I sighed.
“For some it might be,” Burke said, “but the hell if it is for people like the Gerrigans. They were probably one of the original families that came over on the goddamn Mayflower. I can’t imagine their family planning included little Tariq Jr. running around the old North Shore mansion.”
“I’m not sure yet if the family knew about the relationship,” I said.
“So, you want to talk to this Tariq and get his version of events?” Burke said, dusting off the last of his barbecue chips. He folded his napkin as delicately as a man his size could and wiped the corners of his mouth. “And you want me to see if we have anything on him.”
“Your detecting mind is nothing short of extraordinary,” I said.
“Fucking wiseass,” Burke said, getting up from the table and lumbering out of the restaurant. Niceties had never been his strong suit.
4
TRYING TO LOWER MY golf handicap was not the only reason I had been reluctant to take on the Gerrigan case. I pulled my van up to the intersection of North and Ashland Avenues, where Wicker Park meets Bucktown to the north. Directly across the street sat a hodgepodge collection of storefronts, from an herbal salon to a karaoke bar called Louie’s Pub. I focused on a squat, nondescript building with a yoga studio called Greatly Gracious on the bottom floor. Mark Stanton lived on the second floor in a small one-bedroom that faced the street. His curtains were drawn. Several potted plants rested on the rickety fire escape adjacent to his middle window.
I had a photograph of him sitting on my dashboard: his mug shot from ten years ago. He’d been forty-five at the time, tall and very handsome. Faint speckles of gray had just begun to streak his strong black hair; his olive complexion had no trace of wrinkles. He wore his clerical collar and a long-sleeve black shirt. It was all in his look—smug and confident and beyond reproach. He was the anointed one. His eyes were unable to hide the darkness in his soul. Five men had accused him of molesting them when they were teens, but they were the only ones willing to go on record. Conservative estimates put his body count well into the dozens.
Without forcing him to admit his guilt, the church had suspended him at first; then, when the media glare grew too bright, they’d defrocked him. He was ordered never to wear the collar again or participate in administering religious services. He was told to take down his website, through which he conducted a digital ministry. It had been ten years, and the website was still up. The men who had accused Stanton of inappropriately seducing and touching them had been told by the District Attorney’s Office that the statute of limitations had run out, and there was no possibility of filing criminal charges. So the accusers’ attorneys had brought a civil case that the church quietly settled just weeks after its filing. Two hundred and fifty thousand per man with no admission of guilt by the church or Stanton.
It was a total miscarriage of justice. Stanton had been accused of pedophilia years before even meeting these boys. The church knew all about it but either largely ignored the complaints or tried to keep them away from the public. They paid for psychiatric therapy for one victim and gave the family of another boy in Dallas $10,000 after they signed a settlement agreement that forbade them from ever disclosing its details. When word finally got out that Stanton had been accused of sexual improprieties, the church publicly stated that he would face internal discipline; then they transferred him to a small parish in St. Louis, where he continued to minister to young children, teaching, of all things, sex education. That was what he’d been teaching when he was transferred to St. Mary’s School just outside of Chicago in a small town called Blue Island. The five boys had been only in middle school when he had seduced and raped them repeatedly, telling them it was important he demonstrate for them behaviors prohibited in the Bible.
The scarred walnut-colored door to the apartment building opened and out walked the former Father Stanton. Along with his defrocking, he had been officially demoted to just Mr. Stanton. The church leadership had argued that this was a punishment worse than excommunication, because it was permanent, whereas an excommunication lasted only as long as the person was committing the sin. I wondered if his victims and their distraught families agreed with the church’s assessment, considering he was still a free man walking around and living his life as if nothing had ever happened, while they remained tortured by the psychological aftermath of his perverse predations.
He was still handsome, his hair a little grayer at the temples, age starting to pull at the corners of his eyes. In a dark dress shirt and jeans, he looked like a television news anchor on his way to do the evening news. He walked east down North Avenue, dropped a dollar in the cup of a man in a wheelchair selling Street Times, then walked into the Hollywood Grill. I turned the van around and drove farther down the street and parked across from the diner’s windows. I slid into the back of the van, which I had specially retrofitted with reinforced steel, cameras, and an observation scope that vented from the roof. I adjusted the camera lens, then increased the magnification. Stanton sat at a small colorful counter. I could practically read the print on the newspaper sitting on the table next to him.
A stout woman wearing a red checkered apron and white hairnet slid him a plate filled with an egg-and-cheese omelet, three strips of overly cooked bacon, and a pile of hash browns. He sipped from his coffee as he read through the Sun-Times, starting with the sports section at the back of the paper. An old man hunched on a cane walked by and gave him a friendly tap on the shoulder before sitting down two seats away. Stanton acknowledged him with a quick nod.
Stanton got through most of the Sun-Times, ate almost all his food, then got up and walked outside. He stood near the door, pulled out a cigarette, and smoked half of it before flicking it to the ground and returning inside. He picked up the Chicago Tribune next, then leafed through the entertainment section. He read it while finishing most of what was left on his plate. The woman refilled his coffee, and he went through the same
routine—three spoons of sugar and two creamers—then back to his paper. After fifteen minutes, he placed a small pile of bills on the counter, left his papers folded next to his empty plate, waved at the old man, then walked out of the diner.
I jumped into the driver’s seat and started the van. Stanton continued walking north for several blocks, then ducked into a sliver of a barbershop with the name THE FINER THINGS painted across the window. I watched him sit in the chair, smiling and laughing with the barber, admiring himself in the mirror; not a care in the world. Yet his victims were scattered across the country, some of them hooked on drugs, unable to form relationships with people, blaming themselves that he had violated them. The barber ran the razor up Stanton’s throat, and I couldn’t help but think about how much justice there would be if I could push it right into the side of his neck and watch his carotids pump blood onto his ironed shirt until it pooled on the floor. I longed to see that arrogance wiped from his face and replaced with the look of fear at knowing that death was imminent. His victims and their families deserved to see his face twisted with dread and agony.
Once his cut was finished, Stanton paid, said something to the barber that made them both laugh, then walked outside to the corner and boarded a bus heading downtown. I looked at my watch and wrote down the time. It had been exactly sixty-nine minutes since he walked out his door. I needed to know his routine precisely. When the time was right, there would be no room for error.
A FULL TWENTY-FOUR hours had elapsed since Violet Gerrigan had walked into my office and dropped an overly generous retainer check on my desk. The critical seventy-two-hour window of discovery had closed, but that didn’t mean Tinsley couldn’t be lucky and beat the odds. I would have to move quickly and keep pressing. I drove to my office with the windows down and took in the clear September morning, one of those days when summer had pushed its last gasp, the leaves were starting to change colors, and a light jacket was enough to fight the early chill.
Part of me wanted to be out on the course working on bringing my club face closed on the downward part of my swing, but I needed to push forward on locating Tinsley. So, I found myself sitting and thinking in the quiet of my office while I looked across Grant Park at the whitecaps rolling in from Lake Michigan. Several small boats crossed each other on the open water. There was nothing like Lake Michigan on a clear day. Sitting there and watching it shiver was hypnotic enough to make you fall asleep.
My cell phone rang. It was my father, the eminent doctor Wendell Cayne.
“It’s good to know you’re still alive,” he said.
“Hello to you, too, Dad.”
“I haven’t seen you in over a week,” he said. “It would be nice if I got somewhere close to the priority of that ridiculous golf ball you like to whack around grassy pathways.”
“They’re called fairways, not pathways.”
“Whatever. A complete waste of an otherwise enjoyable walk in the woods.”
My father hated golf, not because he didn’t like the game but because he thought it had distracted me from playing tennis. He had always dreamed of watching me at Wimbledon or the French Open, sitting in the family box, pumping his fist at me while the crowds cheered me on to victory. Unfortunately, that was his dream, not mine. Then I stumbled upon golf and got addicted.
If I wasn’t going to be a tennis star, the least I could do as the son of a doctor and a corporate attorney was go into an honorable profession like all the other children of my parents’ friends and colleagues. But I wanted to carve my own path. The idea of solving crimes and sorting out right from wrong had always appealed to me, even at a young age. I really broke his heart a second time when I entered the Chicago Police Academy. He felt that was beneath “my station,” as he called it. Our relationship still hadn’t recovered.
Despite my father’s protests and outrage, my mother had never wavered in her support, constantly standing up to him and explaining that it was important I chase my dreams. She’d died a few years ago from a rare form of kidney cancer. As my father and I still struggled to make sense of her absence, his loneliness drove a greater interest in my work.
“I took on a new case,” I said. “Missing girl.”
“Anything I can help you with?”
“It’s still early. I’m trying to put things together.”
“I’m here whenever you need me,” he said. “Don’t be a stranger.”
“I’ll come by soon.”
I knew he was at his weekly match at XS Tennis Village down on the South Side. I could hear the echo of the voices and the sound of tennis balls popping off racket strings.
“My match is about to start,” he said. “Gotta run.”
“Hit the ball in your strike zone.”
“Something I told you when you first picked up a racket.”
As I hung up the phone, there was a polite knock on my door.
“Enter at your own risk,” I yelled. I kept the lights off. There was plenty coming in through the windows. Last year my next-door neighbor’s millennial son had spotted me leaving the apartment with a Styrofoam coffee cup and lectured me about my lack of environmental awareness and the need for me to get serious about reducing my carbon footprint. Using fewer lights wasn’t going to save the world, but at least it was a start.
The door swung open and in walked Violet Gerrigan all gussied up in another one of those expensive suits—this one a deep red—and carrying an oversize black leather handbag that had more gold buckles and locks on it than the vaults in Fort Knox. Her hair and makeup were the same. She gave me a polite smile but showed no teeth. Standing next to her was a tall boy somewhere in his late teens. He was thin, dressed in tennis whites, and his blond hair was tousled about in a way that was meant to make you believe he hadn’t given it much attention, when in reality he had probably spent the better part of an hour in front of a mirror agonizing over the arrangement of every strand.
“Good morning, Mr. Cayne,” she said. The rich could even make their greetings sound like commands. “This is my youngest son, Connor. My oldest is married and lives in Seattle with his wife and two children.”
I nodded at both of them. Connor reluctantly returned the nod. His hair held up. He appeared to be timid.
Mrs. Gerrigan didn’t wait for me to make the offer; instead, she took a seat in the same chair she’d sat in yesterday. Connor stood with his hands behind his back and waited for his mother to sit before taking the chair next to hers. Chivalry was alive and well in the Gerrigan household.
After she had settled her handbag on the small end table and gotten herself situated in a chair that I’m sure was much more uncomfortable than she was accustomed to, she said, “Have you gotten any closer to locating my daughter?”
I always marveled at how people with her pedigree could talk and barely move their mouths. Violet Gerrigan had mastered the technique.
I swiveled my chair around and opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of ice tea all in one motion. I made an offering gesture to my visitors, both of whom declined. I popped the top and took a short pull and let the cold liquid explore my mouth before swallowing.
“Not much has changed since we last spoke twenty-four hours ago,” I said. “But I’m pursuing a couple of promising leads.” I really had only one lead, and that was Chopper McNair, whose whereabouts I had yet to ascertain. I was still waiting on Burke to see what he was able to dig up. But when you said “a couple of leads” to a client, it always sounded encouraging, especially when they’d already paid the retainer in full.
“I was thinking of hiring another detective who could work with you,” she said. “Maybe you can cover more ground with another set of eyes and ears.”
“I appreciate the gesture,” I said politely. “But I work best alone.”
“She’s been missing for three days now.”
“I’m aware of that,” I said. “And I’m working extremely hard to move this along. Hiring someone else will only mean two of us doing the
same thing and getting in each other’s way.”
Violet Gerrigan considered my words carefully, then said, “I wanted Connor to come because he told me something last night that you might find helpful.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Is that a real gun?” Connor said. He was pointing to the corner of my desk. His hand shook.
“It is according to the last guy I shot,” I said. “The trail of blood he left as the medics carried him away confirmed its authenticity.”
“You shoot people?” Connor said.
“Only when I have to.”
Connor’s face deepened a couple of shades of red. He swallowed hard. His eyes kept drifting back to the gun.
“Tinsley smoked weed,” Connor stammered. He looked at his mother as if he were sorry for saying it. “She and her friends smoked mostly when Mom and Dad weren’t home.”
I took the gun off the desk and slid it into the middle drawer. Distraction now gone, I could see some relief on his face.
“Is that all you have to tell me?” I said.
“I know it’s not a big deal, but Tins knew that Mom wasn’t a big fan of it, so she didn’t want me to say anything. I promised her I wouldn’t. But now she might be in trouble, so I figured it was more important to tell the truth if it could help find her.”
I found it interesting that he thought she was in trouble rather than just missing. Was there something he wanted to say but was holding back?
“A little weed is against house rules?” I said, directing my attention to Mrs. Gerrigan.
“I don’t want drugs in my house,” she said, all dignified.
“Most people nowadays don’t consider weed to be any more of a drug than alcohol.”
