The temperature that night was much warmer than normal for mid-May, so I decided to go out for a quick three miles when I got home. I liked running along the water just after sunset, when there was less noise on the drive and the sounds of the lake moved in on the back of a gentle wind. The path was mostly empty, and I was alone with my thoughts and a full moon lighting my way. I ran all the way to Bronzeville, not too far from my father’s house, then turned around and headed back north.
I couldn’t help but think about Elliott Kantor. Why would someone want to kill him? Was it over a bad business deal? Was it an accident? Was he just one of seventy thousand other Americans who overdosed each year? But why was Elliott Kantor doing drugs? Molly, of all things. A club drug. Cocaine seemed like it would’ve been a better fit.
I dialed my father’s home phone number. He was one of the last few people in Chicago who still used a landline. He always turned his cell phone off after dinner. He picked up on the third ring.
“I was just finishing up this special by Henry Louis Gates Jr. on PBS,” he said. “He’s covering the four-hundred-year-old history of the Black church. Very powerful. Very moving. Your grandfather would’ve enjoyed it.”
My grandfather had been a Baptist preacher in a small town called Greenville, North Carolina. I remembered being scared of him when I was a little boy and we’d go down there in the summers to visit. He was a big, dark-skinned man with a deep, booming voice and huge watery eyes. His hands were as big as mitts, and when he swung them in your direction, you best be on the move. He was a no-nonsense man, and excellence in his household wasn’t optional; rather, it was obligatory. He was proud that my father had become a doctor and my uncle one of the first Black federal judges, who had been appointed by President Carter. He and my grandmother lived long enough to see both of them at the top of their professions, and he was never afraid to tell anyone who would listen that it all started on the front pew of his tiny church in a tiny Southern town.
“I’m sure they streamed it,” I said. “I’ll watch it online when I get a chance.”
“You’ll have to show me how to do that,” he said. “The second part comes on in a couple of days. You should come and watch it with me. I’ll have Pearline fix your favorite dinner.”
I was supposed to have dinner with Carolina, but I knew turning down his invitation would mean several months of him complaining that I gave him very little time since my mother had died a few years ago. My father would never admit that he missed me. Instead, he created narratives, trying to make me feel guilty. We would argue, not talk for a week, and then I would call him to make up. This was the recurring cycle in our relationship. Despite the fact he had spent an entire forty-year career getting others to open up about their feelings, he rarely—if ever—heeded his own advice. Doctors really were the worst patients.
“I look forward to coming over,” I said.
“And don’t be late,” he said. “We’ll have dinner downstairs first, then go upstairs to watch the show.”
“What do you know about the drug Molly?” I asked.
“A lot,” he replied. “I saw the damage it can cause hundreds of times working the ER.”
“Elliott Kantor had Molly in his system when he died. Does that surprise you?”
“When it comes to drug usage, nothing really surprises me,” he said. “But that’s not the drug I’d expect a man like him to use.”
“That’s what I want you to explain.”
“MDMA really got popular with young people in the nightclub scene,” he said. “It was and still is really big at these all-night dance parties called raves. Typical user is a male between eighteen and twenty-five. Kantor definitely doesn’t fit the profile.
“Older people lean heavily toward alcohol and marijuana. Next in line would be cocaine. But you have to remember that data doesn’t determine how people behave. It’s very possible he was into MDMA.”
“What else should I know about it?”
“User demographics tell us that sexual orientation also influences the usage rates. Gay or bisexual men and women are more likely than heterosexuals to use it.”
“But why would someone choose MDMA over cocaine?”
“They’re both stimulants. They increase the levels of dopamine in the brain. But there are differences. MDMA produces much higher levels of dopamine because the nerve cells respond differently than they do to cocaine. Also, the high you get from cocaine is much shorter, because half of the drug is removed by the body in an hour. It can take up to twelve hours to remove the same amount of MDMA, so it stays around longer, which means the high does too. MDMA is much cheaper, which is another reason a lot of young people use it. Problem is, cheaper often means lower quality, so the dealers mix a lot of fillers with the MDMA, and sometimes those added ingredients can have adverse effects.”
“Does it kill a lot of people?”
“Not as many as you might expect. It can cause all kinds of side effects, like blurred vision, chills, nausea, and sweating, but most people come through it okay. The people who die from it do so because of the other drugs that might be mixed in with it.”
“Kantor was seventy-seven. He died from a heart attack.”
“Not surprising. His age and all those steak dinners, he probably had underlying heart disease. You put too much MDMA and other drugs on top of an already sick heart, and it’s gonna go haywire and give out. If I were you, I’d try to answer two questions: Why did Kantor choose MDMA? And where did he get it from?”
Two days later, over a plate of blueberry pancakes and warmed maple syrup, I took a look again at Elliott Kantor’s schedules. There was a small entry that simply had the letters POL. There was no description or specific time attached to it. I’m not sure what about it grabbed my attention, but I couldn’t stop looking at it. Maybe he had a call with a politician or had to attend a political fundraiser. But if either one of them was true, there would be more written, like with the other entries.
It wasn’t nine o’clock yet, but I called Simon anyways. After several rings he answered.
“Are you making any headway?” he asked.
“One step forward, two steps backward,” I replied.
“Anything you can tell me?”
“I assume CPD told you about the meth and alcohol in his system.”
“They did, and I don’t believe it.”
“You think they made a mistake?”
“I do. Maybe they mixed up his labs with someone else or one of the tubes got mislabeled. I don’t know what happened, but there’s no way in hell I believe my father had meth in his system.”
“Labs make mistakes,” I said. “But this isn’t the kind of mistake they’d make, especially with someone like your father. They go the extra mile to make sure everything is done to the highest standards. This is not a case they want to get wrong.”
“My father drank like any normal adult,” Simon said. “But use drugs? Nope. I’m not buying it. I asked them to repeat the lab tests, and I’ve hired an independent pathologist to do the same.”
I understood when family members were surprised by unexpected autopsy findings, but rarely did repeat tests produce different results. He seemed more upset about the drugs than he was with his father being found in a compromised position.
“Do you know what ‘POL’ means?” I asked. “I saw it on your father’s schedule.”
“Politician?” he said. “I’m not sure. I haven’t seen his schedule in years. The guys at the office kept it for him.”
“I have his schedule for the day after he died. There’s a small entry at the top of the page that says ‘POL.’”
“That’s it?”
“Nothing more. Nothing less.”
“I have no idea. You’d have to call Javier or Pedro.”
“Are they in the office yet?”
“One of them is always there by eight. At least that was their schedule before Dad died. He didn’t like being in the office alone.”
“Thanks, I’ll give them a call.”
“Can you prove my father didn’t have meth in his system?” he asked.
“I can do a lot of things, but unfortunately, that’s not one of them,” I said. “Best I can do is have someone else read the report and see what they think.”
“If you learn anything, please let me know right away.”
I found Kantor’s office number and dialed it. Javier picked up right away.
“It’s Ashe Cayne,” I said. “You’re off to an early start.”
“Early bird catches the worm,” he said.
“And the second mouse gets the cheese,” I replied.
“Never heard that before. What does it mean?”
“The first mouse going for the cheese gets stuck in the trap. The second mouse comes along and gets the cheese without getting caught.”
“I like that one. Gotta use it sometime.”
“I didn’t make it up, but feel free. Anyway, I called about the daily schedules you gave me. I noticed for the schedule on the day after he died that the letters ‘POL’ were at the top of the page. I couldn’t figure out what that means.”
“‘Plane on loan,’” Javier said. “Whenever Elliott loaned out his plane to someone, we put it on the schedule so we could keep track of where it was.”
“But it didn’t say who was borrowing it or where they were going,” I said.
“All of that’s in a separate file. Elliott loaned his plane out so much, we had to use another schedule to keep track of it.”
“Do you know who used it that day?”
“Not off the top of my head. Give me a second.”
I heard him tapping his keyboard. The problems of the rich, I thought as I waited. Needing a separate calendar to keep track of their private planes. You can’t make this shit up.
“Lance Greene,” Javier said. “He and a couple of friends used it.”
Lance Greene was the former all-pro tight end for the Chicago Bears. He was third on the all-time receiver list and the only Bears player to catch a hundred touchdowns. He retired a few years ago and now co-hosted a radio show on ESPN and a football show on NFL Network. Next to Walter Payton, it didn’t get bigger than Lance Greene. He was a god to the fans, and the women couldn’t get enough of him. I had seen him once at a restaurant. He was even bigger in person than on TV. Two hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle.
“Where did they go?” I asked.
“Down to the Bahamas to play golf.”
I had heard that Greene was a big golfer. One of the caddies at Medinah Country Club said his handicap was in the low single digits, and he hit almost every drive well past three hundred yards.
“Was Elliott good friends with Greene?” I asked.
“Definitely,” Javier said. “They met at a Bears game. Elliott had seats on the fifty-yard line, but he watched most of the games on the field next to the players. Lance used the jet whenever he needed to. He’d come out to the Michigan house during the summer with his girlfriends. He’s a good guy.”
“‘Girlfriends,’ plural?”
“Lance is very popular with the ladies. People love him everywhere he goes.”
“Where did Lance stay in the Bahamas?”
“Elliott’s house.”
“Even when Elliott wasn’t there?”
“Of course. Everyone used Elliott’s house whether he was there or not. Elliott was very generous with his friends.”
“Who went with Greene on those trips?”
“I don’t know right off, but I could find out. Everyone who travels on the plane has to be listed on the flight manifest.”
“Do you keep a copy of all the manifests?”
“Not here in the office, but our management company does.”
“I’m a complete novice when it comes to stuff like private planes,” I said. “But tell me exactly what a management company does.”
“They handle everything related to the plane, like the pilots, flight attendants, cleaning, safety maintenance, flight coordination, and catering. We’ve used the same company for the last ten years. JetProper.”
“Can you get me all the flight manifests from the last six months?”
“I will talk to the company and see what they can send me.”
“One more thing,” I said. “You and Pedro said that Elliott went into a depression after his wife died, then he went down to the Bahamas for a couple of months and came back a new person.”
“Yup. He came back more energized than ever.”
“Did you or Pedro go down to visit him?”
“No, he wanted us to stay here and keep everything running in the office.”
“Did anyone go down to see him?”
“The kids and grandkids went for about a week, then some of his friends went down to cheer him up.”
“Do you know who exactly went?”
“I don’t, but Pedro would. He was mostly in charge of Elliott’s real estate portfolio.”
“Portfolio?”
“Elliott had fifteen houses and apartments around the world,” Javier said. “He was really particular about where he stayed. Whenever possible, he’d always choose having his own place or staying with a friend rather than sleeping in a hotel.”
“So Pedro was in charge of the apartment on West Fullerton?”
“That’s the one residence that Pedro didn’t manage.”
“Who did?”
“Elliott ran everything there himself.”