Mechanic and I arrived at 1425 West Fullerton just after one o’clock in the afternoon. We found a spot in front of the insurance company across the street, which again looked like it wasn’t doing too much business. Javier from Kantor’s office had given us a building key and the numeric code to Kantor’s front door. We entered the building and stood in the lobby.
“Let’s figure out the layout of the common areas,” I said. “See what access people have once inside the building.”
We took a left out of the lobby, which sent us down a short hallway that was connected to another longer hallway in the shape of an L. This brought us to apartment 1E, which belonged to the older couple, the Manns. We walked past their door, which had some large preserved floral decoration hanging above its center. The hallway dead-ended at a brick wall. A row of very tall windows that were at least ten feet above the ground ran along the left wall, washing the hallway in bright light. We returned to the lobby, then turned left and walked to the back of the building. Two elevator doors sat across from each other halfway down the hallway. These were the private elevators for apartments 2E and 2W, respectively. There weren’t any windows or doors off this hallway, and it too dead-ended at a brick wall. We returned to the lobby.
“Everyone has to have access to the garage from inside the building,” I said. “I can’t believe they would construct a building where access was only from the outside.”
“But there aren’t any garage doors here on the first floor,” Mechanic said.
“Exactly. Which means access must come from within their apartments.”
We walked toward Kantor’s apartment. The hallway was identical to the Manns’, L-shaped and dead-ending at a brick wall. There weren’t any other doors except Kantor’s, and a similar row of windows was along the opposite wall. I punched the code into the keypad and opened Kantor’s door.
“Jesus Christ,” Mechanic said as we stepped in. “This place is gigantic. And this was just his city getaway?”
“Welcome to the lifestyles of the rich and famous,” I said.
We walked deeper into the apartment, carefully inspecting each room. There were at least twelve rooms on the first floor. Six bedrooms, including the primary suite, as well as a formal library, sitting room, dining room, and family room. The kitchen was the size of an entire one-bedroom apartment. We finally located the garage door in the back of the apartment, off the hallway, between the primary suite and one of the bathrooms. It opened into a cavernous garage. A Mercedes and Porsche SUV sat on the polished limestone. Kantor’s now-empty bay was simply marked with his unit number. We walked over and inspected the three garage doors that led to the back alley. They could be activated by either a remote or manually by a keypad along the wall.
“Let’s go out and check the external access,” I said.
We didn’t have a remote or the code, so we had to go back through the apartment, then out the front door. We took a left once we reached the sidewalk, then another left, heading down Janssen Avenue. We turned into the alley and examined the doors. There was no keypad, so external access could only be gained using a remote control.
We were walking back along Janssen Avenue to get to the front when Mechanic suddenly stopped and said, “What’s this door?”
Against the building’s exterior wall, about a third of the way down, was a small door that I hadn’t noticed before. It was camouflaged with the same coloring and texture of the limestone wall, but when you looked at it closely, you could see its edges. There wasn’t a handle or lock, just the outline of a door.
“Maybe it’s not a door,” I said. “There’s no way to open it. Maybe it was a door before the building was refurbished, and they just closed it off.”
“Possible,” Mechanic said. “But then why not just run the stone over it and close it permanently? If you’re rehabbing the entire building and you want the door to go away, that would’ve taken little effort.”
We went back into the building and down the hallway outside of Kantor’s apartment. I didn’t see a door, but that didn’t surprise me. It wouldn’t have come off this wall anyway. It was at least twenty or thirty feet beyond the end of this hallway, which meant it would’ve been coming off a wall deeper inside the apartment.
We entered the apartment and examined the first room on the right side, a large sitting room. The side back wall had been covered in orange wallpaper with swirls of fabric throughout. We knocked against various parts of the wall but didn’t hear any change in sound that would suggest there had been a door.
The next room was a guest bedroom. The walls and ceiling had been painted a pastel blue. Two large windows ran along the side wall and were also visible from outside the building. A queen bed sat in the center of the room, flanked by two ornate nightstands and lamps. A large dresser with a flat-screen TV sat across from the bed. The room looked as if it had never been used.
“Someone forgot to clip the price tag on this lamp,” Mechanic said. He lifted the tag that had been hanging behind the nightstand. “Damn. Who pays seven goddamn thousand dollars for a lamp?”
We searched the wall, tapping and running our hands over it but not finding any indication a door had once been there.
“Stay right there,” I said. “I’m going outside to mark this off.”
I walked outside the building and started pacing off the point where Kantor’s apartment started. Once I arrived at the door, I took out my phone and dialed Mechanic’s number.
“I’m gonna bang on the door,” I said once he answered.
“Copy that,” he said.
I waited for a woman to walk by, and once she was well out of earshot, I pounded on the door several times.
“I hear you banging through the phone, but not against the wall,” Mechanic said.
“I’m gonna hang up and bang and then call you back,” I said.
I disconnected and knocked on the door several times. A car drove by and slowed down. The driver looked at me suspiciously, then moved along. I called Mechanic.
“Nothing,” he said.
I counted the number of strides it took to get from the door to the front of the building, then went back inside and walked the same number of strides. I landed back in the bedroom Mechanic and I were just in.
“It has to be in here,” I said. “The distance matches.”
I looked in the corner of the room and noticed a closet that I hadn’t seen before. I pulled the door open, and there in plain sight, against the right wall, behind a rack of coats, was a lever handle. The door was heavily insulated, and the entire closet had been soundproofed.
“This is why you couldn’t hear it,” I said to Mechanic.
He joined me in the large closet.
“What the hell was this man up to?” Mechanic said.
I put on a pair of rubber gloves from my pocket, then pushed the handle down. The door opened. However, it didn’t take us directly outside, as I had expected. Instead, we stood in a small, dark space about six feet across. I switched on my phone. In the far corner of this space, I spotted the metal panic bar of a door. We walked toward it, and I pushed it. We found ourselves looking out on Janssen Avenue.
I closed the door, and we walked back into the apartment. I dialed Kantor’s office number. Pedro answered.
“Who was in charge of the construction plans for Elliott’s apartment in Lincoln Park?” I asked.
“An architectural firm we hired,” he said. “They drew up the plans for the general contractor.”
“Did you see the plans?”
“I did, but I’m not an architect. It was just a bunch of lines and numbers to me.”
“Did you know there was a secret door?”
“A secret door? What do you mean?”
“Behind one of the closets, there’s a hidden door that goes out onto the sidewalk next to the building.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because I’m here at the apartment and just found it. Do you still have the building plans?”
“I’m not sure, but I can check the files. It’s been several years.”
“Look for them as soon as possible, and if you locate them, let me know.”
I turned to Mechanic and said, “I think Elliott Kantor had secrets. Time for you to go to work.”
I told him about Manny’s recollection of what happened that last night and how plans had been changed by that call from Connelly. Mechanic knew what I was coming to next.
“How many days you want me on him?” he asked.
“Let’s start with three or four,” I said. “See if we can get an idea why a big-time law partner who works for one of Chicago’s richest men is cavorting with a casino cocktail waitress and professional escort.”
“‘Cavorting’?” Mechanic said, rolling his eyes. “That choice of word necessary?”
“The only SAT word in just over an hour. Thought you’d commend my restraint.”
Mechanic looked at me, shook his head, then walked out of the apartment.
I dropped Mechanic off at Hammer’s gym, then headed south to the Jackson Park Driving Range. I needed to look at everything through a new lens and hopefully discover new connections. Being out in the warm air and swinging my clubs always had a calming effect. There was something about the repetition of my swing and the crack of the ball hitting the face of the club that allowed my thoughts to settle into better focus.
So far, all roads led to Elliott Kantor; I just wasn’t sure how. What was out there that I hadn’t learned about him and the expanding circle of people who played a role in his life? All of us, whether we intended to or not, had our secrets. The second series of lab results had come back only to confirm the first results—Kantor had died of a heart attack secondary to an overdose of methamphetamines. Pedro had gotten the architectural prints for me, and there was no plan for a door leading out of the closet. Elliott must have decided to have it installed after the drawings were complete and the renovations had already started.
My phone rang just as I had gotten halfway through my first bucket of balls. It was my father.
“Let me guess,” he said when I picked up the phone.
“Your guess is correct,” I said. “And my nine iron is popping about ten yards farther than usual.”
“If only you had given your tennis so much effort.”
“You keep forgetting the small detail that I ruptured my ACL.”
“Plenty of players have come back from that injury and gone on to great careers in various sports,” he said.
“Did you really call to have our millionth conversation about my tennis disappointments?” I said.
“I called to talk about Bishop Thompson. I heard some things that reminded me of your case with that billionaire. Thought you might find them interesting.”
“Such as?”
“For starters, he was found half naked in a sexually suggestive way in a bed that was not his own, his arms and legs tied up to the bedposts.”
“Damn. What the hell was he doing?”
“By the sounds of it, too much,” my father said.
“Whose bedroom was he in?” I asked.
“Some fitness trainer. He claims to have come home and found the body.”
“He?”
“I didn’t stutter.”
My mind started racing. This was going in all kinds of directions I hadn’t expected. How does one of the country’s most visible preachers end up dead, half naked, and tied up in the bed of a male fitness trainer?
“How did you hear about this?” I asked.
“Clarence Allen over at the Defender. He called to talk about tennis and told me in confidence what he had heard about Thompson.”
“Who was his source?”
“These are all questions you need to ask Clarence. I told him you might be interested in knowing more about what happened. He agreed to meet with you in his office.”