I left Delacorte with Duncan for a second interview. His story was strange, but I believed it. I didn’t fill in Burke on all that I had gleaned over the last couple of weeks, because I wanted things to be more cohesive before I presented them to him. I also didn’t want him to feel the need to rein me in, as if that were possible. I decided to rush back to my office to take another look at the timeline. I had just gotten into the car when my phone rang. It was a number I didn’t recognize, but I answered anyway.
“This is Mrs. Graves,” the caller said. Clarinda Graves had been a friend of my mother’s for as long as I could remember. They had gone to the same church and sang in the choir together. Mrs. Graves had been working in the ME’s administrative office for over forty years and had no intention of retiring.
“A voice for sore ears,” I said. “Do you have anything for me?”
“They got the preliminary autopsy results back yesterday,” she said. “The report was just uploaded into the computer. I have a copy for you.”
“Did you read it?”
“I did. Didn’t seem too remarkable to me, but I’m not a doctor. You can form your own opinion.”
“What took so long for the autopsy?”
“The family out in California didn’t want it. They didn’t feel like it was necessary. They even hired a local lawyer to stop it. Didn’t work. By law, we have to do an autopsy on all cases like this.”
“Which family member was fighting it?”
“The wife. She was adamant.”
“You have a contact number for her?”
“An address too. I’ll put it on the back of the report.”
“I’ll swing by to pick it up tonight.”
“That’s what I figured, honey. I’ll have a slice of peach cobbler waiting for you and one for that beautiful lady friend of yours who you need to make an honest woman of.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Well, you take much longer, and they’ll have to bring me to the wedding in a wheelchair.”
I entered my office and went straight to the evidence wall, where I had printed out a timeline for the night Kantor had been found. At 9:53, the Amazon driver showed up in front of the Manor. At 9:59, the driver returned to the van, loaded the trunk, and took off. Kantor arrived at 10:05. The Bentley pulled out of the garage at 11:03. And now I could add that Duncan arrived at the building and entered precisely at 11:00. It fit perfectly. He wasn’t in the apartment too long, followed instructions, went to the garage, and left. Miles Carthew had been walking his dog that night. He saw a man leave the building, but he wasn’t sure what time that was. He knew it was sometime after ten but before midnight.
I stared at the timeline, then at the photographs of Kantor and Thompson. All of this made sense, except for the woman who hired Duncan. Who was she? Why did she want Duncan to steal the Bentley? Maybe she wanted it to look like a burglary gone bad. But if it were a simple burglary, then why tie Kantor to his bed while he was wearing panties? I couldn’t make the sexual nature of the scene match the car being stolen.
I studied the similarities between the cases again. Carthew saw a man leaving through Kantor’s secret door. Duncan said the door was left open for him. So the man entered Kantor’s apartment first. He killed Kantor, then exited through the secret door and left it open enough for Duncan to enter. Duncan entered the apartment and followed the instructions he had been given to get to the garage and take the Bentley. The woman who gave him the instructions must’ve been familiar with the apartment to know the layout. She knew Kantor had a Bentley, something that his own kids hadn’t known, and she knew where the car key was kept. She and the man who left through the side door and almost hit Carthew and his dog had to be working together. She set it up, and the man completed the job.
I looked at Thompson’s case. No one was in Boyd’s apartment when he got home except for a dead Thompson strapped to his bed. His neighbor said he had heard footsteps and looked out his peephole and saw a man’s black boots going upstairs. Could that have been the same man who left Kantor’s building? Even if the man did kill both of them, that left the biggest question on the board unanswered: Why?
I curbed the Porsche on LaSalle Street, just outside of city hall. On the dash I slid the police credential Burke updated for me every year, then walked into the gigantic rectangular building. Just in that two hundred square feet of lobby space, the entire demographic kaleidoscope of Chicago was represented. Lawyers and businessmen waited at the enormous bank of elevators, next to hardened contractors making the always inconvenient trek to renew permits, intermingled with angry homeowners en route to the assessor’s office, fuming about yet another property tax hike.
I exited the elevator on the fifth floor and walked to the entrance of the mayor’s suite of offices. A police officer seated at a desk in front of the door checked for my name on a clipboard, then allowed me to pass. Another officer sat next to an older woman, who was barely visible with all the flowerpots on and around her desk. She called me by my name as I approached her and told me to go ahead into the office. The boss was expecting me. She had a bowl of mints on her desk, which reminded me of the mints my grandmother would carry in her purse to church on Sunday mornings. The older woman saw me looking at them and offered me one, which I gladly accepted.
Bailey sat behind an enormous desk that looked like it must’ve been carried in with a forklift. He was leaning back, talking on his cell phone. His French-blue shirt was open at the collar, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. His tie and suit jacket sat on the back of a chair at his enormous conference table. Like most Chicagoans, I was accustomed to seeing the mayor in front of microphones, in complete control as he sparred with journalists. Seeing him like this actually humanized him. He ended his call and slid his phone into his shirt pocket.
“I appreciate you taking the time to come and see me,” he said, standing and offering his hand. I took it and waited for him to let me know where he wanted to sit. He chose two comfortable chairs in front of an enormous window with views of downtown and the lake.
This was only the second time I had been in this office. The first time hadn’t gone so well. I had been a detective in the Second District. An unarmed young Black kid had been shot sixteen times while walking away from the police. The entire tragedy had been hidden from the public for over a year. I got wind of what went down and started making noise about this rogue cop being a murderer and how he needed to be held accountable. Bailey knew the case would be a powder keg in a city that had always been operating on the precipice of an all-out race war. He sent messages through intermediaries, trying to convince me to go along with the department’s official position. When he had gotten word that I wasn’t exactly the cooperating type, he summoned me to this office. His polite suggestions quickly turned to threats, then a full-on screaming match that prompted his security detail to rush into the office to make sure we weren’t throwing hands. I made a few phone calls to a journalist friend, the bodycam footage was finally released to the public, and the officer was charged, tried, and found guilty of second-degree murder and sixteen counts of aggravated battery. I reached a hefty settlement with the city as an agreement for my resignation. Bailey survived the political blowback, and I was destined to be his eternal adversary.
Once we had settled into our seats, he said, “I know this is a busy time of year for you. With all the rain we got last month, I hear the courses are in great shape.”
“The fairways are lush,” I said. “The rough is thick and treacherous.”
“Not sure why I never took to the game,” Bailey said. “Had plenty of opportunity, but just didn’t suit me. Too genteel, maybe.”
“Takes a certain mindset,” I said. “Discipline. Calm. Patience.”
“Well, that must be why I’m not cut out for it. Patience isn’t my strong suit.”
“Neither is subtlety,” I said. “Burke told me you were the one who referred me to the Kantor family.”
“I did. Elliott Kantor was a good man. He and his family have been great for the city and great to me personally. I want them to get the answers they deserve.”
“You have over eleven thousand men and women under your control who can help get those answers.”
“That’s true,” Bailey said, smiling wryly. “But you’re good at what you do. Very good. And you operate differently.”
“‘If any man doubt that, let him put me to my purgation,’” I said. “‘I have trod a measure. I have flattered a lady. I have been politic with my friend, smooth with mine enemy.’”
“You’re still quoting Shakespeare,” Bailey said.
“Wole Soyinka too.”
“Who the hell is that?”
“One of the most acclaimed playwrights and poets in Nigerian history.”
Bailey nodded softly. “I know about the good work you did for Gerrigan and his family a few years back, when his daughter went missing.”
“Good work until they fired me for it being too good.”
Bailey shrugged. “Sometimes it can get complicated with rich people,” he said. “They tend to see the world differently than we do.”
“Which is why we’re sitting here right now, trying to be civil to each other, though I know the sight of me makes your innards boil.”
“‘Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names,’” he said.
“President John F. Kennedy,” I said. “Not bad.”
“I called you in to help because I know that, in your new line of work with clients, you value discretion,” he said.
“That’s definitely something my clients expect and pay for,” I said.
“That’s what the Kantors need more than anything,” Bailey said. “This is traumatic on many levels. So, what have you learned so far?”
“Hard to say. There are times during an investigation when you feel like you’re learning a lot, then there are times you feel like you don’t know anything at all.”
“Which time are you in right now?”
“Nothing at all,” I lied. I had no intention of telling him anything substantive with regards to the case. It didn’t matter how philosophical and complimentary he was being; I didn’t trust him or his intentions.
“You must have some thoughts about what happened,” he said.
“I have a few.”
“Care to share?”
“I think he got caught up in some extracurriculars that didn’t favor a man of his advanced age,” I said.
“You think the drugs killed him?”
“Old age and street drugs are not the most perfect union.”
“Is it possible he wasn’t using drugs and he just died from natural causes while he was doing whatever he was doing?”
It was clear he and Simon were reading from the same script and wanted the same ending. Made sense. Beyond the inheritance, there was a lot of insurance money riding on the cause-of-death determination, and I was certain a financial windfall for Simon also meant some generosity thrown in Bailey’s direction.
“Not sure how you can reason he wasn’t using drugs,” I said. “They found drugs in his system. No one can magically put them there.”
“Unless he had a drink that was spiked or something like that.”
“Possible,” I said. “But given how he was found and what he was wearing, it’s not too far of a stretch to believe he might’ve also popped a pill or two to get himself in the mood. Drugs can make the most rational people do the most irrational things.”
Bailey groaned. “Jesusfuckinchrist. This is a real fuckin’ mess. Of all people, how does this happen to Elliott?”
I didn’t have an answer, so I didn’t offer one. Bailey stood, walked up to the window, and leaned against it. He quietly surveyed the skyline crammed with towering steel and shiny glass. I could see the admiration in his eyes. His city. His destiny. I also took in the view and appreciated the fact that with as many dreams that had been built in our complicated city, just as many had come crashing down. A sliver of the Ferris wheel on Navy Pier could be seen in the distance. He pointed toward it.
“No other family has been more instrumental in building this great city than the Kantors,” he said. “Whether it was adding a wing to the Art Institute, funding programs for students at Science and Industry, or refurbishing the asphalt for hundreds of city basketball courts, they have helped make this city great. Take Navy Pier. That Ferris wheel is standing over the lake along with Festival Hall and the Children’s Museum in no small part because of Elliott’s old man, who ran the family business when my father sat in this office. When the city couldn’t afford to totally refurbish the pier, old man Kantor reached into his own pocket and wrote an enormous check. What once was a training facility for the US Navy back in World War II is now the biggest tourist attraction in the entire Midwest. Last year alone it attracted over nine million visitors. The Kantors have given a lot to this city.”
“And the city has given them a lot in return,” I said.
“It has,” Bailey said. “That’s why this is so tragic, and why Elliott and his family deserve to be treated with dignity.”
“With all due respect to the family and what they’ve done for the city,” I said, “but every Chicagoan, regardless of their zip code or the size of their checkbook, should be treated with dignity.”
“Of course,” Bailey said, turning back around and facing me. “The last thing my father said to me before he died was ‘At the end of the day, the city always belongs to the people.’”
“All of the people,” I said.
Bailey extended his hand. “My door is always open,” he said. “Whatever you need from my office to help you help the family is fully available to you.”
We shook hands firmly, and I turned and left the office feeling like I had just made a deal with the devil.