High Chicago

CHAPTER 8

What are we doing wrong?" Jenn sighed.

We were scrolling through floor plans of the penthouse units of the Birkshire Harbourview website, logged in as prospective buyers. As if.

"Those twelve-foot ceilings… those windows… those views. And that kitchen, my God, it's bigger than my whole top floor!"

"We're not doing anything wrong," I said. "We just don't aspire to that lifestyle."

She flashed me a look that was both contemptuous and somehow compassionate. "How little you know me," she said.

"Never mind, Ivana. Go to the part where the man himself speaks."

She clicked on a feed of a video Simon Birk had recorded the previous spring, when his partnership with Rob Cantor had first been announced. He stood at the top of a skeletal iron tower in Chicago, many storeys above the city, wind ruffling the hem of his overcoat.

"My name is Simon Birk," he told the camera. "And some of you may have heard of me." A grin at his own joke, his capped teeth white as virgin snow. "You've seen my name on some of the greatest buildings on the continent. You've stayed in my hotels, played in my casinos, eaten in my restaurants and danced the night away in my clubs. You may think of me as a man who builds towers like this one, Chicago's own Birkshire Millennium Skyline, scheduled to open next spring. But what I really build, my friends, are dreams."

The camera moved in closer. Birk was not a handsome man in any conventional sense. He had a bulbous nose, fleshy lips, bushy eyebrows, and a thick bony ridge hooding his pale blue eyes. Yet it was a face that commanded your attention.

"What are your dreams? That somewhere in your great city of Toronto, a city I love almost as much as my native Chicago, is a residence that reflects your desires, your aspirations, your success? Built by a man who spares nothing, cuts no corners, to bring you the very best in luxury living?"

"Think he's impressed by himself?" I said.

"I choose my projects carefully," Birk was saying. "And my partners even more so. So I'm delighted to be working with Toronto's finest developer, a man who shares my drive for perfection in every detail, Rob Cantor of Cantor Development. Together, we are creating an unforgettable domain where you'll be surrounded by the best of everything: Indonesian hardwood, granite countertops, travertine marble and stainless steel appliances. You'll know from the moment you visit this website-or even better, our model suite-that this is where you want to live."

"My kingdom for a Dramamine patch," I moaned.

"Shut up," Jenn said. "My aspirations are climbing by the minute."

"To meet your expectations," Birk said, "we have sought out only the finest craftsmen, the finest goods, to bring you the new crown jewel of the Toronto port lands, the Birkshire Harbourview. For a virtual tour of the complex, just click on the link below. Better yet, click on the green link to join our exclusive mailing list."

"How exclusive can it be if anyone can join?" Jenn muttered.

"These magnificent residences will sell out fast," Birk said. "We anticipate every unit to be pre-sold before completion, so-"

Jenn had finally had enough too. She clicked off the web feed and left Simon Birk in mid-sentence. Something, I guessed, not too many people did.

"Hey," she said, looking at her watch. "Don't you have a date to get ready for?"

"Won't take me long."

"You're not going out dressed like that, are you?"

"You been talking to my mother?"

"Seriously. Why don't you knock off?"

"What about you?"

"I'll hang here awhile," she said. "Karl said he might swing by with Maya's computer after he closes up."

"He cracked her password?"

"Like an egg, he said."

"That's our boy. It'll be interesting to see what's on there," I said. "Because no one so far has a clue about why Maya did it. Her mother, brother, father, even her theatre prof: can they all be in denial?"

"It's the same with her girlfriends," Jenn said. "They were just as sure-insistent, even."

"She was a doer, Jenn. She wasn't withdrawing from the world, giving her things away, dropping hints, crying out for help. She'd never attempted suicide before, and how many people succeed on the first try? She was energetic, involved, engaged in things. And by all accounts, she wasn't faking it."

She looked at me across the desk. "Her mother said it couldn't have been an accident, not with that high wall around the balcony."

"You check it out?"

She nodded. "It's more than waist high on me, and I'm six feet. Marilyn said Maya was five-seven."

We sat for a moment in silence, broken only by the hum of machinery, traffic on Broadview, the sound of our breathing, the beating of still-living hearts.

"Why did she call Simon Birk?" I asked.

"Maya?"

"Yeah."

"He's her father's partner."

"What could he tell her that Rob couldn't?"

"Or wouldn't."

"We know she had a fight with Rob the night she died."

"And she had a bug up her ass when it came to the environment."

"We know a lot of the port lands are polluted."

"Except they'd have had to clean the site before they started building. Wouldn't they?"

"Yes. You can't break ground without an environmental assessment. The soil and water have to be analyzed and cleaned first."

I sat back down at my desk and went back to the Birkshire Harbourview's web page, then clicked onto a link that listed all the partner firms involved: the engineers, architects, banks and construction company.

The engineering firm that conducted the water and soil testing on the site was called EcoSys.

"Check this out," I said to Jenn.

The founder and chief executive officer of EcoSys was one Martin Glenn.