High Chicago

CHAPTER 31

Avi's house didn't look like much from the outside-the brick facade needed some tuck-and-point work and the paint on the porch was coming off in strips-but that didn't reflect the interior at all. The ground floor had been fully renovated into an open-concept space with a huge island kitchen and spacious living and dining rooms separated by wooden French doors.

"When we bought the place, we gutted it and opened it up but we didn't put a nickel into the outside," Avi told me. "It only makes you more of a target for thieves. When you want to sell, that's when you worry about curb appeal."

He introduced me to his wife, Adele, a thin woman with dry, wispy brown hair and angry red patches of psoriasis on her elbows. Her hand felt like chicken bones when we shook and she barely made eye contact. Avi then took me down to the finished basement so I could meet his children. Noah was six, Benji was four and Emily was two. They were watching cartoons on a big-screen TV and barely acknowledged me or their father.

I said, "Every two years, eh? When's the next one due?" "Three was it for me. Had myself fixed after Emmy." We went back upstairs where Adele had poured us each a glass of chilled white wine.

"Nothing for you?" I asked.

"It gives me a headache," she said.

At her insistence, we took our drinks into the living room while she stayed in the kitchen to finish dinner.

"Check this out," Avi said, kneeling in front of a glassed-in cabinet that held a stack of stereo components. He loaded a CD into the player and pushed play. It was R.E.M. again, this time the album Automatic for the People. He must have had it on shuffle, because the first tune up wasn't "Drive"-it was "Everybody Hurts." Michael Stipe had written the lyrics in reaction to a rash of suicide among young people. And here I was listening to it, on a leg of a journey that began with the supposed suicide of Maya Cantor.

"Avi, please!" Adele called from the kitchen.

"Sorry, hon," he said, and lowered the volume before settling his bulk into a black leather recliner that faced the leather sofa I sat on. "She gets headaches," he said to me. "A lot of headaches."

"Sorry to hear that."

"Not as sorry as me."

"The kids look great," I said.

"They are," he smiled. "They're a lot of fun, most days. Their problems are still little problems-scrapes and spats and arguments over what show to watch. But it's draining sometimes, especially when Adele is-when she's not at the top of her game. And they eat into my salary like termites. And wait till all three are in private school. And summer camp. I'll be out on the street with a sign that says, 'Will sue for food.'"

"You look like you're doing all right."

"Yeah," he said. "All right is what I'm doing."

"So," I said, "were you able to find out anything about Simon Birk that would help me?"

"I did make a call or two," he said. "And I think it's safe to say some of his business practises have raised eyebrows in the building community. He's known as an extremely tough negotiator, a real balls-to-the-walls bastard, according to my friend. His word is as good as his bond, only his bond isn't worth shit. He doesn't give a damn about his investors, his employees, his residents or anyone but Simon Birk. He's litigious as hell. He sues everyone sooner or later: business partners, journalists, competitors. And he's been sued more times than I could count. But there is nothing to suggest he's ever been involved in anything overtly criminal, Jonah. And certainly not murder. Not even a hint of it in thirty-odd years."

"Doesn't mean he didn't take it up."

Avi shrugged. I took that as a sign he remained unconvinced.

"Let me ask you something else," I said. "You've heard about the home invasion at Birk's two years ago?"

"Sure," Avi said. "He and his wife were both beaten up. Crooks got away with a ton of art."

"What do you think of the possibility that he set it up himself? Anyone you could ask about that?"

"Jesus, Jonah. Is there anything you think he's not guilty of?"

"He was on the verge of going broke, then collected millions in insurance and the sale of his home."

"And he and his wife almost got killed. She's never recovered, from what I heard."

"I'm not the only one who thinks he could have done it."

"Who else?" he asked.

"A reporter."

"I've never seen that accusation in print."

"He hasn't written it yet."

"Because he has no more proof than you. You're going to need a lot more than these off-the-wall theories to convince anyone in authority."

"I'm still sure about the killings in Toronto."

"Yeah? Why do you think he's guilty and not this partner of his, this Cantor?"

"Because that's what Cantor told me and I believe him." "What were his words?"

"Birk assured him he'd take care of distractions." "So you're making yourself into another distraction, and if he murders you, you'll have your answer?" "That's not my exact plan." "You have an exact plan?" "To enjoy this glass of wine. After that, it's all up in the air." Dinner was fast and furious. Adele tended to the children, who had hot dogs cut up in baked beans, guiding spoonfuls into two-year-old Emily's mouth and cajoling the other two to eat, while eating almost nothing herself. The grown-ups had baked salmon fillets, roasted asparagus and wild rice. Avi and I finished the bottle of wine. Adele had sparkling water. After dessert-applesauce for the kids, frozen yogourt for us-she bade us good night and marshalled the kids upstairs for baths and books. Avi led me into the living room and turned on a flat-screen plasma TV mounted to the wall.

"You have to see this," he said, popping in a DVD. "A little blast from the past."

It was a concert film: David Broza and friends at Masada, the two-thousand-year-old mountaintop fortress in the Israeli desert. Once King Herod's winter palace, better remembered as the place where Jewish zealots held off Roman troops until a long siege led to their mass suicide. A mesmerizing guitarist who had been trained in flamenco, and also absorbed folk, jazz, rock and blues into his style, Broza has been variously referred to as Israel's Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Bruce Springsteen-pretty much everybody but Yngwie Malmsteen. Every year he hosted a sunrise concert in an amphitheatre on the west side of Masada, singing songs in Hebrew, English and Spanish. The DVD Avi played was a more recent event, but it still took me back to 1995, when Avi, Dalia and I, along with others from our kibbutz, went to hear him play. We ascended the mountain in the middle of the night-because of the searing heat, which often topped fifty degrees, the concert started at a quarter to four. Some four thousand people were there, singing along with Broza, swaying in each other's arms, especially when he played "Yihyeh Tov (Things Will Get Better)," a peace anthem he wrote when Israel and Egypt signed their historic treaty in 1979. We watched in awe as he punished his guitar with manic fingers, its surface scarred and practically worn through. By the end of the concert, we were as sweaty and exhausted as Broza himself, but some of us walked up the Roman Ramp to watch the sun come up over the faraway hills of Jordan, the mountains turning purple and rose in the new light of day. It felt like a time when peace might actually be at hand. We had no way of knowing that our kibbutz, Har Milah, would soon be bombarded by Katyusha rockets from Lebanon, and that one of them would end Dalia's life.

The DVD ended, as Broza concerts always did, with "Yihyeh Tov." I watched the footage knowing that good things had not come. Peace had not come, then or now. I felt tears fill my eyes and tried to wipe them away discreetly. Then I stole a glance at Avi Stern and saw that he was crying too.