The Confessors' Club

EIGHT

Anne Barberi lived at the Stanford Arms, a tall, upscale gray brick-and-granite building across from the Lincoln Park Zoo. While the upper floors surely provided magnificent vistas of Lake Michigan, I imagined the lower apartments occasionally offered troubling views of coupling chimpanzees, and suspected that those units were equipped with electrified, fast-closing drapes. Even when living the good life along Chicago’s Gold Coast, the rich had to be vigilant.

A parking valet leaning against a Mercedes straightened up with a pained look on his face, likely soured by the clatter of my arrival. I thought about pulling in to give him a closer blast of my rusted exhaust, but the thrill wouldn’t have been worth the parking charge. I drove on, found a spot on a street four blocks over, and hoofed back.

The lobby was enormous, dark and deserted except for two potted palms and two potted elderly ladies, slumped in peach-colored velvet wing chairs, sipping fruited whiskies. The oily-haired man behind the oak reception counter scanned my khakis, blue button-down shirt and blazer like he was looking for resale shop tags.

‘Dek Elstrom to see Mrs Barberi,’ I said to the oiled man.

‘Photo identification, sir?’

I gave him my driver’s license. As he studied it, and then me, the corners of his mouth turned down, as if he were wondering whether the blue shirt in the photo was the same one I was wearing. Such was wealth, I wanted to tell him. Even I didn’t know; I had three.

‘A moment, sir,’ the man said, handing back my license. He picked up the phone, tapped three digits and said my name. Nodding, he hung up. ‘Mrs Barberi is expecting you.’

I turned and almost ran into a burly fellow who had noiselessly slipped up behind me.

‘Mr Reeves will show you to the elevator,’ the oiled man said.

He meant Mr Reeves would show me only to the elevator, and nowhere else. We walked to the farthest of the three sets of polished brass elevator doors and Mr Reeves pressed the button. I stepped in and the doors closed before I could ask which floor was Anne Barberi’s.

There was no need. The elevator panel had only one button, and it was not numbered. After a short whir and the merest tug of gravity, the doors opened directly into a rose-colored, marble-floored foyer. A gray-haired woman wearing a lavender knit suit stood waiting. Likely enough, she hadn’t strung the jumbo pearls around her wrinkled neck from a kit.

‘I’m Anne Barberi,’ she said, extending a hand that was as firm and in command as her voice. I followed her to a small sitting room. She sat on a hardwood ladder-back chair; I sat on a rock hard, brocaded settee. Freshly cut yellow flowers sat just as stiff between us, on a black-lacquered table.

‘Mr Chernek tells me you have questions concerning my husband’s death,’ she said.

‘I’m afraid they’re not very specific.’

‘At whose behest are you conducting your inquiry?’

I’d considered inventing a lie, but decided simply to stonewall to protect Wendell’s identity. Truths are always easier to remember than lies. ‘One of your husband’s associates,’ I said.

‘Within Barberi Holdings?’

‘No.’

‘Fair enough, for now.’ She folded her hands in her lap.

‘I understand Mr Barberi had a long history of heart disease,’ I said.

‘For twenty years, he’d been careful, monitoring his cholesterol, exercising under supervision, watching his diet. At work, he chose very able assistants, young men and women who could shoulder much of the stress. My husband was cautious with his heart, Mr Elstrom, which is why I am interested in what you are doing.’

‘I’m merely gathering facts, for now.’

She studied me for a moment, realized I wasn’t going to offer more, and went on. ‘As I said, Benno kept a tight lid on the pressures of his job. Until the night he died, when he lost control. He came home from a dinner furious, literally trembling because he was so upset. I tried to get him to sit and tell me what had happened, but he would not. He went into his study, and a few minutes later, I heard him shouting into the phone.’ She looked down at her hands. She’d clenched them so tight the knuckles had whitened. Pulling them apart, she looked up. ‘I found him in there the next morning, slumped over his desk.’

‘Do you have any idea who he’d called?’

‘I assumed one of his subordinates, but I really don’t know.’

‘No one thought to question what set him off?’

‘Come to think of it, no.’

‘Can we find out?’

‘Surely you’re not sensing something deliberate, are you?’

‘I like to check everything out.’

‘His secretary might be able to help.’ She reached for the phone next to the vase and dialed a number. ‘Anne, Joan. Fine, fine,’ she said, brushing away the obligatory questions about her well-being. ‘I’ve asked a friend, a Mr Elstrom, to find out something for me. I want to know with whom Benno was speaking on the phone, the night he died. It was about some matter that upset him greatly.’ She paused to listen, then said, ‘I’ll tell Mr Elstrom you’ll call him to set up an appointment.’ She read the number from the business card I’d given her, then hung up.

‘Joan was Benno’s secretary for years,’ she said. ‘She knows things she’ll never tell me, but she’s always been loyal to Benno. And unlike me, she did think to inquire with whom Benno was speaking the night he passed away. He’d set up a conference call with two of his subordinates. She’ll make them available to you.’

She walked me into the foyer and pushed the elevator button. ‘It was not like Benno to allow himself to become so upset, Mr Elstrom. I won’t ask again what you’re pursuing, but I expect the courtesy of a report when you’re done.’

I said I’d tell her what I could, when I could. As I stepped into the elevator, it seemed likeliest that Benno Barberi had simply lost control as accidentally as had the driver of the freak passing car that had smacked Grant Carson. But as the elevator descended, I imagined I heard the Bohemian’s voice intermingled in the soft whine of the motor, whispering urgently about the certainty of percentages. And by the time the door opened, I almost knocked over the burly Mr Reeves in my haste to get out. I hurried across the tomb-like foyer, silent except for the ancient ladies gently snoring beside their drained whiskies, and out into the daylight.

I called the Bohemian from the sidewalk. ‘Any luck on getting someone close to Whitman to talk to me?’

‘He was a widower. I left a message, and your cell number, for his daughter, Debbie Goring.’

‘She’ll call soon?’

‘My God, Vlodek, do I detect urgency?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You’ve seen Anne Barberi?’

‘I just left her.’

‘And?’

‘Call Debbie Goring again.’