High Chicago (25 page)

She hurdled the corner of the coffee table and tried to bring the weight down on my head. I lunged away and kept my feet somehow and lurched left to keep the coffee table between us. But she was faster than me. She got a leg behind mine and shoved my chest and I fell onto my back. She tried again to crush my head but I rolled away. She leaped astride me, holding the weight easily with one hand while trying to push my hands away with the other, to get a clear shot at my head.

So fucking weak I was. Such a dazed head. A sure skull fracture. I couldn’t buck her off. My limbs flapped like useless fledgling wings. Only the length of my arms was keeping the weight from pulping my skull. Couldn’t scratch or bite her. Couldn’t reach a weapon. I could feel a throb now in the back of my head, wetness on the back of the neck. Getting harder to focus, seeing four hands above me, two weights to fight off, four cold eyes staring down.

Then a roaring sound: a voice calling Nina vile names,
asking how she could do it—the voice raging with hurt and hatred, surging with violence.

It wasn’t me. I wanted to say those things to her. Wanted to ask how she could have done it. But it was a different voice. A man but not me. Then he stormed into view past me, moving so much faster than I could imagine moving—Rob Cantor, lifting Nina off me and slamming her into the entertainment centre. The weight dropped from her hand. Shelves rattled and compact discs poured out of the shelves around her. She put her arms up in front of her face, some stance she’d learned from Perry or some other trainer, but Rob was much taller and outweighed her by at least sixty pounds and had the full strength of rage. He simply punched through her hands and landed a solid blow to her nose, then banged her hard on each bicep, breaking down her defence. Slammed a fist in her gut. Then he hit her in the face again, holding nothing back. I could make out his words—“How could you?”—as he landed each blow.

I remember her slumped and weeping against the trashed entertainment unit, blood pouring out of her nose and a vertical gash in her upper lip.

I remember Rob turning to me with his fist still cocked, as if asking me if I thought she’d had enough.

I think I remember saying, “One more couldn’t hurt.”

I
still get headaches. I get them when I stand too fast, when I stand too long, sometimes just when I stand. Working out is out of the question—has been for two weeks. Some of the headaches are sick ones and I lie on my bed or the couch like a stricken woman in a Tennessee Williams play, waiting for someone to mop my brow with a cool linen handkerchief and say, “There, there.”

No one has done that so far, though Jenn has visited every day and her partner, Sierra, has come with her at least half the time. She’s dedicated to her craft and, in typical Sierra fashion, has been swamping herself with information on post-concussion syndrome so she can distill it into a cogent, caring analysis and approach, all of which has gone for fucking naught. I feel gnarled and depressed. It doesn’t help that we’re losing light by the day, that what little we have is flat and cold as nickel.

Other people have come and gone to help out, to keep me company, to steer me through some of the touchier legal matters that followed me home from Chicago like flies around my fruit. Luckily I am on medication for pain, so little that I say can be held against me.

It had been hard enough to keep all my stories straight
before sustaining a Grade 3 concussion, but I think in the end it went something like this.

Working in close cooperation with Detective Thomas Barnett of the Bureau of Investigative Services, Chicago Police Department, Katherine Hollinger determined that both Martin Glenn and Will Sterling had been killed by Francis Curry, whose confession had been heard by Barnett and Chicago lawyer Avi Stern before Curry was shot to death in a desperate bid to escape. That was two cases closed for her, which put me on her good side.

Stern, an innocent speculator who happened to be viewing an apartment with Birk when Curry snapped, sustained a gruesome leg injury during the attack but was said to be healing nicely.

Nina Cantor confessed to killing her stepdaughter, Maya, but insisted a fight broke out spontaneously and there was no intent, and an overworked Crown will likely agree to a charge of manslaughter, which means she won’t serve serious time. Probably three years of an eight-year sentence, being a first offender. She could be out by the time she’s thirty-six, still time to wander into another gym and stretch out in front of some guy who’d welcome the thought of her straddling him—provided she wasn’t trying to crush his skull.

It also means I’m three for three with Hollinger. Whether or not she likes being helped, her Super loves it when cases close in bunches. She called the other day to say she’d come and see me on her way home from work, then had to call again later saying she’d be pulling an all-nighter at a dead-end crescent west of the Allen Expressway, a brazen drive-by that left one teen dead and three more wounded, all because their basketball bounced off a passing car after a particularly piss-poor shot.

Hollinger said she’d try again soon.

My mother told me she heard through my brother that Rob Cantor was considering selling his interest in the
Harbourview project to a local consortium that included Gordon Avrith.

My brother hasn’t called. Or has he?

My mother wants me to see a specialist. “He’s the best in the city,” she said. “He went to McGill with your cousin Steven—remember Auntie Gertie’s son? Finished first in his class. I pulled a lot of strings to get you an appointment. Luckily for you, his wife takes an interest in the Cuban Jewish community and I chaired a fundraising drive last year to send Passover food.”

No, my brother didn’t call, I’m sure of it now, which means he isn’t talking to me. Or maybe it’s me that’s not talking to him. Either way, neither of us is talking to the other. I would be very surprised if I got any more referrals from him.

Ryan sent in food the first week, and last week he came to see me. We watched a football game—Jets and the Patriots, I think. He had to keep reminding me of the down, the yardage, the score. He showed me some new pictures of his son, Carlo, taken at a fall softball tournament. He’d once told me, back when he was in the killing game, that he never carried a picture of his wife or kid, afraid that someone might follow that trail back to where they lived. Now he can watch his son play; he can take and carry pictures and show them with the pleasure and pride of a dad.

I have to make these headaches go away and get back to work. Marilyn paid us for a full week, and Rob kicked in another week’s pay to see me through this slow phase. But it won’t last forever. Scary Mary will call and be Scary Mary nice, and Jenn and I will cringe and pass each other the phone. Maybe Jenn will land some new work, log a few hours while I heal. Maybe a simple family matter.

How dangerous can they be?

Special thanks to my agent, Helen Heller, and to Anne Collins and Marion Garner at Random House Canada, as well as freelance copy editor Barbara Czarnecki, for their help in making
High Chicago
a better read.

Thanks to Michael Clarke, David Green and Jeff Oberman for their advice on matters related to construction and development; Terri Rogers and John Steele, Ontario Ministry of the Environment; reporter Dan P. Blake, of the
Chicago Tribune;
author James L. Merriner, whose book
High Steel
was the most entertaining and informative of all the texts I read on skyscraper construction; the folks at the Chicago Department of Buildings and cityfeedback website for their patient responses to my questions. Any errors or inventions regarding these aspects of the book are mine alone, as are certain liberties taken with geography.

Thanks to Norm Bacal, Rene Balcer, Amit Bitnun, Paul Chodirker, Jeff Cohen, Eddie Sokoloff, Jeffrey Harper, Maureen Jennings, Carl Liberman, Marion Misters, Enn (no relation to Jenn) Raudsepp, Shlomo Schwartzberg, J.D. Singh, Sherry Smith, Beth Sulman, Mutsumi Takahashi, Karl Thomson, Catherine Whiteside and Scott Wise for their support in various guises.

And thanks again to my parents for their love, understanding and promotional efforts on my behalf.

HOWARD SHRIER
was born and raised in Montreal, where he earned an Honours Degree in journalism and creative writing at Concordia University. He began his career as a crime reporter for the
Montreal Star
and for the past thirty years has worked in a wide variety of media, including journalism, theatre and television, sketch comedy and improv, and high-level corporate and government communications. He now lives in Toronto with his wife and sons and is working on his third novel. For more information, please visit his website at
www.howardshrier.com
.

Vintage Canada Edition, 2009
Copyright © 2009 Howard Shrier

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2009 by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited.

Vintage Canada and colophon are trademarks.

www.randomhouse.ca

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to quote on p. vii from “Fall on Me.” Words and Music by Mike Mills, William Berry, Peter Buck and Michael Stipe, © 1986 Night Garden Music. All Rights Administered by Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission from Alfred Publishing Co., Inc.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Shrier, Howard
    High Chicago / Howard Shrier.

eISBN: 978-0-307-37353-3

I. Title.

PS8637.H74H53 2009     C813′.6     C2008-906574-3

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