at a glassed-in area where a dozen men and women wearing headsets watched closed-circuit feeds-'the Birks had their own monitor right in the foyer of the house. Nice crisp Toshiba twenty-four-inch. They would have seen who was at the door.'
'But?'
'But they let them in anyway,' he said.
'Two guys?'
'Yup. Want to see them?'
'You're kidding.'
'Hey, it's all digital these days, not like when you had to erase tapes and reuse them. And like I said, this one really bugged me. She was practically beaten to death, Mrs. Birk was, and on our watch.' He got up from his desk and brought me into the monitoring room, where he eased his great bulk gingerly into a sway-backed chair and searched a hard drive for the recording.
When he had it cued up, he jabbed a thick finger at the screen. 'See the time code? It's just after ten at night. Everything's working like it should. Cameras are all rolling. And a truck shows up.'
We watched a half-ton cube van pull up in front of the Birk mansion. On the side was a logo that said Carpet Cleaning and Restoration. Totally generic: could have been stencilled that morning. The driver angled out into the street and then backed up the driveway, stopping just short of the side entrance. Then the rear doors opened and two men got out. Both wore faded blue coveralls, ball caps pulled low and wraparound dark glasses. The doors of the truck blocked them from the view of the gate camera.
They obviously knew where each camera was. You could tell by the way they positioned themselves, every move orchestrated to deny full-face views.
They pressed a buzzer at the side door. Konerko froze the tape. 'Based on the height of this model van, we estimate the guy on the left at about five-eleven, maybe six feet. The right, a few inches taller.'
'Six-three?'
'Around there.'
About Francis Curry's height.
He pressed play: the side door of the house opened wide enough to admit them, then closed quickly. 'So now they're in,' he said. 'From our point of view, there's nothing unusual so far. Nothing that would have made our people sit up and take notice. Far as we can tell, two guys showed up to pick up a carpet. Granted, it's late, but maybe there was a spill, a flood, who knows what. But the inside camera, the dome, should have recorded whatever happened next, because that's where the Birks were assaulted, right in the front foyer. When the cops came, that's where they found his wife.'
'And Birk?'
'He'd made it to the den and called the cops from there.'
'What was his story exactly?'
'He said he saw the cleaning truck and assumed his wife had called them. He knew he should have checked with her but he got careless and opened the door first.'
Simon Birk, the control freak, the man who chose every detail of every tower he built, getting careless at ten at night, beckoning into his intensely private life two unknown tradesmen in dark glasses and ball caps.
'So what about the hidden dome camera?'
'That wasn't on a live feed to us, obviously. Clients don't want outsiders watching their every move. But it was wired to a hard-drive recorder in a utility closet in the basement.'
'Let me guess. The thieves took it with them.'
'That they did.'
'How did they know it was there?'
'Birk told the cops the thieves knew about the camera and forced him to tell them where the recorder was.'
'What did the cops think about that?'
'The guy I talked to-'
'Tom Barnett?'
'Yeah, that's him. He took down the details. Said he'd talk to Birk about tradesmen, staff, people who might have had the inside scoop on the cameras. He questioned me and my employees. But no one ever got arrested. And nothing was ever recovered. I wasn't happy about the whole thing, like I told you. But it wasn't my job to ask Birk why he let the guys in. And thank the lord, I wasn't the one who had to hand him an insurance cheque.'
'Who did?'
CHAPTER 34
I called Great Midwestern Life from my hotel room and asked the claims adjuster, Gary Herman, if he could spare a few minutes to talk about the Birks' claim.
'There's nothing I can tell you,' he said.
'Because there's nothing to tell or because you aren't allowed to tell it?'
'Either way. We signed a confidentiality agreement.'
'You did.'
'An airtight one.'
'Exists on paper somewhere.'
'In this very office.'
'So even if you had misgivings about the claim…'
'Even if I had whoppers,' he said. 'I still couldn't tell you that. I also couldn't tell you that Simon Birk is one litigious sonofabitch and that it could never on any level be worth the grief to try to deny the claim. Wouldn't matter the case you had. He would take it to the next level and the next. He'd nuke you if all you had was a baseball bat. That I definitely couldn't tell you.'
'As one investigator to another,' I said, 'could you tell me if the police had misgivings?'
'Would have made my job easier if they had.'
'Would have given you traction.'
'If they had done so.'
'Was it Tom Barnett you spoke to?'
'Finally,' he chuckled. 'A question I can answer.' I called Jenn at home and told her about my visit to Simon Birk's office.
'If he knows you're there, and he knows your every move, I hope you're being careful,' she said.
'His bodyguard is a guy named Francis, for God's sake. And he looks like a mannequin. A Madame Tussaud version of himself.'
'Doesn't mean he isn't dangerous.'
Jenn had put together a complete list of the pieces stolen from the Birk house. 'I spoke to my friend Patrick,' she said. 'He owns a gallery called Arles and he drooled over this stuff. At a legal auction, the stuff would have fetched at least twenty-five million. The Modigliani nude alone would have gone for five or six million, the Monet about the same, even though Patrick said it was a minor variation on the water lily theme. At least a million for Picasso's sketch of his mistress. And that's just three items out of dozens taken. If Birk netted even half of what they were worth and collected on the insurance, it was quite the payday.'
I asked her if anyone had called for me.
'Anyone as in a certain homicide detective?'
'For instance.'
'Sorry, chief.'
'What about Cantor? He write up those notes of his?'
'Haven't received them yet.'
'All right. Turn up the heat if you don't get anything by end of business.'
'Will do.'
