'The robbery,' I said.
'What about it?'
I looked around for a bolt. Ryan found one first. As soon as he picked it up, Birk said quickly, 'All right! The robbery!'
'It was a fraud, from beginning to end.'
'Yes,' he whispered.
'Louder.'
'Yes!'
'You planned it.'
'Yes.'
'You, not Francis.'
'Yes.'
'You circumvented your own security system and let Francis in?'
'Yes.'
'And Chuck Belkin too.'
Birk's eyes widened, as if he'd just seen a ghost. I glanced at Curry. He had taken note too. Birk said, 'How do you know about Belkin?'
'For the record,' I said, pitching my voice toward Avi and his recorder, 'Chuck Belkin was found shot to death a few weeks after the robbery.'
'So many people get shot in Chicago,' Curry said. 'It's hard to keep track of them all.'
I ignored him. 'So you let Francis and Belkin in the house and they took out all the artwork you subsequently reported stolen?'
'Yes,' Birk said.
'Then what? You sold it privately?'
'Yes,' he admitted. 'Not for full value, of course. But there are always people who will buy art even if they can't display it publicly. They want to own it for the sake of owning it.'
'Then you defrauded Great Midwestern Life for the full value.'
'Yes.' He glanced over at Avi, at the recorder glinting in the moonlight. 'No one is going to admit this as evidence, you know. Surely your lawyer friend told you that.'
'He tried,' I said. 'I didn't listen.'
'You should have.'
'You want to go back another five steps?'
'No!'
'Then forget the law and keep talking. Tell me about the beating. That was planned too?'
'Yes. They were supposed to rough us up, to make the robbery more convincing,' Birk said. 'They got carried away. Especially Belkin. He wouldn't stop hitting Joyce.'
'Why?'
'I don't know. He went a little crazy.'
'And you couldn't stop him?'
'No.'
'And Francis couldn't?'
'No! I don't-I was already unconscious.'
Until then, I believed, he'd been telling the truth. But all my instincts now told me he was lying. It was as if a surge of emotion had welled up inside him, and he was using every ounce of his will to suppress it. But the pitch of his voice had changed, and his body had tensed. In the dim light cast by nearby buildings, I could see his eyes flutter slowly before they blinked.
I held out my hand and asked Ryan for the bolt.
'What are you doing?' Birk shouted.
'You lied,' I said.
'No,' Birk cried, cowering as he gripped the beam with his hands and his knees. 'Why would I-'
'You're lying!'
'Francis did it!' Birk said. 'He beat her.'
'Bullshit!' Curry said.
'I only said it was Belkin because he's already dead, but it was Francis.'
'Why would he do that? Unless you ordered him to.'
'No! I loved my wife.' Birk was clutching the beam he was on like it was a bucking bull he was about to ride.
'Yeah,' Curry laughed. 'True love. You can see it on the tape.'
'What tape?' I asked.
'The one of him beating her head in.'
CHAPTER 48
The way Curry told it, Birk had wanted his wife dead from the outset. He didn't love her. He hated the way she spent his money on paintings that made no sense to him, sculptures that looked like scrap. Vases and rugs he could have bought for a tenth of the price. Like many rich men, he was tight with a dollar. He might spend thousands on a Rolex, millions on a private jet, but he begrudged the expenses Joyce piled up.
'Even this home she's in now is peanuts compared to what she used to spend, right, Simon?' Curry sneered.
'He's making it up,' Birk insisted. 'He's trying to save his own neck.'
'You had your chance,' I told him. 'Let Curry talk.'
Curry told us Birk had come up with the idea after seeing a news report on a fraudulent home invasion in Connecticut. He approached Curry with the plan, went over all the security systems with him, lined up buyers for the artwork in Switzerland, Japan and Russia.
'The inside camera, the one in the foyer, was supposed to be disconnected,' Curry said. 'But I needed insurance, in case Simon tried to pin it on me. I knew he wouldn't hold up if the police brought any heat on him. So I kept it rolling, and it's a fucking beauty. Nice crisp images of Simon taking a tire iron to his beloved wife. And you know what else? Belkin was supposed to do it. I was going to break a couple of Simon's bones and Chuck was going to do his wife. The story would be she resisted, kicked him in the nuts or something, and he lost it on her. But Simon insisted on doing it himself. Didn't you, boss? He took the tire iron and looked her right in the eye. Then whack, whack, whack. Six, seven times in the head. She only saw the first one coming, but what an image to take to your grave. Your own husband doing you in, in the home you made together.'
'How did she survive?'
'We thought she was dead. Christ, you could see through her skull right to her brain. And we were running out of time. We had to get Simon cleaned up-he was covered in blood-and we still had to get all the shit out to the van. We were all surprised she made it. The wonders of modern medicine. Personally, I think she would have been better off dead, because she's got no life now. But in her own way, she contributed. As long as I have that recording-and I have plenty of copies-I have a job for life. Simon can't fire me, kill me or say anything to the cops.'
'Why worry about that?' I asked. 'You have Tom Barnett on your side.'
'I wasn't sure Tommy would go along with it. He was a pretty good cop once. Even that thing-the one that got me kicked off the force-he didn't have much to do with that. Lucky for us he needed money to help his kid get off dope. What they charge for rehab programs, he wasn't going to make as a cop.'
'You getting all this?' I said to Avi.
'Yes.' He looked deathly pale. I guess corporate law didn't prepare you for sordid tales like this one.
I paged Jenn on the walkie-talkie: 'Everything cool down there?'
'We're good,' she said. 'One car stopped here a minute ago but it moved on.'
