Fatal Reaction (21 page)

“Commonwealth Edison has informed us they are shutting off our power this Friday at five
P.M.
and working on the installation over the weekend,” reported Carl. He sounded sick.

“When will they turn it back on?”

“They say six
A.M.
Monday,” said Stephen.

“But that’s the day Takisawa is set to arrive here at Azor,” I protested. “I assume you’ve already asked them to push the work ahead by a day or two....”

Carl nodded miserably indicating that he had and to no avail.

“Then what about rescheduling Takisawa?” I asked, wondering how many things could go wrong before it could be safely concluded that the deal was jinxed.

“We’re having cash-flow problems as it is,” snapped Stephen. “We can’t afford any more delays.”

“How will the power shutdown affect the work in the labs?”

“Virology will be hardest hit, of course,” responded Carl. “The air handlers on the sixth floor completely exchange the atmosphere every six minutes. It will take several days to get that system back up and running after it’s been shut down. I’m also not sure how many of the experimental animals will have to be moved to other quarters.” I wondered where you’d find someone willing to take on a couple hundred rodents for the weekend but didn’t say anything.

“Hematology, of course, will just be happy for the day off.”

“What about the ZK-501 project?” I asked, thinking about all of Dave Borland’s work in the cold rooms and what Lou Remminger had said about crystals having to be grown under ideal conditions.

“I figure we’ll shut down the computers and bring in a diesel-powered refrigeration unit. Our tissue and reagent inventories, which aren’t quite so sensitive, will be fine if we just turn the temperature down in the cold rooms as far as it will go and tape the rooms shut. Theoretically they’ll hold below freezing until the juice comes back up on Monday morning.”

“And if they don’t get the power back up in time?” I asked.

“In that case I suggest we all show up bright and early with mops and flashlights,” replied Stephen, without the slightest trace of humor.

* * *

By the time I finally sat down at Danny’s desk I felt as though I’d already lived through a year’s worth of catastrophe and it wasn’t even nine o’clock. With a heavy heart I turned around and checked the fax machine for the transmissions that had arrived from Takisawa overnight.

Instead of slowing things down, the time difference between Chicago and Tokyo had a weirdly accelerating effect. Fifteen hours ahead of us, the Japanese business day ended as mine began. This meant I’d spend the day crafting our response to their most recent fax which I’d transmit to them at the end of the day. With the time difference they’d receive it just as they were arriving for work. Thus the faxes shot back and forth, communications hurtling forward much faster than if Takisawa were across the street.

I read through the various communications intently. There were requests for details about their proposed itinerary and politely worded inquiries as to when they would be receiving the financial information they had thus far requested. All the faxes were still personally addressed to Danny. Stephen had yet to settle on a strategy for breaking the news of Danny’s death to Takisawa.

The last fax in the pile was the shortest, but I still had to read it through twice. Its contents were so disturbing that they got me on my feet and propelled me down the hall to Stephen’s office. The door was closed, but I didn’t even bother to knock.

“We have to tell Takisawa about Danny,” I said.

“I’ll have to get back to you,” Stephen said quickly to whomever he was talking to on the phone. Once he had hung up the receiver I handed him the fax.

“It’s marked personal to Danny,” I told him.

Stephen read it quickly. It was a short personal note from Takisawa’s son-in-law, Hiroshi, saying that he would be traveling to New York on business before coming to Chicago and asking whether Danny might be free to meet him for dinner in New York later in the week. He would be staying at the St. Regis and had an extra ticket for
Sunset Boulevard.

“We have to tell them,” I said. “But more important we have to tell Hiroshi.”

“I don’t know,” said Stephen.

“What do you mean you don’t know? What if Hiroshi calls him here? Do you want him to hear that Danny’s dead from whoever happens to be covering the switchboard that day? Or maybe you’d prefer to instruct all the secretaries that if anyone with a Japanese accent happens to call to speak with Danny they’re to lie and say he’s in a meeting.”

“You’re right. I’ll write them.”

“I’ll draft something formal for you to send to Takisawa,” I said. “But I had something else in mind for Hiroshi.”

“What?”

“I think I should go to New York and tell him in person. I’m sure he’ll appreciate being told privately,” I said, thinking of the regrettable way Tom Galloway was dealt the news. “It’ll also give me the opportunity to ask for his continued support for the deal.”

“You mean you’re planning on blackmailing him,” said Stephen, vastly amused.

“Absolutely not,” I replied, genuinely shocked. “I am merely going to explain to him how much I admire the finely honed Japanese traditions of loyalty and honor.”

* * *

I didn’t speak to Elliott until the end of the day. He was being deposed in an insurance-fraud case and had spent the day being grilled by a phalanx of defense attorneys. I wanted to tell him about what I’d learned about Tom Galloway and Danny, but he had other news that he was eager to share and that he managed to get to first. It turned out that despite his being otherwise occupied, someone from his office had managed to track down the tape from the surveillance camera in Danny’s building. He suggested that we get together to have a look at it.

We agreed to meet at my office downtown at seven. When I hung up the phone I called Cheryl and asked her to please make sure that she set up a TV and a VCR in my office before she left. Driving back to the city I felt guilty. There was a mountain of work sitting on my desk in Oak Brook and I was leaving it undone in order to spend time with Elliott Abelman.

Back at Callahan Ross I stopped in the ladies’ room long enough to brush my hair and put on fresh lipstick. As I pulled the pins out of my French twist I looked at myself in the mirror. Never quite beautiful under even the best of circumstances, today the face that looked back at me was tired and preoccupied. I wondered what Elliott saw in it that attracted him.

I knew what my mother would have said; I could even imagine her tone of voice: It wasn’t my face he was interested in—it was my money. Having the Millholland family name was like wearing a bankbook around your neck. No one could look at you without attempting to calculate your net worth. Growing up I’d endured endless sermons on the subject of what men were really after. Girls with my kind of background were taught to protect their inheritances as assiduously as maidens in other centuries safeguarded their virginity.

Elliott arrived right on time, the videotape tucked under his arm like a box of chocolates. It had started snowing and the dark wool of his topcoat was dotted with melted flakes. As we walked back toward my office I asked him how his testimony had gone and he just rolled his eyes. Back in my office I took his coat and waved him into the same seat Tom Galloway had occupied that morning. Not wanting to change my mind, I immediately plunged into an account of Galloway’s relationship with Danny.

“I was wondering what the story was behind the cup you sent over,” he replied. “You’ve got to admit he’s got one hell of a motive. He’s gunning for a partnership, he’s married with little kids, and his father-in-law is up for reelection. If he was the one in the apartment he wouldn’t want to be anywhere near Danny when the paramedics showed up.”

“He says Danny was alive when he left him.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a picture of this guy, would you?”

I rooted through my desk drawers until I found a copy of the firm directory, which was known around the office as the face book. In addition to names and phone numbers it also contained head shots of every attorney at the firm. Callahan Ross had gotten so big and had offices in so many cities that I’d had to use the face book more than once just to make sure I’d know who was on my side when I walked into a meeting.

“He’s a good-looking son of a bitch, I’ll give you that much,” mused Elliott, studying the picture. “That’s probably why she married him, don’t you think? Women are always suckers for looks.”

“And men aren’t?” I countered, trying to pretend he wasn’t talking about Stephen.

“He sure matches the description of the guy who was seen with Danny at Kamehachi. Do you mind if I borrow this long enough to have some copies made?”

“Keep it. I’ll get another.”

“We’ll have to see if we can get Joe to find out if his footprints match.”

“You can’t tell Joe.”

“Why not?”

“Because what Tom told me about his relationship with Danny is protected by attorney-client privilege. What I just told you is off the record.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. This guy is lying to his wife, he’s lying to his partners, and you’re worried about giving your word?”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

Elliott Abelman stared at the ceiling as if seeking divine guidance. It didn’t matter. We both knew I was right.

“Let’s take a look at the tape and see if it puts him in the building around the time of death,” he suggested. “With any luck we’ll spot our friend leaving the building. That way we can go to Joe without sullying your reputation.”

Elliott handed me the tape and I slipped it into the machine. The film was taken by a fixed-location camera mounted on the ceiling of the lobby and aimed at the front door of the building. It captured almost the entire area of the lobby with the elevator doors in the extreme left of the picture. There was no furniture, only a meaningless abstraction in a frame hung above a pillar-style ashtray on the wall opposite the elevators and a large ficus tree on either side of the doors which I strongly suspected of being artificial. The images were grainy and in black and white. A digital readout of the time appeared in the lower right-hand corner of the picture.

Elliott adjusted the tracking and explained that the tapes were automatically changed every six hours. The one we were about to see conveniently spanned the hours between eight
A.M.
and two
P.M.
the Sunday that Danny died. We watched the tape at regular speed for a minute or two, but it was so tedious that Elliott reached for the fast-forward button. Even speeded up it was like watching paint dry. People went in. People went out. But mostly the lobby stayed empty. At six minutes after nine a man in spandex shorts and a tank top struggled to get his bicycle through the door. At nine forty-three a woman in jeans and a T-shirt dropped an apple out of her grocery bag without noticing, and it lay untouched until a man in coveralls who looked like a building engineer picked it up, rubbed it on his sleeve, and took a bite as he walked out of the picture.

Tom Galloway stepped out of the elevator at ten twenty-six, well within the window of time that the medical examiner had given during which death had occurred. I reached across Elliott’s lap and pushed the button to slow down the tape. In the picture Tom was dressed in chinos and a denim shirt. He wore a sweatshirt draped over his shoulders with the sleeves tied loosely across his chest. His hair looked wet and freshly combed, but there was nothing in his demeanor that spoke of any urgency or agitation. Indeed, his body language had seemed much more tense this morning when I’d found him waiting for me in the hallway outside my office door.

Elliott pushed the rewind button and we watched Tom walk backward across the lobby and back into the elevator. Then we watched the section of the tape again in slow motion but noticed nothing new. I shook my head.

“Maybe Tom left by the front door and then came back later,” I offered.

“Let’s see who else comes to pay a call,” said Elliott, pushing the fast-forward button. An elegantly dressed woman with a mane of blond hair walked into the lobby at ten thirty-six, consulted a piece of paper in her pocket and left again, presumably having come to the wrong address. Two men arrived a couple of minutes later, one carrying a box from Dunkin’ Donuts and the other a copy of the Sunday paper. While they waited for the elevator I could read the banner headline announcing Sarrek’s sixty-three victims.

At ten fifty-one a large bald-headed black man with arms like a stevedore came in followed immediately by a tall woman in a bandana and sunglasses. They were immediately followed by a family with two toddlers who had to practically wrestle their double stroller through the door. It looked like the husband and wife were yelling at each other and both children were crying. We fast-forwarded through another twenty minutes of vacant lobby. I found myself wondering why I was doing this.

Then suddenly Elliott hit the pause button. “There!” he exclaimed. “This must be who the neighbor saw.”

He hit the slow-motion button and we watched a figure in a gray Armani raincoat with a baseball hat pulled low over his face walk quickly through the lobby. The time in the lower right-hand corner of our screen read eleven twenty-seven. On one shoulder was slung an athletic bag, which looked as though it was filled to near bursting. The tape was black and white, but even so the bag was distinctive—two colors, one dark and one light, dappled in what looked like a zebra pattern. In the other hand, the person carried a Marshall Field’s shopping bag, large but apparently not heavy. Whether by accident or design, he kept his head down and turned away from the camera as he walked quickly through the lobby and disappeared out the door and into the street.

CHAPTER 17

Elliott rewound the tape and we looked at it again. I wish I could say we saw something new. But every time we viewed the tape, which we did dozens of times— backward, forward, in slow motion, and in freeze-frame—every time it was exactly the same. The figure of a man wearing Danny’s raincoat and a baseball cap, with an athletic bag slung over one arm, darted quickly through the lobby and out into the street....