Last Dark Place

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Left?”

  “He’ll be back tomorrow,” said Richie. “Comes every day he’s in town. Brings ’em stuff. Sees them an hour maybe. Looks none too happy coming in. Nice smile going out. You know how it is with parents.”

  Wayne didn’t know how it was. He had always gotten along well with his parents.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Yeah,” said Richie. “Like I said. Usually in the morning. You want to come back in the morning and shoot him; I suggest around nine on the way in or ten on his way out. Don’t forget to bring your camera.”

  “Why?”

  “To shoot him.”

  “I’ve got a gun.”

  “Right. Right. My mistake. Come back tomorrow or leave your gun with me and I’ll shoot him.”

  Richie shook his head.

  “No,” said Wayne. “I’ll come back and do it myself.”

  Hanrahan and O’Neil found Hugh Morton at his duplex home two blocks from Lake Michigan in the Lincoln Park area. The building was squeezed tight between two apartment buildings. The yellow bricks of the 1950s two-family building had recently been sandblasted. The small patch of grass was surrounded by a knee-high black painted wrought-iron fence in front of a small well-trimmed front lawn.

  Hanrahan had pushed the bell. A woman had answered. She was the color of light coffee, about forty, hair pulled tightly back. She was a beauty dressed in a black business suit touched off by pearl earrings and a pearl necklace.

  “Is Detective Morton home?” asked Hanrahan.

  She pursed her full lips, looked at the two men and clearly pegged them for cops.

  “I think he’d like to be alone with his son right now. He’s heading over to the hospital to be with his wife in a few minutes,” she said, not standing back for them to enter.

  “And you are …?” asked O’Neil.

  “Denise’s sister,” she said.

  “Detective Morton’s wife is Denise?” asked Hanrahan.

  She didn’t answer, though both detectives sensed that she could have come back with something sharp and very sarcastic.

  “She is,” the woman said. “Are you handling the case?”

  “We are,” said Bill. “We’d like a word with Detective Morton. Please. Just ask him if he’ll see us. If he says ‘no,’ we’ll go away.”

  She considered the request, looked down and then said, “Wait here.”

  When she was gone, the door closed, O’Neil said, “We’ll go away?”

  “Yeah,” said Hanrahan.

  “We’ve got a fucking murder investigation going on here,” said O’Neil. “Kearney’s scratching at our backs with dirty nails and you say ‘we’ll go away.’”

  “And we will,” said Bill.

  “To the hospital to talk to the victim, right?”

  “We’ll see,” said Hanrahan.

  The door opened again. Hugh Morton stood there, tall, blue slacks, blue shirt, and blood-red tie.

  “Hanrahan, right?” he said evenly.

  “Right. This is Sean O’Neil.”

  No handshakes. A nod from Morton.

  “It’s our case,” said Hanrahan.

  “It’s my wife,” Morton replied. “My child.”

  “I know …,” Hanrahan said.

  “Not really,” said Morton. “You don’t really know. Take out your pad. I’ll give you what I have.”

  Hanrahan pulled out his pad. A man with a briefcase walked by on the sidewalk and looked up at the three men.

  Morton’s eyes followed the man.

  “Three of them,” he said. “All white. In their twenties. One had a shaved head, goatee, wore a black T-shirt, something shiny, jeans, washed out, belt with a buckle shaped like a bird’s head. The second was skinny, white shirt with a guy carrying a guitar on it, image faded. Second guy had an earring, right ear, plain. Third guy was short, walked with a swagger, mouth open, looked retarded. Shirt orange with a blue sword on it. None of them used names. She didn’t see their car. They came up from behind her and pushed her between two cars.”

  Hanrahan quickly took notes.

  “Now,” said Morton, “that’s what she saw. I didn’t ask her how she felt, how many times, or … If you have any other questions for her, tell them to me and I’ll ask her.”

  “We’ll have to—,” O’Neil began but Hanrahan put out a hand to stop him.

  “Okay,” Bill said to Morton.

  “Anything else?” asked Morton.

  “Anything we can do?” asked Hanrahan.

  “Yes,” said Morton. “Find them before I do because if I find them first, it’s going to be messy.”

  “Won’t help to do that,” said Bill.

  “Yes, it will,” said Morton. “It’ll help a lot and you know it. I’ve got to go now.”

  Morton closed the door.

  “If we move real slow on this,” O’Neil said as they moved back toward their car, “Morton will close it out for us and save Cook County the cost of a trial and the State of Illinois the expense of keeping the bastards locked up for the rest of their lives.”

  “One problem with that,” said Bill, opening the car door on the driver’s side.

  “Yeah?”

  “That ends it for Morton,” Bill said. “He’ll go down and out.”

  “His choice,” said O’Neil, getting into the car.

  “Not if we find the bastards first,” said Hanrahan.

  Lieberman sat across from his daughter Lisa in the back booth of the T&L deli, the one near the restrooms, the one he sat in facing the door to the street whenever he could get it. If he called ahead, his brother Maish reserved it for him. He had called ahead.

  Lisa sat silently, coffee cup in both hands, looking at the warm brown liquid. She was pretty, a little too thin, her straight black hair long and brushed to catch the light. She wasn’t quite as pretty as her mother. Lisa had just a hint of the Lieberman stock that gave her face a slight sadness even when she was happy, though Lieberman could remember few times when his daughter was truly happy.

  There were five customers in the T&L and only four alter cockers at the table near the window. The alter cockers were debating the future of mankind, having just disposed of the heady issue of whether Hank Greenberg or Sandy Koufax was the greatest Jewish baseball player who ever lived. The vote had been split with Howie Chen wavering till the last second and voting for Koufax, to which Herschel Rosen, a Greenberg worshiper, had said, “Traitor. You shouldn’t get a vote. Name even one, even one Chinese baseball player.”

  “Cy Yung,” said Howie with a straight face.

  Louis Roth sputtered with laughter, his thick glasses flying from his nose. Morris Hurwitz reached out and grabbed them before they hit the table.

  “Lieberman,” Rosen called. “You make the call. The greatest Jewish baseball player.”

  “Rod Carew,” said Lieberman.

  “He was a convert,” Rosen said with mock disgust. “He was a shvartze.”

  “A Jew is a Jew,” said Hurwitz, the psychologist.

  “Genetics comes into this equation,” said Rosen.

  “I thought we were talking religion?” said Roth.

  “I thought we were talking baseball,” countered Rosen.

  “You are hopeless, all hopeless,” said Roth. “If I didn’t like the Nova lox here, I’d let you all try to make it through life on your own. You going to Ida Katzman’s funeral?”

  “I’m going,” said Lieberman.

  “Where’s Irish?” asked Rosen. “I thought you were joined at the hip. Who was the surgeon who performed the miracle of separation? I want to see him with my wife.”

  “The surgeon was a woman,” said Abe.

  “Then I’m not taking any chances,” said Rosen.

  And then the alter cockers turned their attention to saving the world.

  “Suicide bombers,” Roth declared.

  “Again with suicide bombers?” asked Rosen.

  “I thought we agreed to call them homicide bombers,” s
aid Howie.

  “Semantics is not the issue,” said Hurwitz. “We need solutions, not more questions.”

  “Who asked a question?” said Roth, pointing to his chest.

  “I’m in favor of building the wall,” said Rosen.

  “Second the motion,” said Roth, agreeing with Rosen one of the few times in his life. “Lieberman the cop, what do you think?”

  “Make the Palestinians rich and they’ll stop bombing.”

  “And how do you propose making them rich?” asked Roth.

  “Make the Saudis give them billions, build factories, start industries,” said Lieberman.

  “They don’t want money,” said Howie Chen. “They want Israel to go away.”

  Lieberman shrugged and slowly drank his coffee and forced himself to take small bites of his omelet filled with mushrooms and done on the soft side the way he tolerated them. The alter cockers kept up the discussion.

  “So?” Lieberman asked his daughter, sneaking a peek at his watch.

  “So?” Lisa answered, looking up at him.

  “Your husband’s not coming to the bar mitzvah?”

  “No,” she said. “I … I can’t look at him.”

  Lieberman said nothing, took a very small forkful of omelet and judged that he had half an omelet left to eat. A slice of cantaloupe sat untouched on his plate.

  “You want to know why?” she said, her eyes meeting his in a challenge he was sure would lay guilt on the table.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Guilt,” she said.

  “What’s he guilty of?” asked Lieberman.

  “Nothing. I’m guilty,” she said. “He forgave me for that, that business with the intern last year.”

  Lieberman caught himself before he could make a comment on the word business. It would not do to open that door.

  “I see it in his eyes,” she said. “His forgiving eyes, his gentle brown eyes, his knowing smile. I can’t live being forgiven, constantly forgiven.”

  Lieberman nodded and said, “You want him to hit you? Yell?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But it’s not in him. I need closure. He won’t give it to me. He can’t give it to me.”

  “It’s nuc-lear” said Hurwitz at the alter cocker table. “Not nucular.”

  “Jimmy Carter was wrong?” said Roth.

  “Bush was wrong?” added Rosen.

  “Wrong is wrong,” Hurwitz insisted. “You want to save the world, you start by pronouncing words correctly, particularly important words. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Maish waddled up to Abe and Lisa’s table and freshened their coffee. He touched his niece’s cheek and she touched her uncle’s stubby hand.

  “You going to the funeral, Maish?” asked Lieberman.

  “I’ll be there.”

  “No trouble?” asked Abe.

  Maish shrugged and held up the coffeepot. Since Maish’s son David had been murdered a few years earlier, he had taken to battle with God and Rabbi Wass whenever the opportunity presented itself. It wasn’t that he had become an atheist. An atheist has no one to do battle with over the injustice of life. Maish believed in God. He just didn’t like Him very much anymore.

  “No trouble,” agreed Maish, but Abe wasn’t sure.

  He watched his brother carry the pot over to the alter cocker table where Rosen asked him, “Who was more important, Einstein or FDR?”

  Abe didn’t hear the answer. Lisa was speaking. He missed the first part of what she was saying but caught “… I can’t live with it.”

  “You can’t?”

  “Unless he changes,” she said softly.

  “Changes?”

  “Talk to him,” Lisa said, looking away. “He’ll listen to you. He likes you. He respects you.”

  All three of which, Abe was sure, Lisa did not feel about her relationship with her father.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Abe said. “I’ll advise marriage counseling.”

  “It won’t work,” she said.

  “Then doormats anonymous,” said Abe.

  “You always think being funny will get you out of responsibility,” she said with a disgust with which Abe was quite familiar.

  “I never think being funny will get me out of responsibility,” he said. “My hope is that seeing the possibility will keep me from depression.”

  “Will you do it?” she asked, an ultimatum more than a request. “You owe that to me.”

  Lieberman wasn’t sure why he owed it to his daughter, but he said, “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight,” he said. “I’ll call him.”

  “He’s home at seven Pacific time,” she said. “He never stops for a drink, picks up women, sneaks off to a movie. Seven.”

  “I’ll call him,” Lieberman said, finishing his omelet. “You’re going to be here for Barry’s bar mitzvah?”

  “Abe,” she said, leaning forward. “Barry is my son. Of course I’ll be here.”

  Abe said nothing, nothing about the times she had not been there for her children, nothing about the fact that she had turned them over to Abe and Bess to raise. There was nothing to say that would make the situation better.

  “And the speech?” Abe asked.

  “I don’t like it,” she said. “But I’ll be quiet. He’s already learned it.”

  “What would you like him to say?”

  “I don’t know,” Lisa said with a sigh. “The world is … I don’t know.”

  “You done?” he asked. “I mean with your coffee?”

  Lisa nodded, wiped her mouth with her napkin and stood up.

  On Devon in front of the T&L, Abe fished his car keys out of his pants pocket. The door of the deli opened behind him and he turned.

  Howie Chen, short, heavy, large dark sacs under his eyes that had been there as long as Lieberman had known him, said, “A word?”

  “Sure.”

  Howie looked at Lisa, who said, “I’ll meet you at the car.”

  When she was just out of earshot, Howie said, “I heard about the death of David Sen. I know his grandfather, Chang, a good man.”

  Abe watched a black-coated and dark-bearded Orthodox Jew in a black hat walk by avoiding meeting their eyes.

  “Victor tells me you’re working on it,” Howie went on.

  “There’s trouble,” said Abe. “I’m doing what I can to see there’s as little as possible.”

  Howie shook his head in understanding.

  “Twin Dragons,” said Howie. “My nephew Raymond is one of them, my sister Anna’s youngest boy. She says they’re talking about war with the Puerto Ricans. Raymond has a … what should I call it, a loyalty, almost like a religion. The Twin Dragons mean everything to him. I don’t want him to be a martyr in a stupid war.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” said Lieberman.

  “Honor is not overrated,” said Howie, “but it is often misplaced.”

  “You get that in a fortune cookie?”

  Howie smiled. Abe did the same. Abe’s smile was much smaller.

  “May I make a suggestion?” asked Howie.

  “Make it.”

  “You might want to seek Mr. Woo’s advice.”

  “I may,” Abe agreed, and the two men departed, Abe for a tense drive to pick up Bess for the funeral, Howie to return to his seat at the alter cocker table where the old men were heatedly solving the problems of the world, which, Howie Chen thought, was much easier than stopping a gang war.

  Cowboy Faubus stood up at the bar of Vernon’s Tap in Yuma. The music was country, loud, Waylon Jennings. There was also a baseball game on the television over the bar. The sound was off. The Diamondbacks were ahead of the Red Sox 3-1 in the sixth. Waylon Jennings and the score of the game were all right with the Cowboy, whose hat lay on the bar.

  He brushed back his long hair, emptied his beer glass, and said, “It’s the fingers.”

  He demonstrated what he meant, holding the glass in front of the man on the stool next to him. There were two reas
ons to hold it close: the dim light of the bar, and the fact that the man was about three drinks ahead of the Cowboy.

  “Split finger like so. Knuckler like so. Trick is to hide it from the batter.”

  The man on the stool nodded “yes” as if he understood what the hell the Cowboy was talking about.

  “And the fastball and slider,” said Faubus. “Subtle difference, you know? See?”

  “Uh-huh,” said the man on the stool.

  The Cowboy sighed in frustration.

  “If I had a ball, I could show you exactly.”

  He could show the man, show the world, how to hold a baseball for every pitch, including the screwball. He used to have a great screwball, spinning the ball out instead of in. Great pitch. Short career. Tears the hell out of your shoulder.

  The telephone behind the bar rang.

  “Martinez is the best damn pitcher ever,” the drunk on the stool said. “Ever.”

  The phone rang again. Larry the bartender picked it up.

  “You know what you know?” asked Faubus. “You know? You don’t know shit? Martinez is damn good but—”

  “Cowboy,” said Larry. “For you.”

  He handed the phone over to Faubus.

  “Yeah.”

  “How did it go?” asked the caller.

  “Like we planned,” Faubus said. “Perfect. Went down just as planned. You should have seen me. Wish you could have. Threw the cop curves he didn’t even see coming.”

  “Thanks,” said the caller.

  “You’d do it for me,” said the Cowboy.

  “I would.”

  “You take care of yourself,” said Faubus, and the caller hung up. So did Cowboy, who turned back to the drunk. “Where was I?”

  “Screwball,” said the drunk.

  “She’s a cop’s wife.”

  Easy Dan spoke with a large chocolate-chip cookie in one hand and his eyes on the television set in Blue’s living room.

  “Look,” Easy Dan said, pointing his cookie toward the screen.

  Blue Berg had been sitting in his grandmother’s chair, the one with faded pink flowers on silky green material. His right leg had been draped over one of the arms and he had been staring at the wall, biting a knuckle and feeling trapped.

  He looked, but he didn’t care. He didn’t listen to the talking head of a blond woman with too-red lips and amazing white teeth being serious about what Blue, Easy Dan, and Comedy had done to the woman the night before.