Lieberman's Law

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “He’s feeling very Euripides today,” said Lieberman, hearing the door upstairs open and Melisa shout, “Daddy!” in happy surprise.

  “Avrum,” Bess said, leaning toward her husband and taking his hand. “Are the children in real danger?”

  “I’ll see to it that they’re not,” said Lieberman.

  Bess shook her head.

  “So,” he said. “What are you going to wear for Ted Koppel?”

  “If they call me back, and if I do it,” she said. “Very businesslike. Gray suit.”

  “With the pearls,” said Lieberman.

  “With the pearls,” Bess said with her first smile of the day, albeit a small one. And once again, the phone rang.

  “I’ll get it,” said Lieberman. “I’m expecting.” He picked up the phone.

  “Por supuesto,” he said. “Quisas. Pero. … Deme cinco secundos.”

  Lieberman put down the phone and moved across the living room to the front door. The Asian in the car was still there. He walked past Bess in the dining room holding up a hand asking her to be patient. He pushed open the kitchen door, and she heard him cross the room and open the back door. It closed almost immediately and when Lieberman returned he held a white envelope. He picked up the phone and said. “Si, yo lo tengo. Hasta luego. Yes, I’ll say a Jew prayer for Sammy Sosa.”

  Lieberman hung up the phone, looked at his wife and bit his lower lip.

  “Lieberman,” she started, and then above them Barry let out an enormous cackling laugh. Bess changed her mind about asking her husband what he was planning to do. All she cared about was that it resulted in her grandchildren and her husband being safe.

  “Don’t do anything foolish, Avrum,” she said.

  “No man alive can budge necessity,” Lieberman said. “You suppose a cheese and onion omelette from a woman who’s going to be on ‘Nightline’ might be beneath her?”

  “Sharp cheddar? Egg Beaters?”

  “Perfect,” he said, putting the envelope in his pocket.

  SEVEN

  “BIG PILE,” SAID LIEBERMAN, looking down at the photographs on his partner’s desk.

  Hanrahan nodded. They had already exchanged information and had cups of strong coffee, Nestor Briggs’s special brew, which required that the pots never be cleaned. Lieberman’s stomach hurt after the second sip.

  In the photographs, there were faces, puzzled faces, angry faces, faces Lieberman recognized, including his own. Lieberman didn’t like looking at pictures of himself. The man in the pictures and the man he saw in the mirror was not Abe Lieberman. It was Abe Lieberman’s grandfather. It was the silent, sad-looking man serving up his famous hot dogs with everything in the always packed hole-in-the-wall on Central Park in the heart of Jew Town.

  Lieberman shook his head, kept flipping through photos, and found Ibraham Said and Rene Catolino, who the camera was kind to. It took most of the hard edge from her face. And here was Eli Towser holding his arm in pain. And the muscular Israeli blond. And there were three young men he hadn’t noticed in the crowd. They were wearing berets and arm bands. And there were multiple pictures of the two people who had stood on the steps, the young woman and the young man. In some pictures she was tight jawed. In others she looked passionate. Lieberman gathered the photographs and put them in a large envelope along with a half-dozen movie stills and then made a phone call before they left in Lieberman’s car.

  On the way, Lieberman talked with Hanrahan about the threat from the Asian man.

  “The Koreans,” Hanrahan said. “Kim?”

  “It would seem so,” said Lieberman.

  “And you left one of them sitting in the car at your house?”

  Lieberman went straight up Clark till it turned into Chicago Avenue in Evanston and then kept going along the elevated train embankment on his left and then the business district leading toward downtown Evanston. He turned on Dempster and headed west.

  “We could scare the shit out of him,” Hanrahan suggested.

  “It wouldn’t work,” said Lieberman.

  “No,” Hanrahan agreed. “It wouldn’t work. Round the clock shift on the house, Bess and the kids.”

  “Think we can justify it on the basis of an Asian man talking to my grandson and another Asian sitting in a car near my house? Kearney would lose his job.”

  “Volunteers,” said Hanrahan. “Off duties. I could set it up.”

  “No,” said Lieberman. “It’s got to end. I’m taking care of it.”

  “Meanwhile …?”

  “I’ve got someone watching the guy in the car,” said Lieberman crossing McCormick into Skokie. “If he moves toward the house or the kids or Bess, he’ll have a very big surprise. But I think he’s parked out there to scare us off the Kim case.”

  “They don’t understand, do they?” said Hanrahan with a shake of his head.

  “No,” said Lieberman, checking his car clock as he pulled into the small strip mall parking lot across from Temple Mir Shavot. “Bess is going to be on ‘Nightline’ tonight, maybe. About …”

  Lieberman looked at the bank that had been converted less than a year ago into a temple and desecrated the day before. Hanrahan also looked at the temple building. A Skokie police car was parked in front of the door with two uniformed cops inside.

  “We, Iris and me, are going to have both a Unitarian and a Chinese wedding,” said Hanrahan, leading his partner through a door between a hardware store and a baseball trading card shop.

  “Mazel Tov,” said Lieberman, as they moved up the stairs.

  “If they have best men in Chinese weddings,” said Hanrahan. “Would you …?”

  “I would take great umbrage if you asked anyone else,” said Lieberman.

  Hanrahan knocked at the door at the top of the steps. Anne Crawfield Ready opened the door, smiled politely, and backed away so the two men could enter. Leo Benishay was standing in the middle of the room. The policemen shook hands.

  “You know Mrs. Ready has a collection of ceramic frogs in that cabinet,” said Benishay. “Fascinating. And her husband, look at those photographs, professional. But those frogs.” Leo Benishay was a con man from way back.

  Mrs. Ready, smiling proudly, went to the cabinet in the corner and opened it, revealing shelves of ceramic, porcelain, and other frogs in neat lines. She stood back so the two policemen who had just come in could admire her collection.

  On the bottom shelf were a camera and a bag.

  “Frogs are mine,” she said. “Camera was Carl’s. You can touch that but please don’t touch any of the frogs. I’ll tell you about any ones that interest you.”

  “The tiny one, here on top, size of a pea,” said Lieberman with genuine interest.

  “Probably my most valuable,” Mrs. Ready said beaming. “Perfect scale, perfect detail, Chinese, about two hundred years old, probably made for a member of the ruling class, possibly even an emperor or someone in his family. I’ve seen ones like it, but not as good, priced at seven hundred dollars in catalogs. But I’d never sell any of them.” She reached out and touched one of the larger frogs. Most of them were standard green or gray-green, a few were bright yellow or even white, and some had spots.

  “What got you into this?” Hanrahan said.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Mrs. Ready said with a smile and a shake of the head to indicate this great mystery. “I think my husband gave me one once and I’ve picked them up ever since at garage sales, flea markets. Once in a while, my nephew from Salt Lake City will bring me one when he comes to Chicago on business.”

  “Magnificent collection.” Lieberman said, as she closed the cabinet door gently and turned the key in the lock.

  “Magnificent,” Leo Benishay concurred with an appreciative smile.

  “Could we show you some photographs, ma’am?” asked Hanrahan, looking for permission at Benishay, who nodded.

  Lieberman opened the brown nine-by-twelve envelope he was carrying and handed the photographs to Mrs. Ready who sat in her c
hair at the window.

  The sun was bright. There were no lights on in the small apartment.

  “Just tell us if you recognize anyone?” Benishay said. “Please take your time.”

  “All right,” said Mrs. Ready, clearly enjoying the attention being given her by three men. She went through them slowly.

  “This one is you,” she said, pointing to a photograph of Lieberman and looking up at him.

  “Just skip the pictures of Detective Lieberman,” said Benishay.

  Anne Ready nodded and kept looking.

  “This one is Winona Ryder, the actress,” said Mrs. Ready looking at one of the photographs Lieberman had put in with the ones taken at the rally. The photo showed the actress in front of a crowd. She was wearing jeans and a. flannel shirt. “She was wonderful in Little Women, but in Dracula … Once a month my daughter-in-law comes in from Batavia and takes me shopping and the movies.”

  The three policemen nodded as she returned to the pack of photographs correctly identifying, in turn, Debra Winger, Benazir Bhutto, and Sally Ride.

  “This one,” she said, holding up the photo so the policemen could all see. “She was the girl in the doorway across the street the other night.”

  “You’re sure?” asked Benishay.

  “Positive, and here’s another picture of her. Pretty girl, but so serious. What’s that in her hand?”

  “A bullhorn,” said Lieberman.

  Anne Ready nodded knowingly.

  “Could we count on you to identify her in person?” said Benishay. “And, possibly, if it comes to it, to testify before a grand jury and possibly at a trial?”

  “Like on television?” she asked with obvious excitement. “Like the O. J. Simpson trial?”

  “Like that,” said Benishay, “but probably not on television.”

  “I’d be happy to sit in a chair and take the oath,” she said.

  “And identify this young woman as the one you saw in the doorway?” asked Benishay.

  “I’ve already said that I would do so,” said Anne Ready. “Do you want me to bring my own pictures of her?”

  The three policeman looked at the woman.

  “I take pictures of people from my window,” she explained. “With Carl’s camera. Carl didn’t like to take people. I collect people. I’ve got some of you,” she said looking at Lieberman. “You and a pretty younger woman coming out of services on Friday nights. The Saturday morning ones are best but you never go on Saturdays.”

  “My wife, Bess,” said Lieberman. “The younger woman.”

  “Ah,” said Anne Ready, moving to the kitchen and coming back with a thick box she could barely carry. She placed it on the table and sat with a sigh of relief. The box was heavy.

  She opened the box and looked through the photos, front to back, saying as she searched, “In respect for Carl’s art, I don’t put them up. Besides, I’ve got my frogs. Here, here they are, three of them.” Mrs. Ready handed the photographs to Lieberman who looked through them and handed them to the other detectives. The girl was quite clear if a bit grainy. The one shot of the bald man did not show his face. He was more of a blur and he seemed to be carrying something large under his arm.

  “Grain, I know,” said Mrs. Ready, watching the detective’s face. “I used the telephoto with Tri-X and had them develop it for one thousand ASA, which is pushing it, but you can see, she’s right under the light, and you see the one where she looks like she’s looking right up at me?”

  “I see,” said Leo Benishay.

  “The one with the man in it is blurry because he was moving fast out of the temple. I had to shoot pretty wide open at two-point-eight and a little slow at one-fiftieth. They’re dated on the back,” said Mrs. Ready. “Date and time just like all my photographs. I’ve got a log for my frogs too. Where I got them, when, how much I paid, or if they were gifts.”

  “Can we keep these photographs of the woman?” asked Benishay.

  “You can have them,” said Mrs. Ready, “as long as you give me money for the cost of printing them again.”

  Lieberman was out first with the cash.

  “Too much, said Anne Ready taking the ten-dollar bill.

  “Make an extra print of each and, if there’s change, you’ll give it to me when we come back,” said Lieberman. “And we may still need you to testify.”

  “And show my photographs at a trial?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Hanrahan.

  “My Carl would be so proud, or jealous, or both,” she said. “He was a complicated man.”

  Lieberman gathered the photographs and put them in the envelope with the ones he had brought.

  “We’ll get back to you soon, Mrs. Ready,” said Leo Benishay taking her hand.

  “Whenever you like,” she said.

  “You have a beautiful collection,” said Hanrahan.

  “Beautiful,” added Lieberman.

  “Frogs are my passion,” Anne Crawfield Ready said, placing her hands on her heart to calm its beating.

  And then the policemen were gone. She locked the door and moved to the window. The policeman who had come first was heading around the building. She couldn’t see the other two. She moved to the other window and watched the policeman from Skokie go over to the packed police car and say something to the two men inside who looked over at her window. She waved to them. One of them waved back.

  She got Carl’s camera and hurried to her other window. She had daytime low ASA color film in it now.

  At the other window, the two policemen from Chicago did not appear. There were very few conclusions to draw from this. One was that they were still standing in the hall or on the stairs, but she had heard them all go down. The other was that they had either stopped at Ace Camera Shop or the store where all the children went to buy comic books and cards with pictures of baseball players. The usual number of bicycles were parked in front of the baseball card shop even though it would soon be dark. She had so many photographs of these children that she had not yet filed all of them though she had dated them.

  Anne Crawfield Ready stood for a long time looking out her front window. Finally, after about fifteen minutes the two policemen appeared in the parking lot.

  Curiosity got the best of Anne Crawfield Ready. She slipped on her shoes, opened her door and slowly made her way down the stairs, holding the railing. When she stepped out onto the narrow sidewalk of the small mall, she opened the door of the photo shop. Mr. Shenkman said that two men had not just left his shop. The story was different in the trading card store.

  There was a lull in the frenzy of small boys in baseball hats. Mrs. Ready always knew when it was baseball season. The shop was almost always crowded.

  Mrs. Gantz stood behind the counter, an overweight woman of about sixty, wearing a satin-like Cubs jacket with a Cubs cap on her head. Mrs. Gantz was supposedly the daughter of a famous baseball player from a long time ago. Mr. Shenkman had told her this.

  When Mrs. Gantz saw Anne Crawfield Ready, she interrupted her conversation with an adamant twelve-year-old to come out from behind the counter and greet her.

  “Mrs. Ready,” she said. “I think this is your first time in the shop since I moved in and you brought me the plate of cookies.”

  Anne Crawfield Ready nodded and watched the boys arguing, trading, looking. “Did two men just leave here?”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Gantz. “Big one and a little Jewish one.

  “They bought something?” asked Mrs. Ready.

  Mrs. Gantz told her neighbor what they had bought. Mrs. Ready shook her head and said, “I thought collecting delicate frogs was almost unique, but …”

  “We get all kinds,” said Mrs. Gantz. “And you wouldn’t believe what grown men will pay for a top grade card. I sold a Ron Santo yesterday for fifteen dollars.”

  Mrs. Ready didn’t know what a Ron Santo was.

  The weapons were cleaned, loaded, ready. What he needed was a shave and some help. There weren’t many he could count on, though
there were a few he could push, prod, intimidate, shame. He would use them all. He would use the one called Berk who strutted and shaved his head. He would use Berk as Berk planned to use him. In their few meetings, they had looked at each other with hatred and distrust, but they had struck a bargain from which there would be no retreat.

  He had a book on the table in front of him. The book was not on his mind. The book was about the smallest known particles of matter. He had thought greatly about this. Each time the tools of science discovered an even smaller particle of matter or the movement of what appeared to be matter, a new scientist appeared with a new theory of the universe, how it operates, what it means. Meaning was back alongside Big Bangs and infinity as a time-space continuum. There were always alternative theories, but the one that emerged was the one whose wagon held the most room for the most scientists.

  Then the philosophers, to whom no one listened, gave their explanations. At the same time, the priests, the gurus, the evangelists, came up with their own explanations and many listened and some believed, afraid that some massive technological machine working with some computer would confound what was thought of as the ordered universe.

  Once he had cared about all this. Once he had feverishly sought information to present on a radioactive plate to be sifted through for answers the way an ancient or an oracle might sift through beads or the leaves of tea. Now, he had but one goal. It was simple. It was personal. It had no meaning in the total history of the universe, but he did not care.

  Life, whatever it was, was precious. Life, whatever it was, did not endure for individuals in a species. Life was filled with fear and hate and at any moment it could be taken away meaninglessly. Small, ridiculous creatures fighting over which one was best because of the color of their skin, the power of their superstitions, the history of their people.

  He had concluded long ago that there was no sin. There were fools on earth, mostly fools, who wasted time and life attacking, hating, fearing.

  He had been labeled by birth and history. Why? It was the wrong question. A woman named June Singer had said that to ask the question, “What is the meaning of life?” is a waste of time. She was right. She suggested that a meaningful question was, “What is the meaning of my life?”