Lieberman's Law

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Priam eased the weapon back in his pocket.

  “There’s two of us, old man,” said Priam. “You fast enough to shoot both of us?”

  “You’ve seen too many junk movies,” said Lieberman. “I shoot you first and then I shoot Batman. Simple, fast. Believe me.”

  “I believe him, Priam,” said Batman.

  “Kill him,” Beach demanded.

  “Pick up your friend,” said Lieberman. “Go away and don’t come back tonight. I’ll be gone before tomorrow.”

  “You crazy or you got big balls,” said Priam, shaking his head.

  “Both,” said Lieberman. “Now try to be retentive about what just happened here, and I’ll go back to sitting alone on this bench and thinking about the meaning of good and evil.”

  “Re …?”

  “Retentive,” said Lieberman, the gun still pointed at Priam’s right eye. “It’s your homework for tonight. Look it up in a dictionary.”

  “I don’t need no dictionary,” said Priam not backing away. “My brother’s in college.”

  “Wish him my best,” said Lieberman.

  Beach groaned.

  Priam pointed at Lieberman. “You here tomorrow or any other night or we catch you on our streets at night,” he said, “you a dead, crazy old fart.”

  “I’ve got a lot on my mind,” said Lieberman with a sigh. “Just pick up your friend Beach and go away. If you’d like, I’ll count to five and shoot.”

  Priam shook his head and motioned to Batman, who moved to his side to help pick up the fallen Headhunter.

  “Remember what I told you, old man,” Priam said over his shoulder.

  “I am retentive,” said Lieberman, lowering his gun to his lap as the three boys slowly moved down the sidewalk and disappeared around the apartment building where not a single light had gone on when Beach had screamed.

  As the three had gone away, Lieberman had seen a movement between two of the cars parked on the side street. He kept his weapon in his lap and called out, “Charles?”

  Pig Sticker came out from between the two cars. His eyes followed the three boys down the street. He stood still till he was sure they were gone and then he headed toward Lieberman on the bench. The young man was big, very big, wearing a pea coat buttoned to the collar and a cap covering his shaven head. His hands were in his pockets.

  “You really a cop?”

  “I am really a cop,” said Lieberman.

  “You know my name.”

  “Bill Hanrahan’s my partner. He’ll be here in a second.”

  “He better hurry,” said the young man. “I heard you talkin’ to those niggers. You think they’re not coming back with real artillery?”

  “Your language is distasteful, but your logic is sound,” said Lieberman.

  “You always talk like that?” asked Pig Sticker.

  “Depends on the company I’m in,” said Lieberman. “Now take your hands out of your pockets. Slowly.”

  “I’m not carrying,” said Pig Sticker.

  “Hands,” said Lieberman.

  Pig Sticker removed his hands from his pockets.

  “You’re a Jew,” said Pig Sticker.

  “It shows. I know. I live with it. I’m one of the chosen people, though it baffles me why God chose us and then proceeded to torture us for centuries.”

  “I want Hanrahan or I’ve got nothing to say,” Pig Sticker said, looking in the general direction of where the three boys had disappeared.

  A car hurried down the street from under the elevated train viaduct and pulled into a space next to a fire plug. Pig Sticker looked as if he were going to run.

  “It’s Bill,” said Lieberman. “I suggest you sit down. The seat’s been warmed for you and I think you’d like to keep the conversation low and get it over with fast.”

  Hanrahan came out of his car, slamming the door behind him and hurrying across the playground.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said.

  “A few seconds late can mean my life, man,” Pig Sticker said indignantly.

  “Sit,” said Lieberman. Pig Sticker sat with a thud. He was big.

  Hanrahan, wearing a coat Lieberman had bought for his partner’s birthday five years earlier, hovered over Charles Kenneth Leary.

  “This is fast,” said Pig Sticker. “I want away from here before those niggers come back.”

  Hanrahan looked at his seated partner and the gun in his lap. “Several members of the Headhunters gang took umbrage at my being in their park,” said Lieberman. “I gave them a vocabulary lesson and they left to work on it.”

  “They’ll be back,” said Pig Sticker. “And they’ll be carrying heavy.”

  “Then talk,” said Hanrahan.

  “Something big’s coming Monday,” said Pig Sticker nervously. “Weapons, somebody gets hurt. I figure Berk plans to hit some Jews. He picked five of us. Said he’ll tell us where to meet, when, and give us the weapons we’re gonna need. He said we should be ready to kill. Big time. I’m sure, but I don’t know who we’re supposed to be killing. I just know I’m supposed to be somewhere to pick up a combat weapon Monday night. I’ll get a call to tell me where to pick it up or if he lets us know where we’re going. Then we … do it unless you stop us.”

  “OK, when you know where you’re supposed to pick up the weapon, you call one of us. You memorize my number?” asked Hanrahan.

  “Yeah. I’m going. One more thing. I get the same thing they all get. No special treatment. They get booked and go down, I get booked and go down with ’em. Unless it goes to a Murder One or Two and a sure conviction. Then we deal. I testify and go into witness protection.”

  “Everybody watches too much television,” said Lieberman.

  “Deal or no deal?” asked Pig Sticker.

  “Fine,” said Hanrahan, knowing he didn’t have the power to offer Leary any such deal.

  “You want to know why I wanna go down with them on anything but Murder?” asked Pig Sticker looking up at Hanrahan. “I don’t want Berk or anyone else marking me and I think whatever Berk wants to do is right.”

  “If whatever it is does happen and you don’t give us plenty of warning,” said Lieberman, “I’ll hug you in front of Berk, kiss your cheek, and call you Lantsman.”

  Pig Sticker looked at Lieberman with hatred and rose from the bench.

  “I’m gone,” he said. “You better get out of here too.”

  “Charles Kenneth Leary,” Hanrahan sighed, watching the young man hurry between two cars and into the darkness. “You think he’s straight on this Monday business?”

  “Yes,” said Lieberman, putting away his weapon and buttoning up.

  “The Irish in him,” said Hanrahan.

  “The Jew in him,” said Lieberman.

  “We are truly blessed to belong to the two best ethnic groups in our free country,” said Hanrahan. “And that’s an objective truth.”

  “You hear me arguing, Father Murphy?”

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Hanrahan.

  Abe got up too. Not quite as quickly. The knees were not cooperating. They reveled in their arthritis when he allowed them to stay still for too long.

  “Give my best to Michael,” said Abe, walking toward his parked car.

  “I will, Rabbi,” said Hanrahan with a wave, heading back to his car.

  When the Headhunters, seven of them, returned to the small park twelve minutes later, it was empty. In a rage, Priam shot out the last two lights and took a few blasts at the windows of the darkened apartment building next to the playground. No one in the building screamed or shouted. A child cried, awakened from a dream.

  Priam motioned for his small troop to follow him. His anger was not satisfied. The skinny little old Jew cop had dissed him in front of two Headhunters. That skinny old Jew cop was gonna have a bad accident when Priam found him. A bad accident.

  ELEVEN

  BERK LOOKED AT THE WEAPONS on the table. He wore a flannel shirt with a black tie and a faded denim vest. He walked
down the line of neatly laid out Uzis, handling each one, picking it up and examining it professionally while his host stood back watching, showing nothing.

  “They aren’t the best,” Berk said putting down the last weapon and looking at the faded velvet scroll with wooden handles. “A little old.”

  “They don’t have to be the best,” his host said. “They have to leave a trail, perhaps a difficult trail, but a trail back to our mutual enemy.”

  Berk put his hand on the Torah. He did not like the man he was dealing with. Berk had caught the man more than once twisting his scarred face into a look of distaste when Berk’s back was supposedly turned. This Arab was, in fact, not much better than the enemies they were planning to kill. Once this was over, truly over, he would see to it that this man had a fatal and painful accident. Not just because he was an Arab, but because there was no choice. The man was crazy. Berk smiled. He had often been accused of being mad himself. But he had carefully calculated that image and let his temper go when it suited him. Mr. Grits had seen through it to the man with whom he could make a deal. Here was Berk standing in front of a table of automatic weapons, planning mass murder, looking as if he could barely control his temper. Berk who had maimed and murdered and knew there had been times, many times, when he had been possessed by inspiration or madness but those times were brief. Through his normal day, even when he was making a passionate speech, Berk was in control of himself. He believed in Berk. The Arab had a cause, too; he was a true believer. But he could make mistakes and lead the police to Berk and the Mongers.

  “I know,” Berk said. “I want it quick, easy, and no mistakes. Better firepower would make it easier.”

  “But not accomplish our goal.”

  Berk nodded and unrolled the scroll slightly. He looked at the fancy lettering and decorations. He knew it was in Hebrew. Some of his people thought it told stories about how Jews were supposed to kill and even eat the children of their enemies as sacrifices to God. Berk was no fool. He had actually read the first five books of the Bible in English and found them not particularly interesting or threatening.

  Berk was over thirty. He was growing tired of these games, this anger. It wasn’t that he had given up his beliefs in the superiority of the clean, white race. That was true. That was something no one would ever change his mind about. And it wasn’t that he was afraid. On the contrary, if anything he cared less about getting hurt now than he did almost eight years ago when he began. The simple high of facing down a crowd of Jews or niggers was coming less frequently. Now all he really enjoyed was the fact of his own leadership, the respect and fear of those who served under him, and the powerful, moving sound of his own voice when he spoke out. Berk didn’t even know where he got the words. Mr. Grits had said that the young man was “inspired,” that Christ took over when Berk spoke, that it was Jesus’s voice, Jesus who wanted the white race to take back the world, whatever the cost.

  Berk was strong. Berk was fearless. A dead look from his eyes could turn a listener cold with fear. He had given that look to several earlier that night, Pig Sticker, Boyce, Neville, Fallon. He had seen the fear in all of them. Not one of them, not one person in the world knew that Berk was simply tired of it all. It took too much out of a person to be mad with rage and suspicious of others all the time.

  Berk had a secret plan now. He already had over $100,000 from Mr. Grits and would get $200,000 more when the job was done. He didn’t think Mr. Grits would double-cross him, disappear without the final payment. Mr. Grits might think Berk could not identify him, but Mr. Grits was wrong, could be dead wrong. He had been out at a mall with Fran one night when Mr. Grits called on a public phone and the kid who answered had turned and looked around. Someone had been described to him. That someone was clearly Berk. As the kid called to him, Berk had told Fran to walk through the mall checking every public phone, the closest ones first, even the business phones in nearby shops. If she saw a well dressed man talking, she was to get as close to him as possible, listen for a Southern accent and come right back to Berk without being seen by the man if possible.

  Fran had done the job. It hadn’t been too hard. She had spotted him at one of the phones next to the Gap. Fran had hurried back, pleased with her success and whispered to Berk while Berk gave her a kiss and then kept talking.

  “Listen to him,” Berk had told Fran handing her the phone, his hand over the mouthpiece. “Don’t make a sound. If he asks you a question, hang up. He’ll probably keep talking a minute or two and hang up. Got it?”

  She had nodded and taken the phone and Berk had hurried to where he could see the line of phones outside the Gap, being careful not to be seen. He got there just as the man hung up the phone and looked around. Berk was wearing a Bulls cap to cover his shaved head, but he didn’t want to be spotted. He ducked into a vitamin store and got behind a stack of bottles of bee something.

  And then he had carefully followed Mr. Grits who was smaller, older than Berk had expected. He had followed him very carefully into the parking lot and was so careful that he almost missed getting the complete license number of the rented black Lincoln.

  The next day, through the crazy Arab who had connections, he had found the local address and name Mr. Grits had used to rent the Lincoln. Unwilling to trust any of his men on this one, Berk had staked out the Hilton on Skokie across from the Old Orchard Shopping Mall. He had easily found the Lincoln in the hotel lot. At the desk, he had asked the clerk if he would deliver a birthday package to Mr. Jerome Wilson. The clerk checked to be sure that Jerome Wilson was registered and then told Berk that he would see to it that the package would be delivered. Berk said the present was a surprise from Wilson’s family and would arrive soon from Neiman-Marcus. The clerk said that he understood and that whoever was on duty would deliver the package.

  Berk was reasonably secure now, knew what he planned to do: fake his death, become a martyr to a murderous Jew or nigger. His body would never be found. A note would be left saying that Berk’s fate would be that of all who opposed Zionism or Black Nationalism. Berk would let his hair grow out, maybe grow a mustache, move to some small town, watch television, maybe get married, write a book about all he knew about the conspiracy between the police state and the impure races. He would write the book and send a copy to the Nazi press he had been corresponding with and getting books from for the last five years. They would publish it as a posthumous work discovered by a friend of the murdered Berk. The manuscript would be in Berk’s own hand, undeniable, and Berk would be out fishing or shooting deer when it was published.

  Another thing bothered Berk as he grew older. More and more younger members, even women, were not sufficiently frightened to keep from questioning an occasional decision. He could still beat with his fists, expel with his words, but that would not always be true.

  And gnawing inside him was a fear he would not call fear. He certainly did not trust Mr. Grits. In addition, though Berk was unwilling to allow himself a clear, conscious awareness of the fact, he was becoming increasingly convinced that he had picked up HIV from a nigger woman he and two others had raped about a year ago. He hadn’t raped her for pleasure. It had been to teach her a lesson, to teach them all, and it was he who had learned. He had no, intention of taking a test to find out if he had the disease. What difference would it make? He’d know when it started to show. If he even had it.

  Berk was highly motivated for the task ahead.

  On his way home, Lieberman called the station. Nestor Briggs answered. Nestor almost always answered. He had no wife, little family, and had lost a small, smelly little white dog to simple old age more than a month ago. Nestor had always put in long hours at the desk. Now, his days were typically eighteen hours long. Nestor never put in for overtime.

  Four messages. Three could wait. One … He pulled over next to the phone booth outside the McDonald’s on Howard Street and dropped in a quarter, smelling sizzling beef and fighting the urge to pick up a Quarter Pounder when he finished his call.
A man answered.

  “Quien es?”

  “El Viejo,” said Lieberman.

  “Emiliano quiere a hablar conmigo.”

  “Si,” said the voice and there was silence for less than two seconds before El Perro came on.

  “Can you believe it, Viejo? Dunston homers in the ninth. Dunston. We win.”

  “I didn’t have time to watch the game or hear it on the radio.”

  “Yo se.”

  “You know?” asked Lieberman.

  “Manny Guttierez tole me about what happened in the park,” said El Perro. “You got guardian angels till we’re sure the Korean gooks ain’t gonna try anything stupid. Manny’s probably watching you now.”

  “I appreciate your concern, Emiliano,” said Lieberman, knowing that El Perro would get to the point.

  “Su cuento, how you say it?”

  “Story,” said Lieberman.

  “No,” said El Perro. “Fuckin’ bigger than that. Legend. That’s the word. Someone just told me. Perez. He graduated from high school.”

  “Education is a privilege that should be cherished,” said Lieberman.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said El Perro with a laugh, “But, Manny, he’s got a carphone, told me you backed down three RP Headhunters, maybe broke one of them’s knee.”

  “Maybe,” said Lieberman, waiting for the subject of this conversation, almost certain he would not be able to resist at least a single burger with cheese.

  “RP Headhunters ain’t shit, Viejo,” El Perro said. “Maybe veinte or veinte y dos with no more firepower than the nuns at St. Catherine’s.”

  “I feel reassured,” said Lieberman.

  “You can’t go around making enemies all the time, Viejo,” said El Perro.

  “Emiliano, you have made more enemies than the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Bureau,” said Lieberman. “I know at least eight people who would risk their lives to kill you.”

  “Eight? Twenty. Maybe thirty,” said El Perro with pride. “And is not fair. I’m a legitimate businessman now, mostly. Bingo parlor, restaurant, dry cleaner, bar, hardware store. Expanding, Viejo, up and down North Avenue. Pretty soon I’ll have a big office and talk to IBM.”