Lieberman's Folly

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  The rain had started to fall when Lieberman stepped into the street. Canopies were coming down in front of Kim the Korean’s Devon Television/VCR Repair Shop, and the Dollar Store, also owned by Kim. The Pistoki brothers were hauling in their fruit displays, and someone in one of the doorways was watching Abe Lieberman walk slowly to his Buick and get in. Lieberman adjusted the mirror to see the person in the doorway between Discount Toys and Devon Animal World, but whoever it was was well back, hidden by a display of Nintendo games and a dirty window. Whoever it was had also been outside the Clark Street Station when Lieberman came out earlier.

  Lieberman turned on his windshield wipers and pulled out into traffic as the clouds exploded like a water balloon. Whoever was in the doorway, a man, ran for a nearby car. Lieberman could have taken a quick left and another left into the alley next to the barber shop to get rid of the tail, but it would have been pointless. The man knew where Lieberman worked and where he hung out. The man might also be the one who had called four times about “what happened to her yesterday.” It could have been many other things. It could have been any of six dozen people Lieberman had put away or been on top of for a quarter of a century.

  Lieberman pushed the button on the radio and caught Harry Caray saying that the game was tied in the twelfth and delayed because of rain.

  Instead of turning right and heading home Lieberman turned left and drove slowly down a side street. The man followed half a block back. The rain was coming harder now. Lieberman knew where he was going. He pulled next to a fire hydrant between a pickup truck and an old Datsun. He got out slowly, giving his pursuer time to find a parking space. Lieberman looked neither right or left as he locked the car. The rain was coming in warm sheets now.

  Soaked through, Lieberman walked slowly to the passageway between two twelve-flat apartment buildings, went down the stairs into darkness, and walked to the end of the cool cement corridor where there was a doorway to the furnace room. Six years earlier Abe and Hanrahan had nailed the building janitor in this room with a stack of stereos he had stolen from apartments in the neighborhood. Lieberman fished out his semidry handkerchief, wiped his nose, took out his gun, and waited, listening to the rain and thunder. Lieberman had always loved the rain, felt protected by it, excused by it. He had never loved the outdoors. The rain gave him reason to remain inside, blanketed by shower.

  The footsteps were quick. They came down the three cement stairs and started down the cement passageway. Lieberman stepped out, gun leveled at the dark figure dripping in front of him.

  “Hold it there,” he said. “Hands behind your head.”

  “I’ve got to talk to you,” said the man, his voice trembling. “I’ve got to talk about what happened between her and me. I … I did it.”

  Lieberman put his gun away and stepped toward the figure.

  “I didn’t have the nerve to face her, you,” the man went on.

  “Whose car are you driving?” Lieberman asked.

  “Rental. Mine’s in the shop.”

  “I’ve got a dry sweat suit in the trunk,” Lieberman said to his son-in-law. “Let’s go someplace for a cup of coffee and dry out.”

  7

  HANRAHAN FELT BETTER. HE DIDN’T feel good but he did feel better as he sat parked in front of the Black Moon Restaurant on Sheridan Road watching the rain waterfall down his front window.

  Confessing to the Whiz had helped. Now he was doing something that might help even more. He looked over at the high-rise. A cab pulled up to the door and two people, a man and a woman, ducked under the concrete canopy of the Michigan Towers as the doorman rose inside. They went through the revolving door and laughed. Hanrahan let out a chuckle. He didn’t know why.

  The Black Moon Restaurant was open for dinner. It was still early. No customers inside, but he could see Iris. He was in a no parking zone so it had been no problem getting directly in front of the restaurant. Hanrahan, fifty-two years old and a grandfather, was nervous. His first plan had been to go into the Black Moon and talk to Iris. Now he decided to work first. When a break in the traffic came, Hanrahan took it and pulled into the driveway of the high-rise. He parked as close to the door as he could and ran in.

  “Can’t leave your car there,” said the fully uniformed doorman, the same black man who had been on duty the night before.

  “Police,” said Hanrahan, showing his badge. “Saw you last night.”

  The doorman, Billy Tarton, nodded. “I got no more answers man,” he said.

  “Woman who got in the cab last night before I came running over,” Hanrahan said. “Tell me about her.”

  “I told the other guy,” said Tarton with a sigh. “I didn’t see her good. Hat over her eyes. Sunglasses, went right out. Cab was waiting. Cabby right with her with her bags. She didn’t say nothing, do nothing.”

  “She white or black?” said Hanrahan.

  “White,” he said. “Couldn’t tell her age but she wasn’t old. Young mostly. If I remember anything else, I’ll call you, but there’s nothin’ more to remember. Zip. Nada. Nothing. You made a trip for nothing.”

  “I didn’t come here to talk to you,” Hanrahan said.

  A bolt of lightning cracked the sky.

  “Does like that in Florida almost every day in the summer,” said the doorman. “Used to live in Lakeland. Thinking of going back.”

  Hanrahan grunted and pointed to the door. Billy Tarton pressed the button to open it and Hanrahan went in. Behind him a soaked woman jogger pushed through the revolving door panting, her dark hair plastered down over her forehead and across her face. Hanrahan moved toward the elevators.

  He had a simple plan. He would knock on every door in the building and ask everyone they hadn’t already talked to and some that they had what he, she, or they knew about Estralda Valdez or Jules Van Beeber or the fall of the Berlin Wall. He would ask until he was sure no one had anything to tell him. He would ask because in spite of the absolution given him in confession Bill Hanrahan still believed that he was responsible for the death of Estralda Valdez.

  In the front seat of his car while the rain thump-thudded on the roof, Lieberman took off his sopping jacket, shirt, and tie and put on a blue sweat shirt with CHICAGO POLICE DEPARTMENT printed on it in white block letters. In the back seat, Todd struggled into a plain gray sweat shirt half a size too small.

  “You want a bagel?” Lieberman asked.

  “I can’t eat,” said Todd, forcing his arm through a sleeve.

  “Then let’s talk while I eat one,” said Lieberman.

  “‘Long am I silent. Struck down by disasters exceeding speech and question,’” said Todd, slumping back and running his hands over his wet hair. Todd was an associate professor of comparative literature at Northwestern University. Todd was a specialist in Greek tragedy.

  “That’s a line from …?” Lieberman said, fishing a bagel from the bag and releasing the smell of corned beef.

  “Aeschylus, The Persians,” said Todd.

  “Sure you won’t have a bagel, half a bagel?”

  “No,” said Todd.

  “‘Better a bagel in the rain than a pain in the ass,’” said Lieberman. “Papodopolus said that. He’s a Greek too. Ran a little diner near the train yards till he did in his girlfriend with a variety of kitchen utensils. Actually, he didn’t say ‘bagel.’ He said ‘bun,’ but I’m allowed poetic license, right?”

  Todd didn’t answer. Lieberman examined his son-in-law in the rearview mirror. Todd was thirty-five, a little on the thin side for Lieberman’s taste, sandy haired and long of face.

  “‘The load I bear can never be laid down,’” said Todd. “‘And would you add to it by lightening yours?’”

  “Sophocles?” tried Lieberman.

  “Euripides. Iphigenia in Tauris,” said Todd without enthusiasm.

  “A joke,” said Lieberman, turning in the seat to point half a bagel at Todd. “Papodopolus told it when we took him in. Use the word ‘Euripides’ in a sentence?”


  “Abe—” Todd began.

  “Euripides pants, I breaka you neck,” said Lieberman straightfaced.

  Todd looked at the serious sad face of his father-in-law and groaned. Then he let out a small laugh.

  “That’s terrible,” he said.

  “I’ll make a deal,” said Lieberman. “I stop telling Papodopolus stories and you stop quoting dead Greeks.”

  “Papodopolus is alive?”

  “Doing life in Joliet,” said Lieberman, shaking his head. “You want to talk now?”

  “I didn’t do it,” said Todd. “I talked to Anastasia Holt, sure, even had lunch with her a couple of times. She’s a Plato scholar, but I never touched her, never—”

  “Lisa doesn’t think you did,” said Lieberman.

  “She doesn’t? I thought—”

  “If you’re thinking of quoting another dead Greek now, forget it or get the hell out of my car,” said Lieberman. “She says you don’t spend time with her. You think about your work. You look right through her. You make it clear you’d rather be at work. You never ask her what she thinks or feels. She’s a professional without a profession. She feels like a nonperson, the days going by, the kids getting older and she getting no place. She had seven-ten Graduate Record Exam grades in both verbal and quantitative, which, she says, were higher than yours. You following this?”

  “Yes,” said Todd, brushing his wet hair back with one hand.

  “Good, because I was up most of last night listening to it,” said Lieberman. “And I’ll probably be up half the night tonight hearing it again.”

  “She’s right,” said Todd. “It’s all clichés but it’s right. The maddening thing about clichés is that they’re so often right. That’s how they became clichés. Do you like me, Abe?”

  “Have you been drinking?” asked Lieberman, wiping his hands on a tissue from the box in his glove compartment

  “Yes, a little. You think I normally follow policemen and cry in front of them? Do you like me, Abe?”

  “Yes,” said Lieberman.

  “Bess is disappointed that I’m not Jewish,” said Todd.

  The rain had suddenly ceased its waterfall noise and turned into a strong patter, which gradually eased to a moist whisper as they spoke.

  “She got over it,” said Lieberman.

  “What should I do?” whispered Todd. “I love Lisa, the kids.”

  “Go back home. Watch the fights on television. Read a science fiction novel. Take a long bath. Better yet, you ever see The Man Who Could Work Miracles? With Roland Young, the guy who played Topper?”

  “Abe—”

  “Let her think it over, Todd,” said Lieberman. “Don’t push it. Call our house and say you’d like to know how she is. Tell me or Bess to tell her you love her. Tell us to tell her you want to see a marriage counselor.”

  “I can’t just—”

  “I know a good one,” said Lieberman. “Levan’s daughter-in-law, Darla. In Evanston, not far from you.”

  “The kids,” said Todd.

  “The kids can go too. Talk to them. Tell them you love them. They can use a few days’ vacation. Let me tell you a story. When I was kid, maybe eight, nine, my parents got in a fight. Maish went to my Aunt Sadie’s for the night. My older cousin Lenore took me out to a movie. Never forget it, Dr. Cyclops, hell of a movie. Albert Dekker was bald, big thick glasses. He made people little in the jungle. After the movie Lenore took me home. My mother and father were still fighting. Lenore took me back to the movies, a double feature, The Cat and the Canary with Bob Hope and Charlie Chan at the Opera. When we got home just before midnight, my mother and father were having coffee and holding hands. I’ll never forget that day.”

  “Is there a point to that story, Abe?”

  “Hey, you came to me. One of the prices you pay is listening to me remember when I was a kid,” said Lieberman. “There’s a point. Let it alone. Lisa’s like my mother. She wants to come to you she’ll work it out and come to you.”

  “Your story didn’t have anything to do with that,” said Todd after a sigh.

  “I forgot I was talking to a professor,” said Lieberman. “The point of the story was you should postpone feeling guilty and go get a tape of something and relax and wait. Nobody waits anymore. I’ll work on Lisa. You call later. I want to go home now, take a shower, eat some of this corned beef, and play Yahtzee with your kids.”

  “OK,” said Todd, opening the door, his crumpled jacket in one hand.

  “You want a corned beef sandwich for the road?” asked Lieberman.

  Todd shrugged. Lieberman dug in the bag and put together a corned beef sandwich by tearing open a bagel and sticking in a stack of meat. Todd took the sandwich and closed the back door.

  “Thanks,” said Todd.

  “You’re welcome,” answered Lieberman.

  The rain had completely stopped.

  “I love Lisa,” said Todd, biting into the sandwich as a Toyota splashed by.

  “So do I,” said Lieberman. “Go home.”

  Lieberman left his son-in-law standing in the street, his wrists sticking out of the sleeves of the tight sweat shirt, his hands around a corned beef sandwich. Five minutes later Lieberman pulled up in front of his house, got out with his bag, went to his front door, opened it with a key, and stepped in to say, “I’m here.”

  “Grandpop the cop,” said Melisa, looking up from the television set.

  “Hi,” said Barry, looking away from the television only long enough to smile.

  “What’re you watching?” asked Lieberman, kicking off his shoes.

  “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” said Barry.

  “They’re doing the guy who plays the monster in those movies,” said Melisa.

  “Sounds very educational,” said Lieberman. He moved into the kitchen where Bess and Lisa sat whispering.

  “Lieberman,” Bess said, looking up. “You been jogging in the rain?”

  He put the bag on the table, kissed his wife and daughter, and sat down.

  “I’ve been solving the problems of the world,” said Lieberman, “and it has made me hungry.”

  “Eat fast,” Bess said. “You’ve got fifteen minutes to get to the synagogue. There’s a meeting of the Committee to form a Fund-Raising Committee.”

  Bill Hanrahan was tired. He had knocked on forty-three doors and received twenty answers, a damned good percentage, which he attributed to people staying home or coming home because of the storm. He took pages of notes and found probable cause for a narcotics arrest in three apartments. Eight people refused to let him in. He talked to five of them through closed doors and persuaded three of the refuseniks to let him in. A few he talked to remembered seeing Estralda Valdez, at least a few admitted it. He had the feeling that some of the married men had noticed her but didn’t want to say so.

  He struck silver twice. A pair of men in their forties, definitely gay, said that they had seen Estralda Valdez talking several times to a woman named Gwen who lived on the ninth floor. Hanrahan, who had been working his way down, went back up to the apartment of Gwen Dysan on nine. He had already talked to her, a quiet woman in her midtwenties with her hair combed straight back, her skin clear, her glasses too large for her face.

  “Another few questions if you don’t mind, Miss Dysan,” Hanrahan said with his most winning smile as the woman opened her door.

  “I told you I didn’t know her,” Gwen Dysan said nervously.

  “You knew her, Miss Dysan,” said Hanrahan gently.

  “I didn’t,” she said.

  “I can continue this with you down at the station if need be,” he lied. “I don’t want to.”

  “Come in,” she said, stepping back.

  The apartment was efficient, furniture modern, not comfortable looking, easy to move out of fast. Gwen Dysan left the door open and folded her arms, not defiantly but defensively.

  “How well did you know her?” Hanrahan asked.

  “Not well,” she said.

/>   “Why didn’t you tell me you knew her?”

  “She … I knew she was a prostitute,” said Gwen Dysan. “She told me. I was embarrassed I guess. I didn’t know her all that well.”

  “You liked her?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Gwen, looking him in the eyes.

  “She talk about men, people she knew?”

  “No,” said Gwen. “She talked about her family. I told her about mine.”

  “Her family?” Hanrahan asked, trying to keep from sounding particularly interested. “Father, mother …?”

  “Her father is dead,” said Gwen. “Her mother and brother.”

  “They live in Chicago?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You know where?”

  “South Side somewhere. I think she said Ogden Avenue. I’m not sure.”

  “You think Mrs. Valdez knows what happened to her daughter? It didn’t even make the ten o’clock news on television.”

  “Her name isn’t Valdez,” said Gwen Dysan. “It’s Vegas. She wasn’t what you think. I mean Estralda. She was—”

  “I knew her,” said Hanrahan.

  “We talked,” said Gwen Dysan softly.

  “Talked, yes,” said Hanrahan.

  Gwen Dysan’s sigh was enormous.

  “I’m a Catholic,” she said. “Your name is Irish. Are you a Catholic?”

  “Yes,” said Hanrahan.

  “I work in a print shop,” said the woman, looking out the open door into the empty corridor.

  Hanrahan turned. There was no one there.

  “I’m a secretary,” she said. “My family is in North Dakota. I’ll grow old and die a secretary in a print shop. Estralda said I was too pretty to do that.”

  Gwen Dysan looked at the policeman with wet eyes.

  “You are,” he said.

  “She said I was pretty enough to do what she did, that I could make enough money in two years to buy a print shop or a beauty shop or a … I knew I couldn’t do it.”

  “I know,” said Hanrahan. “Anything else you can tell me? Anyone you know in the building who …?”

  “Nikki Morales,” said Gwen Dysan softly. “Eighth floor. I don’t know the apartment number. I’ve never gone down there. But Estralda talked about her. I know they were friends.”