Lieberman's Folly

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  This, Abraham Melvin Lieberman did not like.

  “What?” asked Lieberman flatly, looking at Bess who was smiling at him.

  She knows what he wants, Lieberman thought, and she likes it.

  “The board,” began Rabbi Wass. “That is to say the board and I and some very active members of the congregation would like you to serve as president of Temple Mir Shavot when Israel Mitkowsky moves to California in September.”

  “I’m overwhelmed,” said Lieberman, looking at his wife and seeing the frail hand of Ida Katzman at work.

  “Then you will accept?” said Rabbi Wass, sensing that victory had come too easily.

  Through Lieberman’s mind flashed images of himself conducting meetings, going to services every week, reading from the Torah in his halting Hebrew, cajoling Irving “Rommel” Hamel to speak to the Sunday morning men’s club.

  “I don’t deserve the honor,” said Lieberman.

  “We think you do,” Rabbi Wass’s voice beamed.

  “Irving Hamel would make a better president,” said Lieberman with some despair. “He’s young, wants—”

  “He turned us down,” said Rabbi Wass sadly. “Too busy. He’s a lawyer. Avrum, we need you. There is God’s work to be done.”

  Not only was he being pressured, Lieberman was not even first choice. And then Lieberman got an idea.

  “I have a better choice,” he said.

  “There really is no—” Rabbi Wass began sadly, ready to tick off the reasons why Syd Levan or Herschel Rosen had turned him down.

  “My wife,” said Lieberman.

  Bess’s smile left her face. She stopped dead at the kitchen sink.

  “She’s a woman,” Rabbi Wass said, explaining the facts of life to the obviously confused Lieberman.

  “I am aware of that, Rabbi,” he said.

  “Being president is a great honor,” countered Rabbi Wass.

  “An honor my dear wife richly deserves,” said Lieberman on the attack.

  “We’ve never had a woman president,” the Rabbi explained.

  “There are women rabbis,” said Lieberman, looking at his wife’s astonished face. “I’m sure other congregations have women presidents. I’m sure Ida Katzman would love the idea.”

  “I really don’t think—” Rabbi Wass began.

  “Ari,” said Lieberman softly. “I’m about to turn you down and report to the congregation that you won’t consider a woman as president.”

  “Blackmail?” asked the rabbi incredulously.

  “You’ve got it,” said Lieberman.

  Rabbi Wass laughed, a deep genuine laugh, that Abe Lieberman had never heard before.

  “Then what can I do?” said the rabbi. “I accept. Confidentially, Avrum, I don’t think you would have made that good of a president either. As the Catholics say, I don’t think you have the calling. But Bess? I like it. Ask her to come see me, today if possible. Shalom, Abe.”

  “Shalom, Rabbi,” said Lieberman and the two men hung up.

  “Abe,” said Bess.

  “Madame President,” said Lieberman, wondering what he was going to do about his hair. “You want the job?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Would that all life’s problems were so easily solved.”

  13

  LIEBERMAN CALLED THE STATION where the ever-present Nestor Briggs reported that (a) José Vegas had been treated for head wounds, appeared before Judge Wilson Woolf, and been released on $50,000 bond posted by the Lewellyn Bond Agency on behalf of Vegas’s mother, (b) Captain Hughes had left for a meeting with the chief of police less than twenty minutes ago. Lieberman told Briggs that he was heading for the hospital.

  After reshowering, both to wake up and to tame his hair, Lieberman headed for Maish’s T & L where the Alter Cockers were out in force.

  “How’s Bill, little brother?” asked Maish, sliding a cup of coffee across the counter. Lieberman took it.

  “Alive,” said Lieberman. “Should make it.”

  “Yetta took the kids to Toys ‘R’ Us,” said Maish, who looked round and genuinely grieved.

  “Buy you a cup?” called Rosen from the table.

  “Got one,” said Lieberman holding up his coffee.

  “Danish?” tried Rosen.

  “Why not?” said Lieberman, accepting a cherry Danish from Maish and moving to the Alter Cocker table, where Herschel Rosen was holding court. Herschel was feeling solemn today. He had taken off the yellow cap he was wearing and placed it next to his coffee cup.

  “Your partner OK?” asked Howie Chen.

  “He’ll live,” said Lieberman, who wondered whether he continued to say this because he thought that repeating it would make it true.

  “God willing,” said Rosen.

  “God willing,” agreed Howie Chen.

  Bloombach and Stoltzer, the atheists, said nothing but looked at Lieberman with sympathy.

  “You think it’s Maish’s coffee?” asked Syd Levan. “First the girl. Then the partner?”

  “Not funny, Sydney,” said Rosen, ruling him out of order.

  “Who’s being—” Levan started and then stopped.

  “It’s all right,” said Lieberman, downing his coffee. “Cops do the same thing. You see a lot of death. You try to make jokes so it doesn’t feel so real.”

  “Like in the books with the homicide detectives who think they’re funny,” said Bloombach, trying to remember the name of the books.

  “All cops?” asked Howie.

  “Not all,” said Lieberman. He put his cup down. “Gentlemen, I must bid you adieu.”

  A hand touched Lieberman’s sleeve. Lieberman turned.

  “You’ll find whoever did it?” asked Rosen gently.

  “I’ll find whoever did it,” Lieberman assured him.

  Maish waved as his brother moved to the door.

  “If you get a chance, stop by later,” said Maish, cleaning the counter with a sponge though Abe’s coffee cup during its momentary rest had left no ring. “Let me know what’s going on with Lisa and Todd.”

  “We think they’ll work it out,” said Bloombach.

  Lieberman shook his head and looked at his brother, who shrugged. Lieberman went into the street, heard the distant sound of thunder, but looked up in the sky and saw no clouds.

  Fifty-two minutes later he entered the University of Chicago Hospitals and went to Intensive Care. Dr. Deep was standing there in the hall talking to Maureen and her son Michael. Michael Hanrahan looked far more like his father than his mother, a clean, trim version of the way his father had probably looked a dozen years before Lieberman had met Bill Hanrahan.

  Dr. Deep spotted Lieberman coming down the hall first and looked up. Maureen turned to follow Deep’s eyes and saw Lieberman. Her eyes gave out a warning and Lieberman looked again at Michael and did not like what he saw.

  Nurses flowed past. Somewhere down the hall and down an endless corridor a hospital transport bed with a wobbly wheel headed in their direction.

  “How is he?” asked Lieberman.

  “You should have been there with him,” said Michael.

  Lieberman looked at the young man, remembered that he was twenty-six, no, twenty-seven, his father’s son, and Irish.

  “He went in that house with no backup because you were eating hot dogs at a baseball game,” said Michael defiantly.

  “You may be right,” said Lieberman.

  “Michael,” Maureen said. “You’re not facing the—”

  “You find this funny, Lieberman?” asked Michael.

  “I’m not laughing,” said Lieberman. “And I’m not smiling because I find the situation funny. I’m smiling because life is arranged with surprises to keep everyone but children from getting a good night’s sleep.”

  “This,” reminded Dr. Deep gently, “is an Intensive Care area. We must be quiet.”

  “Dad’s right,” said Michael, turning to his mother. “He’s a bullshit artist.”

  Michael stalked off witho
ut looking back. He was headed for Deep’s office at the end of the corridor.

  “I’m sorry, Abe,” said Maureen.

  “I am so very glad you arrived,” said Deep. “Mr. Hanrahan should have no visitation yet, but he is most agitated and insists on talking to you. I feel it would be best if you did so for just a minute. No more than a minute.”

  Maureen touched Lieberman’s arm and he looked at her. Age had found her overnight.

  “Iris had to go to work,” said Maureen. “I like her.”

  Lieberman gave Maureen a hug and followed Deep through the white double doors, where a nurse gave him a gown, cap, and mask and waited for him to put them on.

  Machines were humming and beeping. Lights and voices were dim and the carpet muffled footsteps. Lieberman followed Dr. Deep into a room with a glass window. In the bed lay William Hanrahan complete with nose tubes, IV, and the pallid skin, open mouth, and closed eyes of the critically ill.

  “Thirty seconds only,” Dr. Deep reminded Lieberman who advanced to the bed.

  “Father Murphy?” Lieberman said, laying his hand gently on his partner’s arm, careful to avoid the tube that was connected to it.

  Hanrahan’s eyes fluttered and opened. They sought the voice, looked in the wrong place, and slowly found Lieberman’s masked face. Hanrahan’s mouth formed the word “Rabbi,” but no word came out. Lieberman leaned forward, his ear almost touching Hanrahan’s lips, and this time, when Hanrahan repeated “Rabbi,” Lieberman heard it.

  “You’re doing OK,” said Lieberman.

  “You’re a bullshit artist,” Hanrahan gasped.

  “So your son just told me,” said Lieberman.

  Hanrahan’s lips quivered in a smile.

  “Article,” Hanrahan said. “Newspa—”

  “I’ve got it,” said Lieberman.

  “Sister,” said Hanrahan. “Estralda’s sister. Photograph in bedroom.”

  “Same as the one in the article,” said Lieberman. “Estralda and her sister. Looks like they killed a couple of guys. Paper’s from Corpus Christi, Texas.”

  “Detective Lieberman,” Dr. Deep said. “I’m afraid we must stop for now.”

  “Seen her,” said Hanrahan whose eyes were fluttering, fighting against drugged sleep.

  “Estralda’s sister?” asked Lieberman.

  Hanrahan nodded.

  “Where?”

  And Hanrahan told him.

  Before he left the hospital Lieberman went to the lobby and put in a credit card call to Mayor Carrol LaSalle of Corpus Christi. Carrol LaSalle had, according to the lady with a very heavy Texas accent, left a message with his office that any call from Detective Lieberman should be forwarded immediately, day or night. There was a click, a delay, and Patsy Cline singing something while he waited a good two minutes till LaSalle came on the line.

  “Lieberman,” he said. “You got my little girl with the gun?”

  “Looks that way, Mayor,” said Lieberman. “You might want your people to get the papers started.”

  “Guadalupe Madera?” said LaSalle.

  “Guadalupe Madera,” Lieberman agreed, watching a nurse wheel a young mother out in a wheelchair. The young woman, who looked both black and Asian, was carrying a small bundle in her arms. Lieberman couldn’t see the baby’s face. A nurse’s aide followed with a cart of flowers. Beyond the glass doors at the entrance, Lieberman could see a waiting cab with open trunk and door.

  “Best guess, Mayor. What will your people throw at her?”

  “Best guess? Depends. She been a good girl? Shot any more people in the head? That sort of thing,” said LaSalle. “Life maybe. Out in five depending on the judge, the climate, and the collective memory. Shoot, she may get nothing. Remember what we said about you folks giving us a hard time on extradition.”

  “I remember,” said Lieberman.

  “You plan to point out to your people and whatever press might be around that you found her with the invaluable assistance of Carrol LaSalle?”

  “That’s my plan,” said Lieberman. “One more question. The newspaper article said a bartender named Frank was the first one on the scene after the murders. Happen to know Frank’s full name and where he might be?”

  Mayor LaSalle had no idea where Frank might be but he remembered him clearly and gave both a description of the man and his full name.

  “Got to go now, Lieberman,” said the Mayor. “Big mall opening this afternoon. Think I’ll hint that some unfinished business might be wrapped up soon. Watch your back, Detective, and get yourself a new partner, hear?”

  Lieberman heard. He made another call and asked the man who answered for a favor. The man didn’t understand the request but he agreed.

  “It’s about the murder we talked about Friday, right?” said the man.

  “Yeah,” said Lieberman.

  “Am I putting out a want ad sign?” the man said.

  “I would.”

  And Lieberman hung up. He sat in the hospital lobby for twenty-five minutes reading the Sun-Times, watching patients and visitors come and go, and trying to remember if it was Ann Savage or Ann Dvorak in Detour.

  The cab pulled up to the door and the driver looked out to see who his fare was. Lieberman came slowly through the hospital door, walked to the cab, got in the back seat, and closed the door.

  “Where to?” asked the driver.

  “Does it matter?” asked Lieberman.

  “Guess not,” the driver answered.

  Lieberman removed his pistol slowly from his holster and, as the cab pulled into the street, he pointed it at the head of Francis Dupree.

  14

  “FRANK,” SAID LIEBERMAN AS the cab drove up Fifty-Ninth Street along the grassy Midway south of the University. “I’m seriously considering shooting you in the head.”

  Frank Dupree simply shrugged.

  “I figured when dispatch sends me from a job on Grand Avenue here, something is not kosher,” said Dupree. “But kosher, that’s your area, right?”

  “You shot my partner in the head, Frank,” said Lieberman evenly. “I’d like to know why.”

  “I didn’t shoot nobody, man,” said Frank. “You’re not sticking me with no murders cause you think you got a dumb bayou boy to close some doors.”

  Lieberman shot out the front window of the cab. Dupree let out a yell and swerved toward the curb, kissed a parked car, and straightened out.

  “What the fuck you doin’? You crazy?”

  “Turn right,” said Lieberman lazily and Dupree turned right. “We are now in a neighborhood where shots are frequently heard and police do not move quickly. Park.”

  “Wait now,” said Dupree with a laugh. “You—”

  “Park,” said Lieberman softly.

  Dupree parked behind a rusting, abandoned Honda.

  “Tell me what happened, Frank,” said Lieberman. “Tell me slowly and tell me the whole thing.”

  “It’ll all get thrown out,” Dupree said, turning in his seat and leaning toward the window. “You gonna get a confession with a gun in your hand and you think it’s gonna hold?”

  A pair of boys, both black, both about nine, looked through the broken front window of the cab at the two white guys just sitting there. The taller of the two was about to say something when he saw Lieberman’s gun and decided to keep walking.

  “That old man he got a gun,” said the boy.

  “She-it he does,” said the other boy.

  “I’m clearing away some of this glass,” said Dupree, agitated.

  “Your hand touches the glove compartment and your head goes through the windshield,” said Lieberman.

  “I’m just … I told you,” said Dupree with a deep sigh at Lieberman’s inability to understand this simple need.

  “Gun’s in the glove compartment Frank, right?” asked Lieberman.

  Dupree slumped. A call came over the radio. Dupree flipped the voice off.

  “I shoulda changed my name,” he said. “But I didn’t know what … Beli
eve it, policeman. I came to this here city looking for work, got this cab, kissing my wandering good-by. Then one day she get into my cab.”

  “Which one?” asked Lieberman.

  “Estralda, the younger one,” he said. “She didn’t change that much.”

  “And you blackmailed her,” said Lieberman.

  “Not saying I did, not saying I didn’t. Just you and me in the car and you know when I get me a lawyer I’m gonna tell that judge I said nothing.”

  “You blackmailed her,” Lieberman repeated.

  “I asked her for money,” he said. “Not blackmail. Old times’ sake.”

  “Tell me about Friday,” said Lieberman.

  Dupree glanced at the glove compartment and turned in his seat. Lieberman leaned forward and poked him with the barrel of the gun.

  “Don’t turn,” he said. “I can see your eyes and mouth just fine in the mirror.”

  “She tole me to be on the corner of Foster and Sheridan at midnight,” said Frank. “She tole me she had to get out of town a while. Cops were giving her troubles. She give me everything I asked for.”

  “Money and Nikki Morales,” said Lieberman.

  Dupree’s eyes met Lieberman’s in the mirror.

  “If you know, why you ask me?”

  “Continue your story,” said Lieberman.

  “All right, so I’m at the corner. I tell my dispatch I picked up a fare on the street, took him to Foster and Sheridan, and I’m getting a burger at the McDonald’s that’s two blocks from where Valdez lives. I get the call. I get back in my cab and drive over thinking, thinking.”

  Dupree was tapping his head with the fingers of his right hand.

  “I’m thinking,” he went on. “What’s this? Why she don’t just come out, walk two blocks, and give me the money? So, I go to the place and the door guy tells me to go up and help Miss Valdez with her luggage. Well, I know she’s goin’ out of town so I go up. Maybe, I think, cops are watching her and she figures this out to make it look like she’s just calling a cab, but that don’t make much sense. I go up to the apartment, through the door, which is open, and the place is a mess, you know? You know what happen, then?”

  “Someone tried to kill you,” said Lieberman.

  “You got that right,” said Dupree. “In the living room this bum is asleep. Right in the middle of the mess. I don’t know who it is.”