Big Silence

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  A television was on across the room. The sound was off. It looked like C-Span.

  “Hal Litt’s dead,” Mickey said, shaking his head at the more than forty-year-old memory. “One of the greatest. Best all-around player I ever saw, like French silk pie to play with, wasn’t he? Could have, should have been the best Jew in the NBA. What was he? Six seven? Should have gone to a major college. Would have set records up the ass.”

  “Hal was stupid,” Abe said, reaching for a cup of coffee Mickey had leaned over to pour for him. “A basketball idiot savant. Genius on the court. Couldn’t read past fifth-grade level. Couldn’t add numbers over the low hundreds.”

  “Couldn’t carry numbers,” Mickey said, handing Abe the coffee cup. “I tried to help him. You know that? With you, Hal, Mel Goldman, your brother Maish, and the black kid …”

  “Alvin Garrett,” Abe supplied.

  The coffee was bad, very bad.

  “What happened to him?” asked Mickey.

  “Went to Pepperdine,” said Abe. “Got a Ph.D. Heads a department out there.”

  “And Hal’s dead.”

  Abe shrugged.

  “He worked in Fetterman’s bagel bakery. Went to park district games at night. Looked older than any of us.”

  “Time,” Mickey said with another shake of the head. “How’s Maish?”

  Abe said his brother was fine.

  “Still owns the T&L on Devon?” Mickey asked, glancing at C-Span and over at the cop at the door.

  “Still,” said Abe.

  “Okay,” said Mickey sitting back. “Now we talk about what you’re really here for. The days of the Marshall Commandos can wait for better times.”

  “Bad news,” said Lieberman.

  “How bad?” asked Mickey, the small smile still in place, hands clasped together white in frightened mockery of prayer.

  “Someone killed your ex-wife,” said Lieberman.

  “The boy?” asked Mickey. “Did they …?”

  “We don’t know,” said Lieberman. “Happened just outside of Dayton. Motel. We were watching. You can’t be one hundred percent sure of protecting people who are out …”

  “Stashall’s got him,” Mickey said, standing up and running his hand through nonexistent hair. He began to pace.

  “Maybe,” said Lieberman.

  “There’s no maybe,” Gornitz said, pacing around the sofa. “How did they do it?”

  “She was shot during the night. Window smashed. Cop guarding them came in, just missed them. Your son was gone.”

  “I don’t care about her,” he said. “She was a bitch, took my kid, told him lies about me, tried to make him hate me, kept me almost broke.”

  Which Lieberman knew was a lie, at least the part about his ex-wife keeping him almost broke, but he sat quietly listening.

  “She was a warning,” he said. “That’s how much I can count on you people. They told me that my kid would be protected and …”

  “They won’t kill him,” Lieberman said.

  “I know that,” Mickey said, pausing and glaring at Lieberman. “I shut up, Matthew lives. Happens fast, doesn’t it, Abe? One minute we’re talking basketball and the old days. The next …”

  “Happens fast, Mickey,” Abe said, flashes of his own nightmares held back.

  “Now we —” Mickey began, but he didn’t finish.

  Two men came through the door to the hallway. One man was short, stocky, black, head shaved and wearing a well-pressed dark designer suit. The short black man was about forty-five and not happy. At his side carrying a briefcase was a thin, towheaded white man in a nondesigner suit. The towhead looked thirty at the most.

  “What the fuck is going on here, Lieberman?” asked the stocky black man who was an assistant state attorney and whose name was Eugene Carbin, Eugene A. Carbin. The “A” was for ambition.

  “Kearney sent me,” Lieberman said without getting up.

  “And I suppose you told …”

  “He told me,” Mickey said, standing behind the sofa.

  “You should have checked with our office,” Carbin said, adjusting his tie. He didn’t look comfortable in the tie, possibly because he had so little neck.

  “I assumed Captain Kearney had …”

  “You assumed shit,” said Carbin, motioning for the thin towhead to move to the table near the window.

  “Abe stays. He’s the one I talk to,” said Mickey.

  “Okay,” said Carbin, holding out his hands. “We’ve had that straight for some time, but that doesn’t give Detective Lieberman the right to keep my office uninformed …”

  “What the hell difference does it make who tells me my ex-wife was murdered and my son kidnapped?” Mickey shouted.

  Unspoken was the likelihood that Carbin may well have withheld the information indefinitely.

  Lieberman leaned forward and drank some more of the awful coffee. He exchanged looks with Carbin and they understood each other. If Matthew Firth was kidnapped, by Stashall or by someone Stashall paid to do it, someone would be calling to talk to Mickey Gornitz, someone who would insist with the threat of killing the boy if he didn’t.

  “We don’t know if your son was kidnapped.” Carbin moved past Gornitz and sat at the table where the towhead was setting up shop with the contents of his briefcase. Carbin looked out the window. It looked as if it might rain. “It could have been a coincidence. Locals after money. Wouldn’t be the first time that motel was robbed, room broken into.”

  “Then Matthew is dead,” said Mickey.

  “I didn’t say that,” Carbin said, rising again.

  “If Stashall has my son,” said Mickey, “I’m not talking. I’m not testifying. No disks.”

  Mickey was shouting now and pointing to his chest.

  “I’m not talking. I’m goddamn mad. If Stashall hurts my boy, I’m gonna get out of here and kill Jimmy Stashall. I never killed anyone in my life, but I’m gonna kill Jimmy Stashall. You get my boy back alive.”

  “Talk to him, Lieberman.” Carbin stared at Abe across the room.

  “You can put Jimmy Stashall away for twenty, thirty years, maybe more,” Lieberman said without conviction.

  “With his lawyers? With this system? He’ll do ten if you’re lucky. He’ll do ten years and my son will be dead. Ten years isn’t enough.”

  “Gornitz,” Carbin said in the deep, slightly preaching voice he usually saved for juries. “You have enough to put a lot of people away, to break open a major criminal activity, to make connections to the mob no one has ever made. You have the obligation …”

  “Stow it,” said Mickey. “Abe, you remember when Maish used to say ‘stow it’ when anyone on the team complained?”

  Abe nodded to show he remembered.

  The towhead had set up some phone equipment as the conversation had gone on. Lieberman had ignored him.

  “Your son’s alive,” Carbin said with a sigh.

  “How do you know?” asked Gornitz.

  “Call to our office,” said Carbin. “About two hours ago. A guy. Said he’d call back at eleven. That’s a few minutes.”

  He looked at the towhead who nodded.

  “We’re patched in here,” said Carbin. “He’ll call my office. It’ll come from there here. We’ll check the call. We have automatic …”

  “It’ll be from a stolen cell phone,” Mickey said, coming around the sofa and sitting again to face Lieberman. “Any calls we get from them will be from stolen cell phones. Having the number won’t do you any good. Tracing won’t do you any good. Well, Abe? What would you do? Your kid? Your grandchildren?”

  “Stall,” said Abe.

  “For what?” Mickey asked, putting his head in his hands. “I can’t believe it. Five minutes ago we’re talking Hal Litt. I find out he’s dead. Now … I can’t believe it. But I should. What I’ve seen working for that bastard. I should.”

  The phone rang. Mickey jumped up. Carbin stepped in front of him.

  “Let it ring a few times,�
�� he said.

  “Don’t you understand? You can’t catch him by tracing the damn call. Get out of my way or so help me you lose any chance you got of my testifying. I don’t testify. You don’t become a judge. We understand each other?”

  The phone continued to ring.

  “We’re putting it on a speaker phone and recording,” said Carbin. His face remained calm. He stepped out of the way. Carbin nodded to the towhead who pushed a button.

  Mickey stopped.

  “Hello,” he said, voice unsteady into the sudden silence of the room.

  “We’re having a nice talk with one of your relatives,” the voice said. “We hope you’re not having nice talks with your friends.”

  “I talk to Matthew or I talk to the state attorney,” said Mickey.

  “Get off the speaker phone,” said the voice. “I hear the room echo. Now, or I hang up.”

  Carbin nodded. The towhead turned off the speaker phone as Mickey picked up the regular receiver.

  “Put my son on the phone,” said Gornitz. “That’s it. Nothing else. No threats. Prove he’s alive.”

  There was a pause. Lieberman looked at Mickey, who slumped, rubbed his forehead, listened, and hung up.

  “They cut him,” said Mickey.

  Lieberman was out of his chair and at the side of the man who used to sit in the wooden bleachers a lifetime ago.

  “He’s hurt,” Mickey said as Lieberman led him back to the sofa. “And they’re gonna hurt him more, a lot more.”

  “Gornitz,” Carbin said. “This isn’t easy, but it’s history and common sense. They aren’t going to let your boy live. And you don’t stand a chance of getting to Stashall even if you get out of here, which you won’t because my office plans to prosecute you even if you don’t testify against Stashall. You’ve given us more than enough for that. You can’t kill anyone from prison, and if you’re not in witness protection, you can get yourself killed when you’re a prisoner. It’s not pretty, but we don’t have a hell of a lot of time. We’re going to do our best to find your son, but …”

  “I’ll work something out,” Mickey said to himself but aloud. “I’ve got to think this through.”

  “You don’t have any options,” said Carbin. “Think about it, but not too long. Did you recognize the caller?”

  “No,” said Gornitz. “But I recognized my son.”

  Mickey’s head was down and he said with self-pity, “I don’t even have a good picture of my own son. That bitch wouldn’t send me one.”

  “What did he say, Gornitz?”

  “Matthew was scared. Real scared. He saw them kill his mother. They’ve told him things they’re gonna do to him if I don’t promise to shut up. They —”

  “And how do they keep you quiet when they release your son?” Carbin said.

  “They want me to kill myself,” he said.

  “Then they’ll kill your son, and you know it,” said Carbin.

  “You’re a son of a bitch, Carbin.” Mickey looked up, eyes moist.

  “But I’m telling you the truth and you know it.”

  “I’ve got to think.”

  With that, Carbin motioned for Lieberman to follow him and nodded for the towhead to stay where he was. Out in the hallway with the door closed, Carbin strode away out of earshot of the plainclothesman pretending to read the paper, then he said softly to Lieberman, “Convince him.”

  Carbin was definitely invading Lieberman’s space. Their noses were inches apart.

  “Of what?” asked Lieberman.

  Carbin sighed and shook his head. “Lieberman, you going to be retiring soon?”

  “Few years.”

  “Pension, party, citation, the whole shmear?”

  “You’re threatening me?”

  “Every cop has done something that can be looked at in his career,” said Carbin. “Every cop.”

  God and Lieberman knew that Lieberman was no exception.

  “Mickey’s smart,” said Lieberman. “He’s a crook, but he’s smart. Let’s give him some time to try to work something out.”

  “Work something out,” Carbin said, turning his head. “For starts, talk him out of any thoughts he might have about jumping through a window or sticking his finger in an electrical outlet.”

  Lieberman shrugged. He didn’t really owe Mickey much but some nostalgia and a lot of ancient basketball games that seemed to matter a hell of a lot once but had been forgotten by almost everyone in what seemed like a short time. He would talk to Mickey. He would also do some thinking on his own about how to save Mickey’s son.

  “We’ll pick up Stashall, talk to him,” said Carbin, “but it won’t do us any good. I understand your partner was responsible for watching Gornitz’s kid and ex-wife.”

  “Yeah,” said Lieberman.

  “Great job,” Carbin said dryly, turning his back on Lieberman and heading back to the hotel room.

  Bill Hanrahan sat in his car in the parking lot of O’Hare Airport. No one had come to meet him when he arrived from Dayton. That suited him just fine. There would be questions, lots of questions, and he was supposed to head directly for the station where Kearney was waiting, probably with someone from the state attorney’s office.

  The run through broken glass and across the parking lot at the motel hadn’t done his feet or knees any good. In fact, his right knee hurt, not enough to go to the doctor but enough to need ice, which he did not have. The cuts on the bottom of his feet made it painful to walk. He knew he was punishing himself with more than a touch of pain for blowing the job.

  It was raining in Chicago. He could see it falling from his space on the sixth level of the parking garage. Simple. Turn the key, start the car, and get into the city where he would deservedly be torn apart.

  Bill Hanrahan considered a number of stops. He could stop by the Black Moon restaurant and get some solace and a cup of coffee from Iris Chen who, as yet, didn’t know what had happened. He could go see Whizzer, the priest at St. Bart’s whose football career had been far longer and more illustrious than Hanrahan’s and who would give it to you straight. He could stop at home and stall seeing if there were any messages, or he could fly off the wagon and get that drink he wanted, the one that would carry him through the morning and into the afternoon. He wasn’t out of options there. He could call Gerald Resnewki and get Gerry or someone from AA to talk to him, see him.

  They all seemed like good ideas. Hanrahan started the car, went down the winding ramp, drove into the rain, paid his toll being careful to pocket the receipt to be reimbursed sometime in the distant future.

  Hanrahan thought as he drove down the expressway that it would be a needed consolation if his son Michael were still at the house. Michael was probably strong enough to talk to and Michael, too, was an alcoholic, but Michael was dry now and sober and back with his wife and kids after spending a month with his father, a month of drying out and reconciliation.

  No, the house would be empty. Bill’s best bet was his partner. He never knew what Lieberman would say, but it would usually make things look less bleak than they certainly seemed. Lieberman knew how to accept failure and was cautious about celebrating anything that resembled victory. “Hope for the best. Expect the worst.” Lieberman’s motto number one or two. He got it from a Mel Brooks movie, but it made sense. Lieberman said he had also found it in the Bible.

  Hanrahan pushed the button and listened to the Chicago oldies station. Buddy Holly and the Crickets were singing “Peggy Sue.” Where was he when that song was popular? Dating Maureen, being courted by Division One colleges. He pushed another button and listened to a grumpy talk show host. The words didn’t matter. It was company.

  When he took the off-ramp at Touhy, Hanrahan compromised by stopping at Big Eddie’s for a pair of hot dogs with everything. Big Eddie’s was a shack whose owner had been fighting condemnation for years. The ancient black man who had owned Big Eddie’s for about half a century made the best dogs in the city, bar none. His name was Ben. No one kn
ew who Big Eddie was or had been. The atmosphere left something to be desired for many customers, particularly first-timers, but regulars and semiregulars like Bill Hanrahan didn’t mind the darkness and the three tables that required endless matchbooks underneath the legs to keep them close to level. People left you alone at Big Eddie’s. Ben didn’t even say hello. He was a surly son of a bitch, but the food was good and fast and hot and brought back memories of the old days and the Sanborn Drive-in not far from Chicago Vocational High where Bill had reigned before Dick Butkus. Hanrahan didn’t dwell on the memory, but it was there. He could have stopped at Maish’s T&L, but that would take too much time and he might have to answer questions. He would be answering enough questions soon.

  It was almost noon when he pulled into the parking lot behind the Clark Street station. The rain had stopped but the sky rumbled with the threat of another torrent. Hanrahan would have welcomed it. It suited his mood. He made his way through the back door and up to the squad room. The place was busy. It was probably the rain. People got cooped up by the rain, got on each other’s nerves, got into fights about what show to watch on television or whether the Yankees would beat out the White Sox or what someone actually said about some relative’s cooking. Sometimes people got killed. Burglaries went down. Burglars, unless they were desperate for drug money, were like other people. When the weather was bad, they stayed home. Same for muggers. That was one of the reasons they became criminals. So they could stay out of the rain when they wanted to. At least most of them.

  Hanrahan looked around for Lieberman. He wasn’t there. A few faces lifted toward him. Detectives at their desks hovered over suspects or witnesses. He saw sympathy, but no one spoke. It could have happened to any of them and they knew it, but Hanrahan would take the drop for losing someone whose life he was supposed to protect.

  He knocked at Captain Kearney’s door.

  At a desk behind him, he heard a young man’s voice with a heavy Hispanic accent saying “I don’ know, man. If the guys says it was me, he’s crazy nuts. I didn’t stab him. I don’t know him. Swear on the holy mother, on my own mother. He’s mistakin’ me for some other guy. You know?”

  “Come in,” Kearney called, and Hanrahan entered.