Big Silence

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Heinie,” Lieberman said with an exasperated sigh. “You’ve been watching too much television. I don’t need a warrant to interview a potential witness.”

  “Jimmy ain’t a witness,” said Heinie.

  “To what?” asked Lieberman.

  “To anything.”

  “I’m really enjoying our conversation,” said Lieberman, “but now I see Stashall.”

  “Not possible.”

  “Is possible. I’ll see him here or bring him all the way out to the Clark Street station.”

  “State attorney already talked to Jimmy,” said Heinie. “Came up empty.”

  “Thanks for sharing that with me,” Lieberman said with a weary hound of a smile. “Now I’m going in to see Stashall.”

  Lieberman tried to walk around the wide man who stepped in front of him.

  “Ain’t here,” said Heinie.

  “If he wasn’t here, you wouldn’t be trying to stop me from going in there. Step out of the way or announce me.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or you’re obstructing justice,” said Lieberman. “I’ll charge you. With your record, your lawyer will be lucky to plea bargain you down to a couple of years. That’s at least six months more time on your record. History is moving quickly, Heinie. You’ll come out to a different world, a world that doesn’t need you, and what for?”

  The woman at the desk was white-haired, almost stereotypically matronly in a brown suit. She had once been Jimmy Stashall’s secretary. Now she was filling in for her daughter, who had replaced her when she had had enough. The daughter had a small cyst in her breast. It was being removed. The woman behind the desk would only be here a day or two, but every minute was a bad memory. She picked up the phone on her desk, pressed a button, and said, “Mr. Stashall, there’s a policeman here to talk to you.”

  She looked up and said, “What’s your name?”

  “You don’t remember me? Abe Lieberman.”

  “Abe Lieberman,” the woman said into the phone. “Yes.”

  She hung up the phone and said to Heinie, “Let Detective Lieberman by.”

  Heinie grunted and stepped aside.

  “Heinie,” Lieberman whispered, “you need a diet. You want a good one, give me a call.”

  Lieberman walked to the door and opened it without knocking. Heinie started to follow him in, but the man behind the desk in front of Lieberman said, “Wait out there, Heinie. I’ll call if I want you. Abe and I are old enemies.”

  Reluctantly Manush closed the door.

  Jimmy Stashall was thin. His hair was black and thin. His nose was thin. His trademark was the suspenders he wore to keep his pants up. They were black and thin. A belt just wasn’t good enough. Jimmy was fifty-seven and had a record even longer than Heinie’s. He wasn’t on his way up or down in the mob.

  He had some territory and if he wanted to do other business outside that territory, he checked with the right people to be sure it was okay. He played the game, took the raps, and had scars like a common eighteenth-century seaman.

  “Nothing to tell you, Abe,” he said without rising.

  The office looked as if it had just been moved into. The furniture, solid, like a lawyer trying to make the right impression, was dark wood and antique. The view from the window behind Stashall was the traffic going down Montrose. There were pictures on the walls, about a dozen of them with Jimmy and various movie stars and Vegas entertainers. In all the pictures, Jimmy and the stars were arms around the neck or shaking hands and grinning.

  Lieberman shrugged and took a seat across the desk from Stashall.

  “Then we schmooze a few minutes, crack wise a few times, mention a few names from back when,” said the detective.

  “I talked to Carbin,” said Stashall. “We can pass a few minutes. Then I’ve got a meeting. I’ve got nothin’ to say.”

  Lieberman could bring him back to the station, but both of them knew he wouldn’t. Stashall would ask for his lawyer and clam up. The lawyer would come and get him out, probably file a complaint, which might or might not get Lieberman in trouble.

  “Lost any fingers recently?” asked Lieberman.

  Stashall held up both hands and looked at them.

  “Other people’s fingers,” said Lieberman.

  “No. You been drinking, Lieberman?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not making sense,” Stashall said, shifting in his swivel chair and looking at his watch.

  “Mickey Gornitz,” said Lieberman.

  “Used to work for me. No more.”

  “You’d be happy if he were dead.”

  Stashall shrugged and looked at his watch. “Lieberman, score a point here or I’ll tell you about the dinner I had with Wayne Newton in Vegas.”

  “You told me about that more than five years ago.”

  “I did? We’re getting old, Abe. Don’t remember things.”

  “I want the boy,” said Lieberman.

  “I know,” said Stashall. “Gornitz’s kid is missing. Carbin thinks I snatched him. You think I snatched him. I didn’t snatch him. I don’t know where he is and I don’t know who to ask. Period. Zip. That’s it. Ever tell you about meeting Liberace? He’s over there on the wall, right over me and Jack Jones.”

  “I didn’t really come for information,” said Lieberman, lowering his voice. “Or to sit in awe of photographs of entertainers who probably have no idea of who you are.”

  Stashall leaned over the desk. “Then why’re you here?”

  “To tell you that if the boy dies, you die.”

  “You’re shovelin’ bullshit,” Stashall said with an uncertain smile, not at all like the ones in the photographs.

  “I’m not,” said Lieberman. “And you know I’m not.”

  “I don’t have the kid,” Stashall shouted. “And if you want to piss out threats, even cops can have accidents.”

  “Okay, we’ve scared the hell out of each other,” said Lieberman. “But I meant what I said and you’re not going to go after a cop. You’ve got enough on your mind, and it’s going to get worse.”

  “Look, Lieberman,” Stashall said, reaching into his pocket for a breath mint. He offered one to the detective. Abe took it. “I could swear to you on the soul of my mother and my grandmother, the one on my mother’s side. The other one, we didn’t get along. Problem is that if I swear this time, the next time we have business, you ask me to swear on my mother and grandmother’s soul, and I can’t do it. See my dilemma on this one?”

  “I’m torn by it,” said Lieberman. “Jimmy, I wouldn’t believe you if you swore by your right hand and cut it off right now. Gornitz is going to talk and you are going to do time.”

  Stashall shook his head.

  “Lawyers, courts, grand juries,” he said with a sad smile. “So much can happen. It costs, but sometimes it’s worth the price. Know what I mean?”

  “The kid, Jimmy,” Lieberman said.

  “Don’t have him,” Jimmy Stashall replied. “Don’t know who does. That’s all you’ll get from me. Even if you took me in and had a chance to play games with me, you wouldn’t get more. Even if there was more. Which there isn’t.”

  Lieberman got up slowly. “Thanks for the mint.”

  “I got a few minutes,” Stashall said, rising. “You want a coffee, Dr Pepper?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Lieberman walked to the door.

  “I can’t say the Gornitz business doesn’t bother me,” Stashall said behind him. “I trusted him like you trust your partner. It’s gonna cost me. It’s gonna cost him. But I didn’t kill his ex-wife or have her hit and I didn’t take the kid. I don’t need you all over me now and that’s what I’ve got. There are better ways of dealing with Gornitz. Besides, I didn’t even know where his ex-wife and kid were. I’ve got friends and people who owe me favors, but, between you and me, we’re not talkin’ Einsteins here. I don’t know if I could have found them if I tried, and I didn’t try. Have a nice day and close the door on yo
ur way out.”

  Lieberman went out, closing the office door behind him.

  Heinie was standing, hands clasped before him, five feet in front of the door facing Lieberman.

  “I’ll tell you in all honesty, Heinie, I like your white turtleneck.”

  “Thanks.”

  “It would help if you had a neck, but you can’t have everything.”

  Heinie stepped back to let Lieberman pass. Then Heinie went into Stashall’s office and closed the door.

  Mistake, thought Lieberman. He had been left alone, probably only for a few seconds, with the matronly secretary, who was standing in front of an open file cabinet putting files away.

  “You know my name,” said Lieberman. “And I remember yours. Grace …”

  “Grace Frasco,” the woman said without looking away from her work.

  “You’ve been away a long time,” he said.

  “I’m just filling in for my daughter for a day or two.”

  “She like the work?”

  “She’d like to be busier, but it pays well and we’ve got bills to pay and no one to count on but each other,” she said. “Mr. Stashall knew my uncle, Anthony Visconti. Remember him?”

  “Someone blew him up in his car in Miami,” said Lieberman.

  “Mr. Stashall married my sister. She’s dead now and … I’m sorry, Detective, but that’s all I’ve got to say.”

  “A woman’s been murdered,” he went on. “Shot in the face. Her son has been kidnapped. You know Mickey Gornitz?”

  “No,” she said. “My daughter knows him, but there’s no point in talking to her. She won’t answer.”

  She stopped, file in hand, and turned to Lieberman. People liked to talk to Lieberman. He was a good listener. He liked to listen.

  “I know things are not always savory in Mr. Stashall’s business dealings. God knows they weren’t in my uncle’s.”

  Lieberman nodded, attentive.

  “But,” she went on, “I don’t believe that Mr. Stashall killed that woman and took her son. I’m not saying he doesn’t want to deal with the problem created by Mr. Gornitz, but he doesn’t have that boy and I pray to God and the Holy Virgin that you find him alive and well.”

  The door to Stashall’s office started to open. Grace Frasco looked anxious. Lieberman got out before Stashall and Manush emerged.

  It wasn’t raining when he hit the street, but it felt like it and the sky was Chicago October gray. The gray he could take. The summer heat he could take. The winters were the problem. Lieberman loved his city, but he hated the deep snows that trapped his car and he hated the deep cold. The normal cold, zero weather, he could take, but in recent winters January and February were bringing wind chills forty below and lower. Such temperatures froze his car battery in spite of the garage, which wasn’t heated and which he couldn’t use when there had been a big snow. He wouldn’t move. Neither he nor Bess wanted to move, but they talked about northern California and the Gulf coast of Florida from time to time.

  Bill Hanrahan was leaning against Lieberman’s car, arms folded. A few kids who should have been in school moved by laughing. A woman pushing a baby carriage with a friend at her side were carrying on an animated conversation in what Lieberman thought was Russian.

  “How’d it go?” asked Hanrahan.

  “Stashall says he didn’t do it,” said Lieberman.

  “What’d you expect?” asked Lieberman’s partner.

  “I didn’t expect that I might believe him.”

  CHAPTER 7

  STASHALL WATCHED THE TWO detectives from his window. Someone knocked at the door behind him. He told them to go away. The cops were talking but nothing in their faces gave away what they were thinking.

  What Stashall was thinking was that life was unfair. He had worked hard, with his bare hands, all the dirty jobs Anthony Visconti had thrown at him. Visconti had taken him in like a son. Visconti had protected him and then Visconti had died and Jimmy had worked even harder and, he thought, gained more than a little respect.

  He was a good family man. He paid his people well and on time. He always gave the buyer or victim a chance before he allowed violence.

  Yes, he committed crimes, crimes for the mob, crimes for himself, to take care of his family, his mother who was eighty-five damn years old, the sweetest … Shit, it was Gornitz. He had made a mistake in hiring that Jew bastard. That’s what you get for being liberal.

  It was getting late so they decided not to leave a car in front of Stashall’s and have to come back for it. Hanrahan and Lieberman drove separately to North Avenue and Emiliano “El Perro” Del Sol’s bingo parlor. Lieberman listened to the radio humming along to the golden oldies. That was one of the great things about having the big brooding Hanrahan as a partner. They both liked the same 1950s music. Lieberman knew vaguely that Elvis was singing. He liked Elvis. Bess did not. Bess liked the Beach Boys. Abe did not. Since they seldom listened to music together, it wasn’t much of an issue in their marriage.

  Lieberman went over his conversation with Jimmy Stashall and Grace Frasco. Stashall could lie. So could Grace Frasco, whom he didn’t know very well. The woman had aged gracefully. She was probably younger than Lieberman, who seemed, according to his mirror, to have been born looking weary and old. But weary or not, Lieberman had something in his gut like most cops with his years on the job. It told him when people were lying. It wasn’t always accurate, but it was enough of the time to make him listen to the rumbling inside him.

  Driving behind him. Bill Hanrahan listened to nothing. He tried not to think about what he could have done and maybe should have done to save the woman and keep the kid from being taken. He had spent most of his waking time since the murder trying not to think about it. He was monumentally unsuccessful. Maybe he should have sensed what might happen in Ohio. Maybe he should have assumed the possibility and stood guard outside the window or dozed in his car from where he could see the window, but they could have come through the motel room door too. He couldn’t watch them both. Besides, he wasn’t violating procedure. He had been listening. He had been in the room seconds after the shot. He had seen the car take off, missed it by seconds. Still, as he had told Sam Parker, he seemed to be one hell of a jinx. He decided to dig out the crucifix his mother had given him when he was confirmed. He would find a chain, wear the image of Christ against his heart. It might help. Probably wouldn’t. What was it Lieberman had said awhile ago? Myths can be comforting.

  There were parking spaces in the new parking lot next to the bingo parlor. There had been a small bodega, a mom-and-pop grocery there only months ago. El Perro had persuaded them to sell the business to him at what he considered a reasonable price. The old couple had accepted without an argument. Then El Perro had called Father Marielli at Holy Angels and told him he could send someone to take what was in the grocery and give it to the poor. That was after he and his men took what they wanted, which turned out to be very little.

  As violent as he was, as feared as he was, El Perro wouldn’t have survived if he didn’t have support from the community from which he was stealing. When he could buy the gratitude of the neighborhood and the church without any cost to him, he did. To many he had become a hero — a hero to stay away from, but a hero nonetheless. To many others who had seen him in a moment of madness or heard about it, he was not a hero but a demon God had unleashed on North Avenue to remind them of his power. God was good, but God needed to remind people that evil existed, and El Perro was certainly unpredictable, violent evil sent by God to test their ability to suffer through life.

  Lieberman had waited in his car for his partner to park. Together they had walked into the bingo parlor. Hanrahan had said only “We’ve got an hour before Mills is supposed to be sitting on that bench in Lunt Park. How long you think he’ll sit there?”

  “He’ll sit,” Lieberman said opening the bingo parlor door.

  Inside, leaning against a wall in the alcove whose walls were covered with colorful posters in Span
ish, was El Chuculo, the Knife, a skinny, good-looking, and very lethal young man. He was good for at least three killings that Lieberman knew about. On two occasions, not murders, Lieberman had helped let El Chuculo walk as a payback to El Perro.

  “Buenos tardes, Viejo,” the young man said, standing up.

  In the past, till about the time El Perro took over the bingo parlor and started calling the numbers himself, every member of the gang had worn black jackets with a painting of an octopus on the back. Now Los Tentaculos wore slacks and jackets that didn’t match and often ties that contributed even more to the chaos of mingled purposes. Dressing very badly had become Los Tentaculos’ new uniform. Everyone in the broad circle in which they traveled knew who they were. Now even Piedras, the enforcer whose I.Q. was probably too low to register in a test but whose loyalty to El Perro was unquestionable, wore the slacks, jacket, and hideous tie combination.

  “¿Porque usted no esta in la calle?” asked Lieberman.

  “Hace frío, Viejo. Yo puede a ver todos aquí,“ said the young man who, the two detectives knew, had a folding knife with a very long blade somewhere he could get to it quickly.

  The policemen walked into the bingo parlor through the door next to Fernandez. The room was large, filled with long tables and chairs. On a raised platform, a thick wire sphere filled with bingo numbers on the table in front of him, sat Emiliano “El Perro” Del Sol, smiling at the two policemen. At least it seemed to be a smile. The white scar that ran down his face made it difficult to be certain. Behind El Perro stood the solid Piedras and another young member of the gang named Ramon Tijas, who had not yet acquired a nickname. As soon as he did something particularly gory and vicious, El Perro would dub him. El Perro was the only one not wearing a sports jacket. He wore a silk Cubs jacket with a matching blue silk tie.

  “Viejo, Irish,” El Perro said, motioning to chairs in front of him on the platform. “¿Que pasa?”

  El Perro had abandoned his office at the front of the bingo parlor in favor of the platform where he ruled like a bandit king. The bingo parlor was not the most lucrative part of El Perro’s enterprises. After extortion came a variety of things, arson for insurance, beatings or even murders paid for on a sliding scale, a little cocaine dealing but no other drug, and car theft, but the bingo parlor had taken what existed of El Perro’s imagination.