Big Silence

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Kearney handed Abe a sheet of paper with an address and room number written in pencil. Abe knew the hotel. Used to be a class hotel on Sheridan two decades ago when George Halas lived less than a mile away and some of the best weddings took place there. Now the place was hanging on and would have been leveled years ago if anyone had wanted to put something else up in its place.

  Abe headed for the hotel, stopping at the drive-through window of a taco stand where he ordered two vegetarian tacos with sour cream. He drove the remaining few blocks to the hotel where Gornitz was being held and sat eating the tasteless tacos and feeling hungrier as he ate.

  What the hell had happened to Clark Mills? What could he say to Mickey Gornitz? What would he do if one of his grandchildren were kidnapped and he was given the same demand?

  Lieberman knew he wouldn’t kill himself. He knew he would stall, lie, work the twenty-four hours knowing that they probably would kill his grandchild no matter what he did. Then he would find them, find them and make his own law. Mickey Gornitz probably knew the same things, but it’s hard to tell a man not to take his only chance to save his only son.

  Lieberman had recognized the two men from the state attorney’s office standing in the hall. They had been expecting him. One of the men knocked at the door of Room 654, two hard taps, two soft ones.

  “Detective Lieberman’s here,” said the man.

  The door opened and Lieberman entered. The door was immediately closed and locked, a metal bar placed under the doorknob.

  There were two more people from the state attorney’s office, one was the man who had opened the door. The other was a young woman in a skirt and sweater. Lieberman didn’t know her. She had naturally curly hair and was reasonably pretty with a no-nonsense look on her face. She nodded and moved to a chair at the window. The man who had answered the door checked the iron bar and took a seat next to the door facing into the room in which Mickey Gornitz sat on a worn sofa, a plastic tray with barbecued ribs, fries, and cole slaw untouched in front of him.

  “Abe,” Mickey said, standing.

  Mickey looked terrible. His eyes were set deep, sleepless and dark. He needed a shave and he definitely needed his remaining hair brushed.

  Lieberman sat next to Gornitz on the sofa. The food looked and smelled good. Lieberman resisted.

  “Abe,” Gornitz whispered softly. “You heard?”

  “I heard.”

  “What can I do?” Mickey pleaded, clapping his hands together. “Carbin was here. He told me they were bluffing. That they wouldn’t dare kill Matt because it would be the one sure thing to make me talk. He said they’d call back and just keep holding him, maybe hurt him a little to make me suffer.”

  “He’s probably right,” said Lieberman.

  “But that can’t go on forever,” Mickey said, rubbing his forehead with both hands.

  “Well,” Lieberman said very softly, “you could go through the window.”

  “Yes,” Mickey said, looking up at Lieberman who was smoothing his mustache with a single finger.

  “Problem is,” said Lieberman, “you’re dead and you’ll never know if Stashall’ll let your boy go. My guess is —”

  “He won’t,” said Mickey, looking around the room in pain. “I know Stashall. I’m dead. My boy’s dead, but I can save Matt from torture. You know the things they can do to people. And maybe, just maybe Stashall let him go if I’m dead. It’s worth a chance, maybe, you know?”

  Lieberman knew. He had seen the bodies in shallow graves in Indiana and the trunks of cars.

  “Mickey,” he said, “I think the only chance of your son staying alive is if you’re alive. Carbin’s right. They call back and you tell them that if anything happens to Matt, you tell everything. If they let him go, you’ll think about holding back, at least on some things.”

  “Stashall won’t buy it,” Mickey said, starting to get up, then clasping his knees and sitting again. “If Carbin’s thinking about putting me in a strait jacket or fill me with drugs to keep me quiet and to keep me from trying to kill myself and, so help me God, I won’t talk.”

  “He won’t do that,” Lieberman said reassuringly, though he had no idea what Eugene Carbin could or would do. “We’ve got twenty-four hours. Let’s use them. When they call back, one of us talks to them, says you’re alive, and puts you on. You make the deal. They’ll take it.”

  “They won’t.” Gornitz sobbed.

  “You got a better idea, Mickey?”

  Mickey didn’t answer. He finally shook his head. He had no better idea.

  “I’m just a bookkeeper,” he said, holding his hands out for understanding. “A CPA. I don’t know how all this happened. I don’t want to die. It just —”

  “You see the Crane game in forty-nine?” asked Lieberman.

  Mickey paused, thought, and said, “Forty-nine? That’s the one where your brother had fifty. Most outside jumpers. Picture of Maish, two columns and a big headline in the Sun.”

  “That’s the one. Maish’s biggest game.”

  “You had a bunch of assists,” said Mickey, showing interest. “But they didn’t count assists or rebounds back then. Only offense, scoring. Was Bosco coaching that year?”

  “Perz,” said Lieberman.

  “It was great to be a Marshall Commando,” said Mickey. “All shvartza now. Has been since the fifties. You even had them on your team.”

  “Yeah,” said Lieberman, considering pointing out that of the three black players on his team, one had gone on to get a Ph.D. from Pepperdine and was now a full professor of psychology, another had started a soul food restaurant with his parents and brothers and branched out all over the country before selling out for millions and investing his part in a series of highly successful McDonald’s franchises, and the last had become a lawyer and still worked for the ACLU. It was not the time to destroy Mickey’s prejudices.

  “Those were great days, Abe,” Mickey said.

  “Great days,” Abe said, putting a hand on the man’s sagging shoulder.

  Abe did not remember them as great days, but it wasn’t the time or place to go into the dangers of living in a Jewish ghetto surrounded by hostile Poles to the south, anti-Semitic Cicero to the west, blacks to the east, and an unknown commercial world of shops, movies, and neighborhood restaurants to the north, an area that was supposed to be neutral but never was. One night on Madison, on the way to the Marboro Theater, Abe and Maish had been surrounded by a gang of Irish kids who lived around St. Finnbar’s Church. They had demanded money and Abe’s new hat. Before he could consider turning over the hat, Maish had laid out two of the Irish kids. Abe had run head down into the face of the leader, and the four who were still standing rushed the brothers and may well have killed them if a crowd hadn’t started to gather and the Irish kids hadn’t run away. They got Abe’s hat. The great times.

  “Mickey, you trust me?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Stay alive.”

  Mickey shrugged.

  “Promise,” said Lieberman. “I’m counting on you.”

  “Okay,” said Mickey. “But if they put Matt on the phone and hurt him …”

  “We’ll take care of it,” said Lieberman. “Say, I’m seeing Maish tonight or tomorrow morning. I’ll tell him you said hello and remind him about that Crane game.”

  Mickey’s smile was full of pain, but it was a smile. Lieberman shook his hand, motioned at the woman near the window, who gave him a puzzled look and followed the detective out of the room and into the hall away from the two men at the door.

  “I’m Lieberman,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “What do you want?”

  “Your name.”

  “Ruth Tyro,” she said.

  “Used to be …?”

  “Tyronovitz,” she said.

  “Ruth Tyronovitz,” he said. “I am going to make a sexist comment. You are the best-looking attorney in the state attorney’s office. Also, given your age and gender, you must be v
ery good to be in that room. You want to know what Mickey just told me? I’ll tell you what Mickey told me. You tell Carbin any way you like. I suggest no one try to talk to Mickey about what’s happening. I suggest you talk basketball, football, baseball, even soccer. Mickey’s a sports nut. Keep him talking. Suggest poker, real money. Don’t give him time to think.”

  Ruth Tyro was smart enough to say nothing and nod in understanding.

  “Last thing,” he said as he walked toward the elevator. “He’s not going to eat those ribs. Eat them before they’re cold. Eat them for the sake of a starving detective who’ll dream about them if he thinks they’re just sitting there waiting. Eat them.”

  “I’m a vegetarian,” she said.

  He turned to her. She was smiling. She had a great smile.

  “But,” she added, “I’ll get the others to eat the ribs and I’ll take the cole slaw and a few fries.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  On the way home, Lieberman called in and told Kearney what had happened. Kearney was almost always in his office. He was there more than he was in his apartment. He slept on the three-pillow, less-than-comfortable lightweight sofa he had bought secondhand from Stavros the Greek less than a block away from the station. Kearney had his own troubles and memories, but he was a good cop. He just depressed the hell out of everybody.

  One quick trip around Lunt Park and Lunt itself with a pause at the gas station to ask if anyone had seen Clark Mills. No one had.

  He considered stopping at Maish and Yetta’s, but he really didn’t have it in him to cope with his brother’s grief without a halfway decent night of something resembling sleep.

  It was still early enough when he parked half a block away from his house so he would have a chance to say good night to Barry and Melisa. Barry had been complaining about having to go to bed early now that he was about to have his Bar Mitzvah. Melisa was eight and eight was her bedtime on school nights though the lights didn’t go out till stories were read, water brought, imagined aches and problems dealt with. Bess and Abe had extended Barry’s bedtime to ten, providing he was in his room at nine where he could listen to the music Lieberman hated and, they hoped, read a book.

  Abe knew he was heading into trouble when he put his key in the lock and heard the voices inside. He recognized them all. It was too late to turn around, and, besides, it was his house and responsibility. He went in.

  The living room was lighted, but the television was off and there was no one there. In the dining room beyond, however, under the bright overhead lights of the twenty-year-old fixture the chairs around the table were full. Bess sat at one end of the table, her end. Surrounding her was their daughter, Lisa, who glared up at her father as if he had done something particularly treacherous. At her side was Marvin Alexander, Lisa’s husband. The smile on his dark-brown face was a bit sad but genuine. He stood, adjusted his rimless glasses, and shook Abe’s hand.

  “Flew in a few hours ago,” he said.

  “Good to see you, Doc,” Lieberman said sincerely.

  Marvin sat as Lieberman found himself looking at his ex-son-in-law Todd, the classics professor at Northwestern who had remarried and was basically out of the family except for the important fact that he was the father of Abe’s grandchildren and that he retained a clinging dependency on both Bess and Abe.

  There was a plate of food in front of Abe’s place at the table with a bottle of opened and half-finished red wine nearby. The others were drinking coffee.

  “I’ll be right back,” said Abe. “I want to say good night to the kids.”

  “Don’t take too long, Avrum,” Bess said in a tone that brought visions of an all-night session to the detective.

  Before going upstairs, Abe went to his and Bess’s bedroom on the first floor, took off his gun and holster, put them in the drawer of the table next to the bed, and locked the drawer with the key he always wore round his neck. Then, as he moved as silently as he could up the stairs, the voices behind him rose. The level of conversation was still civil, but Lieberman knew that could soon end. If anyone could hold it together, Bess could. Abe would let his wife handle this.

  With Lisa present, the chances of her taking offense at anything her father said were almost assured. Yet she always came back for her father’s input. It baffled Lieberman, who simply accepted it as he accepted most of what took place in his life. He addressed it, did what he could and felt he must, and went on.

  Melisa was asleep in her small room. There was a night-light that cast enough light on her face for Abe to see her. He kissed her cheek and went softly out of the room, closing the door gently. The voices from below could be heard on the small landing though only a word or two came across.

  The light was on in Barry’s room. Lieberman knocked and his grandson told him to come in.

  Barry, lean and an almost exact replica of Todd, his father, sat cross-legged on his bed with a book in his lap. The CD player was soft with a sound that Abe had learned to accept as music.

  “Grandpa,” he said. “You want to know what’s going on down there?”

  “It would help,” said Abe, sitting on the only chair in the room, the one in front of the desk. This had been Lisa’s room. Much of the furniture, to make it acceptable to a boy, had been played with, redone by Bess. And he had covered the walls with posters of rock stars caught in the act of screaming and basketball players caught in the act of flying.

  “Well,” said Barry, “my mother wants to go back to Los Angeles with Marvin, but she says he’ll hold something against her. I’m not sure what, but it sounded like she was fooling around with some doctor where she works. Marvin says he won’t hold it against her, that all she has to do is never do it again. He wants Melisa and me to come and live with them. My mother’s not so sure that it’s a good idea even if she agrees to go back. My father says he wants us to come live with him and his new wife. His new wife isn’t bad, but I don’t think she really wants us. Grandma is trying to work it out.”

  “Good report,” Lieberman said. “What would you and your sister like to do about all this?”

  “I like Dr. Alexander. I like my father. I’m not sure either of us want to live with my mother and I don’t think she really wants us. We’d both rather stay here with you.”

  “Anybody ask you?”

  “No,” he said.

  “What are you reading?”

  “A biography of Andrew Jackson.”

  “For school?”

  “No. I’m gonna read a biography of every president,” said Barry.

  Abe got up wearily.

  “Let me know when you get to Nixon,” he said. “We’ll talk.”

  “Okay,” said Barry.

  Lieberman gave his grandson a hug and said, “Back to the family trial.”

  “Mazel tov,” said Barry.

  “I’ll need it,” Abe said, closing the door as Barry went back to his book.

  Abe was happy to escape the music in his grandson’s room but not to face the music downstairs. The discussion continued as he entered the room and sat at his place looking down at a plate set on the table before his chair. It wasn’t ribs, but it wasn’t bad. Cucumber and onion salad, a lamb chop, and asparagus. He poured himself some wine as Lisa and Todd began to speak at the same time.

  “Let the man eat,” said Bess. “We can talk about something else till he finishes.”

  “I’m a detective, remember,” Abe said. “Let me guess what’s going on. Deduction. Just like Sherlock Holmes or Poirot. Todd, you’ve decided you want the kids. Your wife now agrees. Marvin, for some reasons that elude me, you want my daughter back on condition that she not repeat the behavior that has resulted in my presently crowded dining room. You also want the kids. Lisa isn’t sure of what she wants. My wife and I both want Barry and Melisa to stay with us. We think that’s the best thing for them. But we’re not disinterested parties.”

  “They aren’t your children,” said Lisa. “They’re mine.”

  “An
d mine,” added Todd. “You abandoned them to your parents.”

  “I always planned to send for them sometime,” Lisa said.

  “Women, by nature, it seems, were born to be a great impediment and bitterness in the lives of men,” said Todd.

  Lieberman had cut a piece of lamb and was about to bring it to his mouth. He paused and said, “No quotations from Greek tragedies. That was the rule when you were my son-in-law. It’s the rule still. No hiding behind dead Greeks.”

  “Orestes by Euripides,” said Marvin.

  Todd looked up, surprised and pleased. “That’s right.”

  “Provide yourself with friends as well as kin … One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives,” said Marvin. “Also Orestes.”

  “Wonderful,” said Lisa. “My ex-husband and my husband are going to be friends. Someone should call Jerry Springer. We’ll all go sit on national television and the two of you can play dueling Euripides.”

  Lieberman had begun chewing the warm piece of lamb, but he paused again. He was unaware that his daughter had any sense of humor. It was his firm conviction that, with rare exceptions, she lived humorlessly in a recurring torrent of vocal and silent blame aimed at her father.

  Maish, he thought, blames God. Lisa blames me, and these two sit here hiding behind the words of dead Greeks.

  “Bess,” Abe said, pouring some wine, “I assume you were conducting this trial before I arrived. I urge you to continue while I finish eating and wait for a migraine.”

  “Impasse,” said Bess.

  “What do you think should be done?” Abe asked his wife across the table. The wine wasn’t bad. Or maybe he just needed it.

  “Lisa goes back to California with her husband,” said Bess. “Todd goes home or to court if he feels he must. Meanwhile, we keep the children.”

  “Anyone ask Melisa and Barry what they want?” Abe asked, considering the asparagus.

  “No,” said Bess.

  “I’m willing to abide by their decision,” said Todd.

  “They’re children,” said Lisa. “It isn’t their decision.”