“What’s that song?” asked Bloombach. “I’ll be there in the morning if I live. I’ll be there in the morning if I don’t get killed.”
“Change of subject,” said Rosen, and the Alter Cockers lowered their collective voice to a level where it would remain for three whole minutes.
“So, Maish?” asked Abe.
“So?”
Today Maish looked more like a bloodhound than a bulldog. He always looked like some kind of sad-faced dog.
Until his son David, Abe’s nephew, was murdered a year earlier, everyone called him Nothing-Bothers Maish. It had seemed to be true. It wasn’t any longer.
“So, you remember Mickey Gornitz?”
“High school,” Maish said without interest.
“His son’s been kidnapped.” Abe worked on his oatmeal. “He was working for some bad people and he wants to be a witness against them. They took his kid. They want Mickey to kill himself before they let the kid go. Personally, I don’t think they’re going to let the kid go. I think we’ve got to find him.”
“So?” asked Maish. “This you’re telling me? You’re supposed to be arguing with me, telling me to snap out of it, be good old Maish again, stop disrupting religious classes, find a hobby. Avrum, I tried. For a year I tried, but I’m never going to forget or forgive God for what happened to David.”
“I’m not going to argue with you, Maish,” Lieberman said. “Do what you want to do, what you have to do. Who cares if you start going crazy? Me, your wife, your other son, Bess, those Cockers by the window? Terrell? Do what you have to do, Maish. I could never talk you into anything you didn’t want to do.”
“Avrum,” Maish whispered. “I know who I’m hurting, but I have to curse God. It’s all that’s keeping me sane.”
“Maybe it’s what’s driving you crazy?” Lieberman finished his coffee. He wanted to check his watch, but he didn’t.
“Maybe,” Maish said with a shrug. “More oatmeal?”
“A little.”
Maish got up, took the bowl, and came back with a serving even bigger than the first.
“Minor point,” said Maish. “But you know what else isn’t fair? We’re brothers. I hardly eat and I’m fat. You eat like a … Florida State lineman and you’re a skinny little thing.”
“Like Pa,” said Lieberman. “You take after Ma’s side. Would you be happier if I was fat?”
“No,” said Maish. “I’m just making a small point about ‘fair.’ ”
“Don’t wait for me to say ‘Who said life was fair?’ I’m not saying it. I’m a cop. I don’t walk into traps that obvious. I want you to see a friend of mine, a psychiatrist.”
“Never,” said Maish.
“Enjoying your misery too much?”
“You better go to work, Avrum,” Maish said, getting up.
“This isn’t an ordinary psychiatrist,” said Abe. “He lost his wife and little daughter in a car accident. Only daughter. He’ll understand. Can it hurt? I’ll pay. I’ll set it up. I’ll even carry you to meet him. No, I’ll get Bill to carry you.”
“He couldn’t do it,” said Maish.
“Probably not,” agreed Abe standing and facing his brother. “I just happen to have his card with me. Took me an extra ten minutes to find it this morning. Take it. What can it hurt? You can tell him about God. You can get angry in front of him. It’s what he’s paid for.”
“A man who lost his wife and only child?” Maish said, taking the card.
“For Yetta, for me, for whoever but mostly for you. You’re my only brother, literally my big brother. See the man. Tell him you’re my brother. He’ll give you a rate.”
“I’ll consider.” Maish looked at the card. “He’s not Jewish.”
“No,” said Lieberman. “Dr. Mustapha Aziz is an Arab, a devout Muslim. You two should have a lot to talk about.”
Abe touched his brother’s shoulder and moved past him toward the door where the Alter Cocker chorus gave him one last warning,
“Watch out for pickle pockets,” Bloombach called.
Weintraub did not smile. It was one of Bloombach’s recurring jokes.
“We decided Terrell’s bachelor party will be at your house, Lieberman,” said Rosen.
“My pleasure,” said Lieberman. “And you’re all going to get invitations to my grandson’s Bar Mitzvah. Come and bring a nice present. He’s planning to say something insulting about you, but I think he can be bribed out of it.”
“Blackmail,” said Howie Chen.
“ ‘That,’ as my granddaughter would say, ‘is what Tiggers do best,’ ” Lieberman said, walking out into the morning and hurrying to his car.
The squad room of the Clark Street station was eerily quiet. Harley Buel and Rene Catolino were the only ones at their desks. Harley, who looked like a school principal complete with rimless glasses, was talking quietly to a thin Hispanic young man in a leather jacket. Harley played his role well. When you had a suspect or reluctant witness who looked like he or she would fall for an interrogation tone of disappointment, you got Harley on the job. People didn’t want to disappoint their favorite teacher. Rene was the only woman on the squad. Dark, pretty, maybe a touch hard, she never turned away from a case and she could curse with the best in the squad, though Abe was sure the cursing was just self-defense.
No Hanrahan. Lieberman went to Kearney’s office and knocked.
“Come in.”
Kearney and Hanrahan sat at the small table. Kearney hardly ever went behind his desk anymore. He was either standing at the window or sitting at the small conference desk unless he was catching a few hours of restless sleep on the less-than-comfortable couch.
Hanrahan’s eyes were a little baggy, but he was clean shaven, soaped, and neat. He was drinking coffee.
“Detective Hanrahan has been busy,” said Kearney.
Hanrahan held a sheet of paper out to his partner. Lieberman took it. It was a message from Desk Sergeant Nestor Briggs dated the day before and with the time of the call in the right-hand corner, 5:50 P.M. The message was for Hardrock Hanrahan. It read:
COULDN’T COME TO THE PARK. I’M GONNA DO THIS ON MY OWN. NO FREE BUS TICKETS. NO COPS TAKING ME TO BE SURE I LEAVE. I’LL CALL YOU FROM GEORGIA SO YOU KNOW I’M NOT LYING.
The message was from Clark Mills.
“Son of a —” Lieberman started.
“The murder weapon is Chinese,” said Hanrahan. “Lab tech knows all about them. Old Weapon. There’s a name scratched on the handle. No prints. Name is in Korean. Weapon was standard issue to North Korean officers.”
“Looks like a Korean War souvenir,” said Kearney. “Whoever fired it was lucky it didn’t explode in his hand.”
Lieberman wanted a cup of coffee, a good cup of coffee, not the stuff that was brewing in the squad room in the seldom-cleaned ancient coffeemaker. He wanted to sit, drink, close his eyes, and not be bothered by the world in general and his job and family in particular, and he had good reason.
“I may know a suspect,” said Lieberman. “May be nothing, but it’s probably worth checking.”
“Well?” the captain asked.
“I’m probably wrong,” said Lieberman. “I’ll check it out. If it looks like something, I’ll follow through.”
“See the papers this morning?” Kearney asked.
Lieberman now felt like sitting down. Was he feeling his age or the weight caused by his suspicion? Lieberman, in fact, was not the oldest detective in the department. O’Neill on the West Side was almost sixty-five and came in early every day and was the last to leave at night. Some people said O’Neill worked harder every year just to prove he could handle the load. Lieberman thought it was easier. The department and job were his life. Then there was Albert “Big Bells” Bertinelli in the Organized Crime Division. Big Bells might be even older than O’Neill. Now that the old mobsters, whom he knew personally on a first-name basis, were dying off, Big Bells wasn’t quite as essential, but as long as there were a few left and a second a
nd third generation coming up, Bertinelli was too valuable to push into retirement. There were others. At the moment, Lieberman didn’t feel like pulling them up for scrutiny. There would come a time soon when some sixty-year-old detective would be thinking or saying “Lieberman up on Clark is a hell of a lot older than I am.”
Lieberman sat at the table knowing that Kearney was talking but not really hearing.
“I don’t know how they got it,” Kearney was saying when Lieberman forced himself to concentrate on the captain’s words. “My guess is it’s a leak in the department.”
“Maybe a good reporter,” said Hanrahan.
“Maybe,” agreed Kearney. “But I like to think the worst so it doesn’t come up behind you and kick you in the ass when you’re not looking.”
Hanrahan took the Sun-Times from Kearney and passed it to Lieberman. The paper was folded to page two. On the lower half of the page was a story and a photograph of a smiling young black man in a football uniform. The headline read: “Ex-Football Star Murdered. Clark Mills Was Living Homeless.”
“Long headline,” said Lieberman, handing the paper back to the captain.
“Hey, they had half a page to fill,” said Kearney. “You’ve got a suspect?”
“Maybe,” said Lieberman.
“Go for it, both of you. Now. Shit. Druggies, drunks, and homeless drifters get murdered every day and don’t even make a paragraph in the papers.”
“Clark Mills finally gets his moment of fame,” murmured Lieberman.
Hanrahan looked at his partner. Hanrahan didn’t want a half page in the Sun-Times if he died on duty. He didn’t want a headline that said: “Detective Hardrock Hanrahan, Ex-Football Star, Found shot in Sewage Canal.” They’d probably use some ancient file photograph of him in a Southern Illinois uniform a thousand years ago. Hanrahan had a good smile back then, like Clark Mills.
The bags under Lieberman’s eyes were heavier than usual and there was no doubt that the man was showing signs that some heavy weights were coming down on his thin shoulders.
“Let’s go.” Hanrahan got up.
“Let’s,” Lieberman agreed joining him.
“Nothing new from Carbin on the Gornitz kid,” said Kearney. “Carbin called early. May want you to go talk to Gornitz again. Keeps changing his mind about you, Abe. Now he thinks you said something that’s got Gornitz thinking of staying alive.”
“Maybe,” said Lieberman following his partner to the door.
Kearney turned his head and looked at a plaque on the wall. Lieberman had the feeling that the younger man wasn’t thinking of the glory days when the plaque had been awarded to him for being the outstanding detective on the force for that year. Lieberman felt Kearney was looking through that plaque into forever and the way things might have been. With all he was carrying, Lieberman would have been willing to talk to Kearney about his problems, but it wouldn’t happen. Kearney wouldn’t open up, probably wouldn’t even admit it to himself. Maybe a time would come.
When they were back in the squad room, Rene Catolino was having a cup of coffee at her desk with Detective Lorber, the weight lifter, who had come in and was listening, smiling, and trying to hide his feelings of lust for his fellow officer.
“So,” said Catolino, “this guy calls and says he’ll tell me where the perp is hiding if I promise he’ll remain monogamous. So, straight-face, I said, ‘Sir, that is completely up to you.’ ”
Lorber laughed, loud, much more than the tale was worth.
“I’d say the odds are even that Muscles will get through to our tough lady,” Hanrahan said as they moved toward the squad room door.
“I’ve got more faith in her,” said Lieberman. “I’ll say he has one chance in a hundred.”
“Of getting to her?” asked Hanrahan.
“Of getting away from her.”
It wasn’t until they were in the car, Lieberman driving, that Hanrahan said, “I got a tip yesterday, a little vague like the Chinese gentleman who gave it to me …”
“From racy to racist,” said Lieberman.
“I’m beginning to think there are no limits to the tortures the Oriental mind can think up,” said Hanrahan.
“Sounds like one of Cary Grant’s lines in Gunga Din” said Lieberman. “God, I love that movie. So, your Chinese informant …”
They were heading toward Lake Michigan on Devon. Traffic was late-morning normal and slow so they could have made good time, but Lieberman was crawling, as if he were in no hurry to get where he had to go.
“I’ll cut to the heart,” said Hanrahan. “I’m gonna need a few hours on something soft where I can take a nap somewhere quiet real soon. I called a detective I know in Washington.”
“Cunningham,” Lieberman guessed.
“Cunningham it was,” said Hanrahan, realizing that in his state of exhaustion, he was starting to talk like his father. “Well, I ask Cunningham, who I’m pleased to say was on the midnight-to-nine A.M. shift, if he’d check out a few things. He says ‘Yes,’ and calls me back in a couple of hours while I’ve got my head on my desk and my eyes closed imagining Kim coming back with that Korean gun and shooting Clark Mills.”
“Didn’t happen,” said Lieberman.
“I know. I was dreaming. Cunningham tells me that Matt Gornitz Firth had no friends at all in the neighborhood where he lived with his mother. He had gone to private schools since his parents divorced when he was twelve. So, I call the private school Matthew is about to graduate from, but I wait till this morning. I talk to the headmaster. They call them ‘headmasters’ in those schools, Rabbi.”
“I know,” said Lieberman. “That’s because they’re in charge of your head.”
“Reasonably funny,” said Hanrahan, “but I find it hard to judge. I’m a wee bit on the weary side. Well, the headmaster knows every kid. Only one hundred fifty students in the school. We had a couple of thousand at Chicago Vocational when I went there. Principal couldn’t have known anybody, probably didn’t want to.”
“Proceed,” said Lieberman. “You’re wandering a little, Father Murphy.”
Lieberman turned north on Sheridan moving slowly past the line-up of bookstores, fast-food delis, and pizza parlors, CD shops and other businesses that catered to the faculty and students at Loyola University, which stretched to the east right to the lake.
“Headmaster asks questions about Matt Firth, gets me to promise to call him as soon as we know anything. I promise and scrawl a note to myself to keep the promise. It seems Matt doesn’t have many friends at his prep school though the headmaster assures me that everyone there who isn’t an atheist is praying for him. So, I push him on the friend business and find out that not only does our kidnap victim have a friend, his roommate for four years, but the roommate did not return to school today when everyone was due back.”
“Roommate have a name?”
“David Donald Wilhite,” said Hanrahan as Lieberman made a left through traffic onto Lunt and slowed down even more as he searched for a parking space.
“Interesting,” said Lieberman.
“I find it so,” said Hanrahan, knowing he wouldn’t chase the voice of his father without at least two solid hours of sleep. “It gets even more interesting.”
“How?” Abe prompted.
“Got a description of Wilhite. Tall for his age, maybe a little overweight. Smart. Old man’s a stocks and bonds whiz-bang. I call the Wilhite house and talk to Mom. She sounds like prep school herself. She also sounds like she’s not all that surprised to hear from a cop. She says David was staying with a friend and told her he might be a day or two late for school because he and his friend and the friend’s mother were going on a short trip. However, Junior Wilhite has been known to listen to a different piper and lose his way a bit, according to Mom, who assured me her boy was as close to Mother Teresa as a human could get. I gave Mom a tale of terror befitting the Druids and got her to one-day a photograph of Junior Wilhite immediately. She added that she was sure Junior was fine, th
at he had called her last night. I told her for certain he was okay, and sure he was, I agreed with her.”
“Matt Gornitz,” Lieberman said, finding a space.
“That’s the name our David Donald Wilhite gave his mom, Rabbi. The friend he’s taking a trip with under the watchful eye of Matthew’s mother.”
“Proud of yourself, Father Murph?”
“A little, maybe, but we’ve got a way to go. I checked back with Cunningham. He checked Juvenile in five states. Donald David Wilhite has been in trouble with the law since he was thirteen. Got out of everything with good lawyers, maybe his parents paying a bit of a bribe here and there.”
“Trouble?” asked Lieberman.
“Joyriding in a stolen car, cocaine possession, assault.”
“The assault is interesting.”
“Remember, he’s a big boy. Smart. I’m thinkin’ maybe this situation is more perplexing than the Troubles.”
“You’re sounding like your father,” said Lieberman.
“I know. I need some sleep. I told you. There’s a kicker, Rabbi. When I figured we were done talking, Cunningham asks why I didn’t get this information from the other policeman. I ask, ‘What other policeman?’ and he says, ‘The one who called yesterday and asked the same questions.’ I ask for the cop’s name and Cunningham says he has it somewhere. Takes him a few seconds and he comes back with ‘August Vogel.’ Vogel left no number.”
“State attorney?” asked Lieberman.
“Nobody by the name Vogel,” said Hanrahan. “I checked.”
“Interesting.”
They were out of the car now and heading across the street for an apartment building. They were less than a block from where the body of Clark Mills had been found and maybe half a block or so from where Hanrahan had found the North Korean handgun.
Hanrahan didn’t ask questions as they moved to the apartment building. The hallway they entered was brightly lit by a twenty-four-hour bulb and protected by a video camera. Lieberman found the bell and pressed it.
“Who is it?” came a wavering female voice.
“Abe Lieberman,” he said.
“I’m not feeling well,” said Rita Blitzstein. “I had to stay home from work.”
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