Lieberman's Folly (15 page)

“Too bad Estralda couldn't make it,” said Lieberman.

Silk shook his head.

“You mean a crack there?” he asked. “It's not like that. I got an image. You know what I'm saying? I can't be the guy with the kids who goes home and watches Clint Eastwood on the tube with the little lady. Notoriety gets you noticed.”

“My son-in-law calls that a tautology,” said Lieberman. “I'll spell it for you. Look it up. And the other word was ‘eloquent.' You can go now.”

“It's that I'm late,” said Silk, walking to the dressing room door.

“We'll talk again,” said Lieberman with a very small smile.

“How'd you like the four rounds you saw, me and Turner?”

“You were lyrical,” said Lieberman.

“Thanks,” said Silk, looking around for a mirror and finding it on the wall near the door. “I hope you find the guy who punctured Estralda. She was a class broad, you know?”

With that eulogy Silk went through the door. He didn't hear Lieberman answer “I know.”

Lieberman was at the T & L by four. It was Saturday. The sky was dark and smelling of rain but none had fallen. The Ancient Atheist contingent of the Alter Cockers was in session in the booth where Lieberman, Hanrahan, and Estralda Valdez had sat. Most of the Alter Cockers had to stay home or go to services till sundown. Al Bloombach, Gert's brother, held atheist court with Morrie Stoltzer and Howie Chen. Howie, strictly speaking, wasn't an atheist, but whatever he practiced wasn't in session on Saturdays.

Two men and a woman sat at another booth. They were talking Russian. Russians were taking over the neighborhood, which was all right, but they fooled the old timers. Because of their accents, old timers thought the Russians could speak Yiddish. None of them could. Because they were Jews, old timers thought they would be religious. Few of them were. The influx had begun about eight years ago, but the old timers had never adjusted. As far as Lieberman was concerned, the Russians were good for the neighborhood. Most of them were well educated. Few of them committed crimes. Most of them wanted to be accepted and to get rich or at least have a house in Glenview.

Maish was talking to Manuel the cook, a grizzled little man who had learned the art of Jewish cooking as an observant bus boy at the Bagel Restaurant. Maish saw his brother and turned to nod.

“Coffee?” called Maish.

“Why not?” said Lieberman, nodding at Al Bloombach in the booth and sitting at the end of the counter near the cash register away from the Russians. Thunder rolled. Lieberman turned to see if the rain had started. It hadn't but it looked more like midnight than afternoon.

Maish brought the coffee and a large brown paper bag, which he placed on the counter next to the cup.

“Corned beef, lox, cream cheese, bagels—garlic, onion, sesame—and three smoked fish,” said Maish.

“How much?” said Lieberman.

“You won fiftieth prize in the Publisher's Clearing House,” said Maish, wiping his hands on his apron. “Carry-out from the T & L. Tell Lisa it's from Uncle Maish. Make me a big man for a few bucks.”

“You got it,” said Lieberman, drinking his coffee.

“Want the radio? Wanna hear the game? We're playin' the Giants. Sutcliffe started,” Maish said. “Game might still be on.”

“Yeah,” said Lieberman. “But I gotta get home.”

Last year Lieberman had taken his grandson, Barry, to a Cub game. Free passes from an old friend of Lieberman's who worked in the Cub front office. Rick Sutcliffe had started that game against the Mets. Barry and Lieberman had been sitting in the front row on the third-base side where Sutcliffe was warming up. Barry was wearing his Cubs cap and infielder's glove. Sutcliffe had walked over to Barry and thrown him the warm-up ball. From that moment on, Rick Sutcliffe, who by the way went the distance and won the game three to two, could do no wrong.

The Russians in the booth started to laugh at something. Lieberman sipped his coffee and looked at them. The brown bag on the counter smelled of memories.

“Sorry about the woman,” said Maish. “Notice I said woman. I'm getting modern, not like the Cockers. I didn't say ‘girl.' Not too old to learn at sixty-six. Yetta tells me that all the time.”

“You're not sixty-six, Maish,” said Lieberman, finishing his coffee. “You're sixteen and I'm ten and Willie Brochesceu is about to beat the shit out of me on the way home from school behind Kuppenheimer's factory. And you come rolling behind him sweating from basketball practice and land on his back. Knock the wind out of him, hit him in the face with your math book.”

“Science book,” Maish said, looking into space.

“Like yesterday,” said Lieberman. “Broke his nose and arm. Kicked you out of school for a month.”

“That was a great month,” said Maish. “You going good-old-days on me, Avrum? They weren't that goddamn good. Little apartment full of people, rats. Polish kids across nineteenth like Willie waiting for you. Negro—black—kids across Crawford giving you looks if you crossed. Had to almost use a map to get safely to the Jewish People's Institute on Douglas. Good old days are, thank God, gone.”

“Maish,” Al Bloombach called. “Refills.”

Maish nodded. The clouds outside rumbled and crashed.

“How's Yetta's kidney?” said Lieberman.

“Still pumping,” said Maish, moving for the coffee pot.

“I'll stop by tomorrow,” Lieberman said. He stood up and took his package.

Maish nodded and moved with his coffee toward the booth of the atheists.

The rain had started to fall when Lieberman stepped into the street. Canopies were coming down in front of Kim the Korean's Devon Television/VCR Repair Shop, and the Dollar Store, also owned by Kim. The Pistoki brothers were hauling in their fruit displays, and someone in one of the doorways was watching Abe Lieberman walk slowly to his Buick and get in. Lieberman adjusted the mirror to see the person in the doorway between Discount Toys and Devon Animal World, but whoever it was was well back, hidden by a display of Nintendo games and a dirty window. Whoever it was had also been outside the Clark Street Station when Lieberman came out earlier.

Lieberman turned on his windshield wipers and pulled out into traffic as the clouds exploded like a water balloon. Whoever was in the doorway, a man, ran for a nearby car. Lieberman could have taken a quick left and another left into the alley next to the barber shop to get rid of the tail, but it would have been pointless. The man knew where Lieberman worked and where he hung out. The man might also be the one who had called four times about “what happened to her yesterday.” It could have been many other things. It could have been any of six dozen people Lieberman had put away or been on top of for a quarter of a century.

Lieberman pushed the button on the radio and caught Harry Caray saying that the game was tied in the twelfth and delayed because of rain.

Instead of turning right and heading home Lieberman turned left and drove slowly down a side street. The man followed half a block back. The rain was coming harder now. Lieberman knew where he was going. He pulled next to a fire hydrant between a pickup truck and an old Datsun. He got out slowly, giving his pursuer time to find a parking space. Lieberman looked neither right or left as he locked the car. The rain was coming in warm sheets now.

Soaked through, Lieberman walked slowly to the passageway between two twelve-flat apartment buildings, went down the stairs into darkness, and walked to the end of the cool cement corridor where there was a doorway to the furnace room. Six years earlier Abe and Hanrahan had nailed the building janitor in this room with a stack of stereos he had stolen from apartments in the neighborhood. Lieberman fished out his semidry handkerchief, wiped his nose, took out his gun, and waited, listening to the rain and thunder. Lieberman had always loved the rain, felt protected by it, excused by it. He had never loved the outdoors. The rain gave him reason to remain inside, blanketed by shower.

The footsteps were quick. They came down the three cement stairs and started down the cement passageway. Lieberman stepped out, gun leveled at the dark figure dripping in front of him.

“Hold it there,” he said. “Hands behind your head.”

“I've got to talk to you,” said the man, his voice trembling. “I've got to talk about what happened between her and me. I … I did it.”

Lieberman put his gun away and stepped toward the figure.

“I didn't have the nerve to face her, you,” the man went on.

“Whose car are you driving?” Lieberman asked.

“Rental. Mine's in the shop.”

“I've got a dry sweat suit in the trunk,” Lieberman said to his son-in-law. “Let's go someplace for a cup of coffee and dry out.”

H
ANRAHAN FELT BETTER. HE DIDN'T
feel good but he did feel better as he sat parked in front of the Black Moon Restaurant on Sheridan Road watching the rain waterfall down his front window.

Confessing to the Whiz had helped. Now he was doing something that might help even more. He looked over at the high-rise. A cab pulled up to the door and two people, a man and a woman, ducked under the concrete canopy of the Michigan Towers as the doorman rose inside. They went through the revolving door and laughed. Hanrahan let out a chuckle. He didn't know why.

The Black Moon Restaurant was open for dinner. It was still early. No customers inside, but he could see Iris. He was in a no parking zone so it had been no problem getting directly in front of the restaurant. Hanrahan, fifty-two years old and a grandfather, was nervous. His first plan had been to go into the Black Moon and talk to Iris. Now he decided to work first. When a break in the traffic came, Hanrahan took it and pulled into the driveway of the high-rise. He parked as close to the door as he could and ran in.

“Can't leave your car there,” said the fully uniformed doorman, the same black man who had been on duty the night before.

“Police,” said Hanrahan, showing his badge. “Saw you last night.”

The doorman, Billy Tarton, nodded. “I got no more answers man,” he said.

“Woman who got in the cab last night before I came running over,” Hanrahan said. “Tell me about her.”

“I told the other guy,” said Tarton with a sigh. “I didn't see her good. Hat over her eyes. Sunglasses, went right out. Cab was waiting. Cabby right with her with her bags. She didn't say nothing, do nothing.”

“She white or black?” said Hanrahan.

“White,” he said. “Couldn't tell her age but she wasn't old. Young mostly. If I remember anything else, I'll call you, but there's nothin' more to remember. Zip. Nada. Nothing. You made a trip for nothing.”

“I didn't come here to talk to you,” Hanrahan said.

A bolt of lightning cracked the sky.

“Does like that in Florida almost every day in the summer,” said the doorman. “Used to live in Lakeland. Thinking of going back.”

Hanrahan grunted and pointed to the door. Billy Tarton pressed the button to open it and Hanrahan went in. Behind him a soaked woman jogger pushed through the revolving door panting, her dark hair plastered down over her forehead and across her face. Hanrahan moved toward the elevators.

He had a simple plan. He would knock on every door in the building and ask everyone they hadn't already talked to and some that they had what he, she, or they knew about Estralda Valdez or Jules Van Beeber or the fall of the Berlin Wall. He would ask until he was sure no one had anything to tell him. He would ask because in spite of the absolution given him in confession Bill Hanrahan still believed that he was responsible for the death of Estralda Valdez.

In the front seat of his car while the rain thump-thudded on the roof, Lieberman took off his sopping jacket, shirt, and tie and put on a blue sweat shirt with
CHICAGO POLICE DEPARTMENT
printed on it in white block letters. In the back seat, Todd struggled into a plain gray sweat shirt half a size too small.

“You want a bagel?” Lieberman asked.

“I can't eat,” said Todd, forcing his arm through a sleeve.

“Then let's talk while I eat one,” said Lieberman.

“‘Long am I silent. Struck down by disasters exceeding speech and question,'” said Todd, slumping back and running his hands over his wet hair. Todd was an associate professor of comparative literature at Northwestern University. Todd was a specialist in Greek tragedy.

“That's a line from …?” Lieberman said, fishing a bagel from the bag and releasing the smell of corned beef.

“Aeschylus,
The Persians
,” said Todd.

“Sure you won't have a bagel, half a bagel?”

“No,” said Todd.

“‘Better a bagel in the rain than a pain in the ass,'” said Lieberman. “Papodopolus said that. He's a Greek too. Ran a little diner near the train yards till he did in his girlfriend with a variety of kitchen utensils. Actually, he didn't say ‘bagel.' He said ‘bun,' but I'm allowed poetic license, right?”

Todd didn't answer. Lieberman examined his son-in-law in the rearview mirror. Todd was thirty-five, a little on the thin side for Lieberman's taste, sandy haired and long of face.

“‘The load I bear can never be laid down,'” said Todd. “‘And would you add to it by lightening yours?'”

“Sophocles?” tried Lieberman.

“Euripides.
Iphigenia in Tauris
,” said Todd without enthusiasm.

“A joke,” said Lieberman, turning in the seat to point half a bagel at Todd. “Papodopolus told it when we took him in. Use the word ‘Euripides' in a sentence?”

“Abe—” Todd began.

“Euripides pants, I breaka you neck,” said Lieberman straightfaced.

Todd looked at the serious sad face of his father-in-law and groaned. Then he let out a small laugh.

“That's terrible,” he said.