Lieberman's Folly (32 page)
Authors: Stuart M. Kaminsky
Customers were backing out of their booths and off the stools. Coffee spilled. Bratkovic's ear was bleeding, and since the top of the sugar dispenser had come off, the blood was mixed with white glistening flecks.
It took two customers and Elyse to pull Bratkovic off Frankie, who wouldn't stop smiling.
“No fuckin' safe place to have a cup of coffee,” Bratkovic screamed. “You crazy sons of bitches are coming out of the toilets.”
Frankie, his nose now bloody, just smiled as he wished he had something sharp and heavy he could plunge into the eye of the blasphemer, lying on his belly.
That was two months ago. He had now become a regular at the Speed King Donut Shop and had selected another regular, an old woman who always wore a black hat, who looked as if she might be in great need of salvation.
He was considering approaching her when the man on the television began talking about a policeman on a roof who had killed his wife and someone else.
All thoughts of the salvation of old women in black hats fled.
The man on the television speculated, said early reports were that the policeman had found his wife in bed with another man.
“Then,” said Frankie softly to himself, “he was but the arm of the Lord and will be taken unto his breast.”
“Huh?” asked the man behind the counter.
“More coffee,” said Frankie.
The family, yes, he thought. The family is the only salvation for civilization. The husband must hold the family together. It is God's way. Always was. His own father had held his family together with a strong hand and a mighty heart.
Frankie Kraylaw loved his wife, loved his little boy, loved the Lord and the memory of his own mother and father. But the Lord knew best and the Lord had told Abraham to get rid of his wives and sacrifice his son, Isaac.
“If you do not put your faith in the Lord and let him guide your thoughts and your hand, that is an abomination.”
“You talking to yourself or me?” asked the counterman, who was beginning to think that this kid with the goofy smile was losing him some of the early morning regulars.
“Sorry,” said Frankie, getting up.
“Don't act so nuts,” the counterman said, leaning over. “My advice. You can control it, control it. If not, keep it home or take it someplace else.”
“I understand,” said Frankie, looking over at the old woman in the black hat.
He did not want to lose her. God had put her salvation in his hands. The man with the mint breath behind the counter should have his eyes plucked out, for he had no use for them. He was blind to the truth and the ways of the Lord.
Frankie smiled and walked to the door of the doughnut shop, and the counterman dreaded the thought that the kid with the goofy smile would probably be back the next day.
The living room of the sixth-floor apartment of the Shoreham Towers was a beer-bottle, ash-strewn mess. Officer Sandra Anxman opened the door with a passkey and stepped in with Officer Craig Pettigrew behind her, carrying a clipboard.
“And,” said Anxman, “he's all the time telling me it doesn't count as overtime, when the union contract says ⦔
The look and smell of the apartment hit her, and Anxman said, “Who the hell lives hereâPorky Pig?”
“Binyon, Carl, and McAulife, David,” said Pettigrew, checking his clipboard.
Pettigrew put the clipboard under his arm, and the two officers began to check the apartment, looking behind sofas, opening closets.
“You'd think,” Anxman said, pushing open the bedroom door, “in a building like this ⦠Look at this crap. Shepard shot the wrong fuckin' tenants. He would have done the health department a favor by painting the walls with the guys who live here.”
“I'm not touching anything,” said Pettigrew. “Smells like shit in here. Let's go.”
“Check it off,” Anxman agreed. “No one here.”
Anxman stepped out and Pettigrew took one last look at the apartment, shook his head, and said, “How do people live like this?”
Before the door was completely closed, Anxman was saying, “So I'm calling it overtime. I don't give a shit what Walsh calls it. He can talk to the union.”
When the voices of the two police officers had faded, a closet door in the apartment opened and Carl and Dave crawled out from beneath a pile of ratty blankets.
“Did you hear? Porky Pig? Christ, we did a search like that in Kuwait City, we'd be dead meat. Stupid-ass cops.”
Carl stood. He was no more than thirty, but life had not treated him well. Actually, life had treated him as he had treated it. His hair was naturally light and curly, which saved him from the impossible task of combing it. He liked to think that he looked a little like Chuck Norris, which wasn't the least bit true. Dave crawled out after him, a thin creature with a military haircut and no shirt. Dave had a single tattoo on his chest, an ice-cream bar with one bite missing. Dave began searching the rubble for something while Carl went on, “You think this room is a mess?”
“I can't find my shoes, Carl.”
Carl, brooding, cleared a space for himself on a chair and plopped down.
“That's not the fuckin' issue here, Dave. The issue here is sanitary conditions. You like the cops sayin' you're unsanitary is what I'm asking you?”
Dave pushed a pile of newspapers out of the way and realized by the pregnant pause that he was expected to supply some answer.
“I suppose I don't like it much.”
“Like what?” Carl said.
“Whatever we're talking about I'm not supposed to like. I'm looking for my shoes here, Carl. Give me a break.”
Dave stepped over a filthy pillow on the floor and saw his shoe.
“No one kicks us out of the place we pay rent for,” said Carl, hitting the arm of the sofa with the flat of his hand. “We've got our self-respect.”
Dave had one more shoe to find. Instead of the shoe, he turned up an unopened can of Miller beer.
“This,” he said, “should be in the refrigerator. God. I do not like being barefoot. Makes me feel ⦔
“⦠vulnerable,” Carl supplied. “That's what I was talking about, Dave. Your self-respect.”
Dave had heard it before.
“I know. I know. We get our jobs back. We get our self-respect.”
“I don't like hiding in closets, Dave. I tell you that for a fact. It doesn't become a man to hide in closets. We had enough hiding in that fuckin' desert. From now on ⦔
“We hide from no man,” Dave completed, finding his second shoe. “Hot damn.”
Dave displayed the shoe proudly, but Carl paid no attention.
“I'm getting an idea here, Dave,” Carl said, sitting up.
Carl looked up at the ceiling and Dave looked at Carl, not liking what he saw in his friend's face.
“Don't upset me, Carl. I just want to get my shoes on and ⦔
“When's the last time we cleaned the rifles?” asked Carl, and Dave knew he was in some deep, deep shit.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1991 by Stuart Kaminsky
cover design by Jim Tierney
978-1-4804-0019-1
This 2013 edition distributed by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
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