Lieberman's Law (13 page)

It was mid-afternoon. There were no other customers and no one at any other booth or table except for the two men who had come with Bill Hanrahan.

Hanrahan was sure that Woo had arranged the seating so that the policeman could look out the window and across Sheridan Road at the apartment building where a woman had died because Hanrahan had been too drunk to save her.

Mr. Woo was unwrinkled. His thinning black hair was brushed straight back. He wore a serious gray suit that complimented the clothing of his associates, but stood out by being a bit more expensive. The army of Woo was certainly well dressed.

“Tea?” asked Woo,

“Tea,” Hanrahan agreed though he didn't particularly like tea.

“Mr. Huang and his daughter are in the kitchen,” said Woo pouring tea into the small white cup in front of Hanrahan and then into his own cup.

Woo nodded at the cup and Hanrahan took a sip. It was hot, strong, and Hanrahan found it surprisingly good.

“I brought my own tea,” said Woo. “I can see that you appreciate it. The tea served in almost all Chinese restaurants is tasteless and without tradition or civility.”

“It's good,” Hanrahan conceded.

“But other beverages are better?” asked Woo, taking a small drink.

“I don't have to answer to you, Woo,” Hanrahan said. “And neither does Iris or her family.”

Woo shrugged almost imperceptibly.

God, he plays the part well, thought Hanrahan with more than grudging admiration.

“I haven't had a drink in almost two years,” said Hanrahan. “I don't intend to ever have one again. I have an official divorce, papers and all, State of Illinois. I pay no alimony or maintenance to my ex-wife. Her idea. She's got a job that pays better than mine. My sons are grown and on their own. I make enough to support a wife and I've got a little in the bank. But you know all this.”

“Yes,” said Woo. “I would prefer that you not marry Iris Huang. I have, however, given up the hope that she might willingly marry me. By doing so, she would be a wealthy woman while I live and even wealthier when I die. She would help her family and make what remains of my days on earth more enjoyable.”

“You said you've given up hope of her marrying you willingly?” Woo nodded and poured Hanrahan more tea. Hanrahan couldn't keep his eyes from the building across the street.

“I would prefer that she marry someone worthy. Someone Chinese,” said Woo. “Did you know that you and your people have a particular odor, which my people often find offensive? Negro people also have an odor.”

“We call them African-Americans now,” said Hanrahan.

“I have no need to keep up with such fickle conventions,” said Woo,

“Woo, is there a point to all this?”

A tic, however slight, touched Woo's right eye. There was a proper way to carry on a conversation. Though Woo had been of low birth, he had studied, had even learned Mandarin and turned his street Cantonese into grammatical Cantonese. He wished, above all, to be civilized, but the United States was filled with those who had no sense of civility or interest in it. He sat across from an example now.

“You are finding it difficult to get someone to perform a wedding,” said Woo. “And what I offer is something Mr. Huang, his family, and I would like very much. You also want a Catholic wedding. About that I can do nothing, but we both know that such a wedding would not be sanctioned. So, you will be married by a fallen priest in an eccentric church.”

“You're saying that you can get someone to marry Iris and me in a Chinese wedding?”

“I can arrange it,” said Woo. “Why?”

“Mr. Huang and his daughter wish it,” he said. “I am informed that though she tells you it is not of great consequence to her, in fact it is causing her great … distress. I do not like policemen. My entire life has been a series of bribes and confrontations with the police and rarely have I encountered one who showed civility or respect. I will add that I am prejudiced against your race, but, I believe, for good reason. Added to this, I have a particular aversion to you. There is a saying in Mandarin that once a man weds the bottle, there can be separation but no divorce. You are also a very violent man who has committed murder.”

“I shot Frankie Kraylaw in self-defense,” said Hanrahan, his eyes directly meeting Woo's.

“Please repeat that,” said Woo.

Hanrahan sat back.

“Your motives were honorable and violence is sometimes a necessary part of business,” said Woo. “More tea?”

“No, thanks.”

“Then we have an agreement?” asked Woo.

“No strings?” asked Hanrahan.

“The strings are many,” said Woo, “but they will not involve you. My community will view this as a sign of weakness, possibly the failure in thinking of an old man. There may be those who try to replace me because of this. It will take much work to heal wounds and restore honor.”

“I'll try to appreciate your position,” said Hanrahan.

Two couples came into the restaurant, one straight, one gay. They came in together, anticipating with smiles the punch line of a joke from one of the gay men who said, “… and the doctor said, ‘Two Wongs don't make a white.' ”

The quartet, including the man who had told the joke, laughed and found a table across the room from the booth where Woo and the policeman sat, Woo's men between them.

“If,” Woo went on, palms on the table, “you resume drinking, betray Miss Huang, dishonor her family, or cause her pain in any way starting from this moment, I will have you killed. It will be an accident.”

Hanrahan choked back anger and an obscenity. It was what Woo was trying to provoke. A test. Hanrahan tasted bile and sweet tea and said, “I will treat Miss Huang and her family with respect and give neither them nor you any reason to regret your decision.”

“I will discuss the arrangements with Mr. Huang. I understand you are on duty and late for an appointment,” said Woo in obvious dismissal.

Anger just short of rage came close to overcoming reason, but Hanrahan stood, looked back toward the kitchen where Iris had come out to serve the couple still telling jokes across the room. She glanced at Hanrahan. He smiled and she smiled back with relief.

Hanrahan headed toward the door without looking at Woo's two associates. He had work to do and someone to see who deserved no civility.

L
IEBERMAN WASN'T PREPARED FOR
the gathering that greeted him when he walked into his house. Bess hurried to meet him at the door and whispered, “I couldn't stop them. They just showed up.”

They
included Rabbi Wass, looking like a pudgy and decidedly anguished Claude Rains; Irving Hamel, attorney, member of almost every temple committee, not yet 40, and expected by the congregation to attain great things in politics; Ida Katzman, ancient Ida, the major benefactor of Temple Mir Shavot. Ida and her husband had started the original temple and helped to hire the now retired older Rabbi Wass. Ida's husband had left her a chain of jewelry stores, five in Chicago, six in the suburbs. Ida's hearing was going. Her eyesight was going and while her pockets were deep, Lieberman thought that her patience must be going. They sat at Lieberman's dining room table drinking coffee. A place remained open at the head of the table for Lieberman.

“Barry and Melisa?” he asked Bess softly, hanging up his jacket in the front closet taking off his holster and gun and reaching up to put them on the high closet shelf. Normally, when he came home. Lieberman locked the gun in the night table next to his and Bess's bed. He wore the key to the drawer on a thin gold chain around his neck. Clinking against the key was a gold star of David given him by Bess on their thirtieth wedding anniversary.

“The children are upstairs,” Bess whispered.

Lieberman moved to the table, shook hands with Hamel and the pale Rabbi Wass and nodded respectfully to Ida Katzman who had declined in the past few months from a cane to a metal walker that stood next to her chair.

“We are in crisis,” said Rabbi Wass. “I've called my father in St. Petersburg and he agrees.”

Bess filled the empty cup of coffee in front of her husband and sat at his side. The coffee was decaffeinated and the slice of cake he took was fat free, cholesterol free, sugarless, and without distinctive taste, though it tried to make up for its deficiencies with texture and color.

“What does he agree to?” asked Lieberman.

“That we are in crisis,” said Rabbi Wass. “And something must be done. These desecrators must be found and punished. Our Torah must be returned. Do you know where that Torah came from?”

Lieberman knew but he listened as Ida Katzman said, in a hoarse but not particularly weak voice with a slight accent of Eastern Europe, “When my husband and I went to France soon after we were married, a year after the war ended, and before Morris was born, we found the Torah in a small town where there were no longer any Jews. The Catholic priest had it. It had been given to him to protect during the war. The Rabbi who had given it to him had left no name, no place to return it. My husband made a donation to the church and we took the Torah. In New York, Menachem Mushevitz himself, a great scholar, examined the Torah and declared it priceless, from the Moorish occupation of Spain.”

Ida looked at Rabbi Wass who acknowledged in his pious nod that Mushevitz was the essence of scholarly greatness.

“Mushevitz was already an old man.” Ida went on with a story everyone at the table had heard many times before. “Mushevitz said the Torah had certainly been commissioned by a great artist at great cost and done with loving care that would be the envy of any congregation in the world. My husband pressed him for a value. All Mushevitz would say was, ‘priceless.' ”

“So,” Ida Katzman continued. “We brought it home to Chicago where we had opened our first store on Madison Street and we brought it to the old Rabbi Wass who made it the heart of our congregation. Scholars have come from all over the world to see it, touch it, study it. And now …?” Ida Katzman suddenly became silent, having nowhere to go.

“Rabbi Wass has been contacted by phone,” Hamel said, briefcase with laptop computer at his side.

“They want money for the Torah,” said the Rabbi, looking down at his untouched coffee. “First they desecrate … not just our temple but also others. There are rituals I will have to get from the Board of Rabbis to cleanse the temple. There are …”

“The call,” lawyer Irving Hamel reminded him, stealing a glance at his watch.

“Two hundred thousand dollars,” said Rabbi Wass. “Two hundred thousand. And who knows how many thousands it will cost to finish the cleaning, repair the damages. Our people are working. Sam Shapiro will donate materials and time, but he is not a wealthy man. He'll need compensation.”

“Are you sure it was the same ones who …?” Lieberman began.

“They gave details, told me the filth they had written on the walls, told me what they had done, described the Torah in detail down to the small piece missing from the lower right handle of the scroll.”

“How do they want the money and when?” asked Lieberman.

Rabbi Wass adjusted his glasses and shrugged. “Who knows? They said they would call someone in the congregation with that information. They said they will destroy the Torah if we do not do as they say.”

Clever, thought Lieberman, phone taps and tapes couldn't be set up for every member of the congregation.

“They won't destroy the Torah,” Lieberman said. “If they don't get the money from us, they'll sell it in Europe.”

“There probably isn't a congregation in the world that wouldn't recognize our Torah,” said Ida Katzman.

“You know best,” said” Lieberman who, in fact, thought that the people who had mutilated the temple and taken the Torah were very likely, indeed, to destroy it, whether they got their money or not. “We'll just have to get the Torah back. We've got good leads, which I can't talk about now.”

“I'll pay the money,” Ida Katzman said.

Ida had, in her lifetime since the death of her husband and later that of her only son in Vietnam, made the congregation her life, her child. Rabbi Wass estimated that she had donated more than a million and a half dollars for everything from the building fund to new benches and books to guaranteeing the salary of the rabbi.

“Let's hope that's not necessary, Ida,” Lieberman said.

“That's very generous of you, Mrs. Katzman,” Rabbi Wass said with tears in his eyes.

“The Torah is insured for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” said Irving Hamel. “That is the worst case situation.”

“We all want the Torah back,” said Ida Katzman insistently.

All present nodded. Bess looked at Lieberman. It wasn't telepathy. It was nearly a lifetime of silent communication developed between a husband and wife. Bess's face said she was afraid the Torah was already destroyed and Lieberman's eyes closed for an instant to let her know he shared her fear.

“The cleanup is progressing extremely well,” said Bess. “It should be completed in two or three days with volunteer help. With Rabbi Wass's agreement, I'd like to hold an open discussion with the congregation following the sermon.”

“The president always has that right,” said Rabbi Wass. “I welcome it.”

Ida Katzman nodded her agreement and Irving Hamel said yes and added, “One occasionally wonders why God has singled us out for five thousand years of suffering and insists that we are the chosen people.”

Irving had frequently stood ready to argue and disagree, battle and even hold an occasional grudge, but never had Lieberman heard him speak out as he just had with such emotion. Irving Hamel was a contract lawyer. Irving Hamel was an ambitious young man, but above all, Irving Hamel was a Jew. When Hamel was at his worst, Lieberman sometimes referred to him as Irwin Rommel.