Big Silence (8 page)

“Push me and you’re resisting arrest,” said the old man. “Then I can only assume you plan to run me over with your van. I would take umbrage at that and have to shoot you.”

Mike considered. The old man was looking him in the eyes.

“You’re making a mistake,” Mike said with a laugh.

“No, he’s not” came a voice behind him, the voice of the person who had gotten out of the car that blocked Mike’s van.

Mike turned toward the voice and saw a man as big as he was with a pink Irish face. Definitely a cop.

“I think you’d better let me get back into my van and call my lawyer,” Mike said indignantly.

“Detective Lieberman just told you you’re under arrest,” said Hanrahan. “He’ll tell you your rights and we go to the station. You make it easy or you make it hard. I think I’d prefer hard. I’ve had a bad few days.”

“Put it that way, so have I,” said Lieberman. “So, try to get away, Mike. I’ll just put my gun away and watch Detective Hanrahan subdue you. He doesn’t subdue gently.”

Mike’s angry indignation slipped and his shoulders sagged, then he made one more try.

“You’re making a mistake,” he said. “I’m an honest businessman. This is false arrest.”

“You’ve been scaring old people into giving you money for months,” said Lieberman. “Turn around and put your hands together.”

“You’re gonna cuff me?” asked Mike.

“Unless you can think of something else effective I could do with your hands behind your back,” said Lieberman.

Mike turned around. He was facing Hanrahan now.

“Last chance,” Hanrahan said softly. “Just get by me, get in your van, and run us over. We’ll shoot, but you might get lucky and live.”

Mike looked up at the sky. There was a loud clap of thunder. Lieberman clasped on the cuffs.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Mike insisted as the two detectives ushered him toward Hanrahan’s car. Lieberman’s was parked in the garage. The owner of the house, a man named Jankitis who would be celebrating his eighty-fifth birthday in a few days, was inside watching a
Wheel of Fortune
rerun.

“There’s nothing wrong with this driveway,” said Lieberman. “We had a contractor check it.”

“My professional opinion against his,” Mike said as they moved to the passenger side of Hanrahan’s car.

“You are not a professional,” said Lieberman. “At least not a professional contractor. You are a professional con man who takes deposits from people who need their money. Then you disappear. Now, do me the courtesy of being quiet while I tell you your rights. If you listen, really listen, you may find them useful and interesting.”

“Can’t we work something out here?” Mike pleaded, looking from one policeman to the other. “I’ve got a wife, two little kids. I’m just a guy trying to make a living.”

“You think our friend Mike is suggesting a bribe?” asked Lieberman.

“It’s a distinct possibility,” said Hanrahan.

“My roof needs fixing,” said Lieberman.

“My son Michael could use money to send my grandson to a Catholic school,” said Hanrahan. “I’d say five million dollars would do it.”

“Five mil —” Mike began.

“You’re safe,” said Lieberman, guiding the big man in overalls toward Hanrahan’s car. “Maybe you didn’t offer a bribe. Maybe you’ve got no conscience. It happens a lot. Maybe my partner and I like to look in the mirror in the morning and see a face we can live with. I got a feeling you don’t understand what I mean. I suggest you not say another word till you talk to a lawyer.”

Mike shut up as he was shoved into the backseat of Hanrahan’s car.

“My van,” Mike cried.

“We’ll have it towed in,” said Hanrahan.

“You okay, Father Murphy?” Lieberman asked as he closed the door on Mike.

“Could be better, Rabbi. Could be a lot better.”

“We’ll talk,” said Lieberman.

Hanrahan moved around to the driver’s side of his car and opened the door. Before he got in, he said, “That is one hell of an ugly sweater.”

“Guy who owns the house was going to give it to Goodwill,” said Lieberman. “I bought it from him. Comfortable. A little large, but comfortable.”

“B
ESS CALLED,” MAISH SAID
, standing by the booth at the T&L where Abe sat.

The T&L on Devon wasn’t exactly packed but it was busy. The short-order cook, known to all as Terrell, an ex-con whom Abe had gotten his brother to hire a dozen years ago, was a genius with Jewish food, a black culinary genius. Jerome Terrell had learned to cook in prison and had quickly developed a passion for Jewish cooking after Maish hired him. He loved the smells, the taste, the lack of concern about what the ingredients might do to the human body. He cooked by taste and smell, never used measuring spoons or cups.

“She wants me to call?” Lieberman asked in answer to his brother’s statement.

“She wants me to be sure you eat right when you come here,” said Maish.

Maish wore his ever-present white apron, his ever-present sour look on his sagging face, and a few more pounds than he should have been carrying for the sake of his own health, but owning a deli wasn’t the way to stay slim and whatever little care Maish had taken of himself had vanished with the murder of his son David by muggers less than two years earlier.

“Then give me something that’s right,” said Abe. “A magical something that tastes great and doesn’t send cartoon cells scurrying to block my arteries with cholesterol like the slaves scurried with blocks of stone to build the pyramids.”

“The Jews who were slaves in Egypt didn’t know from cholesterol,” called Herschel Rosen from the reserved table of the
Alter Cockers,
the old men who gathered every day at the T&L. The members of the group who might appear at any time of the day. The time changed depending on their schedules, but you could always count on at least a few of them when you came in for a meal or a nosh at the T&L. The
Alter Cockers
were all old Jews except for Howie Chen, a full-fledged member who had owned a Chinese restaurant one block away before his retirement. Howie had lived and worked in the neighborhood for fifty years. He spoke better Yiddish than most of the
Alter Cockers,
some of whom couldn’t speak Yiddish at all. A few of the members could actually speak Hebrew, not well, but they had picked up enough in pilgrimages to Israel over the years.

“It’s a bad analogy,” Rosen continued emphatically. “Pyramids, cholesterol.”

Howie was at the table. So was Sy Weintraub. Sy, at eighty, was the group’s athlete. He walked at least five miles a day, rain or shine. When the weather was really bad, Sy could be found at the Jewish Community Center on Touhy not far from Abe’s house. Sy walked resolutely around the basketball court softly humming till he did his five miles. Sy could hold his own in the table banter, but it was the company he savored, not the conversation. He would have been content to sit at the table near the window with the other old men and simply listen. This information on Sy Weintraub had been given to Abe by Maish, Nothing-Bothers Maish, except lots of things bothered Maish, more since David died. Maish just didn’t show it.

“I’ll live with the bad analogy,” Abe called back. “It should only be my biggest faux pas of the day.”

“Faux pas, again,” said Herschel. “You and Bess planning a trip to gay Paree or something or are you just showing off?”

“I’ve decided to emulate the eloquent repartee of the great French lovers of history,” said Abe, straight-faced. “I’ve launched a personal campaign to woo my wife with poetry in French and Romanian. So I’m practicing French words at every opportunity.”

“Romanian?” asked Herschel. “Romanian poetry?”

“Great Romanian poetry,” said Abe.

“Joking again,” said Herschel looking at the others at his table. “Another Myron Cohen we’ve got here.”

“Where’s Al Bloombach?” asked Abe.

“Bloombach and his wife are on a cruise,” said Herschel with some disdain. “My wife,
alevai shalom,
may she rest in peace, went on a cruise about ten years ago. Too much food. Too many kids. Too many islands with too many stores trying to sell you stuff. He can have it. Al will be back tomorrow.”

Two clerks from the Rosenthal Men’s Shop down the street were hunched over the table in their booth trying to carry on a conversation over the banter between Abe and the
Alter Cockers
but the two salesmen were trapped in the booth between the cop and the Cockers.

The T&L was the last of a dying breed. Once Devon was Jewish with a sprinkling of Chinese restaurants and a Greek fruit store or two. Now the street was Korean with a minority of Vietnamese who probably outnumbered the Jews from Ridge Avenue to McCormick Boulevard. Actually, business at the T&L was better than it had ever been. A lot of Koreans liked corned beef and matzoh ball soup or a good brisket.

Three women on stools at the counter downed bowls of cabbage borscht. Two of the women talked to each other, usually at the same time. Abe recognized them. One was the daughter of Myrna Kransky, whom Abe had dated in high school. The daughter was in her thirties, pretty, with thick glasses. The other woman he recognized, Irene Richman, was a member of Temple Mir Shavot where Bess was president and Abe was constantly being shoved into committees, some of them with Irene, a plump, always suited, even-tempered assistant vice president at a bank on Irving Park Road. Irene had an MBA from the University of Chicago, a fact her mother often brought up when Irene put forth an argument during a committee meeting. Irene’s mother, Rose, was a widow who had a modest income from her husband’s insurance. Rose’s goal in life was to be on every committee her daughter was on at the temple.

The third woman, the one sitting alone, looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her. She was good-looking, dark, short businesslike haircut, pearl earrings, wearing no-nonsense makeup and a look that could have been anything from determination to blank daydreaming. He would place her, remember her name. It used to be easier.

The T&L door opened. The two salesmen went out. Bill Hanrahan came in. For a late-weekday afternoon, business was booming.

“Look who walked in,” said Herschel Rosen. “The Irish Republican Army delegate.”

“Here to make another attempt at contacting the Israeli government through those of us with connections,” said Morris Hurvitz, the short, smiling, bespectacled, and still-working seventy-eight-year-old psychologist.

“Irish and Jews against the British,” Hanrahan said with a sad smile as he headed toward Abe’s table. “Unbeatable. We’d have the British out in a week.”

Hanrahan sat across from his partner and Maish brought a cup of coffee without being asked.

“You want a bowl of soup, a sandwich?” asked Maish.

“You decide,” Hanrahan said, touching his brow and closing his eyes.

“Corned beef and chopped liver on rye?”

“Sounds fine,” said Hanrahan.

Maish joggled slowly back behind the counter to place the order and to ring up a customer on the cash register.

“Booked and out on bond?” asked Lieberman.

“Booked on five counts of fraud,” said Hanrahan. “Judge was Mason Harvey. Old Mason must be seventy-five minimum. Doesn’t take kindly to people who pull scams on our senior citizens. Set the bond so high our pal Mike almost couldn’t post. By the way, his name isn’t Mike. It’s Mikhail Piniescu. Not a citizen. Things go right, Mikhail could be on his way back to the old country.”

“If things go right,” Abe said, drinking some coffee.

“Which they almost never do,” said Hanrahan.

Abe nodded. The
Alter Cockers
chattered behind them. Two of the three women at the counter paid their bill and left together. The third woman, whom Lieberman was still trying to place, checked her watch and picked at her food. A couple of guys in hard hats and overalls came in and sat at the counter.

“I blew it, Rabbi,” Hanrahan finally said, opening his eyes and lifting the cup of steaming coffee.

“You blew it,” Lieberman agreed. “Anyone would have blown it. One man on a job like that would have to be damn lucky to keep a determined, connected
shuck dreck
like Stashall from pulling this off. Face it, Father Murphy, you were there because Mickey Gornitz wanted someone there. Part of the deal. No one thought Stashall would go after the ex-wife and kid. Cunning, yes. Clever, yes. Smart, no. Jimmy Stashall is not one of the great minds of the century. One man on the road to protect an unlikely target … Anyone would have blown it.”

Hanrahan nodded, unconvinced.

“So, you either go into another depression, blame yourself, try to get AA or your priest to keep you together — neither of which is a bad idea — or we get the kid back, nail Stashall, and keep Gornitz convinced that he should talk. What’s your pleasure?”

Hanrahan sighed, finished his coffee, and said, “We get the kid back and nail Stashall.”

“Am I right or am I right that anyone would have blown it?” Abe asked as Maish ambled slowly to the booth with their food.

“Anyone would have blown it,” Hanrahan agreed. “But it was me. And it wasn’t the first time.”

“Probably won’t be the last either,” Abe said, looking at the food placed in front of him and his partner. “I’ve still got my share to screw up. You want to keep score? Most screw-ups in the next year commits suicide.”

“Let’s make it the most screw-ups pays for dinner for four at Houlihan’s,” said Hanrahan.

“Let’s,” Lieberman said, looking at his plate and then up at his brother who hovered over him. “What’s this?”

“Cottage cheese, pineapple, on top of a little lettuce,” said Maish.

“Don’t I get a little maraschino cherry?”

“I’ll get you one.” Maish turned and moved back to business.

Lieberman looked at his plate and at Hanrahan’s. Hanrahan was about to take a bite of his corned beef and chopped liver on rye.

“Despondency doesn’t seem to have affected your appetite?”

“Life goes on,” Hanrahan said, taking a big bite.

“You going to eat both halves of that sandwich?” asked Lieberman.

“Both and maybe a big bowl of matzoh ball soup,” said Hanrahan, his mouth full.

“You wouldn’t consider taking half my …”