Big Silence (9 page)

A deep-red cherry complete with stem dropped atop the hill of cottage cheese in front of Lieberman.

“You eat that sandwich, I tell Bess,” said Maish. “You wanted a maraschino cherry. You got a maraschino cherry. Eat. Enjoy. Indulge.”

Maish left. It was Lieberman’s turn to sigh as he picked up his fork and dug into the lumpy white mound.

“A little sour cream mixed in wouldn’t kill me,” he mumbled.

“Abe,” Herschel Rosen called across the room. “Opinion. You got an opinion on all this new stuff about Genesis?”

“If you Cockers are so interested in the Torah,” Lieberman said, gulping down the cherry, which he had planned to save till the end, “you should go to the study group at Mir Shavot.”

“With Rabbi Wass?” asked Louis Roth, a former jeweler with astonishingly thick glasses. “I’ll take my chances at this table, thank you very much.”

“Amen,” said Herschel Rosen. “You got an opinion? You don’t have an opinion? Which is it, Abraham?”

Abe glanced toward the counter behind which his brother had stopped cleaning and straightening and pouring and was giving his full attention to the conversation.

“There was a beginning,” said Lieberman.

“And?” Herschel prompted.

“That was enough to screw things up,” said the detective.

The two men in hard hats were half turned listening to the conversation. One of the two men was as black as Lieberman’s son-in-law. The other hard hat was a stocky young man in his thirties with a round cheerful face. They definitely did not fit the description of the salt-and-pepper holdup men.

“And they’ll stay screwed up,” Hanrahan said so low that the old men at the table couldn’t make out his words. “Just trying to stay sane in a mad world. We can do without God being crazy too.”

“What’d he say?” Louis Roth asked, squinting around the table.

“God’s crazy,” said Herschel Rosen.

“Amen. So tell me something new?”

Lieberman had finished his cottage cheese and pineapple and even eaten the thin sheet of lettuce. He was still hungry. Hanrahan’s sandwich was gone. Maish was back to filling the coffee cups.

“How was the cottage cheese special?” asked Maish.

“Healthy,” said Abe. “I feel healthy now. I feel like I could conquer giants.”

“A simple ‘good’ would be enough,” Maish said, picking up the empty plates.

“Actually,” said Abe, “it wasn’t bad.”

“Frankly,” said Maish, “I can’t stand the stuff. Herschel’s right. God is crazy.”

And then he was gone.

“What now, Rabbi?” asked Hanrahan.

“We could go back to all the places the Salt and Peppers have hit,” said Lieberman. “Maybe get a lead, some piece of identification we can follow up.”

“We could,” said Hanrahan.

“Or,” said Lieberman, “we could go visit Jimmy Stashall for a friendly conversation.”

“Eugene A. Carbin wouldn’t like it,” said Hanrahan.

Lieberman stood, used his fingers to take a last tiny lump of cottage cheese he had overlooked, and said, “I am firmly convinced he wouldn’t like it at all, Father Murph.”

“Then let’s do it,” said Hanrahan.

And they were about to do it when the T&L door opened again and a man came in, a man about Lieberman’s age, a thin man with dark receding hair and a gaunt look. He was wearing a dark sweater under his open flannel-lined jacket. His hands were thrust in his pockets. The man spotted Lieberman and headed for him. It was then that Lieberman placed the lone woman at the counter: Rita Blitzstein, daughter of the man who was advancing on him, Robert Blitzstein.

“Blitzstein,” Lieberman said to the man who was a member of the congregation at Temple Mir Shavot.

Blitzstein who had lost his wife five years earlier offered his hand and looked at Hanrahan.

“Detective William Hanrahan, my partner,” Lieberman said.

“Good,” said Blitzstein. “Can we sit?”

Lieberman shrugged and sat back in the booth. Hanrahan moved over to make room for Blitzstein, who folded his hands and looked at his daughter at the counter. She saw the look, got off of the stool at the counter and joined them, sitting next to Lieberman across from her father.

“Is that Blitzstein?” Hy Rosen asked from the
Alter Cocker’s
table.

“It is,” said Howie Chen. The Blitzsteins used to be regulars at Howie’s restaurant. Every Sunday. Howie had watched Rita grow up. Had served them the same meal week after week and received the same tip even when inflation was on them.

“Blitzstein,” called Rosen. “Come over when you’re done. We’ll insult you for a few minutes, buy you a coffee or two.”

Blitzstein didn’t answer. He was in no mood. Blitzstein had moved out of the neighborhood long before the Koreans and Vietnamese started to come in. He had moved north, beyond Skokie into Winnetka. Blitzstein had a successful children’s furniture and clothing store. Actually, he had three of them and was one of the more affluent members of Temple Mir Shavot though in actual dollars his annual contributions were well below that of Lieberman and Bess. Blitzstein had, however, been on the building committee with Lieberman, the committee that had been responsible for raising the money for the new temple in the renovated bank building on Dempster in Skokie. The two men were not friends, but neither were they enemies. “Acquaintances” would be the word Lieberman would have used.

Lieberman knew, though Blitzstein hadn’t talked about it, that Blitzstein had received four combat medals during the Korean War. He knew that Blitzstein had never gotten over the loss of his wife to cancer nearly five years earlier. Blitzstein was a man who held tightly the memory of his suffering and that of his family. He was not an easy man to know or like, but he was, Lieberman knew, a man who prided himself on his honesty. The word of Robert Blitzstein was good, though his company might not be.

“They told me I might find you here,” said Blitzstein. “You weren’t at home. You weren’t at the police station.”

Lieberman and Hanrahan sat back. Whatever it was, was important to Robert Blitzstein.

“Rita, tell Detective Lieberman.”

Slowly, clearly, precisely, and in detail Rita Blitzstein told the two detectives about her encounter with the huge man in the street the night before, about the garbage can, the obscenities.

“Clarence Millthorpe,” Lieberman said with a sigh.

Hanrahan nodded his agreement.

“You know him?” Blitzstein asked.

“We know him,” said Lieberman. “Known him for almost three years, when he first appeared. We don’t know where he lives. His fingerprints don’t show up on any local, regional, or national files, which means he was never in prison and never in the armed services under any name. He has no identification. On the street, he’s crazy, but when we get him in for questioning, he could give Gerry Spence a run for his money.”

“So, what are you telling us?” asked Blitzstein.

“Miss Blitzstein,” Hanrahan said, “did he threaten you?”

“He held the garbage can over his head in front of me, for God’s sake,” she said.

“Did he say he was going to hit you with it, show signs that he was?”

“I —”

“What did you say he did with the garbage can?” Hanrahan pressed on. “Threw it down the street,” she said.

“Say anything threatening to you?” asked Lieberman.

“Obscenities,” she said. “Loud, angry.”

“No direct threats,” Lieberman went on. “No witnesses.”

“He’s done this to other people,” she said, her eyes moist but holding back tears. “I’ve seen it. I —”

“My daughter’s afraid to go home,” said Blitzstein. “I’m going to move her in with me till she feels up to finding a new place, subletting her apartment.”

“No,” Rita said firmly. “He’s not driving me from my home. I’m not a child. He’s terrorizing a whole neighborhood. I’m sure you can find witnesses.”

“We’ve had maybe thirty complaints over the last three years,” said Hanrahan. “Never enough evidence of anything but trying to frighten people. We put him in with a shrink. He doesn’t cooperate. We can’t even charge him with disturbing the peace. Not enough evidence.”

“Something’s got to be done about a madman like this before he hurts someone,” said Blitzstein. “Look what he’s done to my daughter.”

Rita looked at her father and let her tongue touch her upper lip to keep back the tears.

“We’ll find him,” said Lieberman. “Pull him in. See what we can do.”

“When?” asked Blitzstein.

Lieberman looked at Rita and then at his partner.

“Now,” said Hanrahan.

Blitzstein nodded with cautious satisfaction and reached over to touch his daughter’s hand. From what Lieberman could recall from bits and pieces over the years, Rita Blitzstein had left her parents’ home after college and had had little to do with them after growing up under the morose domination of her father. She worked for a newspaper or a television station. She had been on her own, professional, and then this happened and she was back seeking the power and determination of her father. Lieberman read defeat in the woman’s eyes, but he may, he decided, be imagining the scenario. She had said that she wouldn’t move in with her father. Maybe the threat of Clarence Millthorpe wasn’t quite as bad as becoming a little girl again. He knew he didn’t particularly care for Blitzstein, but he had never witnessed anything really bad from the man but the flashes of temper at committee meetings.

“Stashall will wait,” Hanrahan said.

Lieberman nodded and the four people got out of the booth and headed for the door.

“You’ll probably have to identify him face to face if we can come up with a charge,” Lieberman said.

“I’ll identify him,” Rita Blitzstein said with determination.

“Blitzstein,” Rosen said as they passed the
Alter Cockers’
table near the window. “You want to sit,
kibbitz
a minute or two, or you got people to talk to in Highland Park?”

Rosen knew Blitzstein didn’t live in Highland Park. Blitzstein took his daughter’s arm and left the T&L. Hanrahan and Lieberman were right behind.

Abe turned to wave good-bye to his brother, the little Jimmy Cagney flip of the hand for Pat O’Brien they had been using since they were kids. Maish wasn’t looking at his brother. He was staring glassy-eyed at the sparkling coffee cup in his hand as if it were a crystal ball that might hold an answer to any of his questions.

Lisa hadn’t gone back to Los Angeles yet.

Lieberman would be in for a surprise when he saw her sitting there waiting for him whenever he came home. Bess knew her husband was good at handling such surprises from his daughter. They didn’t make him happy. He just handled them well. Providing Abe got home from work at a reasonable time — and probably even if he didn’t — there would be a long session of reason, persuasion, exasperation, and frustration. Bess did not look forward to it any more than she looked forward to the first in a series of afternoon Torah studies sessions that she was about to open.

The reason was not the small turnout, only a dozen people, but the fact that her brother-in-law Maish had shuffled into the session before anyone arrived and sat in the first row of seats in the small sanctuary nodding at Bess, the stoic look on his bulldog face emotionless. He was dressed in his one gray suit and even wore a tie and in his lap was a yellow legal-size pad. Bess, from the lectern of the small
bema
on which she stood, could see that Maish’s pad was filled with notes.

Maish had essentially dropped out of the congregation when his son was murdered by a mugger and David’s pregnant wife was shot during the attack, killing her unborn baby. At least that was the story. As Bess knew, there was much more to it than that, more than she would ever be able to tell Maish and his wife, Yetta. Bess had chatted with young Rabbi Wass, who kept adjusting his glasses while people straggled in. Rabbi Wass nodded at Maish, who didn’t respond, and said to Bess with a pleased smile, “You see who’s here?”

“My husband’s brother,” Bess answered, trying to get some sense of why Maish might be here with his yellow pad. She sensed that he had not simply returned to the fold.

At ten after the hour, Bess suggested that they begin with the dozen people seated before them. Rabbi Wass agreed.

“I think I know all of you,” she began. “I’m Bess Lieberman, president of Temple Mir Shavot, and this is our rabbi, who has made the study of the meaning of the Torah, the first five books of the Holy Bible, his life’s work. This is the first in a series of conversations with the rabbi on questions you may have and wish to discuss. All of you have been asked to read the Torah in preparation for this series. We hope and expect that others in the congregation will join us in the future. Rabbi Wass.”

Bess descended from the
bema
and moved to one of the many empty wooden seats toward the rear. There were plenty of empty seats. The sanctuary could hold 107.

“The Torah,” Rabbi Wass began in his most rabbinical voice, “is a living work of mystery, contradiction, wisdom, and great literature. It is God’s solace and warning to us. It teaches us that we can never know God but that we must love and obey. It teaches us that we are the chosen people and that we will survive if we revere God and behave cleanly and with respect for each other, every human being, and our holy days. The —”

Maish’s pudgy hand was up. Bess cringed in the back, determined to move up to her brother-in-law’s side if things got too bad. Where was Maish’s wife, Yetta? Did she even know he was here?

The other eleven people who had gathered, most of them younger members of the congregation with families, most of them professional — doctors, lawyers, businessmen and women — turned toward the overweight man with the sad eyes whose hand was up.

“Morris Lieberman?” Rabbi Wass said, adjusting his glasses.

“Why did God let my son and grandchild die?” Maish asked.

Bess quietly rose and began to ease her way toward the empty seat next to Maish.

“God created man and gave man free will.” Rabbi Wass was ready for this one. “Men are free to act with compassion and goodness or with evil. God watches. If we destroy each other, He watches. If we honor Him and perform acts of contrition and decency, He watches. God takes the dead unto Himself, but He leaves us free to plot our own destinies.”