Lieberman's Day (11 page)

Bess stood at Lieberman's side while Lisa led Yetta to the sofa, where an open book of family photos waited.

“Give him something to eat, Bess,” Yetta called. “He must be starving.”

“I will,” said Bess, turning to her husband.

“I wanted you to sleep,” Lieberman said. “I thought you could use a good night's rest for all this.”

“I know,” she said. “I figured.”

“You look beautiful and you smell like perfect memories.”

“You look terrible, Lieberman,” Bess answered. “And you smell like mildew. You got time to go home, take a shower, change clothes?”

He shook his head no and watched his sister-in-law sitting with the photograph album on her lap, slowly pointing to a David of the past and telling the story of the lost moment.

“That's her history,” Bess said. “That book, some memories of things that don't mean anything to anyone else. We teach kids about kings and wars but pay no attention to the history that will really count for them, their own lives.”

“You're right,” he said.

“You'd tell me I was right if I said your Cubs deserve to lose a hundred games this year. I'm not mad anymore, Abe. We've got grief to deal with here. Are you all right?”

Lieberman couldn't answer.

“Are you feverish, Lieberman?” Bess said, putting her cool hand on his brow.

He closed his eyes. “Keep it there,” he said.

She took her hand away and he opened his eyes.

“Can you stop by the house when Barry and Melisa come home, just before three? Todd's going to pick them up and keep them for a few days. Lisa got some time off and she's going to help me here, pick up Edward at the airport.”

“Bess,” he said. “I'm trying to catch the people who killed Davey.”

“You want to make arrangements for the funerals, the burial, food, calls to relatives? Maish can't do it. Yetta can't do it. Carol is in the hospital trying to …”

“Enough,” said Lieberman, holding up his hands. “I'll be home. I'll change clothes. I'll get the kids packed …”

“Lisa packed them.”

“Then I'll sit there till Todd comes.”

“At three-fifteen.”

“I'll be there,” said Lieberman. “I gotta go. I'm late.”

“Stay a few minutes. Rabbi Wass is on the way.”

All the more reason to get out of here, Lieberman thought, but he said, “Can't. Bill's waiting for me.”

He kissed Bess on the cheek and she stopped him to kiss him gently on the mouth. Her smell seeped into his being and made him feel like sex or sleep.

“Abe,” she whispered. “Don't think that way.”

Her face was in front of his, her brown eyes wide and unwilling to look away.

“What way?” he said with a patient sigh.

“The way you looked when that Puerto Rican girl was murdered. Like you're going to hurt someone, probably yourself.”

“I'm late,” he said.

“Three o'clock,” she reminded him.

“Three o'clock,” he confirmed, moving past her to kiss the seated Yetta, to accept a hug, and to nod to Lisa.

“You remember this one, Abe?” Yetta asked, pointing at a photograph of her two sons at the ages of about ten and thirteen and a younger Abe who looked in the picture exactly as he looked earlier that morning and as he had looked from his fifteenth birthday.

“Round Lake,” Yetta said. “See, David's fishing in a bucket. You know why he didn't have a shirt on, didn't wear one all summer?”

Lieberman looked at the photograph for some clue, but saw none.

“He thought,” Yetta explained, “that he was going to be a superhero. He'd puff up his little tan chest and try to look strong.”

“I remember,” he said, looking at Lisa, who saw the same thing in her father's eyes that Bess had seen.

“Abe,” she said as he stood.

“I know,” Lieberman answered. “Your mother just told me about Todd picking up the kids.”

“I don't mean about the kids.”

“I know,” he said. “I gotta go.”

He was halfway through the crowd when Irving Hamel appeared before him. Irving was not a bad man, but he was an irritating one. He was also young, not yet forty, and a lawyer. He had all his hair and it was black. He wore contact lenses. He stood tall and worked out every morning at the Jewish Community Center on Touhy. His wife was beautiful. His two kids, a boy and girl, were beautiful. Irving Hamel might one day be the first Jewish mayor of Chicago or a Supreme Court justice, but to Abe Lieberman, he was generally a pain in the ass.

“My condolences about David,” Irving said.

His suit was dark, perfectly pressed. His condolences sounded sincere, but Lieberman felt, as he usually felt about Irving Hamel, that there was another agenda that would come out in a prepositional phrase or an aside.

“Thank you, Irving,” Abe said, patting the younger man on the shoulder and trying to move past him.

“How's Bess taking this?” Irving said softly, sincerely. “No one ever thinks about how Bess is taking things. She's always a rock for others, but something like this …”

“She'll be fine,” said Lieberman, now knowing where this encounter was leading. “My wife can take on death as well as she's taken on life.”

“Oh,” said Irving with an admiring shake of the head. “I know. Lord, I know. The woman is an inspiration to us all But …”

“Irving,” said Lieberman, invading the man's personal space by stepping toward him. “Bess isn't going to resign as temple president. She's not going to take a leave or have a breakdown. So you're not going to add a line to the community-service listing of your resumé.”

“You think I …” Hamel said incredulously.

“I know you,” Lieberman said evenly. “Do us all a favor, including you. Fight this another day and another way. Don't discuss this with Rabbi Wass unless you already have. And don't discuss it with anyone else but Bess. You want to take her on, be my guest.”

With that, Lieberman sidestepped the man and strode toward the door.

Before he left the house, however, Lieberman slipped into an alcove near the front door and used the phone there to make a call. The call led to another call and then another until he reached a boy named Justo Carnito who gave him a time and a place. Lieberman wrote the time and place in his pocket notebook, said
“Gracias,”
and hung up the phone.

As he got into his car parked almost directly in front of his brother's house, Lieberman checked the side mirror and saw the familiar black Pontiac of Rabbi Wass, the young Rabbi Wass, who was forty-five years old.

Rabbi Wass was one of three pillars of Temple Mir Shavot on California Avenue just four blocks from where Lieberman and Bess lived on Jarvis. The second was eighty-five-year-old Ida Katzman, whose ten jewelry stores, left to her by the departed Mort Katzman, allowed her to make donations that had not only kept the congregation alive but also held the promise of a move in the near future to the former Fourth Federal Savings Building on Dempster in Skokie, in a neighborhood of younger families with growing children and new life for the temple. The third pillar of the congregation was Lieberman's wife. Bess was not only the president, but also head of the building-fund drive.

Lieberman's rear tires slipped as he backed up, and when he gunned the engine, he slipped further into an iced rut of his own making.

“Wait,” called Rabbi Wass from the open window of his car; Lieberman was trapped.

Rabbi Wass parked in one of the many available morning spaces on the street of small homes and walked over to

Lieberman's car, motioning him to roll down the window. He did.

“I'll give you a push,” said Wass.

“Rabbi, I …”

“Gently in gear and I'll push. Strong back. My ancestors were farmers.”

And Lieberman obeyed, worrying about the hour and knowing he would have to pay with a few minutes of conversation.

“Now,” shouted the rabbi.

Lieberman stepped gently on the gas.

“Rock back and then we'll thrust on forward,” shouted the rabbi.

Abe put the car back in neutral and then switched to drive and hit the gas. With Rabbi Wass pushing, the car belched out into the street.

“Thanks, Rabbi,” Lieberman called through the window with a wave of the hand.

“A moment,” called Rabbi Wass, moving to the passenger side of Lieberman's car, opening the door, and sliding in. “I need moments of activity like that. Thank you.”

“I'm very late,” said Lieberman, looking at his watch.

“Only a minute. I promise. I want to express my sense of loss to you and your family.”

“Thank you.”

He meant well, this earnest man with a round, bespectacled face, and Abe had come to look forward to the
Shavot
services on Friday night during which he could meditate, lose himself in the repetition of praise to God and the poetry of the service, and, if he was lucky, tune out the well-meaning rabbi.

Lieberman was not a religious man; he had considered himself a silent atheist as a young man, a closet Buddhist as an adult, a tolerant acceptor of the rituals of his people at the age of fifty.

The problem with the man at his side was that Rabbi Wass, like his father before him, was a bore whose sermons were definitely the low point of each service though the sermons always dealt with topical issues, including Israeli politics, Middle East peace, racial tension, and Jewish-American politicians. The subject of each sermon was relevant, but Rabbi Wass's observations were on a par with those of a cautious politician: people should learn to be tolerant, should give more to each other, should be open to new ideas.

“We'll have funeral services on Thursday,” Rabbi Wass said. “I'm aware of what must be done by the police in such cases of violence.”

“That's good,” said Lieberman.

“I would like you to say a few words of comfort to the family,” said Rabbi Wass, looking earnestly at Lieberman through clouded lenses.

“That's your job,
Rov”
he said.

“It would mean much to your brother, his family, Bess.”

“I'll say a few words,” Lieberman agreed. “Now, I've really got …”

“I understand,” said the rabbi, touching Lieberman's arm. “I called the hospital before I left home. Dr. Friedman's on the staff. He's the son of Sophie and Nat. You know them?”

“Yes,” said Lieberman.

“Carol and the child are almost certainly out of the woods,” he said.

“Thanks, Rabbi.”

Rabbi Wass smiled, sighed, opened the door, and said, “I'd better get inside. Remember Thursday. Just a few words of comfort.”

He closed the door and Lieberman drove away wondering what words of comfort he could possibly give to his brother, to Yetta, to their son Edward. Maybe they shouldn't be comforted. Maybe they should face the pain for what it was and try to go on.

Maybe a lot of things.

Lieberman hit Lincoln Avenue forcing his way into traffic. He was definitely going to be late.

In the small, warm attic room on the third floor of his home and office on Sheridan Road, J.W Rashish Ranpur, cardiologist, drank some tepid tea and looked around to see that everything was in place. The carpet was dark and clean, the music stand was in place, the heavy wooden folding chair with the cushion stood in the center of the room facing the window through which he could, if he chose, look out into the chill, solid white expanse leading all the way to the icy shore of Lake Michigan.

The tape and compact disc player stood next to the folding chair, and as he sat facing the two speakers, Dr. Ranpur glanced at the photograph on the wall, the autographed photograph of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. He had gone to hear and see them in concert last year and had difficulty holding back his tears of satisfaction as the trombone player, an ancient stick of a man even darker in hue than J.W.R. Ranpur and even older, not only played but took solos, sang, and danced. The memory made Dr. Ranpur's eyes fill with tears.

He sat, picked up his trombone, which felt sufficiently warm, made sure that the slide was smooth and clear, and selected a compact disc.

The room filled with the sound of horns—trombone, coronet, saxophone—and the rattle of banjo, piano, bass fiddle, and drum.

Rashish Ranpur had one hour before his first patient arrived, and in that hour, as he did every day, he would play plaintive jazz songs along with tapes and discs and even rise to sing “Silver Dollar” or “St. Louis Blues.” Dr. Ranpur played the trombone passing well. He knew that. He was also sure that if anyone heard him singing, with his accent, they would have trouble holding back a smile.

Wait, not anyone, he corrected himself as the music began. He had the feeling that the sad-eyed policeman named Lieberman who had come to him during the night would not laugh, that he would understand. He had seen the grief in those eyes and knew that the man's physical ailments, the high blood pressure, the chronic liver problems, the arthritis in his knees and fingers were as nothing to the pain he endured with the horror that had taken place just outside Dr. Ranpur's front door.

It was possible, when some time had passed, that Dr. Ranpur would call the policeman, ask him about his ailments, and invite him to hear the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, or an old King Oliver, Isham Jones, or Jack Teagarden record.

The sad, slow, dirgelike beginning of “Hindustan” made the walls of the small room tingle. This would be a session of sadness for the young people who had been shot in his yard only hours ago, a session of sadness and understanding and the celebration of a new life.

Dr. Ranpur began to tap his toe and lifted the trombone to his lips. He waited dutifully for his turn, and when the trombone solo came he joined in, merging with the soloist, and for an hour was lost in the near-perfect meditation of the music of now-old men.