Lieberman's Day (23 page)

GEORGE
: Don't know. I think I better get me some sleep now.

LIEBERMAN
: I think the gun you had in your pocket is going to match the bullet they took out of the pregnant woman.

GEORGE
: Got to sleep. Weak.

George closed his eyes and Fu turned off the tape recorder.

“Let me talk to him for a minute,” Lieberman said wearily. “Won't take more than a minute.”

Fu looked at George and then at Lieberman before he shrugged and said, “Two minutes.” Then he left the room. Lieberman turned to George again.

“Few more questions, George,” Lieberman said gently.

“Later, man.”

“Now, George,” said Lieberman. “Open your eyes and talk or I'll shoot you.”

“Man,” groaned George, opening his eyes. “I don't have to …”

He saw the weapon in Lieberman's hand. It was pointed at George's face.

“You crazy, man? Why you gonna shoot me?”

“David Lieberman was my nephew,” Lieberman said calmly. “Now, I'm going to tell you something and then ask you questions. You lie or I think you're lying and as miserable looking a piece of breathing flesh as we both think you are you will look even more miserable.”

“I wanna see the Jap cop.”

Lieberman slowly shook his head no and put the barrel of the weapon against George's forehead.

“You would not shoot me,” said George.

“Yes, I will,” said Lieberman evenly. “David went to ball games with me. His father is my only brother. I'm tired and getting old fast and full of lies I can tell after I blow your head off. So, who did you shoot, David or Carol?”

“What I get from I tell you this?”

“To live,” said Lieberman. “And maybe a good word about your cooperation.”

George closed his eyes again.

“Raymond shot the man,” said George. “Got no call to protect him. He shot me, too.”

“Why?”

“Why what? Why he shoot me? I don't know. We was goin' back to the Islands and he …”

“He's from Trinidad.”

“Yeah, that's right. He shot your kin, not me.”

“No,” said Lieberman, “you shot a pregnant woman.”

“I was confused. Shooting. Screaming. Confused.”

“Where can we find Raymond?”

“He got a place over in the city, over a store. I don't know streets so good. 'Sides, we packed up and left that place.”

Lieberman put his gun back in his holster.

“I think,” said George. “I bes' see me a lawyer.”

“That would be best,” Lieberman agreed, moving to the door. “Get a good one. I'd say you don't have much of a case, shooting a pregnant woman during a robbery.”

“Can't think now,” said George.

“Get some rest. Get a lawyer.”

“Yeah. Say, I didn't mean to kill nobody. Never hurt anyone in my life. Then this. I didn't want to go way up there and rob someone. Didn't want to rob nobody, but Raymond got me going. I thought he was my friend till he shot me in the back.”

“Things like that do get in the way of a friendship,” said Lieberman.

“Maybe you see him you jus' shootin' him down like the wild dog he is,” said George, licking his lips and closing his eyes again.

“Maybe I will,” said Lieberman, moving across the room.

“Don' forget about my water,” George said in the glare of the lamp. “I think I be talkin' too much. Delirious. Don' know what I be sayin' here.”

“Tell your lawyer,” said Lieberman, opening the door.

In the hall, Lieberman briefed Fu on what George had said. Fu didn't ask how he had persuaded George.

“I think maybe I'll get George some water and talk to him again,” said Fu, shaking Lieberman's extended hand.

“I'll stay in touch.”

On the way back to Chicago, Lieberman didn't listen to the news or golden oldies from the big-band era. He didn't listen to talk-show hosts hanging up on callers. He listened instead to a voice within him speaking in a deep Islands accent telling him something he didn't want to hear.

Lieutenant Kearney sat in the kitchen of William Hanrahan's house drinking a cup of coffee. Kearney was forty-two years old, roughhouse good-looking with a broken nose and a reputation for common sense that had earned him the promotion and move to Clark Street. He had been in line for even better things, a corner, well connected, well liked, engaged to Carta Duvier, whose father owned a good part of the North Side of Chicago and its suburbs. And then, a few months ago, it had all blown up when Kearney's former partner, Bernie Sheppard, had gone mad, killed some people, ruined Kearney's reputation, ended Kearney's relationship with Carta Duvier, and put his promotion to captain on permanent hold.

Kearney was considered by those who worked with him to be a good cop, a patient cop, a cop with nothing to gain and little to lose, a cop who backed his men as he had not been backed by those above him when the going got rough.

Kearney sat across from Bill Hanrahan and waited. He had time and the coffee was newly perked and hot.

Hanrahan's fingers played on the cover of a record album he had retrieved from the ruins of his living room. It was
The Music Man,
Maureen's favorite. The record was shattered now, shattered by a shotgun pellet.

“Good coffee,” Kearney said.

Hanrahan nodded. Maureen had loved freshly ground coffee. Ground, unground, instant—it had made no difference to Hanrahan, but Maureen seemed to know the difference and each morning of the last six years of their life together he had ground the beans, half regular, half decaf, before he left for his shift. It was one of the marriage habits he had continued partly, he knew, to keep things from changing or to make them change as slowly as possible. Now … He ran his finger over the rough hole in the album, his eyes watching dreamily.

Hanrahan could hear the team from downtown going through the debris of his living room, could hear their feet crunching glass, their voices trespassing on memories. Upstairs, Iris was comforting Jeanine and Charlie while a policewoman took their statements. Cold air raced through the broken windows of the living room and chilled the working cops, including Kearney, who wore his coat fully buttoned.

“He broke into the house,” said Hanrahan, fighting back the unreasonable urge to excuse himself and clean up the living room, do his best to make it look the way it had an hour ago.

“And?” Kearney prodded.

“He had the shotgun. I sent the girl and her son upstairs. Kraylaw said he was going to shoot me. He shot and missed. I shot him.”

“Missed with both barrels of a shotgun?” Kearney almost whispered.

“I must have shot first. Maybe he was going down when he shot. I think I ducked into the kitchen when I fired.”

“You shot him more than once.”

“He still had the shotgun.”

“He had emptied both barrels.”

Hanrahan shrugged wearily.

Kearney got up, stretched, and looked down on Hanrahan, who had pulled out the shattered record and was putting the broken pieces back together in front of him like a jigsaw puzzle.

“O.K.,” Kearney resumed. “What else?”

“Nothing else,” said Hanrahan.

“Look, if …” Kearney began, but stopped when he saw Donna Wheeler, the uniformed policewoman who had been taking Jeanine's and Charlie's statements, come down the stairs off of the kitchen. Wheeler was young, hair short, stocky, daughter of a cop, a pit bull eager to please.

“What you got, Wheeler?” Kearney asked.

Wheeler, not quite at attention, opened her black notebook, scanned what she had written, and said, “Both the mother and the boy say Kraylaw broke in, told them he was taking them. Detective Hanrahan came in. Kraylaw said he was going to shoot. Hanrahan sent them out of the room. Then they heard the shots.”

“He said he was going to shoot?” Kearney asked.

Hanrahan looked up and nodded his head yes.

“That's what Mrs. Kraylaw and the boy say,” said Wheeler.

“For the record, Bill,” Kearney said. “One more time.”

“Yes,” said Hanrahan, covering the jagged pieces of the record with the bright album cover. “He said he was going to shoot.”

“O.K.,” said Kearney, rising again. “Thanks, Officer.”

Wheeler turned and made her way back up the stairs.

“Hanrahan, on the record, you look like you need some help. Off the record, you look like shit.”

“Yeah,” said Hanrahan.

“Got someone to talk to?”

“I think so, maybe,” said Hanrahan, touching his chin. He needed a shave now. When had he shaved last? This morning? In the tub?

“Do it,” said Kearney, heading toward the living room. “Full report in the morning. Details.”

“Details,” Hanrahan repeated.

And Kearney was gone.

Bill Hanrahan didn't move. He listened to the movement in the living room, went through in his mind what he would have to do to clean up. Cardboard box for the broken glass. Hefty bag, maybe more than one, for whatever was broken. And the door. Last summer some young woman with an accent from lower New York State had come to his door and sold him a gallon of something that was guaranteed to get rid of any stain. Eighteen dollars it had cost him, but she had demonstrated on a coffee stain on the sofa and he had bought it. Four or five clean rags, a few sponges, the stuff in the gallon container, and he would get rid of the blood.

He went slowly up the stairs to the bedroom on his right, the room that had been his older son's. The door was partly open and Jeanine, seated in the orange University of Illinois chair, was talking to Officer Wheeler, who knelt before her. On the bed, Iris sat next to Charlie, her arm around the boy, talking to him softly. Charlie had not shed a tear. Nor did he look frightened. His expression was blank. Shock. And then the boy sensed Hanrahan and looked up. Their eyes met. Hanrahan forced a small smile. The corners of Charlie's mouth twitched slightly in response.

And then Jeanine was aware of him. She looked over Wheeler's shoulder at Hanrahan. Her eyes were moist and red, her hair a mess. She was still wearing her McDonald's uniform. Their eyes met and Jeanine gave him a pained smile.

“I've got to go out,” Hanrahan said.

Wheeler turned and nodded, but he had not spoken to her.

“You want me to go with you?” asked Iris.

“No,” said Hanrahan. “I …”

He wanted to kiss her, put his head in the curve of her shoulder and neck, be comforted, but he knew he wouldn't do it, not in front of others, maybe not even if they were alone.

“I'll take them to my apartment,” Iris said. “I called my father. He said it would be all right.”

Hanrahan nodded, turned, and left, deciding when he got to the bottom of the stairs to go out the back door rather than to go through the living room and witness what he had done.

T
HE ROOM IN WHICH
they sat reminded Lieberman of the inside of a musty jewelry box his mother had kept in the top drawer of her dresser until she died. The box that he and Maish had always wondered about and were never allowed to look inside of turned out to hold no surprises. It was lined with purple felt, contained a not-very-good gold ring, a locket with a cameo, and four silver dollars.

Abe remembered touching the cameo, running his fingers over it the day after his mother's death when he had roamed her small apartment alone. He had always liked smooth sculpture, smooth stones or rocks, finely polished wood, and flawless glassware, thin and fine. He had, with Maish's agreement, kept the cameo which now rested on the bottom of his dresser drawer. He had no idea if Maish still had the box. But this room had the feel, the smell of that box.

“… the casket. You agree?”

Abe realized that the question was aimed at him, but he had no idea what it was. He turned to Mr. Myslish, the funeral director, who was dark suited, businesslike, efficient, too rotund for his own health, and at least double the age of David Lieberman, whose funeral arrangements they were discussing.

Abe looked at Maish seated at his side. Maish was lost in his own memories. Abe tried Rabbi Wass, who looked at Lieberman as if the answer to the question was vital to the continuation of civilization as we know it. Abe was not at all sure at the moment that he wanted civilization to continue as he knew it.

“I agree,” said Abe.

“Good,” said Myslish, breathing a heavy sigh of relief. “Then you will say a few words and Rabbi Wass will close and invite everyone to go with us to the cemetery for interment. Because of the weather, we'll need a tent.”

“I will keep the graveside service brief,” said Rabbi Wass. “Unless the temperature goes up significantly.”

Maish looked around the room. The ceiling seemed particularly interesting to his more than usually moist eyes.

“The only question is who rides in the limousine,” said Myslish, “and what the order is for the family cars.”

“David doesn't care,” said Maish.

“But,” said Rabbi Wass, “it will mean something to the way you remember, your wife, his wife remembers.”

Maish shrugged.

Everyone sat quietly for several seconds in Mr. Myslish's study, which looked uncannily like the inside of Becky Lieberman's jewelry box.

“So,” Myslish said, jumping in to fill the dead silence. “We also have the question of who sits where during the service, which will be held in the large chapel. With all of your friends and relatives and David's and Carol's coworkers, I think we'll need the large chapel.”

Voices came through the softness of the purple walls, muffled but harsh, rapid.

“The family, father, mother, uncle, aunt, cousin,” said Rabbi Wass, “will sit in the front row. Whether we designate …”

The door to the study opened and a man who looked very much like Myslish and was, in fact, his son backed into the room. He was immediately followed by Emiliano “El Perro” Del Sol and the Tentaculos Carlos and La Cabeza. El Perro was wearing jeans, a blue button-down shirt, and a green sports jacket. Carlos and La Cabeza both wore jeans, T-shirts, and heavy black zippered jackets. All three were wearing black
yarmulkes
on their heads, as were the men already in the room.