Lieberman's Law (16 page)

Lieberman opened the brown nine-by-twelve envelope he was carrying and handed the photographs to Mrs. Ready who sat in her chair at the window.

The sun was bright. There were no lights on in the small apartment.

“Just tell us if you recognize anyone?” Benishay said. “Please take your time.”

“All right,” said Mrs. Ready, clearly enjoying the attention being given her by three men. She went through them slowly.

“This one is you,” she said, pointing to a photograph of Lieberman and looking up at him.

“Just skip the pictures of Detective Lieberman,” said Benishay.

Anne Ready nodded and kept looking.

“This one is Winona Ryder, the actress,” said Mrs. Ready looking at one of the photographs Lieberman had put in with the ones taken at the rally. The photo showed the actress in front of a crowd. She was wearing jeans and a. flannel shirt. “She was wonderful in
Little Women,
but in
Dracula …
Once a month my daughter-in-law comes in from Batavia and takes me shopping and the movies.”

The three policemen nodded as she returned to the pack of photographs correctly identifying, in turn, Debra Winger, Benazir Bhutto, and Sally Ride.

“This one,” she said, holding up the photo so the policemen could all see. “She was the girl in the doorway across the street the other night.”

“You're sure?” asked Benishay.

“Positive, and here's another picture of her. Pretty girl, but so serious. What's that in her hand?”

“A bullhorn,” said Lieberman.

Anne Ready nodded knowingly.

“Could we count on you to identify her in person?” said Benishay. “And, possibly, if it comes to it, to testify before a grand jury and possibly at a trial?”

“Like on television?” she asked with obvious excitement. “Like the O. J. Simpson trial?”

“Like that,” said Benishay, “but probably not on television.”

“I'd be happy to sit in a chair and take the oath,” she said.

“And identify this young woman as the one you saw in the doorway?” asked Benishay.

“I've already said that I would do so,” said Anne Ready. “Do you want me to bring my own pictures of her?”

The three policeman looked at the woman.

“I take pictures of people from my window,” she explained. “With Carl's camera. Carl didn't like to take people. I collect people. I've got some of you,” she said looking at Lieberman. “You and a pretty younger woman coming out of services on Friday nights. The Saturday morning ones are best but you never go on Saturdays.”

“My wife, Bess,” said Lieberman. “The younger woman.”

“Ah,” said Anne Ready, moving to the kitchen and coming back with a thick box she could barely carry. She placed it on the table and sat with a sigh of relief. The box was heavy.

She opened the box and looked through the photos, front to back, saying as she searched, “In respect for Carl's art, I don't put them up. Besides, I've got my frogs. Here, here they are, three of them.” Mrs. Ready handed the photographs to Lieberman who looked through them and handed them to the other detectives. The girl was quite clear if a bit grainy. The one shot of the bald man did not show his face. He was more of a blur and he seemed to be carrying something large under his arm.

“Grain, I know,” said Mrs. Ready, watching the detective's face. “I used the telephoto with Tri-X and had them develop it for one thousand ASA, which is pushing it, but you can see, she's right under the light, and you see the one where she looks like she's looking right up at me?”

“I see,” said Leo Benishay.

“The one with the man in it is blurry because he was moving fast out of the temple. I had to shoot pretty wide open at two-point-eight and a little slow at one-fiftieth. They're dated on the back,” said Mrs. Ready. “Date and time just like all my photographs. I've got a log for my frogs too. Where I got them, when, how much I paid, or if they were gifts.”

“Can we keep these photographs of the woman?” asked Benishay.

“You can have them,” said Mrs. Ready, “as long as you give me money for the cost of printing them again.”

Lieberman was out first with the cash.

“Too much, said Anne Ready taking the ten-dollar bill.

“Make an extra print of each and, if there's change, you'll give it to me when we come back,” said Lieberman. “And we may still need you to testify.”

“And show my photographs at a trial?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Hanrahan.

“My Carl would be so proud, or jealous, or both,” she said. “He was a complicated man.”

Lieberman gathered the photographs and put them in the envelope with the ones he had brought.

“We'll get back to you soon, Mrs. Ready,” said Leo Benishay taking her hand.

“Whenever you like,” she said.

“You have a beautiful collection,” said Hanrahan.

“Beautiful,” added Lieberman.

“Frogs are my passion,” Anne Crawfield Ready said, placing her hands on her heart to calm its beating.

And then the policemen were gone. She locked the door and moved to the window. The policeman who had come first was heading around the building. She couldn't see the other two. She moved to the other window and watched the policeman from Skokie go over to the packed police car and say something to the two men inside who looked over at her window. She waved to them. One of them waved back.

She got Carl's camera and hurried to her other window. She had daytime low ASA color film in it now.

At the other window, the two policemen from Chicago did not appear. There were very few conclusions to draw from this. One was that they were still standing in the hall or on the stairs, but she had heard them all go down. The other was that they had either stopped at Ace Camera Shop or the store where all the children went to buy comic books and cards with pictures of baseball players. The usual number of bicycles were parked in front of the baseball card shop even though it would soon be dark. She had so many photographs of these children that she had not yet filed all of them though she had dated them.

Anne Crawfield Ready stood for a long time looking out her front window. Finally, after about fifteen minutes the two policemen appeared in the parking lot.

Curiosity got the best of Anne Crawfield Ready. She slipped on her shoes, opened her door and slowly made her way down the stairs, holding the railing. When she stepped out onto the narrow sidewalk of the small mall, she opened the door of the photo shop. Mr. Shenkman said that two men had not just left his shop. The story was different in the trading card store.

There was a lull in the frenzy of small boys in baseball hats. Mrs. Ready always knew when it was baseball season. The shop was almost always crowded.

Mrs. Gantz stood behind the counter, an overweight woman of about sixty, wearing a satin-like Cubs jacket with a Cubs cap on her head. Mrs. Gantz was supposedly the daughter of a famous baseball player from a long time ago. Mr. Shenkman had told her this.

When Mrs. Gantz saw Anne Crawfield Ready, she interrupted her conversation with an adamant twelve-year-old to come out from behind the counter and greet her.

“Mrs. Ready,” she said. “I think this is your first time in the shop since I moved in and you brought me the plate of cookies.”

Anne Crawfield Ready nodded and watched the boys arguing, trading, looking. “Did two men just leave here?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Gantz. “Big one and a little Jewish one.

“They bought something?” asked Mrs. Ready.

Mrs. Gantz told her neighbor what they had bought. Mrs. Ready shook her head and said, “I thought collecting delicate frogs was almost unique, but …”

“We get all kinds,” said Mrs. Gantz. “And you wouldn't believe what grown men will pay for a top grade card. I sold a Ron Santo yesterday for fifteen dollars.”

Mrs. Ready didn't know what a Ron Santo was.

The weapons were cleaned, loaded, ready. What he needed was a shave and some help. There weren't many he could count on, though there were a few he could push, prod, intimidate, shame. He would use them all. He would use the one called Berk who strutted and shaved his head. He would use Berk as Berk planned to use him. In their few meetings, they had looked at each other with hatred and distrust, but they had struck a bargain from which there would be no retreat.

He had a book on the table in front of him. The book was not on his mind. The book was about the smallest known particles of matter. He had thought greatly about this. Each time the tools of science discovered an even smaller particle of matter or the movement of what appeared to be matter, a new scientist appeared with a new theory of the universe, how it operates, what it means. Meaning was back alongside Big Bangs and infinity as a time-space continuum. There were always alternative theories, but the one that emerged was the one whose wagon held the most room for the most scientists.

Then the philosophers, to whom no one listened, gave their explanations. At the same time, the priests, the gurus, the evangelists, came up with their own explanations and many listened and some believed, afraid that some massive technological machine working with some computer would confound what was thought of as the ordered universe.

Once he had cared about all this. Once he had feverishly sought information to present on a radioactive plate to be sifted through for answers the way an ancient or an oracle might sift through beads or the leaves of tea. Now, he had but one goal. It was simple. It was personal. It had no meaning in the total history of the universe, but he did not care.

Life, whatever it was, was precious. Life, whatever it was, did not endure for individuals in a species. Life was filled with fear and hate and at any moment it could be taken away meaninglessly. Small, ridiculous creatures fighting over which one was best because of the color of their skin, the power of their superstitions, the history of their people.

He had concluded long ago that there was no sin. There were fools on earth, mostly fools, who wasted time and life attacking, hating, fearing.

He had been labeled by birth and history. Why? It was the wrong question. A woman named June Singer had said that to ask the question, “What is the meaning of life?” is a waste of time. She was right. She suggested that a meaningful question was, “What is the meaning of
my
life?”

He had concluded from the violence and hatred that had reduced his family and people that the meaning of his life was revenge—pure, simple revenge. He had no illusions that acts of violence would change the world or that changing the world was even important. There were always smaller particles of energy, always deeper regions of space, and always older pieces of matter than had been found before.

Stephen Hawking, lolling in a wheelchair and unable to speak, had come up with the theory that black holes did not simply take in and consume all that came over their rim. Hawking had concluded from his calculations that any mass of energy—a small star, an astronaut—entering a black hole would sink and stretch, hit bottom and bounce out of the hole as a particle of compact energy, rejoining the universe. Too abstract. Too distant.

No, revenge was its own payment. Not reward.

He prayed with the others, but his prayers were different. He envisioned his God as a chance coming together of the particles that formed the universe. The ideal state would be for the universe to be stable and, for whatever particle he was, he would be part of it. Chance, will, madness kept clashing with the ideal tranquil universe. Nothing seemed able to change that. It was eternal. The ideal state would never be reached, just as the delicate butterfly gently flapping its wings against a steel ball the size of the earth would never finish its task of returning the ball to the dust of the universe because millions of steel balls existed for the butterfly when it completed its initial task. The trick, he had concluded, was to accept one's lot as that butterfly resigned to endlessly flapping his wings.

There were seven weapons. There would be six people, though not his people. He had made his pact with the devil. They would walk in and fire at whomever was at worship or meeting. The world would be appalled. Much of the world would hate him even more than they hated him already. Others would consider him and the Mongers heroes. And they would all fear him as they feared the lone mad butterfly that fluttered briefly from the iron ball and flew at the eyes of some leader of state.

The Torah lay in front of him on the table. He rolled it open randomly over the weapons. Oil from the weapons would surely stain the Torah. He didn't care. His Hebrew was very good. As good as his Arabic, his English, and his German.

He pointed a finger at the text. Genesis 49:27, “Benjamin is a wolf that raveneth; In the morning he devoureth the prey. And at even he divideth the spoil.”

So be it. Benjamin was a realist. Monday, three days, there would be a devouring such as Benjamin never dreamed.

He rolled up the Torah. Then he closed the book, limped to the nearby bookcase, and put it away.

“A strike, a fucking strike. Everything is a strike,
Viejo.
”

Emiliano “El Perro” Del Sol sat at Lieberman's side in the box seats fairly close to the Pirates bullpen so he and the Tentaculos could swear at the waiting pitchers, especially any of them unlucky enough to be told to warm up. Only the Hispanic pitchers escaped their grossest language, but they were not immune from attack.

The Tentaculos had all been sitting there, well into the first inning when Lieberman, using the ticket that had been left at his back door, found the box and sat down next to El Perro. Lieberman recognized most of the people in the box. Three of them sat in front of El Perro in the front row. One of them was Piedras, a hulk who had never learned English but knew how to kill with his hands and head. He had left his trademark more than once on a renegade Tentaculo, a rival gang member, or someone, El Perro just didn't like because of a look or remark interpreted as offensive.