Lieberman's Law (19 page)

To those who had not seen the damage that had been done, the hatred that had ripped through the temple with the madness of a trapped animal, it looked much the same as it had before the attack. The speed with which the work had been done had been close to miraculous with donations of time, services, and furnishings coming in not only to Temple Mir Shavot but to the other temples in Chicago than had been vandalized. One rabbi, Tribenfeld, had a minor stroke when he saw the damage to his own house of worship. There was talk that Tribenfeld would retire now. He was old. He had been through too much in his life and had the number tattooed on his right arm to testify to it.

Lieberman and Bess could not see the temple through clear eyes. The double coat of white paint on the wall covered the graffiti, but Lieberman had photographs on his desk of the graffiti and all the damage and Bess carried in her memory her own version of what had taken place here. They could imagine where the words had been spray-painted. They could step down the carpeted aisle to the bema, the raised platform where the rabbi and cantor gave services, and Bess, as president, would make announcements.

Lieberman remembered the torn cushions, the wooden high-backed benches that had been broken and defaced and were now replaced with new, almost identical benches, contrasting with the few which had not been touched only by their newness. On the bema, the ark, the enclosure covered by a curtain behind which rested the temple's collection of Torahs, was closed but, Lieberman and his family knew, the ark was almost empty. One small Torah, the personal property of Herschel Rosen's sister brought from Kiev seventy years ago, sat alone in the ark.

“A good job,” said Bess admiringly.

“Yes,” said Rabbi Wass, looking around sadly. “Only those who had not seen the … what had happened can walk through and not remember, not imagine. It will never be the same. I can see it on your faces. I can see it in my own in the mirror.”

“It looks fine, Rabbi,” said Bess, touching his arm.

“Yes, it looks fine, but … perhaps it will serve as a reminder of what can happen to us, what has always happened, what God has given us to bear in return for choosing us as his people.”

Barry and Melisa had hurried ahead and climbed the two steps up the bema to the platform. Barry stood behind the podium where he would stand and recite from the Torah for his bar mitzvah in less than a month. The sight of his grandson, hands on both sides resting on the podium, white
kepuh
on his head, looking out at the empty benches, imagining, showing just a touch of fear, touched Lieberman as it must have touched Bess, who suddenly kissed his cheek.

“We go on,” Rabbi Wass said, looking at Barry.

Melisa stood before the ark. She knew that the big Torah, the heavy ancient blue velvet Torah, had been stolen. The ark had a new fascination for her.

“I fired Eli Towser,” Lieberman said.

Rabbi Wass shook his head. He didn't have to ask why. Towser had shown nothing but scorn for Rabbi Wass's pacifist attitude, Wass's willingness to take the side of the moderates in Israel and not see the extent of the threat right in his own community. Towser was an angry, earnest, and very intelligent young man. Rabbi Wass had invited him to visit the congregation and earn some money giving bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah training. There was only one congregant who hired him who did not complain about Toswer's focusing not on ritual but on politics with twelve-year-old children.

Rabbi Wass had tried to talk to Towser, who had answered that his own father had been an anti-British terrorist when he was twelve. It was clear from his tone that Towser respected neither Wass's political position nor his religious conviction.

Towser had come to services regularly over the past five months, both on Friday nights and Saturday mornings and on high holidays. He had been part of the minyan. As an honorary member of the men's club, he had launched into discussions of militancy and anger even when the club speaker was a Jewish sportscaster.

Rabbi Wass wished Eli Towser would go away. It was difficult to deliver a sermon or give a service without glancing at or being aware of the disapproving eyes of the bearded rabbinical student.

“I understand,” said Rabbi Wass with a nod. He took off his glasses and cleaned them with a handkerchief his wife had neatly folded, as she did each morning, into his jacket pocket.

Lieberman looked at his grandson who seemed to be trying to decide on the proper pose at the podium.

“So?” asked Bess.

Rabbi Wass put his glasses back on.

“So,” said the rabbi, “I break a precedent. If you wish, I'll tutor Baruch.”

“That would be wonderful,” said Bess with a smile.

Baruch was Barry's Hebrew name. Melisa's Hebrew name was Malka. Abe's Hebrew name was Avrum, and Bess's was Sarah, as her mother's had been and as her mother before her and many generations back had been. When the conversation took even a slight religious turn, Rabbi Wass used their Hebrew names as he was doing now.

“But,” Bess continued, “with everything that's …”

“It will be a relief, a pleasure,” said Rabbi Wass. “I used to do it when I was a rabbinical student and I continued for a while when I got my first congregation. It will be good for me. Baruch,” he called to Barry. “How would you like to finish your bar mitzvah lessons with me?”

“Sure,” said Barry with ready acceptance if no enthusiasm.

“Tuesdays and Thursdays, after school. My study,” Rabbi Wass said.

“He'll be here,” said Bess.

Towser had come to the house. Getting Barry to the temple would make her busy life a little more difficult, but …

“So,” said the rabbi. “Have you found anyone yet? The Torah …”

“In confidence, Rabbi,” said Lieberman. “We think we know who did it, at least one person involved and others very likely. No lead on the Torah. It's a hard object to sell. And we'll have to face the possibility that it may already have been destroyed.”

Rabbi Wass nodded in acceptance. “Nazis,” said Wass.

“More likely a small group of Arab students,” said Lieberman. “I'm telling you more than I should.”

“And you think I would break this confidence?”

“No,” said Lieberman.

“Tell me,” asked Wass. “How many are in this small group?”

“Maybe ten, twelve,” said Lieberman.

“Ten, twelve, fifteen people couldn't do the damage to all the synagogues that was done in a single night, a few hours,” said Rabbi Wass.

Lieberman shrugged. It was a question that had also bothered him.

Bess rounded up the kids as Rabbi Wass said softly to Lieberman, “Oh, that I were as in the months of old, as in the days when God watched over me; when His lamp shined above my head. And by His light I walked through darkness.”

Lieberman nodded as the children and Bess walked toward him down the aisle.

“Job,” Rabbi Wass explained. “If Job could suffer and still believed, what has happened here is little enough to bear.”

Lieberman agreed, but he also felt that it was not over, that there was more coming, that the attacks had been well planned and were but the first step in a campaign of terror. This was not the work of a few stupid children. Taking Jara Mohammed was only the first step in finding out what had happened and what might be about to happen.

He wished Jara did not remind him so much of his daughter. He wasn't sure if he should do the questioning or stand back and turn her over to Leo Benishay. Jurisdiction was a slight problem. Most of the synagogue attacks had been in the city, Lieberman's city, but the only attack on which they had evidence, Anne Ready's photographs, was in Skokie. And Jara Mohammed lived in Chicago.

Rabbi Wass shook Barry's hand and said he would see him on Tuesday, that Barry should bring whatever books or papers
Chaver
Towser had given him. After the goodbyes were finished and Lieberman promised to keep the rabbi informed, the Liebermans left the house of worship.

“Are we going home, grandpa?” Melisa asked. “Or are we going to sleep at Uncle Maish's again?” She took his hand.

“We are,” he said, “going home, but not before I exercise my rights as patriarch of this clan to take you to a restaurant of your choosing and to a movie we can agree on.” He looked at Bess. She shrugged. He had spoken. He should have asked her first, but there was a need in her husband's eyes and she nodded.

“Nothing violent,” Bess said.

“McDonald's,” said Barry.

“Too violent,” said Lieberman.

“Grandpa,” Melisa said in a way that let him know his joke was ill timed.

“McDonald's,” Bess conceded.

“The Toy,”
said Melisa.

“Yechh,” said Barry. “The Jean-Claude Van Damme movie at the Old Orchard.”

“Double yecch,” said Melisa.

“We'll find something after we eat,” said Bess, starting toward the car. There was a hint of coming rain in the air and a dampness in her soul. She was a dozen feet away when she turned and saw her husband looking up at a window across the street. Through the slightly parted curtains in the room, Bess thought she saw an old woman taking pictures of her husband with a rather large camera.

“Abe,” she called.

He nodded and followed her to the car. There had not been enough Arab students in the entire crowd at the university to cause the damage he had seen. And he was sure that most of the Arabs had not participated in the attack, though many might be sympathetic to it. Then who had done the damage? His only link was the young woman and Lieberman had the feeling that something should be done quickly.

In his office, just before he picked up Bess and the children, he had received a call from Emiliano Del Sol saying that he guaranteed the Koreans would not bother him or his family. Lieberman had not asked how he had accomplished this. He didn't want to know.

“Thanks, Emiliano,” Lieberman had said.

“De nada, Viejo,”
El Perro had answered. “We put it in the box, right?”

“En la caja,”
Lieberman agreed, the box of favors each man owed the other. “The Cubs won today. Cincinnati's a game behind.”

“Bueno, Viejo.
Piedras is putting all the cards you gave me in a big book.”

Piedras, the Tentaculos prime enforcer, was big and silent, a silence that did little to hide his stupidity. Piedras's loyalty to El Perro was without question and Lieberman knew that Piedras had killed for his leader. But the image of Piedras carefully putting baseball cards in a book was too much for Lieberman to conjure.

The house was safe, but somewhere, he was almost certain, destruction was coming. He would definitely, if Bess did not give him too stern a warning, down two Big Macs and insist on a comedy.

Berk looked like Curly in the “Three Stooges,” but Berk's body was solid, powerful, and without Curly's belly. He looked a lot like Curly but no one would ever tell him, certainly not Pig Sticker Charles Kenneth Leary, not if he wanted to live. It wasn't so much that a comparison to the looks of Curly would be an insult. Curly was a Jew. All the Stooges were Jews. Berk had a book he kept with him in which he wrote the name of every prominent person who he knew was a Jew. They were all part of the conspiracy. The Jews had no choice. Most of them were in it because they wanted to be. A few had to be pressured, threatened, but all Jews were part of it.

Berk did not despair. He knew what a handful could accomplish. From behind the table he looked out at the two dozen people who had gathered for a meeting. He looked at their faces. All wore leather jackets. All, with the exception of Pure Nell from Hell, were men. All, including Nell, were shaved bald. A few were drinking beer from amber bottles. None were smoking. Smoking was not permitted. Every member had to work out and stay healthy. If they slipped and were caught, they answered to Berk.

Berk was the oldest of the group. Berk was the toughest. Berk was the most confident. And they knew he believed in what they were doing. He had been involved in many beatings, two of which resulted in deaths. He had led marches, held rallies, screamed back at the Jews and niggers who had challenged him. Berk held his own and more in any group and he was afraid of nothing and no one.

They were in the basement of the Tip-Top-Tap on Montrose. Berk's brother-in-law owned the bar and agreed with most of what Berk believed. The Jews, the niggers, the Koreans were taking over everything. They had to be stopped. One of the daughters of Berk's brother-in-law was actually living with a Jew kid right now, somewhere in California.

Berk was sure that no one in the room would talk to the cops. They'd rather go to jail on a put-up charge than talk about what went on in this room. Jail was far safer than Berk's revenge.

“Meeting,” Berk shouted, slapping his hand on the table. Everyone got quiet.

“Problem,” Berk said. “You know what it is. Someone offed the Arab, Ramu, got the guns.”

“It's what we get for working with fuckin' Arabs,” said Nell from Hell.

Berk didn't get angry. In fact, he agreed with Nell. The alliance was supposed to be temporary. Berk thought the Arabs weren't any better than the niggers, but they had money, they had guns, and one or two of them were smart and didn't scare easily.

Berk leaned on the table with both hands. “Maybe. But we're in and we're gonna finish. I want whoever took those guns. If some Jew took them, I want to know. If some nut asshole on his own took them, I want to know. The Arabs think we did it. I don't give a shit what they think and as far as I'm concerned, three dead Arabs aren't gonna be missed by me.”

Laughter. More than the joke was worth, but release.

They all knew what was going down. Someone had a lot of automatic weapons out there. Someone, particularly one of those crazy Jews, might come right through the door behind them, and open fire. Berk had placed a man outside the door and one upstairs at the bar to watch for just such a thing and to be ready, but he didn't expect it, not now. In fact Berk was sure an attack wasn't coming from whoever had taken the weapons because Berk knew who had the weapons. He had a plan, a plan he would share with only five people in this room, and only at the last minute. Berk wanted to be ready, always ready. While the niggers and Jews argued in their groups about what to do, Berk, as small as his group of skinheads might be, was the absolute final word.