Lieberman's Law (21 page)

The doorbell didn't ring. No one knocked, but Hanrahan heard the almost inaudible footsteps, heard the person pause in front of the door, heard someone insert a key in the lock and try to turn it, then remove the key. The lock had been changed with Frankie Kraylaw's death. All the locks had been changed.

Whoever it was hesitated and then rang the bell. Hanrahan got up, weapon in hand, and moved to the door. He opened the deadbolt and went back to the rocker.

“Come in,” he said. “It's open.”

The handle turned. A big man filled the doorway with the streetlight behind him. “Can I turn on the light?” the man asked.

“Turn it on, slowly, carefully,” Hanrahan said.

The man closed the door and moved to the switch in darkness, giving it a click. The hall light was not bright, but it was enough. Standing before William Hanrahan was Michael Hanrahan, his son. The two men looked alike. Michael was thirty, as big as his father, wearing slacks, a white shirt, and a lightweight black jacket. He looked at his father who placed his gun on the table next to the rocker and rose, not knowing what to do. He walked forward and held out his hand. His son took it and they shook. Hanrahan wanted to hug his son but he held back. The last time he had seen him, almost two years ago, the meeting had been brief, cold. Hanrahan had been drinking, holding it well, but drinking. Michael knew, and he knew that his father knew that he knew. And Michael had not come to the hospital even when it had looked as if his father were dying.

“You followed me from the Black Moon,” said Hanrahan, awkwardly facing his son.

“Black Moon?”

“The Chinese restaurant on Sheridan,” Hanrahan explained.

“Before that, from the station,” said Michael, his blue eyes looking around the house in which he had once lived. “Nothing's changed.”

“Nothing,” said Hanrahan and thinking, “Everything has changed.”

“In the whole house, my room, Bill Jr.'s?”

“The same,” said Hanrahan, looking at the room.

“Looks clean,” said Michael.

“I keep it ready,” said Hanrahan.

“What for?”

“For a moment like this,” said Hanrahan.

T
HEY SAT AT THE KITCHEN
table, father and son, surprised at how quickly they had disposed of the history of half a decade.

“Seen your mother?”

“Yes, she's fine. Just got promoted. Still an office manager but a different office.”

“How does she look?”

“Great,” Michael had said, standing next to his father who had ground coffee beans in a little white Braun machine. It already smelled of deep darkness as it brewed.

Michael remembered the last machine, the one his father had let him press to grind the beans into a fine powder. His father had nodded his head when the powder was fine enough and Michael had stopped solemnly and poured the dark, wonderful smelling powder into the basket of the coffee machine. When he was old enough, Michael had filled the back of the machine himself with distilled water kept especially for making coffee.

“Your brother?”

“The same,” said Michael, meaning he still wants to have nothing to do with you and blames you for the breakup of the family.

“His job? He still with that law firm?”

“No,” said Michael. “He left there over two years ago, moved to California.”

“Kids?”

“You mean Billy? No. Not me either.”

“Work OK for you?” asked Hanrahan as they stood listening to the coffee perk.

“It's OK. Minneapolis is a good place to live. I keep trying to talk Mom into moving there, but …”

“Chicago's her home,” said Hanrahan. “And Hallie?”

“Holly,” said Michael. “My wife's name is Holly.”

Hanrahan had met his daughter-in-law only once. She was small, dark, and pretty, but, given that it was the funeral of Hanrahan's mother, the meeting was brief and formal.

“And you?” asked Michael.

“If you mean the job, fine. If you mean the drinking, I haven't had a drop in almost two years.” The coffee was ready. Hanrahan poured two cups, black and then remembered, “You like lots of sugar.”

“Lots of sugar,” Michael agreed as they sat and Hanrahan placed a spoon and the sugar bowl in front of his son. Michael recognized the bowl. It had belonged to his grandmother.

“One day you just stopped?” asked Michael.

“Drinking? Yeah. One day my drinking got a woman killed. I stopped. With a lot of help from AA and Iris and a man named Smedley Ash,” said Hanrahan, taking a sip. It was hot and good, his best flavored beans.

“Ever get the urge?”

“When things get bad,” said Hanrahan. “I fight it. If I can't fight it alone, I get help. I've been needing less help, but once in a while …”

“Like?”

“I killed a man, a crazy man who wanted to hurt a young woman and a child,” said Hanrahan.

Michael looked at his father the way he had when he was a boy and overheard Hanrahan refer on the phone or to his mother to some act of violence that she blamed for his drinking.

“A man can't see what I see, do what I do, and not have a drink or two,” he had once said.

“Abe doesn't need a drink or two.” Michael's mother had replied.

“I'm not Abe,” Hanrahan had answered, raising his voice. “And I'm not Harvey who got his ass kicked off the force for being drunk. Most cops drink. I'm an Irish cop. I drink a little. For Lord's sake, Maureen, I'm not a drunk.” She had not answered him and Hanrahan had muttered something and gone back out slamming the door, unaware that his son was listening in the kitchen, seated just about where he was sitting now.

They drank their coffee in silence. Hanrahan waited and then said, “Do I guess or do you tell me?”

“Why I'm here?” asked Michael, putting down his coffee and looking around the room. He grinned. There was no mirth in it. “I used to hate you.”

No news in that, thought Hanrahan who remained silent, drinking.

“I hated seeing you drunk, hated when you brought me some piece of junk candy and breathed on me and smiled. I hated the gun you wore, and was afraid every night you'd come home really drunk and shoot Mom, or shoot me and Bill. I hated you for not being a father.”

“Did I ever hit you, Michael?”

“Never,” Michael agreed, but this was old territory.

“About five years ago, maybe a little more or less,” Michael said, not looking at his father, “I started to drink. Not much. A little. Drinks with the people from the office. Drinks at my boss's house. Then a drink or two when I got home. Holly commented on it long before I realized it. We had a fight. She threatened to leave me. I insisted that I wasn't a drunk, that I did perfectly well at work and no one complained. I looked at her and saw Mom. I listened to myself and heard you. And then I started to blame you. I drank because I couldn't get over what you'd done to the family. I drank because it was in my genes. I inherited it from you, your size, your eyes, your alcoholism. And I hated you more than ever.”

Hanrahan took another sip of coffee, not looking away from his son.

“I followed you from the station to get up enough nerve to talk to you. I saw the Chinese woman.” Michael had already said this, but Hanrahan didn't interrupt him. “Is she a good woman, like Mom?”

“She's a very good woman,” said Hanrahan. “And I'm lucky she'll have me. We're gonna get married and I'd be pleased if you and Holly would come. I'll ask Bill, Jr., but …”

“I'll ask him,” said Michael. “But I don't think he'll come.”

“You stopped hating me?” asked Hanrahan.

“Yes, and I started maybe understanding you. Or maybe I kept hating you and started hating myself, too. Put us on the same field or in the same bar.”

“And what is it you came down from Minneapolis to ask me?”

“I told you. I think I told you. I'm here on business. Company business,” said Michael, forcing himself to look at his father.

It was in his father's blue eyes. That man had heard hundreds of lies from the best of liars, liars who often believed their own lies. Michael was not a good liar. “OK,” he said finally with a sigh. “I'm on a long vacation, four weeks. Company shrink recommended it. Holly didn't want to come with me. She's got a job and she's just about had enough of me. Did you ever hit Mom?”

“Never,” said Hanrahan. “I broke furniture. I hurt myself.”

“I hit Holly,” said Michael. “Last week. She just looked at me surprised. It was a slap in the face. She didn't even reach up and touch the pain. She just looked at me as if I were someone else. I'm gonna lose her, Dad.”

“You want to stay here, with me, for four weeks?” asked Hanrahan. “In your old room?”

Michael nodded.

“And you want me to help you start getting sober?”

This time Michael said, “Yes.”

“You'll come to a couple of meetings with me, AA, and decide if it's what you need,” said Hanrahan. “I can talk to you, give you the number where I can be reached, give you projects around the house to keep you busy, but this is a fight that'll go on your whole life, Michael. There aren't any quick and sure cures.”

Michael nodded that he understood and Hanrahan thought he just might, a little.

“I've got to tell you this, Michael. Tomorrow morning there'll be a sign in front of the house. I'm selling. Too many memories, good and bad. They'd haunt me. They'd start haunting Iris.” There was a long pause and then he continued, “I kept this house looking like this all these years in the hope your mother would come back. At first I hoped she'd come back to stay. Then I hoped she'd come back to visit, pick something up, who knows, and see that I'd kept the house almost like a … but like the bottle, I've got to put it away.”

“I understand.”

“You have a bag or two in the car?” asked Hanrahan.

“I'll go get 'em,” said Michael, getting up from the table and starting toward the door. He paused, turned, and said, “Thanks, Dad.” And then he was gone.

Twice in the course of a few minutes one of his sons had called him “Dad.” More memories. He wasn't sure what he could do for Michael. Just be there. Bill Jr. would have been a bigger problem. As stubborn as his grandfather, as frail and good-looking as his mother. Bill Jr. seemed the more likely one to go for the family bottle.

The phone rang while Michael went for his luggage. Hanrahan picked it up.

“Hanrahan?”

“Yes.”

“Pig Sticker. Twenty minutes. You know the little park on Rogers not far from Clark?”

Hanrahan knew it. The neighborhood was almost all black and Hispanic. Not likely another Monger would pass by and see him. Very likely a hostile local gang might be cruising and spot him. That would be big trouble, but obviously not as much trouble as Charles Kenneth Leary feared if they met in a place where another skinhead might see him talking to a cop.

“I know the place.”

“Don't take your time,” said Leary.

He hung up and Hanrahan called Lieberman. Barry answered and put his grandfather on.

“Father Murphy, what's up?”

“Pig Sticker wants to talk, little park on Rogers near Clark, twenty minutes.”

“I'll be there,” said Lieberman.

“Oh, Rabbi, my son Michael is visiting me for about a month. I thought …”

“We'll have both of you over for dinner.”

“Maybe we can all get together at the Black Moon,” said Hanrahan. “Iris's father wants to talk old movies with you.”

There was a lot more that Lieberman wanted to ask. But they both hung up as Michael came back into the house with two suitcases.

“Packed heavy,” he said. “Don't know if I'll be able to get back in the apartment when I get back to Minneapolis.”

Hanrahan stood up. “I've got to go out,” he said. “The job.”

Michael nodded and said, “I'll be fine, watch a little television, get comfortable.”

“There's nothing in the house to drink but coffee and orange juice,” said Hanrahan.

Michael nodded again.

“First step,” said Hanrahan, moving past his son and picking up his pistol and holster from the rocker. “Don't leave the house tonight. Search the place. Eat what you can find, but don't leave the house. Promise on your grandfather's grave.”

“And in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord,” Michael said with a smile as his father put on his jacket.

“Amen,” said Hanrahan and he went into the night.

When Hanrahan had called him, Lieberman had been in the middle of an important meeting in his dining room. He would have preferred taking his shoes off, getting in his favorite chair in the living room, reading his back issues of
Atlantic Monthly
or watching two Panamanian bantamweights go at each other on ESPN.

Barry and Melisa were asleep. Bess, Rabbi Wass, Leo Benishay, Syd Levari, and Lawyer Hamel were putting the finishing touches on their plan. Syd was the president of the Mir Shavot men's club. The plan was that teams of men's club members would spend the night in the temple. There would be shifts. If they couldn't get enough volunteers, they would put pressure on, call for volunteers who were not in the club. Their job would simply be to listen and sit near the phone if anyone tried to break in again. If they heard anything, any sign of a break-in, they were to call a number supplied by Leo Benishay and a Skokie police car would be at the temple door in a minute or two. There were a few younger members of the men's club but most were the same age as the Alter Cockers. In fact, many of them were Alter Cockers. A pair of them would not make a formidable force in confronting armed skinheads or Arab terrorists, though Syd reminded the group at one point that several members of the congregation, including Herschel Rosen, had actually been in the Israeli army and had seen combat. But that was a lifetime ago and, as far as everyone in the room was concerned, no one in the entire congregation with the exception of Abe Lieberman, building chairman, owned a firearm. Rabbi Wass said that he would talk to some of the younger members with families and see if he could get volunteers. At least four members of the congregation in their forties had also been in the Israeli army.