Lieberman's Law (31 page)

Michael Hanrahan rose and brushed back his hair. “What time's the meeting tomorrow?”

“Seven.”

Michael nodded and left the room. Hanrahan listened to the stairs creaking. There were twelve of them. He had counted them a thousand times, mounted them in the dark, counting out loud and thinking he was being silent. Maureen had always heard him coming up in darkness, drunk. He only had to count when he was really drunk. The light was out in the hall. He wondered if his son was counting.

Twenty minutes later, Bill Hanrahan had taken a shower, shaved, and brushed his teeth. He smelled good even to himself from the shampoo Iris had given him, something from China. It reminded him of Iris. He placed his gun on the night table near his hand where he always put it since Maureen and the boys had left. Before that, if he were sober enough, he put holster and weapon in the night table. He put on his orange terrycloth shorts and plain, white T-shirt and got into bed. He slept on top of the blankets unless it got really Chicago winter cold. He slept with a pillow in his arms. He looked at the gun and turned off the light on the table.

When he had been alone for three days, he had taken to putting the weapon within reach. He told himself that with no other people in the house, a burglar might think it was easy pickings. The neighborhood had gone down. What did it hurt to be extra careful?

Smedley Ash had suggested that he kept the weapon within easy reach so he could suddenly one night put the barrel in his mouth and pull the trigger, do it all quick, barely thinking.

Hanrahan had come to the conclusion that Smedley was right. Now he kept the weapon nearby to remind him how close the bottle had come to actually killing him. Had he pulled that trigger one night in the dark, there would have been no Iris, no Michael in the next room, no more job, no more banter with Lieberman, no meeting Father Parker.

Hanrahan checked the clock. It was a little after one. He set the alarm for seven. Now that he was sleeping more or less normally that was all the rest he needed. He had called Iris earlier, arranged for her to join him and Michael for a late dinner the next day, actually that day, Sunday.

Hanrahan lay listening. He heard his son pacing slowly, the radio in his room tuned softly enough so that Hanrahan did not know if the gentle vibration was talk or music. He wondered if Michael would be there when he woke up in the morning. He lay on his back and fell asleep.

Before he had gone to find Eli Towser at the public library, Lieberman had spent one of his many nearly sleepless nights. He had chronic insomnia, had it since he was a boy. His father had suffered from it before Lieberman, and his father thought the malady had gone on for generations.

Bess was a sound sleeper, accustomed to her husband getting in and out of bed, taking baths in the middle of the night, dozing off in the hot water and occasionally destroying one of her
Architectural Digest
s or one of his own
Atlantic Monthly
s.

There were occasional times when Lieberman could sleep all night, fall asleep in an instant. This could go on for a week, even two and then, the insomnia would return.

Lieberman had locked his weapon in the side drawer next to his and Bess's bed with the key he wore around his neck all night. Lieberman slept best during the day when he was on all-night shift, but now he was a senior detective, day shift, worked extra hours if the job needed it.

Abe Lieberman had learned that fighting his insomnia did no good. He went along with it, read, sometimes watched an old movie on AMC, tried not to think about work, his daughter, his wife, his grandchildren. He sought a meditation in the mindlessness of television, a magazine, a book. He had even played Tetris on Barry's Game Boy at three in the morning. Lieberman was terrible at the game, but time passed and he could sometimes fall asleep in his chair, the game in his hand.

Abe had simply learned to live with sleeplessness. The hardest part was staying out of the kitchen, keeping himself from the refrigerator and the shelves of cans and boxes of matzoh and almost-healthy cookies. Occasionally, he wondered why his brother had escaped the curse of insomnia. Maish slept soundly, eight hours every night, always had. Retained the nickname “Nothing Bothers Maish” through the Alter Cockers, even though he had earned it almost half a century ago at the free-throw line. During a routine, required annual medical exam a few years ago, the doctor had suggested that the weary look Abe wore was partially due to his insomnia. Abe had pointed out that his brother, who could sleep through the coming of the Messiah, looked just as weary as did Abraham Lieberman. The doctor had refused to withdraw his tentative conclusion. Lieberman did it for him. He knew the difference between heredity and a lack of sleep. His mirror reminded him every morning and frequently in the middle of the night.

The idea of finding Towser had come to him while he sat in his chair in the darkness of the living room watching Claudette Colbert step out of a black-and-white bath, her body hidden by the huge towel held up by her ladies in waiting to hide Claudette's body from the camera.

By the time he had moved to his chair, Lieberman had already bathed, read an entire six-month-old
Architectural Digest,
trying to make out the titles of the books on the shelves of the wealthy and famous, and shaved. He had also read some poetry in old issues of his
Atlantic Monthly.
It had been about a man driving to work who couldn't get the word “Pondecherry” out of his mind. It rang true. Lieberman had laid out all of his clothes for the coming day, considered trying to get back into bed, and decided against it.

That's when he had found
Cleopatra
on AMC and that's when the Eli Towser idea had come to him. He didn't remember clicking off the television or falling asleep.

When he awoke, he felt a weight on his chest. Light was coming through the window. It was just past dawn. And, for an instant, Lieberman concluded that he was having a heart attack. Well, what better place than in his chair and what better attire than his pajamas. The instant thought was gone and then he considered that he was dreaming of his daughter Lisa, little Lisa as she had been when she was no more than seven, lying in his arms, sleeping against his chest, wearing the white nightgown he and Bess had given her for one of her eight Hanukkah presents. And then Lieberman was awake and realized that it was his granddaughter asleep against him breathing gently. He sat there enjoying the feeling, remembering that Lisa had done the same thing almost thirty years before. He had forgotten till this moment that when Lisa had awakened in his arms, she had reluctantly admitted that she had a bad dream.

Lieberman rose, gently cradling his granddaughter whose eyes flickered as he carried her up the stairs to her bedroom.

“Is it morning?” Melisa asked.

“It's morning, butterfly,” he said. “But you could use a little more sleep.”

Melisa closed her eyes. Lieberman put her in bed and stood looking at her for two or three minutes while she clutched her Simba and slept. Then he had gotten dressed, kissed his sleeping wife who muttered something unintelligible, and headed for the T & L. He arrived fifteen minutes before the deli officially opened but Maish was there and showed not the least surprise at looking up from mopping the floor to see his brother.

“Coffee's ready,” Maish had said. “Help yourself. I'm mopping.”

Abe went behind the counter and found a cup. The dishes, utensils, napkins, everything was lined up, spotless.

“You mopped last night?” Abe said, coming around the counter with his coffee.

“Every night,” said Maish.

“Now every morning,” said Abe.

Maish, who had given up all hope of diet after his son David's death, was now devoted to making his small part of the world clean and orderly. Maish's wife said he did the same thing at home and was driving her crazy, though she knew why he was doing it.

“Nothing Bothers Maish,” Lieberman had said, sipping the hot coffee.

Maish had let out a sardonic laugh that was closer to a grunt as he continued mopping. “The temple looks good,” said Maish. “Maybe better than before.”

Maish had helped with the cleanup. When David had died, Maish had not lost his faith. He had simply refused to talk to God. There was no reason, no excuse, nothing about the mystery of God's actions, that Maish could consider. He would go to services. He would be a temple member. He would give to the poor, but he would sit there ignoring God and his word until the Lord actually appeared before him to explain the inexplicable. Maish very much doubted that God would ever make such an appearance.

“Eli Towser,” Abe had said.

Maish knew all in the Jewish community. Pieces of that community moved in and out of the T & L. Maish listened, his sagging face a mask, his memory a better source of information than anyone else in the community. He knew a great deal about Eli Towser.

“Bitter young man,” Maish said still mopping. “That's why you stopped his giving bar mitzvah lessons to Barry.”

Abe was seated at the counter on one of the swivel chairs facing his brother, drinking his coffee. “You think I was wrong?”

“You didn't ask me,” said Maish. “Your decision. I think Towser has a right to be bitter. I think we all do. Between us, Towser is smarter than Rabbi Wass. Barry was learning more from Towser than Wass.”

“But what was he learning, Maish?”

“The truth,” said Maish pausing and leaning on the mop handle as he looked at his brother. “That you have to protect yourself, your people. That we're surrounded by hate and all we have are less than the tip of a toothpick compared to the tubful of people in this world.”

Maish had spoken without passion. Abe had nodded. “You did what you believed you had to do,” said Maish, resuming his mopping.

“Towser,” said Abe.

“Eli Towser,” Maish said, finishing the floor and standing back to see if there were some spot he may have missed. “He's a member of the Jewish Salvation Movement, small, well informed. I give them information sometimes. They keep track of hate groups. The Anti-Defamation League is minor league compared to the Jewish Salvation Movement, which believes in taking its own action when they know a group or individual plans to attack Jews with words or actions. Can you believe it, Abraham? When we were kids on the West Side, we lived in what most of the city called Jew Town. We thought half the world was Jewish. No one attacked us for what we were or believed. That's what we thought. We were wrong.”

Abe finished his coffee and started around the counter being careful not to step in places that were still wet.

“Leave the cup,” Maish said. “I want to clean it myself.”

Abe nodded and made his way to the door as Maish put his mop away and said, “Leave the door open. It's time.”

Lieberman turned to look at his brother who was already behind the counter, scrubbing Abe's coffee cup. Lieberman went outside. The sky was reasonably clear, his light wind-breaker just right for the slight nip of late spring weather.

He had a slight but definite queasiness in his stomach. He should have eaten something with his coffee.

Abe headed for his car and waved at Herschel Rosen who was making his way slowly down the street. The first of the Alter Cockers. Maish's day could begin.

T
HEY HAD MOVED TO
the large interrogation room, the largest space in the station that would hold everyone at the meeting. The squad room across the hall was teeming with the sound of arrivals, departures, complaints, not-particularly-inventive foul language, and the rest of a normal Sunday's activity.

There was a new white board in the interrogation room. Captain Alan Kearney wrote on it with a red marker that squeaked down everyone's back. Kearney wore a suit and tie and looked dressed for a wedding. In fact, he had gone to church that morning with his parents for the christening of his cousin's new baby. Only this emergency meeting had saved Kearney from a day of family politeness, frequent toasts, and a vast array of cookies, cakes, and candies followed by a massive dinner featuring his mother's famous ham, and his Aunt Megan's equally famous apple cake, both of which Alan Kearney had always hated.

“OK,” said Kearney, looking hard at what he had written and then turning to the people seated around the table. No one at the table was a smoker, though half of them had been at one time. Still, the room smelled of cigarettes and the smell was sure to stay in their clothes. “What do we have?”

Harley Buel, who looked like a forty-year-old bald school principal, said, “Our source is supposed to call as soon as he knows what's going down?”

“Right,” said Bill Hanrahan, seated next to his partner who drank water from a Styrofoam cup. Lieberman's stomach had been bothering him all the time he had talked to Eli Towser at the library that morning. He was sure it was the coffee he had drunk at the T & L. Lieberman had now come to the conclusion that whatever was wrong with his stomach, coffee made it worse. He remembered watching a 2 a.m. taped interview with some sexy movie star.

Lieberman had gone home after talking to Towser and called Kearney, who set up the meeting. Abe had picked up Bess and the kids and headed for Lincoln Park. Barry and Melisa argued in the back seat. Bess touched his hand in the front seat. She knew something was bothering him and she knew where they were going and why.

When they got to the zoo, Lieberman headed directly for the ape building. Bess took the kids promising them overpriced, tasteless hot dogs from a vendor and visits to tigers and the children's zoo. Lieberman had sat watching the gorillas. Crowds moved past him, children whined, a few wondered about the old man who sat there mesmerized by the apes. There was one gorilla, Abe didn't know its name, who would occasionally meet the detective's eyes. They would stare knowingly at each other for a few seconds and then the ape would turn away. When Bess and the kids came to pick him up, Abe felt better.