Lieberman's thief al-4

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  The dinner smelled strong and full of garlic.

  "Mr. Lieberman," Greenblatt said seriously.

  "Mr. Greenblatt," Lieberman answered, leaning over to kiss Melisa's offered cheek.

  Bess was standing at the sink, her arms folded.

  "Your wife returned this check to my clients this afternoon," Greenblatt said, removing the check from his briefcase.

  "Yes," said Lieberman.

  Greenblatt nodded and returned exhibit A to the briefcase.

  "This is a matter of great emotional distress," said Greenblatt. "Agreements violated, time and effort expended."

  "Come to the point, please," said Lieberman. "My family is hungry and we're going to be late for services."

  Beyond die kitchen door, the front door opened to the sound of voices. Maish, Yetta, and Lisa had arrived.

  "All right," said Greenblatt. "My clients, the Nathansons, are willing to settle for five hundred dollars. With the five hundred dollars there would be an agreement that no more would be said about this unfortunate incident."

  "I think you'd better leave, Mr. Greenblatt," Abe said. "You have anything to demand, you can call our lawyer."

  Barry leaned forward, fascinated by his grandfather's anger.

  "Mr. Lieberman," Seymour Greenblatt said, rising with some difficulty. "You misunderstand me."

  "I'm not paying you a nickel," said Lieberman.

  "No," said Greenblatt. "It is the Nathansons who are offering you five hundred dollars and their sincere apology."

  Lieberman stood silent.

  Bess stepped forward and said, "They want to give us five hundred dollars?"

  "I have the check right here," Lawyer Greenblatt said, delving back into the briefcase to emerge with the check. "In return for which, you make no issue of Rabbi Nathanson's behavior. Ira hasn't been well. Lots of pressure. A move to get him removed as rabbi at B'nai Shalom. He's been going around giving thousand-dollar checks and trying to make deals on houses all over the neighborhood. Ira and I have been friends for years. All he needs is some time at peace."

  "We won't bother them," said Bess. "And we don't want a check."

  "Five hundred dollars," cried Melisa.

  Lawyer Greenblatt opened the briefcase and solemnly returned the check to it.

  "Thank you," he said, clicking the briefcase shut and holding out his pudgy right hand.

  Lieberman shook it as the kitchen door opened and Maish poked his head in to say, "So, are we eating or what?"

  "What are you doing for dinner, Lawyer Greenblatt?" Lieberman asked. "You're welcome to join us."

  Greenblatt smiled and said, "Funny you should ask."

  Laio Woo sat alone in the sanctuary of his seven-room apartment on Wentworth Avenue. There was not an item in the room that had not been imported from China. There was not an item in the room, with the possible exception of Mr. Woo himself and the black silk robe he wore, mat was less man two hundred years old.

  In front of Woo on a low, black enameled table, sat a vase, a colorful vase with the subtle narrow curve of a young woman. Painted on the vase was a garden and a young woman in the costume of a long-past dynasty.

  This vase was but a copy of the original. This vase was no more than four or five hundred years old, but it was a good copy.

  When he was a boy in Beijing, Laio Woo had first heard the tale of the woman in the vase, the trapped goddess who came out once every hundred years knowing that if she could keep from falling in love with a mortal, she would never have to return.

  The goddess, however, was so giving that she always fell in love and each century left a grieving lover to return to the delicate vase.

  A legend and only a legend, but Woo had devoted his life to the quiet search for the vase, the original, if it still existed. He would have given all he had for that vase, to touch the original, see the goddess before he died.

  Laio Woo had been many things in his life-a poor beggar, a thief, a trafficker in stolen goods, and, on two occasions, the cause of the death of another human. He had also, for more than forty years, since she was a young girl, loved Iris Chen. Not the love that would want her in his home or bed, but the love of a mortal for a goddess on a vase.

  Woo knew that reality would destroy his love as a careless sweep of the hand would destroy the vase before him.

  And so he had watched her. And so he had seen her fall in love with a mortal, an unworthy white mortal. He could do more to stop their union. He could but he knew he would not.

  He rose from his chair and lit a candle before the vase. Then he walked to the door and switched off the lights.

  Laio Woo looked back at the vase and imagined that the goddess danced slowly, subtly in the flicker of the candle. He stood for more than five minutes watching and then left the room, closing the door gently behind him.

  Four Women at Midnight

  Kenneth Franklin snored gently and in the dim glow of die light from the illuminated clock face on the bedside table Betty could see the white face of her husband. He wore his white silk pajamas, and he lay without a blanket flat on his back, arms folded on his stomach. Snoring gentry. Cheeks deep, sunken.

  They had come home early, spoken little, and gone to bed without a "good night" All he had said was, "I've set the alarm for nine."

  She wanted to hate him, but she couldn't. She knew she couldn't.

  Her pillows were propped behind her and she was sitting up looking at him, unable to sleep, unwilling to get up and get a drink of water or wander through the house.

  She would age quickly now. She knew that Kenneth was withering even faster and determined to take her with him in his decay.

  Betty pulled back the comforter that covered her. The novel she had forgotten on her lap tumbled to the floor with a flutter of pages. Ken didn't move and the gentle snore did not alter.

  She didn't bother to search for her slippers. She moved quickly to the bathroom, closed the door, and looked at herself in the mirror. There were no lies here. Without makeup her defeat was clear, naked.

  Slowly, carefully, though she was going nowhere, she opened the top vanity drawer and began to apply her makeup. She had to be able to face herself in the mirror.

  After ten minutes, though she had no idea of how much time had passed, the door opened behind her and in the mirror she saw the pale, white-clad figure of her husband.

  "You closed the door. You know I need a light," he said and went back to bed.

  No "What the hell are you doing?" No "Are you going somewhere in the middle of the night?"

  Betty Franklin couldn't breathe and she couldn't finish and she knew she could not go back to bed and she could not wander through the house and she could not face herself in the mirror.

  She wanted to scream, but the horror would be that Kenneth Franklin would have no response.

  There was nothing she could do or wanted to do, and that was the greatest horror of all.

  Wanda Skutnik stirred in her chair in front of me television on whose screen Greg Kinnear, who used to be on 'Talk Soup," Wanda's all-time favorite show, was staring wide eyed at some movie star Wanda vaguely remembered. The movie star was young, dark, and beautiful.

  The front door opened, slowly, carefully. Wanda closed her eyes. Footsteps on tiptoed stocking feet moved across the squeaking wooden floor. The television went off.

  "Ma," George Patniks whispered. "You up?"

  Wanda grunted and, eyes still closed, muttered, "Up, I'm up."

  "Let's get you to bed. You shouldn't sleep in the chair. You'll get a sore back. You'll get ulcers or something."

  He reached down to help his mother up but she didn't take his hand.

  "Gregor," she said. "You're all right?"

  "I'm all right," he said. "I'm tired. I'll be on the TV tomorrow. You'll find out But I'm all right. No trouble."

  "I thought the police…" she began and took his hand.

  "I'm fine. No law trouble. A guy did something bad. I saw it. I'll have to testif
y is all."

  With her son's help, Wanda sat up. She straightened her purple dress with her thick fingers and palms and looked at her son.

  "You don't look good, Gregor. You want a snack? Corn Chex?"

  "Just tired, Ma."

  "You want to talk, Gregor?"

  "Nothing to talk about," he said with a lopsided smile. "I'll take a shower, shave, and get a night's sleep. In the morning, you'll see, the old Gregor. Ma, what're you looking at me like that? You think I'm lying? Something?"

  Wanda looked up at her son and smiled. It was a very small smile but it was enough.

  "Oh shit," George said, looking away.

  When he turned back to her, Wanda could see the tears in her son's eyes. He knelt in front of her. He had never done that before, never, even as a child. But now he knelt and put his head on his mother's lap. She stroked his moist hair and he said, "I can't go downstairs. I keep seeing her. I can't…"

  "Sleep on the couch," Wanda said. "I'm not tired. I'll watch a rerun of a basketball game with no sound."

  "I'm scared, Mom," he said as she stroked.

  "I'm here," she said. "I'm here."

  Charletta Wayne sat in the apartment window and looked out at the moonlight rubble that stretched below her across Thirty-eighth Street. It was a white and shadowed landscape, end of the world.

  Her mother and father slept or pretended to sleep in the next room.

  Charletta had come home less than an hour ago. She would have been home from the police station long before, but getting a cab to take her to this neighborhood was not easy and there was no way she could take the el this late at night.

  Charletta had come home, kicked off her shoes, and sat in the chair by the window, not bothering to eat, not bothering to take off her dress, underwear, makeup.

  She had talked to Lonny, talked to the police, talked to the man from the Public Defender's Office who represented her brother. Charletta's mother and father had refused to come. Her father's heart was bad. Her mother was humiliated. And so, as it always had, it fell on Charletta, the solid one, the smart one, the only person on either side of the family who had ever gone to college.

  She had soothed her brother, talked rationally and reasonably with (he public defender, who struck her as tired and a little stupid but well meaning. Lord, she thought, if you're out mete among the rats and garbage, save us from the well-meaning and incompetent Something moved in the field and then stopped.

  Tomorrow would be worse and it would be all up to Charletta, who stood tall and with dignity but no trace of beauty.

  The Jewish policeman who looked like an old, tired dog had been patient with her, gone over the case against Lonny, told her what the doctors had done and that they were sure he would recover from his wounds and be all right.

  "All right?" she said.

  "Unfortunate choice of words," the policeman said. "He'll be physically fine."

  "I'm sorry," Charletta said. "But…"

  "No sorry involved here," the policeman said. "I'll get the lawyer from the Public Defender's Office to talk to you. Want some coffee, a sandwich?"

  "No," she said.

  They had been sitting in a waiting room at Cook County lockup.

  "Miss Wayne," the old policeman said gently. "You've got enough suffering to do here. You don't have to be hungry while you do it. Coffee and a tuna on white? Place across the street is not awful. It's bad but not awful."

  "How can I resist an offer like mat?"

  "I'm very persuasive," he said, rising. "Want anything in your coffee?"

  "A little cream," she said.

  He patted her hand and said he would be right back. And he sat with her till the public defender showed up, disheveled, tie knotted awkwardly.

  And now she was back in her parents' apartment. She no longer thought of it as her home. It was the place of despair from which she was escaping. She saw the end of her brother. Jail, a record. Out in-what had the lawyer said? — four years with a plea bargain, maybe less. And then?

  And she saw a threat to her education and future, her escape. She saw parents who needed her, an office job, receptionist, African-American with a white voice was always good for answering phones.

  And she hated her brother, hated Lonny for being weak, for threatening her future.

  "No," she whispered in darkness, determined, a little frightened, angry. "No, I'm not giving it up. I'm not going down."

  From above a shrill crack of gunfire. She looked out the window. Something jumped and squirmed on a slab of concrete in the field below. A rat or cat.

  Charletta shook her head.

  "No," she said again. And she meant it

  "Lieberman, you're awake?"

  "When am I asleep?" he answered.

  Bess sat up and turned on the light. Abe looked at her.

  "You want to talk?" she asked.

  "I have a choice?"

  "Yes," she said.

  Lieberman sighed and sat up. 'Talk," he said.

  "What do you want to talk about?" she asked.

  "I don't suppose you want to talk about the Cubs' chances at making the play-offs?' "No."

  "I didn't think so."

  "Rabbi Wass gave a passable sermon, you think?"

  "Passable," said Lieberman, holding back a yawn.

  "I think if homosexuals want to join the congregation, they should be welcome," Bess said emphatically. "Jews are Jews. They're not going to hold hands or anything that Ida Katzman seems to be so worried about."

  "Why won't they hold hands?" Lieberman asked. "You and I hold hands."

  "You've got a point, Lieberman."

  "Bottom line here," said Lieberman, "Ida Katzman, to whom I owe the pleasure of having been assigned to the Rozier murder, won't like it, and Ida's money is essential to keep the new temple in the black."

  "I didn't say she wouldn't like it," said Bess. "But it sounded like she wouldn't like it to me."

  "And to me too," agreed Lieberman.

  "Want some orange juice?" Bess asked. "I can make a litfle popcorn in the microwave. That can't hurt you."

  "Bess, I love you. You is my woman. You are a rare beauty who I love listening to and looking at. But when are you going to bring out the real agenda?"

  She reached over and rapped the top of his head gently with her knuckles. He yawned.

  "Lisa may never want to take the kids," she said. "She loves them, but… what do you think?"

  "Never is a very long time," said Lieberman. "It's probably sufficient to say that she probably won't want to take the kids in my lifetime, which, if I avoid eating every food in the known world that has any taste, may not come till Barry and Melisa are adults."

  "She's restless, Abe," said Bess.

  "Give her thirty, forty years. She'll outgrow it," he said. "Popcorn sounds good."

  "When we're finished," Bess said. "You don't mind, about taking the kids?"

  "Of course I mind," said Lieberman. "What am I, Father Teresa? I mind. I mind that Lisa feels the way she does. That's what I mind. I'm worried about you and me having to take care of and maybe raise two kids at our age."

  "But…" she prompted.

  "All right. All right. All right I'D get up and make die popcorn," he said. "The kids'll be hard, but it'll be good. There, I said it. You want an orange juice with the popcorn?"

  Bess nodded yes and said, "A Thin Man movie started on AMC about fifteen minutes ago. You want to watch?"

  Lieberman, in his pajamas, paused in the doorway.

  "Popcorn, orange juice, Myrna Loy, and you in bed," he said. "Who could resist such an offer?"

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