Lieberman's Law

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Albert always wore clean, sturdy blue slacks, a crisp, clean denim shirt—except on Jewish holidays when he dressed up and on Sundays when he went to the same Baptist church he had gone to on Harrison Street since long before his wife died more than twenty years ago. Albert had suffered at least two heart attacks, but Dr. Ira Shulman, cardiologist at Rush-St. Luke’s and member of the Temple Mir Shavot congregation, had said that retiring Albert Timms would probably kill him faster than letting him continue to work.

  “I didn’t do that,” Albert said as soon as he saw Lieberman come through the door. “Had nothing to do with it, Mr. Lieberman. You know that.”

  “That, Mr. Timms, I am very sure of,” said Lieberman.

  Albert looked relieved. Lieberman moved behind Albert Timms to the rabbi’s desk, picked up the phone, and dialed a number he got out of the small address book in his pocket. The custodian and the rabbi exchanged looks of confusion and fear as Lieberman dialed.

  “Detective Benishay,” Lieberman said. “Thanks.” Lieberman put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “We’re in luck. He’s there. If … ,” and then he removed his hand from the mouthpiece and said, “Leo, Abe Lieberman. I’m over at Mir Shavot. We’ve had some overnight vandalism. You think you can take the call yourself? … Good … I’m here with Bill. A favor: no sirens, no lights, no marked car. Good.”

  He hung up and looked at the two men. “He’ll be right over. You and Mr. Timms just sit down, don’t come out and touch anything. Detective Benishay will be here soon to have a look.”

  “Abraham, there have been threats,” said the rabbi softly, hands folded before him.

  “Threats?” asked Lieberman.

  “Since the madman in Israel murdered those praying Arabs. I’ve had calls, against me, against the congregation, against the temple.”

  “And you didn’t tell me? Didn’t call the police?” Lieberman asked with a weary sigh.

  “Many rabbis, many congregations have received such threats over the years. Even Jewish schools and community centers. There have just been more since the shameless massacre. And until this … Should I call Mrs. Lieberman?” asked the rabbi.

  “Yes,” said Lieberman.

  Bess Lieberman, Abe’s wife, was the president of Mir Shavot, a job Abe had deftly maneuvered to her when it looked as if he were going to be backed into the position. Bess had proved, as Abe knew would be the case, that she was a much better president than he would have been. Thin, well groomed, and looking fifteen years younger than her fifty-eight, she had been a rallying dynamo, attending meetings, pushing the building committee that Abe had been tricked onto, mediating disputes, raising funds, and taking care of their own two grandchildren.

  Lieberman returned to the chapel and looked across the aisles at his partner who shook his head. Hanrahan had not found the missing Torah.

  “I’m going to find whoever did this,” said Lieberman, turning his eyes to an unfurled Torah, the sacred first five books of the Jewish Testament, the holy word.

  “We’re going to find him,” Hanrahan corrected.

  Lieberman nodded. There was nothing to say. Mir Shavot was a Conservative congregation and Lieberman had really only become an active member a decade ago when he was fifty. His grandfather had been a stern Orthodox Jew, complete with long black coat, hat, and beard. His grandfather, his mother’s father, had refused to speak the language of America just as he had refused to speak Russian in the old country. He spoke and read Hebrew in his prayers and spoke Yiddish in his home and that of Abraham’s mother and father. He had insisted that the boy and his older brother, Morris, accompany him to services, hours of standing and sitting, praying in a language the boys didn’t understand, dreading the knock of their grandfather at the door to take them back to the mysterious boredom of the synagogue on the West Side. Neither Abe nor Maish had ever had faith. And when their grandfather had died, and old men and an ancient rabbi had told them that their grandfather had been a great and pious man, both boys decided that they had seen their last days as practicing Jews.

  When he had married Bess, who came from a Conservative Jewish family, they had agreed that she would continue her practice and he would be left alone. At first he had joined her in only a few annual social events. Then he had decided to accompany her once to Friday night services, just to see if it brought back the same feelings, the ghost of his grandfather.

  There were no ghosts at the service. There was almost as much English as there was Hebrew and though he thought he would feel uncomfortable at praying and thanking a God in whom he did not believe, Abraham Lieberman found himself briefly at peace. He could still read the Hebrew he had learned more than thirty-five years earlier. He still could not understand what he was reading, but it gave him a meditative calm, and gradually, it put him at peace with the ghost of his grandfather. There were even times when Lieberman had gone to services alone, especially when the horror and pain he was forced to witness in his work made him wonder at the meaning of his own life. There were never answers, but there was solace and comfort.

  And now, he looked around the chapel, his refuge, and knew the fear, memories, and images of the Holocaust would slap each member of the congregation, would sting.

  Leo Benishay arrived speedily with a team of photographers and techs and they set to work, Leo giving Abe a sorrowful and sympathetic look as he surveyed the damage. Leo Benishay was a devout Jewish atheist, as Abe had once been, but he would work at this because, atheist or not, he was a Jew and he was a good cop. That, however, was not going to stop Lieberman from finding who had done this in the very room where his grandson was to be bar mitzvahed, the room where he had found some peace. What Lieberman felt was more powerful than Hanrahan’s rage; it was a resolve that no one could be allowed to come into his home and that of his people, and get away with doing this. No one. Somewhere in the Torah it was written that the wrath of the Lord could, when He deemed it, be swift, powerful, and without mercy.

  Even if the Lord didn’t tell him what to do, and Lieberman was certain that the Lord would not since He had never done so before, he would emulate the Lord.

  And then, in the middle of the desecration, he thought of Eli Towser, the unforgiving rabbinical student he had fired no more than an hour ago. And Lieberman knew that even with what he saw about him now, he would still have fired the wild-eyed young man.

  Within half an hour, they began to come to Mir Shavot. The first to arrive were Abe’s brother, Maish, an older, heavier, even sadder version of Abe, and Maish’s wife, Yetta. With them were the Alter Cockers, the klatch of old Jews and one Chinese, Howie Chen who, it had been established long ago, was a distant cousin of Iris Huang, Hanrahan’s fiancée. Terrill, the new short-order day cook, was with the Alter Cockers, Terrill had spent three years in Stateville on a drug count. Lieberman had set up the job for Terrill after his release, and he turned out to be the best short-order cook the T & L Deli had ever had.

  “Cleanup squad,” said Syd Levan.

  “Let’s get to work,” said Herschel Rosen, a gnome in a Cubs baseball cap.

  “We’re ready,” said Al Bloombach, who suffered from asthma, was almost eighty, and shouldn’t have been there.

  “Howie’s kids and a few of the grandchildren are coming over,” said Syd. Howie Chen nodded solemnly.

  “We’ve got to wait till the Skokie police are done with the photographs and fingerprints,” said Lieberman, holding back the rising number of congregation members and friends who were now choking the corridor.

  “Leo,” called Herschel Rosen.

  Leo Benishay stepped through the door into the corridor and looked at the growing throng. Bess was trying to get through with a group of women, some of whom were the wives, daughters, and granddaughters of the men who had first arrived.

  “Mr. Rosen,” Leo called back. “If everyone will just wait a minute or two more …”

  “I was at his bris,” Herschel told those around him. “He was a little pisher. Now he’s
a policeman giving orders.”

  “We’ve got the photographs,” said Benishay softly to Lieberman. “No point in trying for prints except on the things that were torn and thrown around. Lab says the walls are so full of prints it would take us forever to get them and check them against the FBI lists and we’d have to fingerprint every member of this congregation. My men are gathering the things that have been tossed and torn. We’ll call the FBI and have them go over them. Might take some time.”

  “Take some time?” Lieberman said, as Bess made her way through the crowd and moved to her husband’s side taking his hand.

  “Five synagogues were attacked last night,” said Benishay, suddenly looking very haggard. “This one and four in the city. One in your district, B’nai Zion. The FBI is going to be very busy.”

  “So …?” asked Lieberman.

  Benishay shrugged. “We seal off the chapel. Wait for the FBI. They give the OK and your people can clean up.”

  Rabbi Wass suddenly appeared from his sanctuary. The noise level was high. An old woman in the back was shouting something about Arabs. Wass looked at Bess, who took him in her arms and said, “Be strong, Rev. Be strong.”

  Rabbi Wass shook his head, wishing his father were here, that his father were still the rabbi of Mir Shavot, but he was over a thousand miles away in Florida with a weak heart. Wass shook his head and stood up straight.

  “The police still have work to do,” Bess shouted. She was wearing a yellow dress, her cleaning dress. Her short silver hair was perfectly in place and she had taken a moment to put on makeup while she made her phone calls.

  Some in the front heard her. Those in the back shouted, talked.

  “Please,” shouted Rabbi Wass. “Quiet.” They grew silent.

  “The police still have work to do,” Bess repeated. “They’ll tell us when we can start cleaning up.”

  “What did they do?” shouted someone.

  “Graffiti on the walls,” said Lieberman. “Some pews and prayer books damaged. The podium on the bema smashed.” Lieberman looked over at the rabbi who adjusted his glasses and stood erect.

  “They destroyed three of our Torahs,” Rabbi Wass said. People gasped. A woman began to weep. “And they stole the velvet Torah.”

  Now there were wails, people clutching each other in confusion and fear, a few, both young and old, with a look of anger on their faces Lieberman had never seen before. Herschel’s daughter Melody stood at her father’s side. She was a quiet woman, who had lost her husband in a car accident almost ten years earlier. Now she worked at Bass’s Department Store on Devon not far from Maish’s T & L. There was anger, death, and determination clear and frightening on her face.

  “We’ll go into the small chapel,” said Rabbi Wass. “I think we can all fit. Mr. Timms can bring extra chairs.”

  “And what do we do there?” said Bloombach in asthmatic exasperation.

  “We pray,” said Rabbi Wass. “We pray, talk, and wait and let the police do their jobs.” There was some grumbling but they had all heard. When giving his sermons the usually soft-spoken rabbi could project with clear enunciation.

  “When will it end for us, Abe?” Syd Levan said, as he filed past with the rest.

  “Probably never,” said Lieberman.

  Syd, the youngest of the Alter Cockers, had lost a son who had moved to Israel and become a soldier and the victim of a terrorist bomb. He shook his head and looked very old.

  Maish, a bulky bulldog with sad eyes, had not prayed or come to a service since the murder of his own son by a robber a year earlier. Not only that, but his pregnant daughter-in-law had been shot and lost her baby, Maish’s grandchild. He paused when the others were finally in the chapel. He and God were engaged in a bitter feud, a feud which helped to give some sense of meaning to his damaged life. He had lost his faith in God as a young man, regained it before his brother and had it still, but he no longer believed that he could understand the pain of the innocent, which God could stop. He would not quite pray at home, alone, but he would talk to God, imagining answers to his questions, debating them, pointing out God’s errors in thinking. It sustained him.

  Benishay had returned to the large chapel. Bess and Abe stood facing Maish and the Chen clan.

  “Why don’t you all go back to the T & L?” Bess said, taking her brother-in-law’s hand and looking at the Chens and Yetta who, she was certain, did not wish to pray in the small chapel. “I’ll personally call as soon as the police let us clean up.”

  “They took your most valuable Torah,” said Sylvie Wang, Howie’s granddaughter, a nice-looking girl in thick glasses. “I heard the rabbi tell someone.”

  “We’ll get it back,” said Lieberman, thinking, “I’ll get it back if it still exists.” There was a chance the vandals, the anti-Semites, had not destroyed the blue velvet Torah. There may have been some among them, perhaps only one, who knew its value. Simply put, the missing Torah was priceless. More than four hundred years old, about a yard long, made by Spanish Jews during the reign of the Moors, when Jews were allowed not only to hold office in Spain but to worship as they chose. Each of the first five books of the Old or Jewish Testament, the Torah, had been meticulously and beautifully written out in a fine hand with the first words of each chapter in real gold.

  The small chapel was only a few feet from where they stood and the doors were not particularly thick. There was only silence and a few sobs from behind that door.

  “I’d better go in with them, Abe,” Bess said, touching her husband’s arm, kissing his cheek, and turning to the Chens. “You’re all welcome to join us, but I thought you might feel more comfortable at the T & L.”

  Howie nodded and said something to his family in Cantonese. They answered and began to leave the temple with Maish and Yetta.

  “I’ll stay,” said Howie, heading for the small chapel.

  Bess moved with him and glanced at her husband. He nodded.

  Maish, his wife, and the Chens filed out past Bill Hanrahan, who nodded at them as they left. Lieberman had seen his partner coming in moments earlier and caught the look that made it clear he knew or had discovered something.

  When the corridor was clear, Lieberman could see a pair of unmarked cars pulling up in front of the door. The FBI.

  “Rabbi,” Hanrahan said, glancing at the cars out of which men in dark suits were emerging quickly. “I think I’ve found a witness.”

  Abe moved toward him. This was not their town, not their jurisdiction, and legally not their investigation, but it was Abe Lieberman’s congregation. He followed his partner out the door as the FBI men moved briskly past them as if they knew just where they were going.

  It had been a busy night and there had been too few of them. Most of the Arab students at the universities—Chicago, Northwestern, DePaul, Loyola—had simply refused to join in the desecration and the older Muslims in the city had categorically said that they were Americans and had no intention of breaking the law.

  “If you do this, they will blame us, punish us,” Mohammed Ach Bena, a highly successful rug dealer in the Loop, had told the young man who had tried to enlist him or at least make a donation. “I am not a terrorist.”

  The group, which called itself the Arab Student Response Committee, had wound up recruiting a total of fifteen to join them in their night of desecration, the anniversary of the date the madman had murdered innocent Arabs at prayer. Even so, when the moment came to attack the Jewish temples, some of the active members of the committee chose not to show up.

  Those who took part were mostly young men and a few young women. After the coordinated attack at the Jewish houses of worship, they sat in the meeting room the University of Chicago provided for campus groups. About half of them were, students. They were tired. A few were unsure. A few closed their eyes. A few smiled at their success.

  “And no one was seen?” asked the young woman, a graduate student, who stood before them. “Except those we wanted seen.”

  Heads nodded. A
few voices said, “Only the ones you wanted seen.”

  At her side stood a tall Arab in a gray suit and tie. He was well groomed, clean shaven, and very big. His face showed nothing but a broken nose and scar tissue that bolted over both eyes. He was clearly a man who had seen and suffered violence.

  “The scrolls?” she asked the man. “The Torah? Where is Howard?”

  “Safe,” Massad said. “The Torah is safe.”

  “The call?” she asked.

  “Made,” he answered.

  She nodded and told the group that they should leave, a few at a time, quietly carrying the books that were provided at the door if they did not have books of their own.

  One hour earlier, the big man with the broken nose had made two phone calls, one to the FBI and one to the Chicago police in South Rogers Park were they had struck two of their five targets. He had called from different phone booths, speaking quickly, calmly, and precisely to the person who answered the phone and saying the same thing: “We have struck our next blow to free the so-called United States and bring down the corrupt government run by Jews and their money. In the name of the memory of our too-long-dead Führer, we will bring the Jews and those who support them to their knees and shoot each one of them in the back of the head as they shot Adolf Hitler. We are his ghosts, his new army. Heil Hitler.” And with that he had hung up, wiped the telephone clean with a handkerchief and gone to his nearby car.

  They would wait a week, maybe more to be sure they hadn’t been seen and then take the next step. She had already planned it, had already imagined the frightened faces of the Jews. She was concerned that Howard had not come to the meeting as he was supposed to have done, but she would deal with him later. The attack appeared to have been a complete success. If so, this was but the start.

  It would be almost twenty-four hours before she realized what Massad had done, what he had not told her or the committee, and why Howard Ramu had not been there.

  THREE

  “I DRINK TEA BUT I don’t like it,” the old woman said, pouring a cup for each of the policemen who sat in her small studio apartment on small unmatching furniture. The furniture was of acceptable size but not texture for Lieberman. Hanrahan chose to squeeze himself into one of the chairs near the window that the woman had offered and to take the tea.