Lieberman's Law

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Thank you,” said Lieberman, taking a sip of the tea as he stood looking at rows of mounted photographs on the walls. “Very good.”

  “My departed husband was a photographer as a sideline. They are good, aren’t they?”

  Lieberman had meant that the tea was good.

  “You’ll notice there are no people in Carl’s photographs. No animals either for that matter. Trees, flowers, empty parks and playgrounds, buildings.”

  “Interesting,” said Lieberman.

  “You sure you wouldn’t like more sugar? I like lots of sugar.”

  Lieberman drank tea socially when it was offered to him by strangers but he didn’t like it. Coffee was his drink.

  The old woman, whose name was Mrs. Ready, Anne Crawfield Ready, was covered in a flowered shift. Her hair was dyed an odd reddish orange and she looked far too overweight for any of the frail chairs. “Noisy out there this morning,” she said, nodding at the two windows of her apartment.

  The apartment was across the street from the front entrance of Mir Shavot, in a small square above a real estate branch office that wouldn’t be open for another hour, a photography supply store, and a baseball card shop.

  “Yes,” said Lieberman. “My partner tells me you have trouble sleeping?”

  “Insomnia,” Mrs. Ready said, touching Lieberman’s arm and speaking quietly as if the condition were something to be kept secret. “I watch television, read.”

  “I know what you mean,” Lieberman said. “I have insomnia, for years. I take hot baths. I read. I watch AMC, nothing works.”

  “Tea is no good,” she said.

  “Never helped me,” Lieberman said, turning his baggy eyes down to the dark brew. “Detective Hanrahan says you saw something last night.”

  “About three in the a.m.,” she said, moving to the third and last chair in the room and easing into it. “Heard something. Usually quiet out there except for the cars on Dempster. I like the rushing of the cars. Soothing. You know the wind sound, changes when they pass the street. It’s like a what-do-you-call it, a meditation. Relaxing. I read a book on it. Buddhist. I’m an Episcopalian myself.”

  “The sound you heard that was different?” prompted Hanrahan.

  “Oh,” Mrs. Ready said as she downed her tea in a single long gulp. “Like something breaking. I looked out the window and saw him coming out of that Jewish church where the bank used to be. Jews are quieter than the bank. Surprised me when they moved in, but they’re quieter and I don’t mind listening to them on Friday night and Saturday morning.”

  “What did you see?” Lieberman asked.

  “Young man, leather jacket, bald head,” she said. “One of those German swastikas on the back. I turned my light out so he couldn’t see me, but he looked right up.”

  “And you said he was carrying something?” Hanrahan asked.

  “Yes, something that looked a little heavy and maybe blue. Street lights are not the best, but I’m not complaining.”

  “Where did he go?” asked Lieberman.

  “Down the street, right below me. Watched till I couldn’t see him. Then I thought I heard a car start.”

  “And that was it?” Lieberman asked.

  “Bank was here for more than ten years and never got robbed,” she said ruefully. “I watched, hoped I’d be able to identify a bank robber, but this is good too, isn’t it?”

  “Very good,” Hanrahan said, sipping his tea.

  “You’d know him again if you saw him, the bald man in the jacket?” Lieberman asked.

  “Can’t be one hundred percent,” she said. “But I watch television, CNN, WGN. He was one of those skinheads.”

  “We’d like to tell the local police about this, have them come and talk to you,” Lieberman said, rising.

  “The FBI too?” Mrs. Ready asked excitedly. “I saw those cars pull up. Look just like the FBI guys on television.”

  “Probably,” Hanrahan said, also rising. The chair beneath him creaked in relief.

  “I don’t get out much anymore,” the woman said. “Embolism in my left leg. Friend of my daughter from college days does the shopping for me and takes me to the doctor. Almost all my family is in Salt Lake City. A few are Mormons. Well, tell the other police and the FBI to come on over. I’ve got lots of tea, herbal and otherwise.”

  “You’ve been very helpful,” Lieberman said, taking her hand in both of his.

  “I’ve seen you go in there more than once,” she said. “I’ve got 20-20 without glasses. You’re a Jew.”

  “One of the chosen people,” Lieberman said, with a touch of irony that only his partner caught.

  “My husband, Carl, rest his soul, wore thick glasses and had swollen toes. Stuck it out at the postal office never letting on his constant pain to a soul. Died two months after he retired, leaving me the pension and Social Security and the photographs.”

  “Anything else you think of, tell the local police or the FBI,” said Hanrahan. The two men moved to the door. Lieberman opened it.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me about the girl?” the old woman said.

  The two policemen turned toward her, door partly open.

  “Girl?” asked Hanrahan.

  “Pretty, standing at the door right under the night light. Bald guy moved right past her. She was back in the shadows. Then when he was gone she looked back into the glass door and moved the same way the bald guy had gone. She was dressed all in black. Looked pretty from what I could see. Long, black hair, turned once to look up at my window, but I still had the lights out.”

  “And you’d recognize her again if you saw her?”

  “Yes,” said the old woman. “I figured she was out late, heard the noise, and tucked herself back in the dark so she couldn’t be seen by the bald guy when he came out. Pretty girl. I hear there’ve been rapes within blocks of right where I stand.” She pointed at the floor and badly faded gray carpet.

  When the policemen were down the stairs and in the curious bustle of gawkers who knew something was happening even if they weren’t sure what, they spoke as they walked back toward Mir Shavot. “How do you figure it, Rabbi?” Hanrahan said. “Skinheads like the lady says?”

  “Could be, Father Murphy,” said Lieberman. “The girl worries me.”

  “If there was a girl,” said Hanrahan as they crossed the street. “And if Mrs. Ready really can identify her.”

  “And if there was a bald young man,” said Lieberman. “A bald young man carrying something heavy and blue.”

  “The Torah,” said Hanrahan.

  Lieberman glanced back across the street toward the window of the old woman. She was looking down at them with a proud smile. She was perfectly clear and so, he was sure, were they, even in the rain, but in the middle of the night it might be different. Lieberman had the feeling that the woman was reliable. Maybe because he wanted to believe that she was.

  Howard Ramu had stuffed his skinhead jacket and the Torah in the oversized Reebok gym bag and put on his wig as soon as he had gotten back into the car. He had driven home carefully, not too slow, not too fast, sticking to streets that were reasonably busy even at three in the morning—McCormick to Devon, Devon to Western, Western south, avoiding the expressways.

  He went back to the apartment he shared with two other Arab students, one of whom was his cousin and both of whom disapproved of the Arab Student Response Committee and Howard’s participation in it. They had, in fact, asked him to leave the apartment at his earliest convenience. He had readily agreed.

  It was a little before four in the morning when Howard Ramu parked on Woodlawn, picked up the bag, and locked the car doors. He was lucky to find a space so easily. Bag in one. hand weighing heavily and his other hand in his pocket holding a small gun, Howard hoped that he would not be confronted by one of the wandering bands of black teens who came into the university neighborhood during the night and sometimes during the day looking for some student or faculty member to trap and rob. Woodlawn was an all-black neigh
borhood surrounding Hyde Park and the University of Chicago, an unofficial boundary that was not always respected.

  Howard made it back to his room in the six-flat brick building, opening the locks as quietly as possible. The living room was dark as he entered. Even through the closed door he could hear the loud snoring of his cousin. He placed his gym bag on the top shelf of the closet near the door, confident that his roommates would not touch it, and then he felt very, very tired. The bag contained not only the heavy Torah but six lightweight Israeli Uzis, but lightweight or not, the bulging bag had been extremely heavy and straining at the seams. He had taken no more than four steps from the now-closed closet when he heard the tap at the apartment door. He froze. It came again. A voice whispered.

  “Everything all right?” came the man’s voice still in a whisper. “Can you hear me in there?”

  Howard stood still, gun now out and in his hand. The man knocked harder. Howard looked toward the closed bedroom doors. His cousin snorted but continued to snore.

  “Everything is fine,” said Howard softly, moving to the door.

  “Saw someone going in there,” said the man. “I’m with campus security.”

  “It was me,” said Howard. “I live here.”

  His cousin was no longer snoring.

  “How do I know you’re not a burglar just telling me everything is fine?” said the man in the hallway.

  “My name is Howard Ramu,” Howard said with exasperation. “I live here.”

  “Could have gotten the name from the bell downstairs,” said the man. “I’ll have to ask you to open up.”

  Howard’s cousin was clearly awake now. The snoring had stopped and the bed springs vibrated as if he were rising.

  “How do I know you are campus police?”

  The man shoved a card under the door. Howard picked it up and examined it. It was a photo ID of a heavyset man with a dull American face. Howard adjusted his wig, put his gun back in his pocket keeping his hand on it, and opened the door except for. the chain link. Behind him, Howard heard his cousin’s door open and his voice sleepily saying in a heavy accent, “What on earth is happening?”

  Before Howard could answer, the chain link snapped and the door flew open, sending Howard backward into a small table. A man came in, neither in uniform nor resembling in the least the photo of the heavyset, dull American. The man, whom Howard Ramu well knew, held a weapon in his hands, a weapon Howard recognized. The man closed the door.

  “Where?” asked the man, stepping into the room with a decided limp. “I saw you come in with it.”

  Howard said nothing. His cousin stood frozen.

  “Where?” the man with the automatic weapon repeated.

  Howard’s hand came out of his pockets. He did not think nor pray nor hope. He knew the man meant to kill him and that his little gun was no match for what the man carried. Before his hand cleared his pocket, the intruder fired, the sound breaking a still-night silence, tearing into Howard Ramu, who dropped his pistol and fell backward, dead.

  Howard’s cousin turned back to his bedroom and the intruder fired, tearing red-black dots into the white pajamas. The gunman moved toward the closed door of the second bedroom. He kicked open the unlocked door and fired as a voice cried, “No.”

  In spite of the noise and the certain arousal of neighbors, the murderer put down his weapon and began looking under the small secondhand sofa. He searched quickly, determined. Gunshots were not new to this neighborhood; neither were they likely to be ignored. Someone would call the police.

  The gunman threw open the closet and immediately saw the oversized Reebok bag on the shelf. “Found it,” he said to himself. He unzipped the bag, folded the metal stocks of his weapon and put the compact gun on top of the Torah, then zipped up the bag. The bag was even heavier now, the zipper beginning to tear, the seams already tearing. He hurried to the front door, his limp made more pronounced by the weight of the bag. At the door, the killer stopped to pick up the fake ID from the floor and pocketed it. He pulled a small, black yarmulke from his pocket, knelt at Ramu’s body, and touched the little cap to the blood. Printed inside the cap, black against white lining, was “Temple Mir Shavot” with the temple’s address. He stood up and dropped the yarmulke in front of the body of Howard Ramu.

  He left the apartment, closing the door behind him, not worrying about noise. He had already made ample noise but no doors opened. Everyone was afraid to look. The man ran down the stairs and out of the building as quickly as his heavy bag and limping leg would allow. The streets were still clear. A drunk tottered toward him. He was black and ragged, humming to himself. The man brushed past him and the drunk sullenly shouted, “What the fuck you think you are, goddamn Newt Gingrich?”

  He had parked illegally next to a fire hydrant. He placed the gym bag on the back seat, slid behind the wheel, closed the door and moved into the night. He had only a few blocks to go. He made it without lights on and, he was sure, without being seen. He pulled into the campus overnight parking lot using a key code card, parked in the rear where most people preferred not to leave their cars, and hurried out, carrying the heavy bag.

  He moved quietly up the rear stairs in his sneakers and stopped at the second floor to rest his leg and shift the bag to his other hand. He unlocked the door to his apartment on the third floor, stepped inside, put down the bag and reached back to lock the door behind him.

  Outside a police siren cut the night.

  “You got all six?” said the man with the shaven head.

  Berk had left his tiny, neat, cell-like apartment minutes earlier to buy a cup of coffee at Denny’s and stand at the phone booth in front of the restaurant. No one would bother him and no one would try to use the phone if he indicated to them that he was waiting for a call. He was not tall but he was broad like a wrestler and in good condition. In fact, when he hung up, he planned to go back to his apartment and continue his workout. He had finished 110 push-ups and four hundred sit-ups before he put on his jeans and a T-shirt and ran the two miles to Denny’s, which he would have done no matter what the weather. He planned to run back home after the call came.

  William Stanley Berk wasn’t worried about his phone being tapped. One of his men had worked for the phone company and checked it out regularly. Besides, if they had been tapping, they—the cops, FBI, whoever—would have pulled him in by now and played him the tape to break him. The line was safe. Tuckett would tell him if and when it wasn’t. Even so, Berk never called or received a call at home that might incriminate him. At the end of each call, they would designate who would initiate the next call and at what time. The person to receive the call would give the number of a public phone where he would be waiting. It was awkward, but it was safe. Some people, in fact, were too safe, like the man he called Mr. Grits. Mr. Grits would never use the telephone like this as safe as it seemed. Mr. Grits made it even more elaborate. When Mr. Grits and Berk spoke on a phone designated by Mr. Grits, Mr. Grits was always pleasant, reassuring, and matter-of-fact. There was only one clear rule. Berk was not allowed to see Mr. Grits.

  But the man on the other end of the line now was not Mr. Grits. He was an Arab fanatic named Massad, whom Berk treated with what seemed like true respect.

  “All six,” Massad said proudly, breathing hard.

  “And the prayer thing?” Berk said. He knew it was a Torah. He knew what to call it, but he had an image to present to his caller and he didn’t want the caller to think Berk was as smart as Berk knew he was. Berk was a reader. Berk had educated himself, like Gary Gilmore.

  “The Torah, got it,” said the man.

  “What’s the problem?” asked Berk, sensing something in the man’s voice.

  “I had to kill Ramu,” he said.

  “Couldn’t have been any other way,” said Berk. “I told you.”

  “And two others who were with him,” Massad went on.

  “Civilians?”

  “Arabs,” said the man softly. “More Arabs have died. Thre
e Arabs and not a single Jew.”

  “Breaks,” said Berk. “We’ll talk later. We stay with the plan. Give me a number and a time.” The man gave Berk a number and a time. Berk said the number was fine, but he would call him at seven, not midnight. If Massad could not get to the phone, he would call at seven the next morning.

  Berk almost added, “Put the guns somewhere safe,” but that was a given and he didn’t want the man looking down on him for suggesting the obvious. Berk hung up and looked to see if anyone was watching him, was fairly certain there was not, and threw his empty plastic coffee cup into the nearby garbage before running home.

  When he got to the small apartment, he was greeted on one wall by a large poster of George Lincoln Rockwell. Once he had put up a photograph of Adolf Hitler taken from an old Life magazine he bought legitimately from an old bookstore on Damen, but now Berk had read a lot of Hitler, his life, his speeches. No substance. All ego. He had seen movies. Hitler was a great speaker, probably the greatest, though Berk couldn’t understand German, but putting his picture on the wall had been something a kid went through. Berk was no kid. Rockwell had been calm, held a pipe in his hand, wore a Nazi uniform, always sounded reasonable even if he proposed cutting the balls off a Jew politician.

  Berk didn’t like dealing with the man he had spoken to on the phone in front of Denny’s, but he had no choice. It was part of Mr. Grits’s plan. Bruce Willis in one of those Die Hard movies would call it a double-cross, but Rockwell would have understood. Expediency. He would make it work and he would convince others to help him make it work.

  Berk had risen fast. He had gotten in trouble as a kid, petty stuff, snatch-and-grab, a few purses. His father had always given him mixed messages. Once, when they caught Berk, he couldn’t have been more than ten, his father had come to pick him up and had hit him on the side of the head, but not as hard as Berk had expected. His father was a sober, hardworking Irish fireman.