Lieberman's Law

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “To kill them,” the young woman said. “We vote.”

  The vote was against her call for murder. Only three voted with her. Hands went down.

  “All right,” she said. “Those of you who voted against honorable vengeance should leave now. Those who voted for it should remain.”

  “You are destroying our organization,” a young man said, standing.

  “The organization remains,” she said. “What we do outside of it is not your responsibility.”

  One of the three who remained was the tall Arab with the scarred face. He walked to the door with a decided limp, closed it behind those who had departed, folded his arms, and leaned against the wall to listen to the young woman. He had no intention of participating in what she might be planning. In fact, though he was easily the most militant member of the Arab Student Response Committee, he would see to it that whatever she might devise would not take place for at least a week. He had his own plan and had already murdered three of his fellow Arabs to ensure that it would work.

  There was a new, neatly painted sign at Maish’s T & L. It was in red letters. It was pinned to the wall behind the counter and said, “Thank You For Not Smiling.”

  There was little at the T & L that Said could eat so he simply said that he was not hungry. He sat alone with Lieberman at one of the booths. The place was nearly empty. Maish and most of the Alter Cockers had returned to Mir Shavot and had begun the cleanup, probably arguing about what they could do about this outrage and reluctantly concluding that they should leave it to the police.

  The short-order cook, Terrill, wearing a white apron, took Lieberman’s order for a lean corned beef with hot mustard and a cup of coffee. Neither was good for his stomach, but there were things on the menu much worse.

  “Those two old men are staring at me,” said Said calmly, hands folded on the table top.

  “Alter Cockers,” said Lieberman, “Part of the furniture. Probably haven’t heard yet about what happened or just don’t have transportation to get to the temple. You want a salad?”

  “That would be fine,” said Said. “No dressing.”

  Lieberman called out the order. Terrill grunted back.

  “This food will kill you,” Said said, watching Lieberman eat when he was served.

  “So I’ve been told,” Lieberman said. “By my doctor, my wife, my daughter, a few friends, and some people I don’t even know. To live without pleasure is to not live at all.”

  “Is that from your Torah?” asked Said as the salad was placed before him.

  “Columbo,” said Lieberman. “You think this Student Arab Response Committee tore the temple apart.”

  “I think it is a possibility, at least a possibility for some of them,” said Said. “We are dealing with angry, intelligent young people without a homeland. They are attacked, called names by your press and people, suspected of all acts of supposed terrorism, awakened by phone calls in the middle of the night with threats.”

  “And for all this, they blame the Jews?”

  “They are not anti-Semitic. We Arabs are Semites too. They are not against Jews. They are against Israel and. against the American Jews who support it with their dollars. Against the government of the United States, which protects Israel. Do I look like an Arab?”

  “Not particularly,” said Lieberman, feeling a definite discomfort in his stomach.

  “Could you mistake me for a Jew?”

  “Could,” said Lieberman.

  “Semites. We are all Semites. Were we to band together in the Middle East we could build an economic empire to rival Western Europe, Japan, and the United States.”

  “Umm,” said Lieberman, eyeing the last bite of sandwich and then wolfing it down.

  “You’ve heard this before?”

  “Frequently,” said Lieberman. “Right now I don’t care about it. I care about finding who desecrated the place where my family and I worship, where I get the only damned sense of sanctuary from what I see every damn day. I care about getting our Torah back if it still exists. I think you’d feel better if you had a half pastrami instead of pieces of lettuce.”

  “Were your parents born in this country?” Said asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Grandparents?”

  “No,” said Lieberman. “My mother’s parents were from the Ukraine. Had a farm north of Kiev, a few miles from Chernobyl. My father’s parents were from Vilnius in Lithuania. Does it make a difference?”

  “Yes,” said Said. “My parents were born in Cairo. I was not taught by them to hate Jews. I was encouraged by them to become a successful American.”

  One of the two Alter Cockers at the table set for eight called over to Lieberman, “Where’s everybody? Where’s Maish? This a holiday?”

  Lieberman explained and the two men had a conversation and stood up and walked over to the booth.

  “Nazis?” asked old Braverman, squinting through amazingly thick glasses. He was thin and stooped and almost completely bald.

  Lieberman shrugged.

  “Nazis,” Braverman confirmed, looking at Moscowitz who looked ten years younger then Braverman, though both were seventy-six.

  “Maybe Arabs,” said Moscowitz, looking at the two policemen.

  “Nazis,” insisted Braverman, “maybe working with Arabs. Arabs are crazy. They blow themselves up. Nazis don’t die for their hate.”

  Said sat silently. Old Braverman’s sleeve was pulled up. On his arm was a still-vivid concentration camp number.

  “Shoot them dead on sight, Lieberman,” Braverman said with calm certainty.

  “Let’s go to the temple instead of sitting here repeating ourselves, see if we can help,” Moscowitz said, taking Braverman’s arm. “I’ll call my daughter-in-law. She’ll take us.”

  As Moscowitz turned, Braverman said, “Well, was I right or was I right? Arabs or Nazis. Or maybe the Klan.”

  “I don’t know,” said Lieberman.

  “There’s right and right,” said Moscowitz, as he and Braverman went to the pay phone near the washrooms to call Moscowitz’s daughter-in-law.

  “They think I’m a Jew,” Said said. Lieberman nodded and worked on his coffee. “I’m as American as they are. Maybe more so,” Said continued, watching the men make their call.

  “Children?”

  “Two,” said Said. “Don’t tell me you want to see their pictures.”

  “If I don’t tell you, how do I communicate the information?”

  Said reached into his jacket pocket, came out with a wallet and opened it to a photo of a pretty, dark woman and two remarkably beautiful children, one a boy, the other a girl.

  “Beautiful,” said Lieberman, handing Said his wallet open to a picture of his daughter and two grandchildren.

  “Also beautiful,” said Said.

  Lieberman took back the wallet and looked at the photograph as if he had never seen it.

  “Not beautiful,” he said. “That’s Lisa, my daughter, and her two kids. Lisa is too serious to be more than pretty and too stubborn to work on it. The kids are fine. Barry looks like his father, which is good, and Melisa looks like her mother which makes her, I’d say, on the verge of good-looking.”

  “And now?” asked Said.

  “You and I go see some of the people Howard Ramu knew,” said Lieberman.

  Said nodded and opened his wallet to take out a five-dollar bill. Lieberman stopped him. “At Maish’s, my guests don’t pay.” On the way out, Lieberman called out his thanks to Terrill, who was nowhere in sight.

  The phone was ringing.

  Bill Hanrahan sat in his immaculate living room in his perfectly clean little house in Ravenswood not far from the Ravenswood Hospital. He and Maureen had raised their boys here, fought here, made love here, and very seldom had any visitors because of Bill’s odd working hours and his drinking.

  The phone was ringing.

  Bill Hanrahan had been an alcoholic. He probably still was but he didn’t drink, though he occasionally wanted to
. A woman had died because of his drunkenness and he had stopped drinking with the help of AA and Smedley, his sponsor. Hanrahan had always been a big man. Without the booze, he had grown even bigger. He wondered why Iris, calm, determined, beautiful, even-tempered Iris wanted to marry him.

  The phone was still ringing.

  Iris said she didn’t mind living in the house when they were married. They had made love here once, on the open-out couch in the living room, the couch on which he now sat looking at the phone. No, he couldn’t keep living here. There were ghosts and memories on every shelf, in every corner, on every piece of furniture. He had kept himself busy the night Maureen left by cleaning house. The boys were already grown and on their own clearly wanting nothing to do with their drunk of a father.

  He had never struck Maureen and never wanted to, though, ironically, she had frequently, toward the end, tears on her cheeks, slapped Bill, slapped him hard and he had taken it, knowing she was right.

  He had cleaned the house better than she had ever done and he waited for years for her return, waited for her to come to the door and see what he had done, the shrine he had kept to their marriage and family.

  The phone did not stop ringing.

  Hanrahan had finally realized that she was not coming back. He had been attacked by a murderer during an investigation and was hospitalized with critical head wounds. Maureen had come. One of his boys, Bill Junior, had come. There had been no love in his eyes. A touch of sadness. A tic of regret. A quiver of sympathy. Maureen and their son had come once, heard that he would live and had departed after a few words of bitterness from Bill Junior. His younger son, Michael, had refused to fly in to see his father. Maureen had said little, but had made it clear that she had a new life, was seeing other men, had a decent job in an insurance office, and as a good Catholic, had no hope in seeking a divorce or annulment within the church. Instead, she had pursued a legal divorce and obtained it, though she told herself that she would have to live out her life in the eyes of the church still married to William Hanrahan.

  Hanrahan picked up the phone.

  “Father Murph,” said Lieberman from his car phone.

  “Rabbi,” answered Hanrahan.

  “I’m heading for Hyde Park with Said.”

  “Be more specific and I’ll meet you there,” said Hanrahan.

  “How about you get the short list of neo-Nazis and skinheads and start paying them a visit instead?”

  “Right,” said Hanrahan. “Watch yourself.”

  “I’ll check my well-groomed mustache in the mirror right now. Catch up with you later,” said Lieberman.

  “Abe.”

  “Yeah, Bill?”

  “Forget it. See you later.”

  They hung up. In this room were ghosts, even the ghost of the man he had murdered, the madman with the gun, Frankie Kraylaw, who Hanrahan had set up before the man could kill his own wife and little boy.

  Hanrahan stood up. It was time to leave the ghosts. He’d sell and send half the money to Maureen, though the house was in his name and she had not asked for it in their quick civil divorce. She had asked for no money and no support, wanting none, knowing that Hanrahan probably wouldn’t have it even if the court ordered him to pay. She wanted all chains cut. They had paid off the house years ago. She deserved half. He thought she’d keep it, but she might send it back to him.

  What had brought all this back? The sight of destruction, anger borne of a hatred Hanrahan could not understand. He had simply stood there while the Skokie police and the FBI had gone over the chapel. He had read the signs, seen the destruction.

  He really needed a drink. He called Smedley Ash, who answered after three rings. “Smed? It’s Bill Hanrahan. The bottle’s calling.”

  Smedley Ash was an alcoholic. He had been sober for a decade. Ironically, Bill Hanrahan had arrested Smedley on two occasions for disorderly conduct. Now Smedley was sober and working as the manager of the Now Boutique on Oak Street. Smedley was quietly but proudly gay.

  “What happened?” Smedley asked.

  Hanrahan rambled for about ten minutes about Maureen, his kids, what he had seen earlier that day, Iris.

  “I’ll be right over,” said Smedley.

  Hanrahan sighed. “No,” he said. “It’s passing and I’ve got to get to work. I just needed to let it out. I don’t even know what it is.”

  “OK,” said Smedley. “I’ll give you a call later, maybe we can talk after work.”

  Hanrahan thanked him and hung up. He put on his shoes, checked his gun, holstered it, put on his jacket, and headed for the door. The phone rang. Hanrahan considered ignoring it, but he had no answering machine, and he picked it up.

  “Bill?” came a woman’s voice.

  “It’s me,” he said. “Bess?”

  “Yes,” she said, trying to speak calmly and evenly. “I’ve got to find Abe. Someone threatened to kill us, came right up to Barry when he was playing baseball in the park, said he’d kill us if Abe didn’t leave him alone.”

  “How’s Barry?”

  “Considering, he’s all right. Scared but all right. I didn’t tell Melisa. Find Abe.”

  “I’ll find him,” said Hanrahan. “Did Barry describe the man? Would he recognize him again if he saw him?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Bess. “Maybe. He wore a raincoat and dark glasses. He was Chinese.”

  Hanrahan paused. Or Korean, he thought.

  “I don’t know,” Bess said. “I woke up this morning and the world went crazy. Fanatics deface my synagogue, lunatics threaten my family.”

  Hanrahan knew the feeling.

  The phone rang.

  Barry was in the kitchen drinking chocolate milk and eating Oreo cookies. Melisa was in the living room watching something about manatees on the Discovery Channel. Melisa had asked if she could go down the street and play with Sarah Horowitz. Bess, who desperately wanted a shower because she was covered in paint and reeked of filth from the start of the cleanup at the temple, said no. She wanted them together, in the house. Melisa had asked why she couldn’t play. Bess said that she needed her granddaughter’s help in making cookies. It was a weak excuse, but Melisa didn’t question it and was soon absorbed in the manatees.

  The phone rang again. She picked it up automatically, expecting an Asian voice, the repeat of the threat and warning that had been given to Barry. It turned out to be almost as bad.

  “Bess?” asked Lisa.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you all right, the kids, Abe?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just had a feeling.”

  California was doing something to Lisa. Bess wasn’t sure whether it was good or bad. Lisa, her biochemist daughter, who showed little affection and no capacity for or interest in intuition, was on the phone showing concern for something she didn’t even know had happened.

  “Well, everything is fine. How are you?”

  “Making it,” Lisa said seriously.

  After she first left her husband, Todd, he had pressed for months for her and the children to return. He’d finally given up. At the very moment that Lisa had finally considered a return to her husband, Todd had taken up with another professor in his department, a woman ten years older than he and, what was worse, a woman Lisa liked. And so they divorced and Lisa had left her children with Bess and Abe, and had taken off for California with the idea of settling and sending for the children.

  “Good,” said Bess, aware of her reeking dirty clothes. “Would you like to talk to Melisa?”

  “Yes, and Barry.”

  “Barry isn’t here,” said Bess, eyes closed as she lied. “He has a ball game at the J.”

  “Then Melisa.”

  “Lisa?”

  “Yes?”

  “We love you. Your father and I.”

  “I know,” she said. “And since I know I’m not lovable, I’m beginning to appreciate it. Bess, I’m seeing someone.”

  “Is it serious?” asked Bess.
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  “Very,” said Lisa.

  Melisa, having heard part of the conversation during a commercial, ran to the phone and took it from her grandmother.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes, Missy. How are you?”

  “OK. Did you know manatees are almost extinct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know that grandma’s temple was torn up by Nazis?”

  “Torn up by …” Lisa said with a gasp.

  “They wrote things on the walls and everything. Grandma helped clean up. She’s still wearing smelly clothes. We’re going to order Domino’s pizzas delivered. I’ve got a tape of Lion King. When are Barry and I going to California?”

  “You want to come to California?”

  “I guess. Maybe not. It doesn’t get cold there, does it?”

  “Not very. I’ll talk to you again soon. Tell Barry I called.”

  “You can talk to him. He’s in the kitchen all muddy eating cookies.”

  “Put Grandma back on.”

  Melisa handed the phone to Bess and returned to the television set.

  “What is happening?” Lisa said even more calmly than usual.

  Bess sighed and told her from beginning to the present. Then she said, “Lisa? Are you there?”

  “I’m here, Mother,” Lisa said. Lisa rarely called her mother and father anything but Bess and Abe. It was a sign, but of what Bess was not certain. “I think I may take the children now,” Lisa said.

  “It’s the middle of the semester,” Bess said. “Barry’s about to have his bar mitzvah.”

  “It’s the beginning of their lives,” Lisa answered. “They’ll be safe with me.”

  “Los Angeles is safer than Chicago?” asked Bess.

  “It is where I live,” she said. “And I don’t live in a house with a policeman whose family gets threatened because he deals with lunatics, drug dealers, gangs, and killers.”

  “Lisa,” Bess pleaded. “You’ve got a full-time job. You couldn’t even be home for them after school. And the cost of day care …”

  “Mother, I …”

  “Lisa,” said Bess. “I’m too dirty, too depressed, and too tired to do anything but tell you the truth, a truth you and I both know.”

  She looked back to see if the children could hear. Melisa was already back in the living room. Barry had left the kitchen.