Lieberman's Law

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “That would be wonderful,” said Bess with a smile.

  Baruch was Barry’s Hebrew name. Melisa’s Hebrew name was Malka. Abe’s Hebrew name was Avrum, and Bess’s was Sarah, as her mother’s had been and as her mother before her and many generations back had been. When the conversation took even a slight religious turn, Rabbi Wass used their Hebrew names as he was doing now.

  “But,” Bess continued, “with everything that’s …”

  “It will be a relief, a pleasure,” said Rabbi Wass. “I used to do it when I was a rabbinical student and I continued for a while when I got my first congregation. It will be good for me. Baruch,” he called to Barry. “How would you like to finish your bar mitzvah lessons with me?”

  “Sure,” said Barry with ready acceptance if no enthusiasm.

  “Tuesdays and Thursdays, after school. My study,” Rabbi Wass said.

  “He’ll be here,” said Bess.

  Towser had come to the house. Getting Barry to the temple would make her busy life a little more difficult, but …

  “So,” said the rabbi. “Have you found anyone yet? The Torah …”

  “In confidence, Rabbi,” said Lieberman. “We think we know who did it, at least one person involved and others very likely. No lead on the Torah. It’s a hard object to sell. And we’ll have to face the possibility that it may already have been destroyed.”

  Rabbi Wass nodded in acceptance. “Nazis,” said Wass.

  “More likely a small group of Arab students,” said Lieberman. “I’m telling you more than I should.”

  “And you think I would break this confidence?”

  “No,” said Lieberman.

  “Tell me,” asked Wass. “How many are in this small group?”

  “Maybe ten, twelve,” said Lieberman.

  “Ten, twelve, fifteen people couldn’t do the damage to all the synagogues that was done in a single night, a few hours,” said Rabbi Wass.

  Lieberman shrugged. It was a question that had also bothered him.

  Bess rounded up the kids as Rabbi Wass said softly to Lieberman, “Oh, that I were as in the months of old, as in the days when God watched over me; when His lamp shined above my head. And by His light I walked through darkness.”

  Lieberman nodded as the children and Bess walked toward him down the aisle.

  “Job,” Rabbi Wass explained. “If Job could suffer and still believed, what has happened here is little enough to bear.”

  Lieberman agreed, but he also felt that it was not over, that there was more coming, that the attacks had been well planned and were but the first step in a campaign of terror. This was not the work of a few stupid children. Taking Jara Mohammed was only the first step in finding out what had happened and what might be about to happen.

  He wished Jara did not remind him so much of his daughter. He wasn’t sure if he should do the questioning or stand back and turn her over to Leo Benishay. Jurisdiction was a slight problem. Most of the synagogue attacks had been in the city, Lieberman’s city, but the only attack on which they had evidence, Anne Ready’s photographs, was in Skokie. And Jara Mohammed lived in Chicago.

  Rabbi Wass shook Barry’s hand and said he would see him on Tuesday, that Barry should bring whatever books or papers Chaver Towser had given him. After the goodbyes were finished and Lieberman promised to keep the rabbi informed, the Liebermans left the house of worship.

  “Are we going home, grandpa?” Melisa asked. “Or are we going to sleep at Uncle Maish’s again?” She took his hand.

  “We are,” he said, “going home, but not before I exercise my rights as patriarch of this clan to take you to a restaurant of your choosing and to a movie we can agree on.” He looked at Bess. She shrugged. He had spoken. He should have asked her first, but there was a need in her husband’s eyes and she nodded.

  “Nothing violent,” Bess said.

  “McDonald’s,” said Barry.

  “Too violent,” said Lieberman.

  “Grandpa,” Melisa said in a way that let him know his joke was ill timed.

  “McDonald’s,” Bess conceded.

  “The Toy,” said Melisa.

  “Yechh,” said Barry. “The Jean-Claude Van Damme movie at the Old Orchard.”

  “Double yecch,” said Melisa.

  “We’ll find something after we eat,” said Bess, starting toward the car. There was a hint of coming rain in the air and a dampness in her soul. She was a dozen feet away when she turned and saw her husband looking up at a window across the street. Through the slightly parted curtains in the room, Bess thought she saw an old woman taking pictures of her husband with a rather large camera.

  “Abe,” she called.

  He nodded and followed her to the car. There had not been enough Arab students in the entire crowd at the university to cause the damage he had seen. And he was sure that most of the Arabs had not participated in the attack, though many might be sympathetic to it. Then who had done the damage? His only link was the young woman and Lieberman had the feeling that something should be done quickly.

  In his office, just before he picked up Bess and the children, he had received a call from Emiliano Del Sol saying that he guaranteed the Koreans would not bother him or his family. Lieberman had not asked how he had accomplished this. He didn’t want to know.

  “Thanks, Emiliano,” Lieberman had said.

  “De nada, Viejo,” El Perro had answered. “We put it in the box, right?”

  “En la caja,” Lieberman agreed, the box of favors each man owed the other. “The Cubs won today. Cincinnati’s a game behind.”

  “Bueno, Viejo. Piedras is putting all the cards you gave me in a big book.”

  Piedras, the Tentaculos prime enforcer, was big and silent, a silence that did little to hide his stupidity. Piedras’s loyalty to El Perro was without question and Lieberman knew that Piedras had killed for his leader. But the image of Piedras carefully putting baseball cards in a book was too much for Lieberman to conjure.

  The house was safe, but somewhere, he was almost certain, destruction was coming. He would definitely, if Bess did not give him too stern a warning, down two Big Macs and insist on a comedy.

  Berk looked like Curly in the “Three Stooges,” but Berk’s body was solid, powerful, and without Curly’s belly. He looked a lot like Curly but no one would ever tell him, certainly not Pig Sticker Charles Kenneth Leary, not if he wanted to live. It wasn’t so much that a comparison to the looks of Curly would be an insult. Curly was a Jew. All the Stooges were Jews. Berk had a book he kept with him in which he wrote the name of every prominent person who he knew was a Jew. They were all part of the conspiracy. The Jews had no choice. Most of them were in it because they wanted to be. A few had to be pressured, threatened, but all Jews were part of it.

  Berk did not despair. He knew what a handful could accomplish. From behind the table he looked out at the two dozen people who had gathered for a meeting. He looked at their faces. All wore leather jackets. All, with the exception of Pure Nell from Hell, were men. All, including Nell, were shaved bald. A few were drinking beer from amber bottles. None were smoking. Smoking was not permitted. Every member had to work out and stay healthy. If they slipped and were caught, they answered to Berk.

  Berk was the oldest of the group. Berk was the toughest. Berk was the most confident. And they knew he believed in what they were doing. He had been involved in many beatings, two of which resulted in deaths. He had led marches, held rallies, screamed back at the Jews and niggers who had challenged him. Berk held his own and more in any group and he was afraid of nothing and no one.

  They were in the basement of the Tip-Top-Tap on Montrose. Berk’s brother-in-law owned the bar and agreed with most of what Berk believed. The Jews, the niggers, the Koreans were taking over everything. They had to be stopped. One of the daughters of Berk’s brother-in-law was actually living with a Jew kid right now, somewhere in California.

  Berk was sure that no one in the room would talk to the cops. The
y’d rather go to jail on a put-up charge than talk about what went on in this room. Jail was far safer than Berk’s revenge.

  “Meeting,” Berk shouted, slapping his hand on the table. Everyone got quiet.

  “Problem,” Berk said. “You know what it is. Someone offed the Arab, Ramu, got the guns.”

  “It’s what we get for working with fuckin’ Arabs,” said Nell from Hell.

  Berk didn’t get angry. In fact, he agreed with Nell. The alliance was supposed to be temporary. Berk thought the Arabs weren’t any better than the niggers, but they had money, they had guns, and one or two of them were smart and didn’t scare easily.

  Berk leaned on the table with both hands. “Maybe. But we’re in and we’re gonna finish. I want whoever took those guns. If some Jew took them, I want to know. If some nut asshole on his own took them, I want to know. The Arabs think we did it. I don’t give a shit what they think and as far as I’m concerned, three dead Arabs aren’t gonna be missed by me.”

  Laughter. More than the joke was worth, but release.

  They all knew what was going down. Someone had a lot of automatic weapons out there. Someone, particularly one of those crazy Jews, might come right through the door behind them, and open fire. Berk had placed a man outside the door and one upstairs at the bar to watch for just such a thing and to be ready, but he didn’t expect it, not now. In fact Berk was sure an attack wasn’t coming from whoever had taken the weapons because Berk knew who had the weapons. He had a plan, a plan he would share with only five people in this room, and only at the last minute. Berk wanted to be ready, always ready. While the niggers and Jews argued in their groups about what to do, Berk, as small as his group of skinheads might be, was the absolute final word.

  His plan was simple. The group had grown, allied itself with whoever could help attain his ends, the Klan, militias, even Arabs who would eventually have to go. The Jews would go. The niggers would go. The Spies would go. The slants would go. This would be a white country like it was supposed to be. Berk was no fool. It probably wouldn’t happen in his lifetime, but the movement would grow and the skinheads would be the most visible part of it. He imagined his photograph on the wall of meetings in the future. Meanwhile, he would make deals with the devil if it moved them toward a new America. He would also make deals with the devil if it meant making William Stanley Berk rich.

  He thought briefly of Mr. Grits. Looked around the room and meeting eyes as if seeking dissent or a traitor. Berk, in fact, didn’t know where the stolen weapons were, where the stolen religious scroll was, but he knew who had them.

  “One more big rampage with the Arabs,” he said. “And then we go quiet. We let the cops know. We let the Jews and niggers know we did it and then we go under and let them shit in their pants for maybe a year wondering what we’ll do next.”

  “Right,” the crowd shouted. Pig Sticker shouted loudest of all.

  Berk smiled and folded his arms. He had seen pictures of Mussolini with his arms crossed. He wanted to look like that. Mussolini was a martyr to the cause even if he was a wop. Berk smiled. When it was all over, he planned to rape the Arab bitch with the big mouth. Maybe they’d all rape her. What could she do about it? Complain to the cops? She had a big mouth and she was too smart.

  “Now,” said Berk, “I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do next.”

  Pig Sticker sat forward to listen. He was sweating right on top of his shaved head. He looked around. No one else was sweating. He was afraid of what he was going to hear, afraid he’d have to tell it to the Irish cop. Maybe Pig Sticker would pack his bag, take a bus, and let his hair grow out. Maybe. But goddamn it, he believed in Berk, admired Berk, had never met anyone like Berk. Berk was the big brother who would stand up for him. Berk was the leader who would pat him on the back for a job well done. And what Berk said was right. But Berk could never find out that Pig Sticker was part Jew. To Berk there was no such thing as part anything. You were all or nothing.

  Charles Kenneth Leary listened and wondered if he had enough money in his apartment to buy a bus ticket and rent a room in some town far away if he had to. It almost brought tears to his eyes. He did not want to leave Berk or the Mongers. It might be better to kill the cop, but if the Irish cop knew then maybe other cops knew too and would come after him.

  It was too much for Pig Sticker to think about. He wanted to remain Pig Sticker. He liked it when Berk called him Pig Sticker. Shit. He leaned forward and listened, and since he was sitting in the back of the room, he waited for a moment when no one was looking back to lean forward and wipe the sweat from his head with the sleeve of his jacket. When he straightened up, Berk was looking directly at him.

  Hanrahan was not very good at the game, but he promised Iris’s father, Chi Huang, that he would work on it. It was simply that Hanrahan did not have that kind of memory, not even for his own painful football career; much less, movies. It wasn’t that Hanrahan didn’t like movies. He loved them. He had a battered VCR that played but didn’t record, but mostly he would watch old movies on AMC. He just couldn’t remember the details the way Lieberman could.

  “They wept when I read my paper,” Mr. Huang had said solemnly, sitting at his favorite booth in the empty Black Moon Restaurant. Iris sat across from her father at Hanrahan’s side, touching his hand.

  “I don’t know,” said Hanrahan. “The Prize?”

  “Good movie. Good lines,” said Mr. Huang. “Wrong movie. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Original version. Kevin McCarthy came in here one time. I could not get myself to talk to him. I should have.” Mr. Huang looked at the door of the restaurant as if hoping the actor would pay him a return visit. “Your Jew friend is much better at the game,” he added thoughtfully.

  “He has insomnia, watches old movies at night, and has a good memory,” said Hanrahan.

  “You bring him next time,” said Chi Huang.

  “I’ll bring him for lunch soon,” said Hanrahan.

  “Wedding in three months,” said Mr. Huang, returning his look to his future son-in-law and his daughter. “Mr. Woo has said that he would arrange.”

  Iris’s father sat with his hands folded on the table. He was still wearing his apron. Perhaps a couple or two or a late-night party would still come. It was half an hour till closing. Iris would wait with him.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes drinking coffee.

  Chi Huang was not a tea drinker. Neither was Hanrahan. It made no difference to Iris, for whom it was just something social to do and she was pleased that her father and William were doing it. They finished their coffee and Huang said, “Confound it, man. I shall never be able to tell that story again.”

  It was another movie question. Hanrahan had no idea. Better to admit it than make a mistake. “No idea,” he said.

  “Four Feathers,” said Chi Huang. “C. Aubrey Smith at very end. Next time you bring Lieberman.”

  Huang stood up and offered his hand to Hanrahan. Hanrahan also rose and took the hand. Iris’s father had a firm grip in his small hand, a grip developed from more than half a century in the kitchens of Chinese restaurants.

  Iris and Bill waited while her father moved toward the kitchen. Iris said her father was over eighty. It made sense. Though Iris could easily be taken for thirty-five, she was actually a few years older than Hanrahan. She was also, Hanrahan thought, quite beautiful.

  When the swinging door closed behind Mr. Huang, Hanrahan leaned down to give Iris a kiss, a quick one. He knew she did not feel comfortable kissing in public.

  “That was the longest conversation I’ve ever had with your father,” Hanrahan said as he stood away from the booth.

  “I think he is beginning to like you,” she said.

  “Now that I have Mr. Woo’s approval,” said Hanrahan, “my not being Chinese and being an alcoholic are not quite as important.”

  Iris stood, took his hand. “My father likes to hold on to some tradition,” she said. “If you wish to make him truly happy, you might learn to s
peak a little Cantonese.”

  “I’m fifty-one years old, Iris,” Hanrahan said with a grin, kissing her hand.

  “My father is learning Spanish,” she said. “Takes lessons every Thursday night at the Senior Learning Center. I think he is quite good.”

  “So,” said Hanrahan with a shrug. “I learn Chinese.”

  “Cantonese,” Iris corrected gently. “Not Mandarin. We cannot understand Mandarin.”

  “It’s going to look a little silly for a big oaf of an Irish cop to be speaking Chinese,” he said. “But for you …” He touched her cheek.

  “Tomorrow,” she said.

  “Without a doubt,” he said and left the Black Moon Restaurant, feeling the slight night breeze and the possibility of a drizzle.

  He had parked his car quite illegally on Sheridan Road, a few doors down from the restaurant, and had pulled down his visor to show a passing cop who might be below his ticket quota that he should pass this one by. Normally, he would have driven straight down Sheridan to Foster, turned right and gone down to Western and then turned left for the drive to his house in Ravenswood, but this time he took the turn at Hollywood and went South on the Outer Drive. Then he turned at Lawrence and went a few blocks past the Weiss University of Chicago Hospital and made a left into some street. When he had gone two blocks, he was dead certain. He was being followed, had been followed from the moment he pulled away from the curb near the restaurant. He had seen the lights come on in the car parked about six car lengths back, behind a line of illegally parked vehicles, and watched it keep pace behind him.

  He checked the weapon in his holster, a 9mm Luger automatic. It was fully loaded and he had more than forty rounds in a box inside the television set in his living room. He also reached down to slightly loosen the tape around the S&W Short Forty just above his right ankle.

  Ever since an attack that had sent Hanrahan to the hospital for more than a month and had nearly cost his life, he had never left his house unarmed, though no weapon could have protected him from the attacker who had come on him from behind and struck him before he could react. He also had to admit to himself that when he was in the house he had needed the solace of a nearby weapon ever since he had killed Frankie Kraylaw right inside the front door.