Lieberman's Law

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  It was the only subject over which he and Iris had nearly quarreled. She had been in bed in the living room in his house and found it difficult to make love with a large handgun within reach. She understood that he was a policeman, but she preferred not seeing the weapon. He had relented and placed it in the drawer next to the sofa bed in the living room where they were lying. Hanrahan couldn’t bring himself to take Iris to the bed and bedroom he had shared with Maureen. He, himself, frequently slept on the sofa bed, leaving the bedroom exactly as it had been when Maureen left him. However, he had begun to sleep more and more nights in the bedroom upstairs since he had murdered Frankie Kraylaw in the living room. The boys’ rooms had been used several times, the last by Frankie Kraylaw’s wife and little boy before Hanrahan had lured crazy Frankie into the house and killed him. Hanrahan had confessed his sin to Father Parker, but the Whiz had given him too light a penance and had been too understanding. If there were a God in a heaven somewhere, he and William Hanrahan were destined for a long talk about good and evil. Hanrahan had also hinted to Lieberman about what had happened. Lieberman had refused to use the word “murder,” instead he had said “accident” and once he had said “execution.”

  Father Parker had given his view on the matter after Hanrahan had confronted the priest with what he viewed each day of his life, each torture and murder of a small child, often by the child’s own parents, each rape of an old woman. Why didn’t God save them? What did it prove or accomplish? Why was there a Frankie Kraylaw?

  “The way I figure it,” Parker had said in his office, actually holding a football in his hands, a football full of the names of teammates Parker had played with on a winning Rose Bowl team, “God gives us free will, otherwise we’re just puppets. He gives us free will and choices. We can do good. We can do evil. The ones who do evil may not know that what they are doing is wrong, is evil. They may say, and some have to me, that they killed the innocent wife or child to send them to a better life in heaven at God’s side. They may say that they have no choice, that something inside them, childhood abuse, a horrible, uncontrollable impulse, bad genes, whatever, made them do it. Some greater good, the saving of America, made them plant the bomb.”

  Hanrahan had looked up at that one.

  “No, no one has confessed a bombing to me,” Parker had said, throwing the ball to Hanrahan seated across the desk. “But I’ve seen as you have and I’ve heard. God created us and stands back, watching us make choices, exercising our will, often to do wrong or evil. We can make up excuses, blame others, say we are acting for an ultimate greater good, but one day we’ll stand in front of our savior and have to explain.”

  “And he’ll send the sinner to hell?” asked Hanrahan throwing the ball back.

  “I don’t know if there is a hell or what it might be,” said Father Parker. “I believe there is judgment, on earth and after death. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be wearing a tight collar on Sunday, conducting masses, visiting the dying, blessing the newborn, listening to confessions, and talking to friends and parishioners over this table.”

  “And giving absolution,” Hanrahan reminded him.

  “Ultimately, I think that’s God’s business,” said the priest. “I do it and then He has the power to overrule me. Like the Supreme Court.”

  Hanrahan wasn’t sure that he felt better after that conversation. When God gave man free will, why did he also give it to monsters and madmen like Frankie Kraylaw? But, then again, what was free will if it was not a choice between right and wrong, good and evil. It was too much for Hanrahan. He had decided that he was going to go on being a cop, going after the bad guys—for he firmly believed in bad—and giving God a helping hand whether he asked for it or not. William Hanrahan had free will, didn’t he?

  There were a lot of ways to handle the situation he was now facing. He could park, go into a random alley or passageway, find a place to hide, and step behind whoever was following him if the person or people in the car decided to come after him. He could drive to the station, see if they parked, get some help, and confront his pursuer or pursuers. What he did was drive home, inside the speed limit, down main streets, checking his rearview mirror. But the guy stayed back. He could tell that the driver was a man. By the time he parked in front of his house he could tell that the driver was alone. There were plenty of spaces. The overflow from Ravenswood Hospital didn’t spill as far as Hanrahan’s house, though the hospital was expanding. A parking lot had gone up. Hanrahan had a garage in back, but he rarely used it except for winter nights when there wasn’t much or any snow and the temperature dipped below 15.

  The follower parked ahead and turned off his lights. Hanrahan picked up his mail from the box, opened his gate, and went up to his door. The nightlight was on. It was always on. The rest of the house was dark. Still, no one got out of the car, which he could now see was probably a Mazda. Hanrahan went inside, dropped the mail on the table next to the door, and took off his jacket. He turned the rocker toward the front door and sat in it with his gun in his lap.

  He sat, gently rocking in the dark, listening, amazed that he didn’t want a drink, frightened because he wanted whoever it was—some ex-con he had sent away, some gang member he had slighted, someone a cop offends and forgets—to come through the door as Frankie Kraylaw had. God help him, Hanrahan felt a little mad, as if he could shoot another bad guy coming through his door. He would understand, understand that God had chosen his fate, God had decided that William Hanrahan, planning a wedding, drinking no more, would have to kill, the very thing he no longer wanted to do, the very thing that had almost caused him to leave the force. But where would he go? What would he do? Be a security guard with a brown uniform? Or, if he was lucky, no uniform at all, sitting up all night at the desk in the lobby of some big company, watching surveillance monitors, and picking up a check every week?

  The doorbell didn’t ring. No one knocked, but Hanrahan heard the almost inaudible footsteps, heard the person pause in front of the door, heard someone insert a key in the lock and try to turn it, then remove the key. The lock had been changed with Frankie Kraylaw’s death. All the locks had been changed.

  Whoever it was hesitated and then rang the bell. Hanrahan got up, weapon in hand, and moved to the door. He opened the deadbolt and went back to the rocker.

  “Come in,” he said. “It’s open.”

  The handle turned. A big man filled the doorway with the streetlight behind him. “Can I turn on the light?” the man asked.

  “Turn it on, slowly, carefully,” Hanrahan said.

  The man closed the door and moved to the switch in darkness, giving it a click. The hall light was not bright, but it was enough. Standing before William Hanrahan was Michael Hanrahan, his son. The two men looked alike. Michael was thirty, as big as his father, wearing slacks, a white shirt, and a lightweight black jacket. He looked at his father who placed his gun on the table next to the rocker and rose, not knowing what to do. He walked forward and held out his hand. His son took it and they shook. Hanrahan wanted to hug his son but he held back. The last time he had seen him, almost two years ago, the meeting had been brief, cold. Hanrahan had been drinking, holding it well, but drinking. Michael knew, and he knew that his father knew that he knew. And Michael had not come to the hospital even when it had looked as if his father were dying.

  “You followed me from the Black Moon,” said Hanrahan, awkwardly facing his son.

  “Black Moon?”

  “The Chinese restaurant on Sheridan,” Hanrahan explained.

  “Before that, from the station,” said Michael, his blue eyes looking around the house in which he had once lived. “Nothing’s changed.”

  “Nothing,” said Hanrahan and thinking, “Everything has changed.”

  “In the whole house, my room, Bill Jr.’s?”

  “The same,” said Hanrahan, looking at the room.

  “Looks clean,” said Michael.

  “I keep it ready,” said Hanrahan.

&n
bsp; “What for?”

  “For a moment like this,” said Hanrahan.

  TEN

  THEY SAT AT THE KITCHEN table, father and son, surprised at how quickly they had disposed of the history of half a decade.

  “Seen your mother?”

  “Yes, she’s fine. Just got promoted. Still an office manager but a different office.”

  “How does she look?”

  “Great,” Michael had said, standing next to his father who had ground coffee beans in a little white Braun machine. It already smelled of deep darkness as it brewed.

  Michael remembered the last machine, the one his father had let him press to grind the beans into a fine powder. His father had nodded his head when the powder was fine enough and Michael had stopped solemnly and poured the dark, wonderful smelling powder into the basket of the coffee machine. When he was old enough, Michael had filled the back of the machine himself with distilled water kept especially for making coffee.

  “Your brother?”

  “The same,” said Michael, meaning he still wants to have nothing to do with you and blames you for the breakup of the family.

  “His job? He still with that law firm?”

  “No,” said Michael. “He left there over two years ago, moved to California.”

  “Kids?”

  “You mean Billy? No. Not me either.”

  “Work OK for you?” asked Hanrahan as they stood listening to the coffee perk.

  “It’s OK. Minneapolis is a good place to live. I keep trying to talk Mom into moving there, but …”

  “Chicago’s her home,” said Hanrahan. “And Hallie?”

  “Holly,” said Michael. “My wife’s name is Holly.”

  Hanrahan had met his daughter-in-law only once. She was small, dark, and pretty, but, given that it was the funeral of Hanrahan’s mother, the meeting was brief and formal.

  “And you?” asked Michael.

  “If you mean the job, fine. If you mean the drinking, I haven’t had a drop in almost two years.” The coffee was ready. Hanrahan poured two cups, black and then remembered, “You like lots of sugar.”

  “Lots of sugar,” Michael agreed as they sat and Hanrahan placed a spoon and the sugar bowl in front of his son. Michael recognized the bowl. It had belonged to his grandmother.

  “One day you just stopped?” asked Michael.

  “Drinking? Yeah. One day my drinking got a woman killed. I stopped. With a lot of help from AA and Iris and a man named Smedley Ash,” said Hanrahan, taking a sip. It was hot and good, his best flavored beans.

  “Ever get the urge?”

  “When things get bad,” said Hanrahan. “I fight it. If I can’t fight it alone, I get help. I’ve been needing less help, but once in a while …”

  “Like?”

  “I killed a man, a crazy man who wanted to hurt a young woman and a child,” said Hanrahan.

  Michael looked at his father the way he had when he was a boy and overheard Hanrahan refer on the phone or to his mother to some act of violence that she blamed for his drinking.

  “A man can’t see what I see, do what I do, and not have a drink or two,” he had once said.

  “Abe doesn’t need a drink or two.” Michael’s mother had replied.

  “I’m not Abe,” Hanrahan had answered, raising his voice. “And I’m not Harvey who got his ass kicked off the force for being drunk. Most cops drink. I’m an Irish cop. I drink a little. For Lord’s sake, Maureen, I’m not a drunk.” She had not answered him and Hanrahan had muttered something and gone back out slamming the door, unaware that his son was listening in the kitchen, seated just about where he was sitting now.

  They drank their coffee in silence. Hanrahan waited and then said, “Do I guess or do you tell me?”

  “Why I’m here?” asked Michael, putting down his coffee and looking around the room. He grinned. There was no mirth in it. “I used to hate you.”

  No news in that, thought Hanrahan who remained silent, drinking.

  “I hated seeing you drunk, hated when you brought me some piece of junk candy and breathed on me and smiled. I hated the gun you wore, and was afraid every night you’d come home really drunk and shoot Mom, or shoot me and Bill. I hated you for not being a father.”

  “Did I ever hit you, Michael?”

  “Never,” Michael agreed, but this was old territory.

  “About five years ago, maybe a little more or less,” Michael said, not looking at his father, “I started to drink. Not much. A little. Drinks with the people from the office. Drinks at my boss’s house. Then a drink or two when I got home. Holly commented on it long before I realized it. We had a fight. She threatened to leave me. I insisted that I wasn’t a drunk, that I did perfectly well at work and no one complained. I looked at her and saw Mom. I listened to myself and heard you. And then I started to blame you. I drank because I couldn’t get over what you’d done to the family. I drank because it was in my genes. I inherited it from you, your size, your eyes, your alcoholism. And I hated you more than ever.”

  Hanrahan took another sip of coffee, not looking away from his son.

  “I followed you from the station to get up enough nerve to talk to you. I saw the Chinese woman.” Michael had already said this, but Hanrahan didn’t interrupt him. “Is she a good woman, like Mom?”

  “She’s a very good woman,” said Hanrahan. “And I’m lucky she’ll have me. We’re gonna get married and I’d be pleased if you and Holly would come. I’ll ask Bill, Jr., but …”

  “I’ll ask him,” said Michael. “But I don’t think he’ll come.”

  “You stopped hating me?” asked Hanrahan.

  “Yes, and I started maybe understanding you. Or maybe I kept hating you and started hating myself, too. Put us on the same field or in the same bar.”

  “And what is it you came down from Minneapolis to ask me?”

  “I told you. I think I told you. I’m here on business. Company business,” said Michael, forcing himself to look at his father.

  It was in his father’s blue eyes. That man had heard hundreds of lies from the best of liars, liars who often believed their own lies. Michael was not a good liar. “OK,” he said finally with a sigh. “I’m on a long vacation, four weeks. Company shrink recommended it. Holly didn’t want to come with me. She’s got a job and she’s just about had enough of me. Did you ever hit Mom?”

  “Never,” said Hanrahan. “I broke furniture. I hurt myself.”

  “I hit Holly,” said Michael. “Last week. She just looked at me surprised. It was a slap in the face. She didn’t even reach up and touch the pain. She just looked at me as if I were someone else. I’m gonna lose her, Dad.”

  “You want to stay here, with me, for four weeks?” asked Hanrahan. “In your old room?”

  Michael nodded.

  “And you want me to help you start getting sober?”

  This time Michael said, “Yes.”

  “You’ll come to a couple of meetings with me, AA, and decide if it’s what you need,” said Hanrahan. “I can talk to you, give you the number where I can be reached, give you projects around the house to keep you busy, but this is a fight that’ll go on your whole life, Michael. There aren’t any quick and sure cures.”

  Michael nodded that he understood and Hanrahan thought he just might, a little.

  “I’ve got to tell you this, Michael. Tomorrow morning there’ll be a sign in front of the house. I’m selling. Too many memories, good and bad. They’d haunt me. They’d start haunting Iris.” There was a long pause and then he continued, “I kept this house looking like this all these years in the hope your mother would come back. At first I hoped she’d come back to stay. Then I hoped she’d come back to visit, pick something up, who knows, and see that I’d kept the house almost like a … but like the bottle, I’ve got to put it away.”

  “I understand.”

  “You have a bag or two in the car?” asked Hanrahan.

  “I’ll go get ’em,” said Michael, gettin
g up from the table and starting toward the door. He paused, turned, and said, “Thanks, Dad.” And then he was gone.

  Twice in the course of a few minutes one of his sons had called him “Dad.” More memories. He wasn’t sure what he could do for Michael. Just be there. Bill Jr. would have been a bigger problem. As stubborn as his grandfather, as frail and good-looking as his mother. Bill Jr. seemed the more likely one to go for the family bottle.

  The phone rang while Michael went for his luggage. Hanrahan picked it up.

  “Hanrahan?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pig Sticker. Twenty minutes. You know the little park on Rogers not far from Clark?”

  Hanrahan knew it. The neighborhood was almost all black and Hispanic. Not likely another Monger would pass by and see him. Very likely a hostile local gang might be cruising and spot him. That would be big trouble, but obviously not as much trouble as Charles Kenneth Leary feared if they met in a place where another skinhead might see him talking to a cop.

  “I know the place.”

  “Don’t take your time,” said Leary.

  He hung up and Hanrahan called Lieberman. Barry answered and put his grandfather on.

  “Father Murphy, what’s up?”

  “Pig Sticker wants to talk, little park on Rogers near Clark, twenty minutes.”

  “I’ll be there,” said Lieberman.

  “Oh, Rabbi, my son Michael is visiting me for about a month. I thought …”

  “We’ll have both of you over for dinner.”

  “Maybe we can all get together at the Black Moon,” said Hanrahan. “Iris’s father wants to talk old movies with you.”

  There was a lot more that Lieberman wanted to ask. But they both hung up as Michael came back into the house with two suitcases.

  “Packed heavy,” he said. “Don’t know if I’ll be able to get back in the apartment when I get back to Minneapolis.”

  Hanrahan stood up. “I’ve got to go out,” he said. “The job.”

  Michael nodded and said, “I’ll be fine, watch a little television, get comfortable.”