Lieberman's Law

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  The detectives pressed themselves against the wall. Lieberman turned off his flashlight after getting a glimpse of the wounded man.

  “Kim?” Lieberman asked. No answer.

  “Kim, you’re bleeding bad, very bad. You need a doctor and if you could run or walk I don’t think you’d be in here. We’re your hope.”

  The answer came in Korean, not particularly literate Korean but neither policeman knew or cared. The voice was angry, panting.

  “In English,” said Lieberman. “And if you’re armed, throw the gun in our direction so we can hear it.”

  There was a pause and then a weak voice said, “Shit.” Metal clattered down the passageway and the gun actually bounced off of Hanrahan’s feet. Their eyes were growing more accustomed to the near darkness and Lieberman thought he could see a shape in a doorway on the left.

  “I’m turning my light on now,” said Lieberman. “If you’ve got a weapon in your hand, you die.”

  The light came on.

  Kim was huddled in a doorway that probably led to a basement. His right arm was completely red as were his pants. His shirt seemed remarkably clean.

  The detectives moved to the fallen man and looked at the wounds more carefully. Neither detective thought there was a chance of saving that arm, but they weren’t surgeons.

  “I’ll get an ambulance,” said Hanrahan.

  “Yeah,” said Lieberman, still holding the light on the young man’s arm.

  Then Hanrahan was gone.

  “Am I dying?” asked Kim.

  “I don’t think so,” said Lieberman. “I’ve seen people survive worse, much worse. Amazing what the human body can take.”

  “My arm,” Kim said. “I can’t feel it.”

  “You may never,” said Lieberman, “but there too, I’m no surgeon.”

  “A little girl,” Kim said. “And Su, Hashimi?”

  “The ones who were with you? One’s dead. The other is in very bad shape.”

  “When this gets out,” Kim said, eyes tearing with pain and humiliation, “people will laugh at me. A little girl.”

  Lieberman didn’t think people laughing at what happened would be an entirely bad thing, but he didn’t say anything.

  Kim’s breathing became more forced. Lieberman took off his belt and used it as a tourniquet around Kim’s double-wounded arm. He made it tight. Kim seemed to feel nothing. The flow of blood slowed, at least it looked that way in the beam of the flashlight. Lieberman was doing his best to keep from getting bloody. He had a decent chance of succeeding if the ambulance came fast.

  There was silence, a silence in which neither man spoke but Kim breathed a bit more slowly.

  “I’m going to sue,” said Kim.

  “Sue?”

  “I went into that store to drop off some clothes,” said Kim dreamily. “And the girl got frightened, thought we were coming to hurt her or try to get money. I told her we only wanted to drop off some cleaning. She started to shoot. I’m suing.”

  “What did you do with the clothes you brought in to be cleaned?” asked Lieberman.

  “Don’t remember,” said Kim. “Pain. Lots of pain.”

  “Why did you run and hide in here?” asked Lieberman. “You could just go to a pay phone and call 911.”

  “Afraid,” said Kim. “Thought the girl had come after me. Couldn’t shoot back straight with my left hand. Looked for somewhere to hide. Came in here.”

  “Why were you carrying the gun?”

  “I have a permit,” Kim said. “You know I have enemies. I need protection.”

  “You also have friends who might give an old woman and her granddaughter a hard time?”

  Kim shrugged.

  “I can take off that belt and do some things that would insure that you won’t be alive when the ambulance comes,” said Lieberman gently.

  Kim didn’t answer. Lieberman didn’t remove the tourniquet. They said nothing for five minutes till they heard footsteps in the dark.

  “Abe?” called Hanrahan.

  “Here,” said Lieberman, turning on his light.

  “He still alive?” Hanrahan stood over him soaking wet.

  “Mr. Kim claims that he was an innocent customer who got shot by a panicky kid,” said Lieberman.

  “Quick thinking for a dying man,” said Hanrahan.

  “And if I don’t die?” Kim said so softly that they could barely hear him.

  “Well,” said Lieberman. “We work from there.” Lieberman turned the light on Kim. The Korean’s eyes were closed but he was breathing.

  “A brain like that,” said Abe. “He could have been a computer whiz or something.”

  “Or something,” Hanrahan agreed.

  About a minute later they could both hear the ambulance siren through the lightly falling rain.

  Rene Catolino found the hairpieces El Perro had told Lieberman about. The team started with the neighborhood El Perro had given them, though none but Lieberman, Hanrahan, and Captain Kearney had known the source of the information.

  It was Kearney who had insisted that the team go out to ask and carry photographs from the rally. The telephone would be the last resort if they started running out of time. Monday was two days away. It was Saturday. Lieberman was excused from duty on Saturdays and Friday nights. Hanrahan usually covered for him as Lieberman did for his partner on Sundays, especially now that Hanrahan was actually going to services at St. Bart’s. Of course, when something big was coming down or a lead just couldn’t wait, God was asked to understand. It was both Lieberman and his partner’s belief that their respective gods did not much care if the policemen worked on the Sabbath. What they were doing was more important than the repose, worship, and solace they would have sitting or standing with their congregations.

  But it was Rene who found the hair, in the fourth stop she made. It was in a hair consultation shop for men where transplants were one of the options. Rene spoke to a receptionist who assured her that women were welcome as clients and that there were quite a few in spite of the masculine nature of the business.

  “Women are understandably more sensitive,” the full-headed red-haired receptionist old enough to be Rene’s grandmother, had said softly out of the hearing range of a lone man with a receding hairline pretending to read a People magazine in the waiting room.

  “I’m not sensitive,” Rene assured her in her most confident Chicago accent, showing her badge. “I want to see whoever’s in charge.”

  “If you’ll just have a …” the woman began.

  “Now,” said Rene. “One minute.”

  “Is it really necessary to …” the woman tried again.

  “Absolutely,” said Rene. “One minute.”

  The old woman was clearly shaken now. Rene could have handled it various ways. This was the one she had learned from her father. It seemed especially effective coming from a tough-sounding, good-looking young woman with an attitude.

  The old woman said something on the phone and hung up.

  “Mr. Churchill will be out in a moment,” the woman said, glancing at the man reading People magazine, who tried hard to mind his own business.

  The walls of the waiting room were tastefully covered with photographs of men with white, toothy smiles and heads of wonderful hair that looked as if they needed no grooming, just occasional admiration. A door not far from the receptionist opened and a man emerged. He was small, wore a gray suit, a concerned smile, and a head of dark hair that deserved a picture on the reception room wall. In fact, Rene looked back at the wall and confirmed her memory that a photo of this man was there, though in the photograph he wore a much bigger smile.

  “My office?” he said, holding the door open for Rene Catolino who stepped in.

  “I am Randy Churchill,” he said as if he expected her to recognize him.

  She didn’t, even when they were seated in his office, Churchill behind a big desk. She sat in a modern black leather and chrome chair before it. The walls were covered with bookshelves.
Identical books, large, black.

  “Styles, satisfied customers,” Churchill said, seeing her eyes scan the walls.

  His desk was completely clear except for a telephone and two photographs which were turned just far enough so Rene could see them. One was a trio in color, a small blonde girl with a ribbon in her hair on the knee of a pretty, dark-haired, smiling woman in her thirties. A young teenage boy with dark hair stood next to the woman. The other photograph was much smaller, black and white, an old man and woman.

  “Last week,” said Rene. “Six, maybe seven wigs …”

  “Hairpieces,” Churchill jumped in.

  “Hairpieces,” she said. “Six or seven. The buyer wanted good ones. Wanted them without you seeing the people they were for.”

  “Officer …”

  “Catolino,” she said. “Six or seven hairpieces. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  “You have a definite tendency toward abrupt behavior.”

  “You haven’t seen my behavior yet,” she said. “Just a small sign of my attitude.”

  “You know who I am?” he asked, sitting up.

  “Winston Churchill,” she said.

  “Randy Churchill,” he said. “Most people recognize me from the ads on television. You know, I was my first customer. I show a picture of me when I was bald.”

  “Different guy did it first,” Rene said impatiently.

  “Well, he did it first, but mine is different. He …”

  “Six or seven hairpieces,” said Rene.

  “Our services, I’m afraid, are confidential,” he said. “You can understand that.”

  “You’re no lawyer, you’re no doctor, you’re no private detective, or psychologist,” she said. “You’re not even a fucking chiropractor or acupuncturist. I leave anything out?”

  “Your manners,” he said, obviously shaken.

  “These photographs,” she said, reaching for the one of the woman and two children. “Your family?”

  “Well … actually, no. A member of my staff. I’m very fond of them.”

  “No wife. The old man and woman?”

  “I bought it,” he said with irritation and just a bit of bravado in the presence of this aggression.

  “Hairpieces,” she repeated.

  Churchill touched his fine head of hair to be sure it was still there.

  “If I have to take you to the station or we have to start calling your lawyer, I’m going to be very upset because lives may be on the line here, and the clock is moving, and your hair will definitely suffer.”

  Churchill sagged, defeated. “Seven pieces,” he said softly. “Very good ones. All male. All dark. Since I wasn’t allowed a fitting, I didn’t give my usual warranty. Payment was in cash.”

  “Paid well?” Rene pressed on.

  “Yes,” Churchill admitted.

  “With a warning to keep your mouth shut about the sale?” she said.

  “I don’t want to get in trouble with the police,” he said. “I have a sensitive clientele.”

  “Who bought them?”

  “A man, in his thirties,” Churchill said.

  “Bald?”

  “No,” said Churchill. “Full head of hair. All natural. I can tell.”

  “Describe him,” she said, taking out her notebook.

  Churchill shrugged. “Hard to remember.”

  “It’s your job to remember how people look before and after,” she said, “Exercise your professional skills and give me a goddamn description.”

  “I intend to report your bellicose behavior,” Churchill said.

  “Bellicose,” Rene repeated, pursing her lips and nodding her head in appreciation of his vocabulary. “Describe the person who bought the hairpieces.”

  “Dark, not very tall. Male. Slight accent perhaps.”

  “What kind of accent?”

  “How do I know?” Churchill said with a sigh.

  “Look at these photographs,” she said placing the pile from the rally on the desk facing Churchill. “Slowly. Stop if you see anyone familiar, even if it’s not the man you sold the hair to.”

  Churchill sighed and began to go through the photographs. He started to go through them quickly. Rene told him to slow down and look carefully or they could do it in the peaceful solitude of an interrogation room.

  Churchill went more slowly. There were thirty-six photographs. He pulled out three and pointed to a man in the small crowd.

  “Him,” he said. “At least I’m sure in that photograph and fairly certain in this one. He’s moving in the last one but I think …”

  “Thanks,” said Rene, gathering the photographs.

  “I won’t be asked to testify about this, will I? I mean if this man is in trouble?” asked Churchill as Rene stood.

  “It’s possible,” she said. “But I doubt it.”

  “You mean,” he said, “there isn’t much chance of my getting involved in this? After all, all I did was sell a man some hairpieces.”

  “He must have been a real sweetheart,” she said.

  “It was not comfortable to be with him,” Churchill admitted. “He was very determined and filled with something, maybe rage. He told me distinctly not to discuss this transaction and I had a strong impression that I was being threatened with great harm. He actually picked up the photograph of Santiago’s family and looked at it when he told me to keep the transaction very private.”

  “Thanks for your help,” Rene said. “I’ll know where to find you if we need you.” She went out the office door, closing it behind her.

  Randy Churchill began to shake. He had already started perspiring and he could feel his hairpiece growing warm and slipping back. He had four hairpieces, all human hair from the same person, each a different length to simulate daily growth and authenticity.

  Randy had been trained as a barber. Barbers didn’t make money. He had worked briefly as a hairdresser, but he simply didn’t have the eye or the talent. He had not exactly grown rich in the hairpiece business but he was far from poor.

  What he wanted most, however, was to remain among the living.

  THIRTEEN

  “THIS MAN,” LIEBERMAN SAID, showing Jara Mohammed the clearest of the three photographs taken at the rally.

  They were seated in a coffee shop on Hyde Park Boulevard, the two policemen and the young Arab girl. Jara drank nothing. The policemen drank coffee.

  She looked down at the photograph briefly and then up at the Jew policeman.

  “Will you tell us who that man is?”

  “I don’t know,” she said defiantly.

  “He’s your brother,” said Hanrahan. “A few years younger. Big boy. Walks with a decided limp.”

  The identification had been made by Ibraham Said. The problem was that the known address of Massad Mohammed was, as the police had discovered before dawn, empty and abandoned except for a few cardboard boxes and some rusting kitchen utensils. The landlord, a defensive and angry old man, did not know when Massad had moved out, but he was sure he wasn’t renting to any more Arabs, providing the goddamn government didn’t force him to.

  The girl didn’t answer. She pushed the photograph back toward the policemen and sat erect. There were few other customers, mostly students, in the coffee shop. They sat in a high-backed wooden booth and talked in a normal tone.

  “Your brother bought seven hairpieces last week, expensive ones,” said Lieberman. “Have any idea why?”

  It was just a flicker, perhaps the hint of a tic but both policemen noticed it.

  “What bald men does your brother know?” asked Hanrahan.

  “Or women,” added Lieberman.

  “He is my brother,” Jara said with a sigh. “We seldom speak. I do not know his friends.”

  “Skinheads,” said Hanrahan softly. “White supremacists. They hate Jews, blacks, Asians, and Arabs. They hate anyone who doesn’t claim to be white, Christian, and as bigoted as they are. To put it simply, these sons-of-bitches hate you and your brother. Why is he
buying them hairpieces?”

  “It is a mistake,” she said, a few more signs of nervousness appearing, primarily her look downward at the table and the deliberate slowness of her words, as if she were trying to believe what she was saying.

  “No,” said Hanrahan. “Reliable source in a group of skinheads, positive ID from the people who sold the hair. You ask me, your brother is planning to do something very stupid.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “He wouldn’t …” Her voice trailed off and then picked up to say, “He is all that is left of my family. Our politics are different, but we are a family.”

  “How are your politics different?” Lieberman asked.

  She looked at him, bit her lower lip. She was, Lieberman thought, a remarkably beautiful young woman.

  “I believe in the political or military destruction of the State of Israel,” she said, looking directly at Lieberman. “I believe Arab nations should band together and fight war after war with Israel till we win. I am against the PLO land agreement. The land is ours, it should never have been an empty garbage sack for countries to get rid of their Jews who would want ever more land.”

  “So you hate Jews,” said Lieberman.

  “No,” she said. “I hate Israelis. I do not hate Jews. I told you, my motives are political, never to let the world forget that we will get back that which was stolen from us, that we exist.”

  “Terror,” said Lieberman.

  “I don’t believe in killing,” she said. “I have seen enough killing. A day or two ago after the rally, after Howard Ramu’s murder, I advocated local violence. I thought about it. Then I changed my mind. Attacks on American Jews are not the answer. That will only make it worse. Innocent Jews will suffer and then innocent Arabs.”

  She looked at an original painting on the wall not far from where she sat. It was abstract, light, something bright and yellow in the corner like the sun.

  “When I was a child,” she said, “my family was massacred by an Israeli, a doctor. We were on our way home. Our family, my uncle and his family. The Israeli had an automatic weapon. We had no chance. He didn’t know us, knew only that we were a van filled with Palestinians, little children. The Israeli shot me. I was six. He shot me in the shoulder and was going to shoot again and then … an off-duty Israeli border guard, just a boy wearing glasses, shot the mad Jew. The madman went down, the kepuh on his head rolled into the darkness, blown by a night breeze I didn’t feel. The Israeli soldier was crying. He checked my wound, wrapped it quickly with something from his pack, looked at my fallen, dead father and went back to the van. I remember that one of the lights of the van was still on, flickering, trying to stay alive. The soldier came back with my little brother in his arms. Massad’s face was covered in blood. He still wears scars from the overturning of the van. The border guard said nothing. He was not a big man but he picked me up on one shoulder and carried my brother on the other. I don’t know how far we walked along the road and then down a smaller road, one mile, two. I remember a breeze and the weeping of the soldier who kept telling us in Hebrew that we would be all right.”