“A new incentive,” said Lieberman.
“New incentive?” asked Kearney. “What ‘new incentive?’ ”
“Sex, money, fame,” said Lieberman with a shrug. “Maybe he has a brain tumor or stomach cancer and he wants to go out in a flash, a martyr, betraying his Arab partner, killing who knows who, a bunch of uppity blacks.”
“That what you really think, Abe?” asked Kearney.
“Money,” said Lieberman. “That’s my guess.”
“Money? From where?” Kearney asked. “From who? Massad?”
Lieberman looked at the FBI agent, who paused for a long beat and finally said, “There are well-funded groups, white supremacists, who we think have been making payoffs to small groups around the country to spread anti-Jewish and anti-black feelings. It’s a small coalition. They don’t use phones that can be easily tapped. They don’t keep books. They don’t use fax machines and they don’t put anything in writing. They send dispatchers who make deals with groups like Berk’s, pay off, and disappear without giving their names or even letting themselves be seen by the people they’re paying.”
“And what makes you think that might be happening here?” asked Kearney.
“One of the dispatchers for one of the bigger, wealthier groups is in the area,” said Triplett. “Been here for about five weeks. He may be the one who brought the plan, whatever it is, and is making a pay-off to Berk, probably a personal pay-off. We’ve got an informant in this dispatcher’s group. Low ranking but reliable. We haven’t been able to pinpoint the exact location of this dispatcher yet, but he’s here and he may be handing Berk cash, maybe a lot of cash.”
“And you wait till now to tell us?” asked Kearney.
“We’re following up on it,” said Triplett. “We’re not certain this is the situation, but …”
“When do we move?” asked Tony Munoz. They all looked at Triplett, who looked at Kearney. “Do we pick up Berk now, maybe some of his people? Massad?” Munoz said. “Let ’em know we know what’s going on. Make ’em uncomfortable.”
“We’d like a felony in progress,” said Triplett. “A felony and the clear breaking of civil rights law.”
“Then we’re playing with the lives of—if we’re right—Martin Abdul and his buddies, not that I’d send flowers to their funeral,” said Rene Catolino.
“Since Detective Lieberman’s information came to us this morning,” said Triplett, “we’ve alerted Martin Abdul. He doesn’t particularly trust the federal government in general and the Bureau in particular and insists that he can take care of any problems that might arise. Our man dealing with Mr. Abdul believes Abdul thinks we’re setting up a trap for him, that we’ve concocted a government plot to kill him and blame Jews, Arabs, skinheads, whoever.”
“So,” said Lieberman, “we save him in spite of himself.”
Kearney looked at the FBI man.
“I’d like to talk to Agent Triplett alone,” said Kearney. “We’ll work out response details. This room is headquarters, direct phone line, operational with a live officer twenty-four hours a day till this is over. Detective Hanrahan calls as soon as his informant gives some information. Then we move. All my people are on duty from four till who knows when. In or near this room. Objections, Agent Triplett?”
“None,” said Triplett. “The Bureau will have a team ready. Low profile. It’s your show.”
“So I’ve been told by my chief,” said Kearney.
Lieberman didn’t look up but he read the subtext. It was Kearney’s squad that had come up with this plot. It was crazy, but it was possible. Downtown didn’t want to touch it in case it was a fizzle and the media found out. The FBI wanted a low profile for the same reason. Captain Alan Kearney was out there alone and if he read the information wrong and there was some kind of deadly attack that he missed, it would be all his. Once Kearney had been the department’s Irish hope. Then things had gone wrong and now he was high on the list of department scapegoats. He looked tired all the time and Lieberman could see that the man was in a constant battle with himself to keep from losing control.
“Agent Triplett?” Kearney said. It was the sign for everyone else to leave. They did. Rene was the last one out. She closed the door and resisted the urge to pause for a few seconds to try to catch part of the conversation. She had a date with her dentist, named Marty Stevenson. He was divorced, had a good practice, and was in great shape, ranked among the top ten squash players in the country in the over-fifty group. Marty had nice hands.
Hanrahan and Lieberman went back to their face-to-face desks near the window of the squad room. Sundays were busy. Sundays were loud. People weren’t working. They got into trouble. Hanrahan was sure someone had vomited in the squad room in the not-distant past.
“You want a coffee, Rabbi?” asked Hanrahan.
Lieberman said no and looked around the room as Hanrahan got himself a cup. Victims bleeding, angry, perps feigning innocence, maybe even a few of them innocent. Most of them in this district were Hispanic, though it had its share of blacks and poor whites. One of the black guys, a big man who looked a little like George Foreman, sat at Roper’s desk bleeding from a cut deep on top of his shaved head. He was trying to staunch it with a towel that may have been slowing the bleeding but, depending on where the towel came from, might be infecting him with viruses undreamed of except in the recesses of a Chicago district station.
Hanrahan returned. “Well, Rabbi?” he asked.
Lieberman watched his partner drink the coffee. His stomach immediately told him not to consider what he was considering.
“Took Bess and the kids to the zoo this afternoon,” said Lieberman.
“Gorillas?” said Hanrahan, knowing his partner.
“Even when they’re shitting right in front of dozens of people, locked up for no crime they committed, they have dignity,” said Lieberman. For Lieberman it was either the great apes or, during the baseball season, the Cubs. “Got a call from Lisa on the machine when we got home. She’s coming tomorrow for a few days, bringing a friend. We thought we wouldn’t see her till Barry’s bar mitzvah.”
“A friend?” asked Hanrahan, now certain that someone had vomited in the squad room and someone else had done a half-assed job of cleaning it up.
“A black guy, doctor, medical examiner,” said Lieberman. “They’ll talk to each other and I won’t understand a word they’re saying. Then she’ll tell me they’re getting married.”
“You sure?”
“Why else?” said Lieberman.
Hanrahan nodded. He knew his partner was right. “How’s the family going to take it?” he asked.
“They’ll get used to it,” said Lieberman. “They’ll talk when we’re not around, make ‘Guess Who Came to Dinner’ jokes, feel sorry for me and Bess. It’ll come. It’ll pass, not completely, but with time, it’ll pass.”
“Iris and I have a date,” said Hanrahan. “We’re going out for dinner with the priest to talk it over. Michael’s coming too. Maybe Smedley if he can get away.”
Lieberman nodded.
“I thought he was going to leave last night, Rabbi,” said Hanrahan, looking out the window at the parking lot full of cars. “But he stayed. I think he’s got a chance, but …?”
“But, indeed, Father Murphy. You think I can talk this guy into becoming a Jew?” asked Lieberman.
“The black doctor? I think you’re going to try,” said Hanrahan. “Iris won’t turn Catholic. She wants to try to have a kid. I think it’s too dangerous at her age, but she wants to try. Says we can raise him or her as a Catholic.”
“Doctor say?”
“Iris has the body of a thirty-year-old and the health of an aerobics fanatic,” said Hanrahan. “Doctor says there’s a chance we could pull it off.”
“You want to, Father Murphy?”
“I want to get a chance to do it right, Abe. This time I want to do it right.”
Lieberman nodded and wondered if a Diet Coke with caffeine would be tempting
the gods. He decided to tempt the gods. “You think Leary will come through?” asked Lieberman.
“I don’t know, to tell the truth,” said Hanrahan. “You think?”
“I had a good feeling about him,” said Lieberman. “Anti-Semitic bastard, but he’s got something that passes for a conscience.”
“If he doesn’t,” said Hanrahan, throwing his empty cup in the overflowing wastebasket, “it’s gonna come down the ladder and land on us.”
“Not the first time,” said Abe.
“Not the first time,” agreed Hanrahan.
On Sunday, Robert Kim lost his right arm. The surgery went quickly but there were complications caused by a loss of blood and shock. The surgeon, a near-retirement physician named Stringman, saved enough of a stump so a prosthetic arm could be more easily fitted and manipulated.
After almost two hours of surgery, Dr. Stringman, after changing into his slacks and sports jacket, combed his silver hair, and went out to talk to Kim’s parents and sister who listened without comment or emotion.
“I understand your son does not have medical insurance,” said the doctor.
“Cash, he can pay dollars,” said Kim’s father.
“So I understand,” said Dr. Stringman, who had heard from one of the nurses that the young Korean had been involved in a shootout and belonged to a gang. “I’m not concerned about getting paid. I was concerned about how you’d be able to manage.”
“We manage,” the father said.
The sister was young, looked angry, arms folded.
“He will live?” asked the mother.
“He’ll be fine,” said the doctor. “We’ll have him working with a therapist in a week. He’ll be fitted for a prosthetic arm and hand soon, depending on his recovery time.”
“And he will be back on the streets and holding a gun in that hand,” the sister said. “He would be better dead.”
Kim’s mother bit her lower lip and tried not to weep. She had done a lot of weeping in the past two days, in fact, during many of the days they had been in the United States. Most of the weeping had been because of her son.
“Maybe this will change him,” said the father. The sister turned away.
“When he was going under the anesthetic, he mentioned a girl,” said the doctor. “Said he wanted to see the girl with the gun. Does that make sense to any of you?”
“He was shot by a girl trying to protect her grandmother,” said the sister. “When you and your nurses and therapists spend all your hours and days saving his life, he will, at the first possible moment, murder that girl. You would be better to have let him die.”
Dr. Anthony Stringman had been performing surgery for more than thirty years. With rare exceptions, when the patient was saved and he informed the family, he was blanketed in praise and thanks. It was, he assumed, something like what an actor must feel when he takes his curtain call. There had been exceptions—particularly, one abusive husband who had been in a drunk-driving accident and whose life insurance would have been a blessing to a wife and children, and whom Dr. Stringman had saved with no thanks from the prospective widow who foresaw even more abuse in her future and that of her children.
Dr. Stringman, whose fees were high and whose sense of worth even higher, was quite uncomfortable in the presence of this sister who wished her brother dead. It was equally clear that the mother and father had rather mixed feelings about the successful surgery.
“Well,” said Stringman, looking at his watch. “I must go. I’ll check on Robert in the morning on my rounds unless some problem develops, and you can check as often as you like with the surgical nursing station. He’ll be in recovery for a few hours and then in intensive care for probably no more than a day.”
Dr. Stringman gave them his most reassuring smile of perfect white teeth. He was a big man and for years he had run into patients and families who connected his name to the University of Michigan Rose Bowl team on which he had played, a blocking back of some distinction who had been drafted by the NFL but had chosen medical school instead, a fact made possible by a father who was a very successful cardiac surgeon. It was a rare event now to be recognized for his football success.
Dr. Stringman left after patting Robert Kim’s mother on the arm. The Kims began speaking quickly in Korean before he could leave and there was clearly a disagreement among them.
The sister looked up at Stringman and said, “Can other visitors be kept away? Others besides us?”
“Well,” said Stringman. “If the patient wants to see someone and is capable of the visit, there’s not much that can be done. Visitors are generally considered beneficial and your brother is an adult.”
More talk in Korean and the father said “thank you,” extending his hand and shaking the doctor’s. Both men had powerful grips, but the strength in the Korean’s surprised Stringman.
“I’ve got to go,” the doctor said with his smile suggesting that he had more lives to save when, in fact, he was meeting his latest mistress, a young surgical nurse who worshiped him and was five years younger than Stringman’s eldest son. Stringman had told his wife that he had to spend the afternoon working out his surgical schedule for the week with members of his surgical team. She knew better but said nothing.
It was raining again when Stringman got into his car. He had a bad feeling and, in fact, had lost his desire for the assignation, but he was committed now to an afternoon of lies and the hope that he was up to the challenge of the young nurse’s lust.
Anne Crawfield Ready had a Sunday visitor, a cousin from Salt Lake City who was in town for the day and promised the family he would look in on her. He was not really a close cousin, perhaps twice removed by marriage, but he was a decent man doing his duty. His name was Carleton Jackson and he owned a garage in Salt Lake City that specialized in both body work and problems with custom-made and expensive cars. He was actually in Chicago to personally pick up a 1984 Lamborghini engine that had come out of a car wreck completely unscathed. Jackson had a customer for it in Salt Lake, the heir to a well-known line of jams, jellies, and preserves. Jackson had driven the carefully padded covered pick-up truck down and it was parked downstairs of Anne Crawfield Ready’s apartment right now.
Jackson was fifty-two and brawny, with a full head of the Crawfield family red hair, and a desire to get this chore over with as soon as possible and get on the road. The engine was well protected and covered but it was raining and there might be a leak in the customized metal rooftop on the pickup.
Jackson ate his piece of cake across from Anne at the little table, drank his coffee and told Anne about her relatives, many of whom she didn’t remember ever meeting. When they were finished and Anne had told him about her exciting visit from the police, Jackson made the mistake of asking politely, “Is there anything I can do for you before I head back, Anne?”
“Give my love to everyone. Tell them they’re welcome here any time, and take me to the new mall on McCormick to shop for an hour. If that wouldn’t be too much trouble?”
“No trouble at all,” said Jackson, seeing no way out and feeling guilty about wanting one. “One hour and then I’ll have to get on the road.”
In a car parked in the closed Shell station across from Anne Crawfield Ready’s apartment, Massad Mohammed sat with his engine off, watching. He had arrived an hour earlier. He did not read. He did not listen to music. He hardly paid attention to Temple Mir Shavot across the street, the temple he had helped to vandalize two days earlier, the temple whose sacred Torah was stored safely with the automatic weapons far from his old apartment in an empty, recently closed supermarket just off of Western Avenue. The supermarket shelves were empty. A large sign in the front window told prospective buyers who to call if they were interested.
The supermarket was in a small mall where none of the shops were open on Sunday. Massad had a key to the back door, a key obtained through threat, coercion, and an appeal to Arab patriotism from an Arab who worked in the real estate office. The man’s na
me was Fred Starr. No one in the office had the slightest idea that Fred was an Arab. Given the political climate of the United States, Fred Starr had not chosen to share this information, but other Arabs knew and one of them was Massad Mohammed.
Now, Massad sat in the car making up his mind, wondering who the big red-haired man in the flannel jacket was who had parked his car and gone up to Anne Ready’s apartment over the photography store. The photography store was closed but the baseball card store next door was doing a brisk Sunday business. There were more bicycles than there was space for on the metal rack. Kids went in and out.
Were the woman alone, as he had reason to believe she always was, Massad would have simply gone up to the apartment, made her tell him if there were any photographs of him taken from her window on the night of the vandalism of Mir Shavot. Jara had told him of the woman she had seen in the window, had told him of the photographs the police had of her. It was Jara who quickly concluded that the old woman in the window had taken the photographs and she had shared this with her brother and others, though the information seemed now to be of no use to Jara.
Massad thought that the old woman with red hair would have been frightened if he came through her door, gun in hand, scarred face, on a Sunday afternoon. She was an old woman. She wasn’t a Jew. He would take no pleasure and have little satisfaction in what he would have to do. Finding incriminating photographs or not, he would have to kill her. Then, to insure that there were no hidden negatives or photographs of him, he would burn the apartment. This had to be done today. Tomorrow, Monday, was the attack. He would have to leave as soon as the attack was successfully completed. He had a false ID that said he was a Saudi Arabian. He had some money. The FBI would be after him and if they found him, he wanted as little evidence left behind as possible. Jail didn’t frighten him. But if he were in jail, he could not carry out his lifetime mission. The old woman might have taken a photograph of him on the night they attacked the temple that he could now clearly see. It would be part of a chain of evidence. Who knew what others were already saying about him? He knew there were those who might even suspect him of being the killer of Howard Ramu and the other two Arabs. They might suspect it but they would not say it. It was too terrible a possibility to be uttered. Massad Mohammed, however, was committed to the terrible, had been since his father, mother, uncle, aunt, and cousins had been slaughtered on a dark road by a mad Jew.
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