Lieberman's Law

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  He could wait no longer. If necessary, he would also kill the man with the red hair. In a war there are sometimes innocent victims. Arafat had said that before he betrayed the Palestinians. It was still true.

  He started to get out of the car in the very light drizzle when the door across the street opened and Anne Ready and the red-haired man came out, got in the small truck, and drove away.

  Massad had no idea how long they would be gone. If they returned too soon, the gun he carried would kill them silently, a single bullet in the head before the victim had any idea of what was going on. He would shoot the red-haired man first because he was the bigger threat and then, with his body on the floor, he would question the woman who would be too frightened to lie. Then he would kill her.

  Massad got out of the car, locked the door, and limped across Dempster Street. In front of the card shop, three boys were talking about something called a Cal Ripken card and showing it around. Massad didn’t care for any sport but soccer, which he could watch dreamily and without enthusiasm on television. The three boys didn’t look up at Massad, who did his best to hide his limp in case these children were questioned later and one of them remembered a man going through the door.

  When he got to the top of the stairs, Massad could see that the apartment door was no problem. The lock was a joke. There was an apartment across from Anne Ready’s. No sound came from it. Still, Massad opened the door carefully and quietly. His search was thorough. The problem was the overwhelming vastness of the collection of photographs and negatives of Anne Crawfield Ready’s life. He went through books, boxes, held negative strips up to the window. Twenty minutes. Too long. He could simply sit and wait, gun in hand, and carry out his other plan, but he decided against it. Too much risk. Suppose they came back with friends? Suppose the police came to ask her more questions? Not likely, but possible. Massad knew what photographs the police had of him at the rally. That couldn’t be helped, but there might be more, better, something in this room that connected him directly to the crime across the street, something she had overlooked or held back.

  He could find nothing. He strewed negatives and photographs around the small apartment. Negatives and photographs are highly flammable. Massad started the fire in three places and the effect was immediate. Flames spread quickly, scorching the walls, igniting books. Massad did not care if the fire investigators concluded, as they surely would, that it was arson. Nor did he care if the police considered the photographs as a possible motive. It was Sunday. This was Skokie. It would take them days. It would all be over by then.

  Massad backed out of the blazing room, closed the door gently, and limped down the stairs as quickly as he could. There were no children standing outside when he went into the light rain. He moved slowly, but steadily back across Dempster and got into his car.

  Across the street, the window of Anne Ready’s apartment blew out, showering glass, some of it as far as the sidewalk in front of Mir Shavot, which struck Massad as pleasant irony.

  He put the car in gear, looked up at the smoke now billowing through the broken window, and started his engine. He took a right turn out of the parking lot, and a car almost ran into him but skidded to a near stop. Massad headed toward the expressway. People were already looking up at the window of the apartment. He wondered if there were some frightened Jew in the temple hearing the noise who would come to the door, see the blaze, and cower in fear of another attack.

  Massad smiled.

  Officer Edward Munger was driving his marked car down Dempster, making his rounds, double-checking on the temple, when he heard the windows of Anne Ready’s apartment break. He looked up, knowing that the woman who lived there had been questioned and had provided information to the task force. Officer Munger caught a glimpse of a man who took two limping steps and climbed into an Oldsmobile parked in the closed Shell station across from the blast. Something clicked. A report about a possible terrorist with a limp had just come in that morning or the night before. Still, Munger was about to pull into the small mall parking lot, run up the stairs, and see if there was anyone, particularly the old woman, who needed help.

  Then Munger saw a blue Ford Escort almost hit the Oldsmobile, which pulled out of the Shell station. Munger had to hit his brakes behind the Escort. The Olds sped down the street. Munger watched it for a second and then made his call on the radio. He shouted the location of the fire and added, without fully knowing why at the moment, “I’m in pursuit of the possible arsonist. He’s in a late eighties blue Olds Cutlass.”

  Munger had been a police officer for five years. Two years back home in Zachary, Louisiana, after he graduated from Grambling, and three years here in Skokie when he moved his wife and two children north, looking for some promise of advancement. The Mungers lived on the south side of Skokie just off of Howard Street on Kedvale, an area of whites, Asians, and a few African-Americans like the Mungers. The schools were good. The neighborhood was safe, and Munger was due for a promotion.

  He moved now on instinct. A car pulling out of an empty station across from the crime, the driver hardly looking jack when he was almost hit by another car, not even slowing down to see why there was a police car whose lights were now flashing two cars behind him, the profile of the driver who with a brief glimpse looked foreign. Munger had decided this was enough to warrant pursuit. If the woman was still in the apartment and in trouble, he was making a big mistake, but his radio gave him slight comfort as he followed the Olds by saying that another patrol car was already arriving at the fire site. Behind him, Munger could hear the siren of a fire engine. The closest station was only a few blocks away.

  Foot traffic on Dempster was heavy in spite of the light rain and unusual chill. People were out visiting with their families, going to movies, lunch, relatives, friends, rides to keep from being cooped up in the house with the kids. It wasn’t like a rush hour morning, but it wasn’t clear either. Munger ran his siren and weaved through the traffic past the Escort, keeping an eye on the Oldsmobile, which was now switching lanes and definitely taking chances to move ahead in the traffic. No doubt. The guy in the Olds was running. Munger felt better. He also felt a bright surge of adrenaline. He took a chance and moved into the oncoming lane, which had no traffic at the moment. He made up three car lengths before he had to pull back into the westbound traffic.

  He was right on the Olds’s tail now, siren going, lights lashing. The Olds paid no attention and suddenly made a right turn from the left lane, almost hitting a Toyota. Munger watched the Olds go down the side street. He called it in and was told that a police car was on duty at the fire site and two kids had said that the old lady and a red-headed fat man had gone out a while earlier and not come back. It appeared, according to the fire unit chief on the site, that there were no fatalities. They were trying to contain the fire and keep it from the photo store below that probably had enough chemicals, film, and negatives to cause an explosion.

  Munger took a deep breath and did what was definitely not acceptable procedure. He too turned right far too close to the Toyota, which clipped Munger’s fender sending the patrol car into a spin on the wet side street. Munger righted the car, took another deep breath, and went down the side street, trying to remember the neighborhood he was in. The Oldsmobile was going north on the next street. Munger was heading north. The Olds could do a lot of things including pulling into a driveway and heading back to Dempster. Munger’s instincts told him it wasn’t likely. The man in the Olds hadn’t seen Munger make the same dangerous move he had and probably thought there was a cop back on Dempster trying to find a way to go after him down the street. If the man in the Olds behaved the way Munger thought he would behave, he would get away from the neighborhood, from Skokie, as fast as he could. The problem was, the Olds driver probably didn’t know the streets. Munger called in his location, turned off his siren and flashing light and sped up. On these side streets no one but a woman in a yellow raincoat with a little dog on a leash was walking in the rain. The re
al danger was cars on the cross streets. At the first corner, Munger looked right and saw nothing. He took a chance, went even faster and came to the street in front of the park and the school at the T intersection. He turned right. If the Olds had kept going he would hit this T and have to turn right or left. Left might lead him into the police car that was following him. Munger bet on a right turn.

  The policeman turned and thought he caught sight of a car turning down another street a few blocks down. Munger pursued looking down each street as he went, seeing no Olds. When he got to the street where he thought he had seen a turning car, there it was, a block ahead, moving slower, inside the speed limit, trying to avoid notice. Munger drove to the next block, turned left and went north, paralleling the Olds on the next street but going well above the speed limit.

  If the timing was right … Munger made a sharp left turn, drove the short block and then turned left again. The Olds was right in front, facing him, maybe thirty yards away. The man in the car stopped. Policeman and suspect looked at each other through the swishing of their windshield wipers. The Olds began to back down the street but the driver couldn’t control the car at the speed he was trying to move. He hit a parked car and stalled. Munger gave his location on the radio, said he was in foot pursuit of the suspect, and got out, shielding himself with the open door of his patrol car, window rolled down, weapon in his dark hands leveled at the driver’s door of the Oldsmobile.

  Munger screamed, “Come out with your hands up.”

  He wasn’t sure if the suspect heard him. He reached into his car for the bullhorn, and spoke into it after switching it on, “Come out of your vehicle. If you cannot do so, open your window, and put both arms out where I can see them.”

  There was no movement from the stalled Oldsmobile but a few faces did appear at the windows of the small brick homes on either side of the street. Munger wanted to keep his weapon leveled at the Olds but he reached for the bullhorn again and said, “Will all of you in your homes get away from the windows? Move to the back of your homes.”

  He threw the bullhorn onto the seat. People moved away from the windows. Sweat mixed now with the drizzle-and Munger’s blue uniform was getting decidedly wet. He had not had time to put on his raincoat that lay in the back seat of the patrol car.

  Suddenly the door of the Oldsmobile opened. A man stepped out. He was around thirty, maybe younger, dark, wearing a raincoat, and carrying an automatic weapon of some kind in his hands.

  “Stop,” Munger shouted, taking aim.

  Massad fired. A burst of shots hit the patrol car, breaking windows and lights, penetrating the hood. One shot went right through the door behind which Munger was crouched. It missed him by the width of a palm. Munger fired as the man moved across the street, still firing his weapon. The man ran with a definite limp. And then the man stopped for an instant, but just an instant, and Munger was certain he had hit him. The next burst from the limping man sent two rounds through the door, both less than a foot from officer Munger, who felt fear and anger. This man meant to kill him. The feeling was now mutual. Munger stood up to fire. The street was empty. He looked at the sidewalk.

  Empty. He looked back at the Olds for an instant but knew that the limping man would not head for the stalled car.

  Police sirens came from the south. Munger, firearm at the ready, moved to the site where he thought he had hit the suspect. The rain had almost stopped now but it hadn’t washed away the splatter of blood on the street. The blood trailed to the right. Munger followed and when he hit the sidewalk, the bloody trail stopped. The limping man had done something to halt the bleeding, a piece of cloth, a torn shirt.

  There were passageways between houses, leading, Munger knew, to small backyards and one-car garages. It was not only insane to pursue alone with only a handgun, it was against departmental rules. Two more patrol cars came up the street from the south. Munger knew the officers who stepped out of each: One was holding a shotgun. Both were white.

  “Automatic weapon,” Munger said. “I got him, don’t know how bad. Went that way.”

  The other two officers nodded. Now he could pursue. There were families in these houses. Shotzman, the senior of the three officers on the scene, motioned to Munger and the other officers to comb the nearest cement sidewalks next to the nearest brick houses. They did. When they got to the yards, they looked both ways, weapons ready, fearing attack. There was no sign of the limping man. The officer with the shotgun panicked and fired at a bush that moved in the breeze. There was no one behind the bush. They moved to the alley. It was empty. They carefully tried garage doors on both sides of the alley, all locked. More cars arrived, marked and unmarked. Leo Benishay had heard the call in his own car. He was pulling out of the parking lot of Wok Fu’s Restaurant. He told his wife and daughter to go back inside and have a dessert. His wife knew better than to argue.

  The search went on for two hours. Doors were knocked on, roofs climbed, bushes moved. Signs of blood searched for. The limping man was gone.

  Leo Benishay told Munger he had done a good job and ordered him back to the station if he was in shape to drive and his car could still move. As it turned out, twenty-one rounds from Massad’s weapon had torn into it and the car wouldn’t budge. More rounds had hit nearby cars and made holes in the street. Munger got in the passenger seat of Shotzman’s car, happy to be alive, wondering what had happened to the limping man.

  Leo Benishay found Lieberman at his desk. The call was quick, information clear. It looked as if Massad Mohammed had torched Anne Ready’s apartment and been pursued by an officer who was sure he hit him with at least one shot. Suspect’s car had been examined. There were no weapons, no Torah. Suspect had not yet been found.

  Massad’s shoulder was bleeding and time was passing. The old couple, who said their names were Tabitha and Arnold Shultz, sat quietly on the bed while Massad sat on the floor. No one outside could see them in this room. The only problem had come when the police had knocked at the door.

  Massad had sent the woman to answer. She had seemed the calmer of the two. He had told her, “You have seen nothing. You heard some sounds, noise outside, but you and your husband are just about to watch television. You convince them, and they go away. You fail, and I kill your husband and then come out shooting, probably killing us all. You understand?”

  Tabitha Shultz had nodded that she understood and she had left the bedroom and gone to the front door. Massad had listened to her through the partly open bedroom door while he watched Arnold sitting erect and frightened on the bed. The police had gone away.

  It had been surprisingly easy to get into the Shultz house. He had simply knocked at the back door, his weapon under his coat, turned sideways to keep his wound from being seen. Arnold had immediately opened the door and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  He and his wife found out.

  These were not Jews and he had no desire to hurt them, but they were Americans and if he let them live, he wanted them afraid. Under Massad’s direction, Tabitha, her white hair in a bun, had tended Massad’s wound. The shot from Officer Munger had torn through Massad’s shoulder just below the right collarbone.

  “I can see the tip of the bullet,” Tabitha Shultz had said looking at Massad’s back when he took off his coat and shirt revealing a large handgun in addition to the automatic weapon he cradled in his arms.

  “Pull it out,” Massad ordered, aiming his weapon at Arnold.

  Tabitha disappeared and returned in a few minutes. She had pliers in her hand.

  “Heated it over the flames from the gas range,” she said. “No point in telling you this is dangerous and you should see a doctor.”

  “Take it out and put a bandage on the hole,” Massad ordered.

  She did. The pain was monstrous. Massad fought to keep from passing out.

  “I think you’ll live,” Tabitha said after bandaging the wounds. “I was a nurse in World War Two. I saw worse.”

  “You’re not afraid?” he said long after
the police had left and darkness was coming.

  “Not for me,” said Tabitha Shultz. “I have cancer. Pretty soon I’ll be in the hospital and start my dyin’. Arnold doesn’t talk much, accident years ago, hurts his throat, but he’s a good man. Never hurt anyone. Well read. Machinist, retired.”

  She touched her husband’s head lovingly, and he took her hand.

  “He’ll go live with our daughter in Des Plaines when I’m gone,” she said.

  Massad had said nothing. He had gulped down half a bottle of Tylenol and two tablets of a stronger pain reliever prescribed for Tabitha Shultz. He was afraid to take more. The bandage seeped a bit of blood, but not much. He went to the closet and found a shirt, a dark brown shirt. He put it on carefully, watching the Shultzes but sure they would give him no trouble.

  “You have a car?” he said.

  Tabitha Shultz nodded.

  “You both drive?”

  “Take turns.”

  “Good,” said Massad. “Go to your car, open the garage, start the engine, Arnold and I will come out behind you.”

  Tabitha rose, touched her husband’s cheek, picked up a small brown purse on the corner of a dresser and went out to start the car.

  Massad asked Arnold for a gym bag or shopping bag. Arnold, zombielike, went to the closet and came up with a white canvas shopping bag with a full-color picture of Michael Jordan smiling on the side. Massad folded the handle of his weapon and fit it into the bag. He took out his handgun, led Arnold to the kitchen. Arnold sat. Massad waited no more than a minute and told Arnold it was time to go. Arnold rose. The yard seemed clear as they moved to the garage. Inside, Tabitha sat in the driver’s seat. Massad told Arnold to get in the front passenger seat while he kept down in the back seat with his canvas bag and gun. Tabitha drove out into the small alley and closed the garage door with the automatic opener.