Lieberman's Law

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  SEVENTEEN

  LIEBERMAN AND HANRAHAN HAD removed the flashing light. They had not turned on the siren. The man in the car in front of them—it looked like only one man—was driving much too slowly and erratically for a major felon fleeing the scene of a possible murder. Something was wrong.

  “You want to get in front of him?” asked Hanrahan. “Stop him?”

  “Let’s see where he’s going,” said Lieberman.

  And so they drove, across the expressway bridge, to Western Avenue and north directly behind the man in the car.

  “Call it in?” asked Hanrahan.

  “We are in slow pursuit of a suspect heading north on Western,” Lieberman suggested. “At present, no backup is needed. We’ll keep them informed.”

  Hanrahan made the call. It took longer than Lieberman anticipated.

  “They patched me through to Kearney,” he said when he hung up. “I got the impression this was one collar he wanted his people to get the credit for.”

  There really was no place for Massad to go. He knew he was being followed. Streams of marked police cars could appear on the street any moment. And he was growing more weak and tired with each block.

  He had one last plan, not much of one. He shared it with the Torah, asked its advice, and grinned madly when it did not answer. When he was within three blocks of where he was going, Massad got in the left lane. The men in the car behind followed. He had chosen carefully. He would do precisely the same thing he had done to elude the black policeman in Skokie.

  In spite of his near delirium, it was much easier this time than it had been the last. Massad in the left lane signaled for a left turn. So did the car behind. He slowed down and then suddenly a break came in the lane on his right. He put his foot to the floor, went through the opening and had no idea if he would hit something in the lane nearest the sidewalk.

  As it was, he didn’t. A woman with three arguing children in the back seat had slowed down so she could look at them over her right shoulder and threaten them with early bedtime. At that instant, Massad had skidded through the narrow space and down the street.

  “Son of a bitch,” shouted Hanrahan.

  “Get out, Father Murphy, and stop the traffic,” said Lieberman.

  Hanrahan got out, took out his wallet to show his shield and held up his hand. The car in the right lane came within four inches of hitting the big man before it stopped.

  “Stay right there,” Hanrahan shouted.

  The driver, a man who had been absorbed in listening to a talk show about abortion, froze. The next lane was already moving slowly. Hanrahan had no trouble stopping traffic there.

  Abe burst through, leaving his partner in the middle of Western Avenue directing traffic. The car they had been following was nowhere in sight. Since they had been going north, Lieberman made a left turn. It paid. There next to the sidewalk was the car crookedly parked behind a badly rusted Pontiac. There was no one visible in the car he had been following and the driver’s side door was open.

  Lieberman called for backup now, gave his location, and hung up. He got out of the car, weapon ready, and moved to the passenger side of the parked car, ready to fire if anything moved. It didn’t. There was no one and nothing in the car he could see. Lieberman looked around. A rundown apartment building next to an alley across the street, a boarded up supermarket on the curb side of the parked car. Lieberman moved to the front door of the supermarket. Locked tight. He tried to peer between the wooden boards that covered the windows, most of which were broken. He thought he saw a movement.

  Lieberman moved around and down past the loading dock of the supermarket stepping over bits of debris on the cracked concrete. There was a rear door. It was locked. It took two bullets to shoot the lock to pieces.

  Lieberman went in low. There was some light coming through the boarded up windows around the building. Empty aisles and shelves lined the building. He moved to his left, ready at each aisle.

  When he came to the last aisle, he saw the man crouched at the far end. He was holding something in his hands. It was aimed directly at Lieberman who half expected to be torn to pieces, but nothing happened. The man with the object was weeping softly.

  Lieberman advanced slowly and said, “Put it down.” Instead the man held it out.

  “Down,” Lieberman insisted.

  The man continued to hold the object out and Lieberman seriously considered shooting him, but something about the object, something in the dim light, caught his eye. It was blue, but not a metallic blue.

  Ten steps closer and Lieberman recognized the Torah.

  There was nothing else in the man’s hands. Lieberman moved closer and took the Torah. It took both arms. Lieberman held it awkwardly still pointing his weapon at the man who was on his knees, weeping and blinking his eyes.

  “I was going to destroy it, but you saved my life. You saved Jara’s life,” he said. “You carried us. You found the doctor. You should have this sacred object.”

  The man slumped to the floor. Lieberman carefully put down the Torah on one of the steel shelves and went to the man. He was conscious. He had a gan, which Lieberman took and shoved down the aisle.

  “Massad Mohammed?” he said.

  Massad’s eyes were closed but he smiled.

  It took fifteen minutes to get Massad to the hospital and another hour for Hanrahan and Lieberman to get to the main police station downtown where the skinhead Mongers were being booked. Pig Sticker exchanged no looks with Hanrahan or Lieberman. They had a deal. He would do his time if he had to. Hanrahan and Lieberman were confident that with the help of some people they knew in the district attorney’s office, some way would be found to get Charles Kenneth Leary out of prison very early should he be convicted along with the others.

  “A long day, Rabbi,” said Hanrahan.

  “A long day, Father Murphy,” Lieberman agreed.

  Their shift was over. Lieberman drove Hanrahan home. Michael’s car was parked in front and something was frying in the kitchen when Hanrahan went through the door.

  “Michael?”

  “In the kitchen,” his son called.

  Hanrahan hung up his coat and moved into the kitchen where Michael was at the oven, a skillet in his hand.

  “Right on time,” said Michael. “Did you know I have a great recipe for blackened fish?”

  “That I did not,” said Hanrahan, looking carefully at his son.

  “I haven’t had a drink, Dad,” he said. “I’ll get there.”

  “I’m gonna wash up,” said Hanrahan. “It’s been a long, dirty day.”

  Lieberman was home a little over half an hour later. He thought the kids might be asleep. They weren’t. They were at the dining room table listening to Marvin Alexander telling a ghost story his own father had brought from Jamaica. The children were enthralled. Melisa was in Marvin’s lap, drowsy but listening carefully. Even Lisa at the end of the table was listening to the tale, Lisa who thought anything but nonfiction was a waste of time, even in children’s books. Both children wore their pajamas. Abe wondered what sleeping arrangement Bess had made.

  Bess was at the head of the table, her back to him. She nodded back and waved, not really getting a look at him.

  “Grandpa,” Barry said excitedly. “You know what Marvin does? He cuts open dead bodies, even looks in their stomachs. He said I could watch sometime if it was all right with you.”

  Dr. Marvin Alexander looked up at Abe apologetically. Abe had seen autopsies. He had never forgotten his first, had never forgotten any of them.

  “We’ll see,” Abe said as he approached the table, stopped in front of his wife. Marvin stopped his story. Abe carefully placed the Torah on the table in front of his wife. Silence at the table as Bess looked at it and then at her husband. She stood, almost knocking down the chair, and gave Abe a hug and kiss.

  Marvin Alexander knew what a Torah was and thought this was an especially fine example of one, but what he did not understand was why his mother-i
n-law sat down again, put her forehead against the blue velvet covering and began to cry softly.

  When his doorbell rang the next morning, Eli Towser had just awkwardly finished his morning prayers and was carefully and ritually putting away the headpiece and narrow black bands that he had wrapped around his hands and fingers during his devotions before the rising sun.

  It was very early, and because he had heard about what had taken place the day before he approached the door carefully, his heavily cast arm resting awkwardly in a sling. Doing his prayers three times each day was going to prove difficult, but he was quickly learning to make adjustments.

  Eli looked through the peephole. There was no one there. Carefully, leaving the heavy chain in place, he opened the door an inch or two and tried to scan the corridor. No one. A mistake? A wrong bell rung so early in the morning and an embarrassed visitor hurrying away? Eli knew the chain could not keep out a determined violent intruder and no one had yet kicked open the door.

  He looked down and thought he saw something leaning against the partly open door. A brown package. He released the chain and opened the door. The package was shaped like many things, including a bomb. It had his name on it, printed, no address.

  Eli pulled the package in and locked the door. It didn’t have the heaviness of metal. He took it to the kitchen, took the wrapping off carefully, found a white box inside, and lifted the top, of the box.

  Inside the box was a pristine copy of Rejoice O Youth: Comprehensive Jewish Ideology by Avigdor Miller.

  Eli opened the first page and saw written in small letters in blue ink: “To Eli Towser and all of his children yet to be. Shalom. Peace. Salaam.” It was signed “Avrum Lieberman and Ibraham Said.”

  Tel Aviv, Israel, Today

  FROM TIME TO TIME, ESPECIALLY when he was at a meeting at which someone was making a speech that had been made thousands of times, Tsvi Ben Levitt would wonder what had become of those two children he had carried so many years ago. They had lived. He knew that. And they had been sent to relatives. He had tried to find them again but they had been swallowed into the Palestinian population of Jordan and he could get no cooperation from the relatives no matter how sincerely he asked.

  He remembered that night. That he had killed his cousin, that women and children and a man trying to protect his family from a madman had died. The death of his cousin, who was beloved in the community, had forced the young border guard to leave the kibbutz.

  He had moved to the city as soon as his tour of duty had ended. He had gotten a job in a factory and gone to school. He had gotten his degree in history and then two more degrees in political science specializing in and becoming a respected expert on Arab politics.

  He had married, had children, run for public office after three years of teaching, and had been elected to the Knesset, where he was appointed to committee after committee, got to make an occasional speech, and was looked on as the hope of his party, perhaps a future prime minister.

  The chairman of this committee called for further discussion. Tsvi Ben Levitt had learned to rise only infrequently at committee meetings when he spoke. Rising suggested that he would deliver a long speech to which his colleagues would listen with as much indifference as he listened to them. So, he learned to sit and control his passion. Very little came out of these committee meetings of politicians so diverse in their views as to defy reason or the belief that they could ever come up with anything upon which they could show the slightest agreement. But, he had learned, with enormous, exhausting patience, decisions could be reached, recommendations could be passed upward for discussion and possible acceptance and passage.

  Tsvi spoke calmly, emphatically, and with a great confidence that demanded at least the eyes of the men who sat around that table, pads before them, eyes weary.

  The subject was the part Israel would play in the education of Arab children in Israel, whether they were being given an inferior education, and whether more money should be spent on their education.

  Tsvi adjusted his glasses and began to present a chain of logic for improving the education of Arab children, the advantages it would have to the state. He said nothing at this point about the moral rightness of the proposed bill. He had done that many times in the past. These men of diversity would be moved only by a chain of logic that convinced them that the bill would best serve Israel and its continued sovereignty.

  So, as he spoke, Tsvi could see himself, a frail, frightened border guard carrying two children in the dark toward a distant light. He saw and felt but did not speak of it Instead he was the perfect image of professorial logic.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Abe Lieberman Mysteries

  CHAPTER 1

  BILL HANRAHAN HAD BEEN in Cleveland only once before. That was about ten years ago, when he and Maureen were still married. A Cleveland cop, a detective named Morello, had remembered when Bill was a young football hero with bad knees that had kept him out of the pros.

  Three decades ago Hardrock Hanrahan had been the fastest lineman on the Chicago Vocational High School football team. Dick Butkus, who had graduated from CVS a few years later, told Bill at a reunion that Hardrock had been an inspiration to him. And then the knee went in a practice game and so did the speed and any chance at Notre Dame or Illinois or even Wisconsin. He lasted two years at Southern Illinois University and managed a Parade magazine second team All-American spot. But the knees wouldn’t hold. He gave up to join his father as a Chicago cop, as his father had joined his grandfather before him.

  Morello, who followed college football down to the Division III teams, found out that Hanrahan was passing through to Chicago and had a few hours between planes. Morello, a guy in his late fifties maybe, with lots of dyed too-black hair and the face of a Coke can run over by an eighteen-wheeler, had driven through Cleveland showing Hanrahan the sights, apologizing here, showing pride there. Hanrahan, who had been drinking hard then and hated flying, would have preferred being in the airport bar, but he couldn’t hurt the man’s feelings.

  So he had seen Cleveland and had a few drinks on the plane.

  Morello was dead now, his name on a plaque. Line of duty. Shot by a sixteen-year-old drug dealer in a stolen car. According to Morello’s partner, the detective’s last word was “son” before the kid in the car shot him in the face. Morello’s partner had shot the kid four times. The kid died. Morello’s partner had faced charges and been put on unpaid leave for sixty days.

  Now Detective Bill Hanrahan was back in Cleveland, but he wasn’t going to have time for any sightseeing. His knees were no better but he was sober and meant to stay that way. He had gone to AA after he had let an informant die while he was drunk in a restaurant across from her apartment building. Hanrahan’s partner, Abe Lieberman, had covered for him, but Hanrahan had been a Catholic, a lapsed one to be sure, and guilt was his lot.

  A few years later he had seriously considered sliding back to the bottle when he killed a young lunatic named Frankie Kraylaw whose wife and child he had been protecting in his house. Hanrahan had set up the lunatic and lured him to the house, knowing that if he had not killed the man, the man would surely have killed the young woman and the boy.

  With the help of a young Catholic priest, AA, Iris Chen, and his partner, Abe Lieberman, Bill had slowly, shakily come through it still carrying guilt.

  Now the divorce from Maureen was complete and Bill Hanrahan hoped and expected to marry Iris Chen in a few months. He was also slowly and with some caution returning to the church. The assignment he was on was Captain Kearney’s way of giving Hanrahan a few days away from the city, away from the reminders of the past.

  It was early October. A bit cold for fall in Ohio. Hanrahan had watched the Weather Channel and was prepared with the zippered lined jacket Iris had given him. The job was simple, even boring.

  He sat in the car he had rented, heater on low, radio on an oldies station he had found by pushing the right button. The Beatles were singing “Help.”
r />   Hanrahan was a burly man who looked like a cop and didn’t find it easy to hide, but that wasn’t a problem on this one. Back in Chicago a mob witness, an accountant named Mickey Gornitz, had agreed to talk about his boss’s highly illegal operation, but only to Hanrahan’s partner, Abe Lieberman, with whom Gornitz had gone to Marshall High School. No surprise. Abe was easy to talk to, and Abe and his brother had been basketball stars in a basketball school. Articles had been written about the brothers, who were both starting guards on the same team, a team that won the city championship the three years they played. Besides talking to Lieberman, Gornitz had several conditions. One was that his ex-wife and his seventeen-year-old son should be protected until Mickey finished testifying and went into witness protection. The assistant Cook County state attorney didn’t think it was necessary. Gornitz hadn’t seen his wife or son in fifteen years, when she had walked out on him, changed her name and the boy’s, and moved to Boston. Mickey hadn’t spoken to either his son or his ex-wife since they went out the door, but he had sent her money, plenty of it. The assistant state attorney gave in. This was a big case and watching a couple of people, humoring his witness, was a small price to pay.

  A Boston cop named Persky, weary and yawning, had come on the flight to Cleveland from Boston with Gornitz’s ex and the kid. They didn’t know he was there. Persky knew a Chicago cop was going to take over, and he had found Hanrahan waiting for him when the crowd came off the plane.

  Hanrahan had shown the man his ID, but Persky had waved it away, saying “They’re yours. I’m headin’ for the bar. Got a plane back home in about an hour.”