Big Silence (30 page)

Hanrahan drove to his house determined to live with his ghosts, at least for one more night. What he truly dreaded was facing Iris.

Going home turned out to be not nearly as bad as he thought it would be. He found a parking space with relative ease, half a block from the house. He parked and walked back. He had left some of the lights on. He did that more and more recently. He didn’t want to come home to a dark house. He had no illusions that the lights would deter a professional burglar. The lights were for him.

Hanrahan went straight to the bedroom, leaving all the lights on.

He brushed his teeth, touched his bristly face, and decided to shave and shower in the morning. He put on a pair of pajamas Maureen had bought him for Christmas maybe eight or nine years earlier and got into bed, leaving one of the reading lamps on low.

In moments he felt himself sinking into sleep and remembering the name of the man he had seen in the headlights of his car. The man’s name was Suede something and he was a burglar. Hanrahan should have followed him. Too late now.

He fell asleep, and he did not dream.

L
IEBERMAN WAS NOT THE
first to wake up, which was unusual. As resident insomniac, he generally got the coffee going, put out the juice, chocolate milk, and cereal, frozen pancakes, or frozen waffles. He would bring in the
Tribune
after he had dressed and then awaken Bess and the kids with plenty of time for them to dress, eat, brush their teeth and hair, and be ready for the day. It might take two trips to get Barry and Melisa up, but he would simply inform Bess who would smell the coffee and rouse herself.

This morning was different. Barry came in to wake up his grandfather, who didn’t simply feel groggy, he felt nearly catatonic.

“It’s seven, Grandpa,” said Barry.

“Night or day?” Lieberman asked, opening his eyes.

“Day. Your hair is sticking up like a devil.”

“I feel like the devil,” Lieberman said. “I’ll be right out.”

It was Saturday. Religious school at nine for the kids, which gave them an extra hour of sleep or an extra hour to get ready. Lieberman was on the day shift for two more weekends. He had the coming Wednesday and Thursday off, if there were no emergencies related to cases he was working.

The kids and Bess were finishing breakfast when Abe came into the kitchen clean shaven, well groomed, and smelling of a mild after-shave. He had trimmed his mustache, gotten dressed, putting on his holster and gun and selecting one of his better sports jackets, a conservative blue one Bess had bought him about a year ago.

“Is my mother in California now?” asked Melisa.

“She is,” Bess said, pouring her husband some coffee.

Before him sat a bowl of cereal. Next to the bowl was a small blue pitcher of milk. The kids were eating the same thing, Cheerios. Abe now hated Cheerios. He had been a Wheaties man from the days of Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy. Abe was generous in his adding sugar. Bess, who was watching, said nothing.

“Tonight we do the poster,” Lieberman said, digging in with his spoon.

It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good, but the box had a big heart on it that implied his heart, which was never a problem, would be as red and bright as a valentine.

“I’m overnighting at Laura’s house,” said Melisa. “It’s her eighth birthday.”

“Tomorrow then,” Lieberman tried.

“I won’t be back till after eleven.”

“And I won’t be home till six,” said Lieberman. “We’ll work in a creative frenzy.”

“Creative Frenzy. Is that the one that looks like a Honda Civic?” asked Barry. “There’s not much room in the back to work on a poster, and you’ll get paint all over the upholstery.”

“That’s my kind of joke,” said Lieberman. “Bess, tell your grandchild he’s to find his own style.”

“It’s in the family,” said Bess. “Abe, remember Ida Katzman.”

“Like I remember the Alamo, the
Maine,
and Pearl Harbor. I’ll see her. I’ll talk to her. How about I’m honorary chair of the dinner? I’ll talk to Rommel about being the executive chair. He’ll like that, probably assign someone in his office to do the dirty work.”

“If that’s the best,” Bess said.

“Barry —” Lieberman began.

“Grandpa,” Barry said excitedly. “There’s some things I don’t have exactly clear about when you met Frankie Baumholtz. You asked him, what?”

“I asked him to stop trying to keep me from bringing up the subject of his Bar Mitzvah,” said Lieberman. “Unfortunately for you, dear grandson who will carry on the name of Lieberman along with your cousin Arthur, I have grown a little bump in my brain that goes off when perpetrators and witnesses try to change the subject. It always means they have something they don’t want to talk about. From now on, I think I’ll call attempts to change the subject Frankie Baumholtzes. When I get tired of that, I’ll call them Hal Jeffcoats. But I must admit you sensed the direction of my next line of inquiry brilliantly.”

“Thanks,” said Barry, working on his chocolate milk.

“Your speech,” Abe said.

“Here? Now?” Barry looked at his sister and grandmother for support, which was not forthcoming.

“If not here, where? If not now, when?” asked Lieberman.

“I have to?”

“No,” said Abe. “I’m still waking up. Later. Before or after dinner.”

“I’m spending the night at my dad’s,” said Barry.

“Tomorrow, then,” Lieberman said with a sigh. “At night you will recite your Bar Mitzvah speech while Melisa and I work on her death poster. It will be a night to be remembered.”

“Finished?” asked Bess.

The question was directed at all three of them regarding breakfast, not the conversation. All answered affirmatively and all, including Abe, cleared their places, rinsed their dishes in the sink, and put them in the dishwasher.

While the kids went for their books, Lieberman got the phone from the wall and asked Bess for Ida Katzman’s number. He dialed. The phone rang twice and Mr. Smith picked it up.

“Mr. Smith, Lieberman.”

“Good morning, Mr. Lieberman,” Smith said.

“How are you?”

“Very well,” said Smith. “Would you like to speak to Mrs. Katzman?”

“If available,” Abe said as Bess hovered in the room doing small tasks and listening.

There was a pause and Ida Katzman came on with “Abraham?”

“Abraham,” Lieberman said, loudly. “Can we get together tonight? Maybe you and me and Bess? For a few minutes?”

“Dinner,” said Ida. “Here.”

“You know what I want to talk about?”

“I’m old, but I am not unobservant,” she said. “Seven o’clock. You still have the grandchildren?”

“Yes,” he said.

“You can bring them, but there’s not much to do in an old woman’s apartment but watch television.”

“They’re going away for the night,” Lieberman said, tucking the phone under his chin and holding up seven fingers for Bess who nodded “yes.”

“See you at seven,” said Lieberman. “We’ll bring a dessert.”

“You’ll bring nothing,” said Ida. “Mr. Smith will arrange for the dinner. As I remember, you eat everything.”

“Right,” said Lieberman. “How are you?”

“I survive, Abraham. I survive.”

With that she hung up and so did he.

“I’ll take the kids,” Bess said, coming to kiss her husband.

“You smell like gardenias,” he said. “My favorite.”

“And you smell like after-shave. Here’s a bagel in a Baggie if you get hungry.”

He took the bagel and stuffed it in his pocket. He would probably eat it before he reached the station.

When the kids hurried into the room arguing about whether
Predator
was a good or bad movie, Lieberman kissed them atop the head and started out the door.

“Grandpa,” Melisa said, seriously, “you haven’t shot anyone in a long time.”

“No one in my immediate vicinity needed shooting,” Lieberman said, standing in the open door.

“Hard to believe,” said Barry. “People are shooting, shooting, shooting each other every night.”

“And we try to find them, bring them in, get witnesses and evidence, and, if we’re lucky, get them to admit what they did. We seldom have to shoot them.”

“But aren’t there times when they’re so bad, you want to do something bad back to them?” Melisa asked.

“You are, like your mother, a morbidly minded child,” Bess said.

“Sometimes,” said Lieberman. “See you later.”

“Have you done bad things?” Barry asked.

Lieberman paused at the front door and considered lying. “I have,” he said.

“A lot?” asked Melisa.

“Depends on what one calls ‘bad,’ ” said Lieberman. “We can continue this tomorrow if you’re still interested.”

He escaped before his grandchildren could pursue this line of inquiry. Maybe by tomorrow they would have forgotten their question and his answer.

He went out the door. It was colder than he thought. He went back in and put on his three-quarter-length brown coat and called toward the kitchen, “Cold out there.”

“We know,” said Bess.

The bagel sat heavily in his pocket but Lieberman didn’t reach for it as he drove, the memory of Cheerios still strong within him.

The Clark Street station parking lot was full with marked and unmarked cars. It was the weekend. It was always busy on Friday and Saturday nights, and Sunday nights weren’t much better. Some of the revelers were now being interviewed about the fights they had gotten into, the automobiles and store windows they had destroyed, the houses they had burgled while the families slept, the early-morning acts of stupidity and violence, and, finally, the domestic battles. Lieberman hated taking those, and normally he didn’t have to if no one had been seriously, even mortally hurt.

Once he had covered a call to an apartment where a Hispanic man opened the door when he knocked. The man was about forty, heavy, with a knife sticking out of his throat. Lieberman called for an ambulance while the man croaked his tale in Spanish. He had been drunk the night before. His wife had gotten a knife from the kitchen. He didn’t remember her using it. He did remember hitting her. She had left screaming and he had gone to bed. He had slept all night with the knife in his throat and had noticed it there only when he went to the toilet when he got up. The man lived. He didn’t press charges. He had beaten his wife too often to make the charges stick very firmly.

Lieberman hated domestic calls.

Hanrahan was nowhere in sight as Lieberman went to his desk and looked at his messages. One was from Kearney, who told him to come to his office the minute he came in. Lieberman didn’t even take the time to remove his coat.

“So” came a loud male voice from one of the detectives’ desks, a voice that had probably been the result of a botched tonsillectomy, “I say, nice as like now, please don’t sit on my fucking car. I swear to God, and I’m a Catholic, I didn’t hit him with the tool box till he didn’t move. I gave him a good minute.”

The man with the croaking voice was Fats Gerald, stolen auto parts dealer. He liked hitting people and God, if he was up there, had a file drawer full of the times Fats had lied in the name of his deity.

Lieberman knocked at the door. Kearney told him to come in. The captain looked clean, well groomed, and reasonably rested. He had a haircut.

“I’m meeting with brass in an hour,” Kearney explained.

“Saturday?”

“Homicide rate is up in the district,” explained Kearney. “Television station is going to pick up on it. Others will too, plus the papers, radio, alarmists, and every man or woman in the force who wants my job.”

“You need something to throw ’em?” Lieberman asked.

“It would help,” said Kearney. “If they push too hard, Abe, they know I’m likely to blow up. Then I’d be in real trouble instead of just trouble. What have we got?”

“Clark Mills murder suspect,” said Lieberman.

“I’ve got that. We’ve got a hit-and-run killing of a pregnant young woman down in Ravenswood. We got word from downtown to take it. It’s not ours, but something’s going down. We’ve got Butchie the dealer dead, murdered. Lorber’s on it. What I need is a lid on the Gornitz kidnapping. Look …”

Kearney held out the newspaper he took from his desk and handed it to Lieberman.

Front page, bottom,
Sun-Times.
“Mob Informer Gornitz Takes His Own Life.” Then a bold subhead, “Police Watch While Witness Plunges Through Hotel Window.”

There was a photograph of the hotel and one of those dotted black lines with an arrow on the bottom. The arrow led from a broken window to the sidewalk.

Lieberman handed the paper back. He didn’t bother to ask if Kearney had any idea of how the story leaked. The department, the state attorney’s office, was full of leaks and, who knows, someone might have thought it was a good idea to let it out to the public, maybe give incentive to the people holding Matthew Gornitz to let him go.

“He’ll turn up now,” Lieberman said with a confidence he did not feel.

“Dead or alive?”

“Alive,” said Lieberman.

“If anything breaks, I’ll be downtown in the assistant chief’s office with who knows who. Call me if you get anything. I think I’m in for a very long day.”

Kearney headed for the door with Lieberman right behind him.

“One more thing,” Kearney said as they stepped into the squad room with Kearney holding his thin briefcase. “You and your partner handled the Piniescu case.”

“Right,” Lieberman said with a decidedly uneasy feeling.

“Someone burned his truck last night, knocked at his door, and when he answered, they beat the hell out of him in front of his wife. He’s in Edgewater hospital. You might want to go talk to him. Any ideas?”

“A disgruntled customer?”

“Abe, Piniescu’s customers are all ancient.”

They were weaving through the squad room. A toothless woman touched Kearney’s sleeve as he moved past her.

“Lieutenant, Lieutenant, remember me? Remember me? Alberta Dwights. My boy got shot dead a year ago maybe. Now my other boy’s here and they say he shot somebody. He’s thirteen.”

“Why don’t you get your son to make a statement and tell the truth,” Kearney said, touching the woman’s arm.