Big Silence (6 page)

Sitting here with Mickey wasn’t too bad, but Abe really had other things on his mind.

“I remember him,” said Lieberman, sitting across from Mickey on an old fading sofa.

“Crazy guy,” Mickey said, reaching into his pocket and then pulling it out as he remembered that he no longer smoked. According to Mickey, he had quit more than seven years ago. Old habits. “Took his clothes off on graduation night and stood in the middle of Roosevelt Road directing traffic. He wasn’t even drunk. What happened to him, Abe? You know?”

“He got crazier,” said Lieberman. “He’s dead.”

“I wonder what made me think about Hal,” Mickey said, looking down at his lap. “So?” he asked, looking around the room and slapping his legs.

There was a young cop in plain clothes standing next to the door. Another cop, also in civilian clothes, stood outside in the hall pretending to read the
Sun-Times.
An investigator from the state attorney’s office was in the bedroom watching a monitor that showed the hotel’s lobby.

Mickey had spent a life of anonymity. Old acquaintances didn’t recognize him in the street, and when he ran into someone from high school or college and stopped them to say hello, it was clear to him that he was not remembered.

Now all that had changed and one of the Lieberman brothers, half of one of the best back-court duos in the history of Chicago high school basketball, was sitting across from him, talking about old times.

Mickey had been an accountant for his father’s paper box factory when he got out of the University of Illinois and then, when his father died and the factory went into bankruptcy, Mickey had gone to work for Jimmy Stashall. As Jimmy Stashall’s bookkeeper, Mickey had led a life of relative comfort, though a solitary one since his wife took their son and left him more than a decade ago. Still, Mickey had been resigned to his lot. Then something, who knows what, maybe the need to change things around, stay ahead of the game, had gotten to Jimmy Stashall, who decided that Mickey Gornitz was getting a little old and was maybe a little dangerous because he knew too much.

The state attorney’s office had picked up Mickey and played him a tape of Stashall’s number-one man, Carl “the Fish” Cataglio, telling someone unknown that Mickey Gornitz was beginning to smell funny, that he needed a bath. The guy he was telling it to simply said, “Yes.”

The state attorney couldn’t use the tape in court, but he used it on Mickey, who understood exactly what the conversation meant. Mickey’s lawyer made a deal and Mickey never even went back to his apartment to pick up his clothes and a toothbrush. Witness protection in exchange for copies Mickey had kept on floppy disks of Stashall’s illegal activities. Mickey would also have to appear on the stand to testify that the disks were authentic.

Now came the waiting. Convinced that Stashall had gotten to the first lawyer, Mickey fired his lawyer and got a new one. Living in the hotel room for three months, talking and talking and talking to lawyers and cops and prosecutors and the FBI, Mickey was beginning to go a little mad. Everyone expected it. Then one day Mickey insisted on talking to Abe Lieberman and no one else. He knew Lieberman was a cop.

Mickey got what he wanted, including, he assumed, protection for his son and ex-wife.

A television was on across the room. The sound was off. It looked like C-Span.

“Hal Litt’s dead,” Mickey said, shaking his head at the more than forty-year-old memory. “One of the greatest. Best all-around player I ever saw, like French silk pie to play with, wasn’t he? Could have, should have been the best Jew in the NBA. What was he? Six seven? Should have gone to a major college. Would have set records up the ass.”

“Hal was stupid,” Abe said, reaching for a cup of coffee Mickey had leaned over to pour for him. “A basketball idiot savant. Genius on the court. Couldn’t read past fifth-grade level. Couldn’t add numbers over the low hundreds.”

“Couldn’t carry numbers,” Mickey said, handing Abe the coffee cup. “I tried to help him. You know that? With you, Hal, Mel Goldman, your brother Maish, and the black kid …”

“Alvin Garrett,” Abe supplied.

The coffee was bad, very bad.

“What happened to him?” asked Mickey.

“Went to Pepperdine,” said Abe. “Got a Ph.D. Heads a department out there.”

“And Hal’s dead.”

Abe shrugged.

“He worked in Fetterman’s bagel bakery. Went to park district games at night. Looked older than any of us.”

“Time,” Mickey said with another shake of the head. “How’s Maish?”

Abe said his brother was fine.

“Still owns the T&L on Devon?” Mickey asked, glancing at C-Span and over at the cop at the door.

“Still,” said Abe.

“Okay,” said Mickey sitting back. “Now we talk about what you’re really here for. The days of the Marshall Commandos can wait for better times.”

“Bad news,” said Lieberman.

“How bad?” asked Mickey, the small smile still in place, hands clasped together white in frightened mockery of prayer.

“Someone killed your ex-wife,” said Lieberman.

“The boy?” asked Mickey. “Did they …?”

“We don’t know,” said Lieberman. “Happened just outside of Dayton. Motel. We were watching. You can’t be one hundred percent sure of protecting people who are out …”

“Stashall’s got him,” Mickey said, standing up and running his hand through nonexistent hair. He began to pace.

“Maybe,” said Lieberman.

“There’s no maybe,” Gornitz said, pacing around the sofa. “How did they do it?”

“She was shot during the night. Window smashed. Cop guarding them came in, just missed them. Your son was gone.”

“I don’t care about her,” he said. “She was a bitch, took my kid, told him lies about me, tried to make him hate me, kept me almost broke.”

Which Lieberman knew was a lie, at least the part about his ex-wife keeping him almost broke, but he sat quietly listening.

“She was a warning,” he said. “That’s how much I can count on you people. They told me that my kid would be protected and …”

“They won’t kill him,” Lieberman said.

“I know that,” Mickey said, pausing and glaring at Lieberman. “I shut up, Matthew lives. Happens fast, doesn’t it, Abe? One minute we’re talking basketball and the old days. The next …”

“Happens fast, Mickey,” Abe said, flashes of his own nightmares held back.

“Now we —” Mickey began, but he didn’t finish.

Two men came through the door to the hallway. One man was short, stocky, black, head shaved and wearing a well-pressed dark designer suit. The short black man was about forty-five and not happy. At his side carrying a briefcase was a thin, towheaded white man in a nondesigner suit. The towhead looked thirty at the most.

“What the fuck is going on here, Lieberman?” asked the stocky black man who was an assistant state attorney and whose name was Eugene Carbin, Eugene A. Carbin. The “A” was for ambition.

“Kearney sent me,” Lieberman said without getting up.

“And I suppose you told …”

“He told me,” Mickey said, standing behind the sofa.

“You should have checked with our office,” Carbin said, adjusting his tie. He didn’t look comfortable in the tie, possibly because he had so little neck.

“I assumed Captain Kearney had …”

“You assumed shit,” said Carbin, motioning for the thin towhead to move to the table near the window.

“Abe stays. He’s the one I talk to,” said Mickey.

“Okay,” said Carbin, holding out his hands. “We’ve had that straight for some time, but that doesn’t give Detective Lieberman the right to keep my office uninformed …”

“What the hell difference does it make who tells me my ex-wife was murdered and my son kidnapped?” Mickey shouted.

Unspoken was the likelihood that Carbin may well have withheld the information indefinitely.

Lieberman leaned forward and drank some more of the awful coffee. He exchanged looks with Carbin and they understood each other. If Matthew Firth was kidnapped, by Stashall or by someone Stashall paid to do it, someone would be calling to talk to Mickey Gornitz, someone who would insist with the threat of killing the boy if he didn’t.

“We don’t know if your son was kidnapped.” Carbin moved past Gornitz and sat at the table where the towhead was setting up shop with the contents of his briefcase. Carbin looked out the window. It looked as if it might rain. “It could have been a coincidence. Locals after money. Wouldn’t be the first time that motel was robbed, room broken into.”

“Then Matthew is dead,” said Mickey.

“I didn’t say that,” Carbin said, rising again.

“If Stashall has my son,” said Mickey, “I’m not talking. I’m not testifying. No disks.”

Mickey was shouting now and pointing to his chest.

“I’m not talking. I’m goddamn mad. If Stashall hurts my boy, I’m gonna get out of here and kill Jimmy Stashall. I never killed anyone in my life, but I’m gonna kill Jimmy Stashall. You get my boy back alive.”

“Talk to him, Lieberman.” Carbin stared at Abe across the room.

“You can put Jimmy Stashall away for twenty, thirty years, maybe more,” Lieberman said without conviction.

“With his lawyers? With this system? He’ll do ten if you’re lucky. He’ll do ten years and my son will be dead. Ten years isn’t enough.”

“Gornitz,” Carbin said in the deep, slightly preaching voice he usually saved for juries. “You have enough to put a lot of people away, to break open a major criminal activity, to make connections to the mob no one has ever made. You have the obligation …”

“Stow it,” said Mickey. “Abe, you remember when Maish used to say ‘stow it’ when anyone on the team complained?”

Abe nodded to show he remembered.

The towhead had set up some phone equipment as the conversation had gone on. Lieberman had ignored him.

“Your son’s alive,” Carbin said with a sigh.

“How do you know?” asked Gornitz.

“Call to our office,” said Carbin. “About two hours ago. A guy. Said he’d call back at eleven. That’s a few minutes.”

He looked at the towhead who nodded.

“We’re patched in here,” said Carbin. “He’ll call my office. It’ll come from there here. We’ll check the call. We have automatic …”

“It’ll be from a stolen cell phone,” Mickey said, coming around the sofa and sitting again to face Lieberman. “Any calls we get from them will be from stolen cell phones. Having the number won’t do you any good. Tracing won’t do you any good. Well, Abe? What would you do? Your kid? Your grandchildren?”

“Stall,” said Abe.

“For what?” Mickey asked, putting his head in his hands. “I can’t believe it. Five minutes ago we’re talking Hal Litt. I find out he’s dead. Now … I can’t believe it. But I should. What I’ve seen working for that bastard. I should.”

The phone rang. Mickey jumped up. Carbin stepped in front of him.

“Let it ring a few times,” he said.

“Don’t you understand? You can’t catch him by tracing the damn call. Get out of my way or so help me you lose any chance you got of my testifying. I don’t testify. You don’t become a judge. We understand each other?”

The phone continued to ring.

“We’re putting it on a speaker phone and recording,” said Carbin. His face remained calm. He stepped out of the way. Carbin nodded to the towhead who pushed a button.

Mickey stopped.

“Hello,” he said, voice unsteady into the sudden silence of the room.

“We’re having a nice talk with one of your relatives,” the voice said. “We hope you’re not having nice talks with your friends.”

“I talk to Matthew or I talk to the state attorney,” said Mickey.

“Get off the speaker phone,” said the voice. “I hear the room echo. Now, or I hang up.”

Carbin nodded. The towhead turned off the speaker phone as Mickey picked up the regular receiver.

“Put my son on the phone,” said Gornitz. “That’s it. Nothing else. No threats. Prove he’s alive.”

There was a pause. Lieberman looked at Mickey, who slumped, rubbed his forehead, listened, and hung up.

“They cut him,” said Mickey.

Lieberman was out of his chair and at the side of the man who used to sit in the wooden bleachers a lifetime ago.

“He’s hurt,” Mickey said as Lieberman led him back to the sofa. “And they’re gonna hurt him more, a lot more.”

“Gornitz,” Carbin said. “This isn’t easy, but it’s history and common sense. They aren’t going to let your boy live. And you don’t stand a chance of getting to Stashall even if you get out of here, which you won’t because my office plans to prosecute you even if you don’t testify against Stashall. You’ve given us more than enough for that. You can’t kill anyone from prison, and if you’re not in witness protection, you can get yourself killed when you’re a prisoner. It’s not pretty, but we don’t have a hell of a lot of time. We’re going to do our best to find your son, but …”

“I’ll work something out,” Mickey said to himself but aloud. “I’ve got to think this through.”

“You don’t have any options,” said Carbin. “Think about it, but not too long. Did you recognize the caller?”

“No,” said Gornitz. “But I recognized my son.”

Mickey’s head was down and he said with self-pity, “I don’t even have a good picture of my own son. That bitch wouldn’t send me one.”

“What did he say, Gornitz?”

“Matthew was scared. Real scared. He saw them kill his mother. They’ve told him things they’re gonna do to him if I don’t promise to shut up. They —”

“And how do they keep you quiet when they release your son?” Carbin said.

“They want me to kill myself,” he said.

“Then they’ll kill your son, and you know it,” said Carbin.

“You’re a son of a bitch, Carbin.” Mickey looked up, eyes moist.

“But I’m telling you the truth and you know it.”

“I’ve got to think.”

With that, Carbin motioned for Lieberman to follow him and nodded for the towhead to stay where he was. Out in the hallway with the door closed, Carbin strode away out of earshot of the plainclothesman pretending to read the paper, then he said softly to Lieberman, “Convince him.”

Carbin was definitely invading Lieberman’s space. Their noses were inches apart.

“Of what?” asked Lieberman.