Authors: Stuart M. Kaminsky
Lieberman's Day
An Abe Lieberman Mystery
Stuart M. Kaminsky
Two Minutes Past Midnight on a Winter's Night in Chicago
Seven Thirty-Six in the Morning
Twelve Forty-Nine in the Afternoon
To Jim and Margaret Taylor, who know well the city of which you now shall read
Two Minutes Past Midnight on a Winter's Night in ChicagoIn such a state, my friends, one cannot be moderate and restrained nor pious either. Evil is all around me, evil is what I am compelled to practice.
âSophocles, Electra
C
OLD.
The frozen-fingered wind goes mad and howls, beating the lid of the overflowing green dumpster in a metal-against-metal tattoo. Ba-bom,
boom-boom.
Through the narrow slit between the concrete of the two high-rise buildings, Lake Michigan, not quite frozen at the shore, throws dirty ice chunks onto the narrow beach and retreats with a warning roar.
“It is cold, man. I tell you. I don't care what you say. I don't care how you say. It is cold.”
George DuPelee, his huge body shivering, his shiny black face contorted and taut, shifted from booted foot to booted foot. George wore a knit hat pulled down over his ears and an oversized olive drab military overcoat draped down to his ankles. He was hugging himself with unmatched wool gloves, one red and white, the other solid purple.
Boom-boom.
George grabbed the frigid rusting metal of the dumpster lid and pushed it down on the frozen plastic sacks of garbage inside it. The angry wind rattled the lid in his hand and it broke free. Boom-boom-boom-boom.
“What are you doing?” Raymond whispered irritably, adjusting his glasses.
“Goddamn noise driving me nuts,” George whispered back. “I don't like none of this none. I don't like this cold.”
George certainly looked cold to Raymond Carrou, who stood beside him in the nook behind the massive garbage cans. Raymond was lean, not an ounce of fat to protect him under his Eddie Bauer jacket, and he, too, was cold; not as cold as George DuPelee, but cold.
It was December in Chicago. It was supposed to be cold. People like George and Raymond didn't come here from Trinidad to enjoy the warm days and cool nights. People came to the States to make a dollar or to get away from something.
George DuPelee was a complainer. Raymond had known George for only a few days and he was now deciding that, however this business turned out, after tonight he would deal no more with the whining giant whose teeth rattled loudly as the two men waited for an acceptable victim to come out of the apartment building.
By the dim light of the mist-shrouded streetlamp, George watched the cars no more than twenty yards away on Sheridan Road lug through the slush, sending sprays of filthy ice over the sidewalk. Sheridan Road at this point north of Lawrence was a canyon of high-rise condominiums through which the wind yowled at the cars that passed through on the way to Evanston going north or downtown going south.
“Tell me you ain't cold,” George challenged. “Tell me. Skinny thing like you. Got no fat. Wind go through your bones and you no more used of this than me.” George concluded with a grunt of limited satisfaction, pulling his hat more tightly over his ears and continuing his steady foot-to-foot shuffle.
“Cold never bothered me much,” said Raymond, watching as the door to the building opened and an old couple came out already leaning into the night as the blast of icy air ran frozen across their faces and down their backs.
“Them, they old, rich, no trouble, no bubble,” said George, his bulky body nudging Raymond toward the light beyond the shadows of the buildings and the dumpster.
Raymond watched the old couple struggle against the cold wind. The old man almost toppled over, but caught his balance just in time and moved cautiously forward, gasping through the wind, reaching behind him to pull the old woman with him.
“No,” said Raymond, stepping back into the shadow so the old couple wouldn't see him.
“No,” moaned George, turning completely around in a circle like a frustrated child. “No. Man, what we come all the way down here for? Places closer. Over back there on Chestnut, you know? Look at those old olds. They got money, rings, stuff. Just take it, throw them old people in the air and let the wind take them.”
“Up,” said Raymond, his eyes back on the entrance to the high-rise condo building.
“Up?”
“Up,” said Raymond. “We came uptown, north, not downtown.”
George stopped turning and looked as if he was going to cry.
“Up, down, what's the difference here? I got no watch. I got no need. I got no job like you got.”
Raymond ignored him and looked up one-two-three-four-five-six floors to a lighted window covered with frost. A shape, a woman, stood in the window.
“Carol?”
Carol turned away from the window and faced Charlotte Flynn.
“Carol, are you all right?” Charlotte said. “You look ⦔
“Fine,” said Carol, touching the older woman's hand and giving her a small, pained smile. “Just tired.”
“God,” said Charlotte looking at her watch. “I ⦠It's past midnight. Poor thing. You must be exhausted.”
Carol shrugged.
Charlotte was a sleek, elegant woman in a simple black dress. Charlotte was plastic-surgery taut with a cap of perfect silver hair. Charlotte had been the wife of a television station manager for more years than Carol had been on earth. And Charlotte's husband was, for another month, the boss of Carol's husband, David. In one month, David was being transferred by the network to New York City where he would be program manager. Not exactly higher in rank or salary than Bernie Flynn, the jobs were not parallel, but certainly equal to Bernie with the promise, no, the likelihood, that David would one day be Bernie's boss if Bernie did not retire or move on.
And so, the evening had been, as Carol knew it would be awkward. Awkward and long. Carol wondered at least five times, through poached salmon she could barely touch and conversation that had an edge sharp enough to cut a throat, whether she could keep from screaming.
“I think David should get you home,” Charlotte said gently, taking Carol's hand. “Your hands are freezing.”
“Circulation,” said Carol. “Doctor says its normal.”
“I don't remember,” Charlotte said. “My last, youngest, Megan, is thirty-four. I have a vague sense of being pregnant for two or three years and suffering two hours of something white and loud that must have been pain.”
Carol nodded.
“Oh, God,” Charlotte said, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “That was a stupid thing for me to say.”
“It's all right,” Carol said. “Really. I think we should go.”
“Sit down,” Charlotte said. “I'll get David and your coat.”
The older woman strode confidently through the thick-gray-carpeted living room/dining room furnished in contemporary Scandinavian white wood, the look broken up only by the out-of-place yet tasteful eighteenth-century English oak sideboard that Bernie Flynn had brought back from England a decade ago when he covered a summit meeting in London. The sideboard had been converted to a bar. Bernie had converted to Republican conservatism, and Charlotte had converted to three drinks in the afternoon and Catholicism. At least that was what David told Carol, and the conversation had tended to support his observations.
Carol folded her hands, which felt cold even to her, as Bernie and David entered the room. Bernie was tall, workout lean, and winter tan. His hair was full and white. He looked every bit as camera-ready as he had for almost ten years before becoming an affiliate executive. The sleeves of Bernie's red sweater were pulled back. The collar of his shirt was open. His arm was around David, who was almost six inches shorter and ten pounds heavier.
“Carol,” Bernie said, moving to her side with a show of large white teeth that were, indeed, his own. “I'm sorry. All my fault. We were talking business and ⦔
“We were talking replacements,” said David seriously.
Carol's eyes met her husband's. She saw concern and question.
“What's wrong, Carol?”
“Just tired,” she said. “We should go.”
“Got your coats right here,” said Charlotte, hurrying back into the room.
“Might be a good idea to check in with your doctor in the morning,” Bernie said, helping her on with her fur coat. “You look ⦔
“⦠very pregnant,” David said, pulling on his Eddie Bauer jacket.
“I think I
will
call the doctor in the morning,” Carol said.
David reached for her arm, but she took a quick step forward to hug Charlotte. They all moved to the apartment door and went into the hallway where the women moved ahead toward the elevator.
“None of my business,” Bernie whispered, “but Carol doesn't look well.”
“
Rosemary's Baby
syndrome,” David whispered back. “She's a little ambivalent. Doctor says it's natural.”
“And I say it's natural,” Bernie said softly. “Charlotte came close to not having our last. Between you, me, and the one-too-many double Scotches I just had, she almost decided on an abortion, long before they were politically correct.”
Ahead of them Charlotte was supporting Carol and whispering to her. Probably, David thought, revealing some small, confidential sin of her husband's. It had been an awkward evening. An evening of ambivalence with Bernie shifting from proud mentor to comically envious rival to potential underling.
David hadn't wanted to come. He had given Carol a list of last-minute excuses, the best of which was Carol's sixth month of pregnancy and a night of cheek-freezing cold. But Carol had insisted on going, had been willing, it seemed, to even fight about it when he insisted.
“It's the last time,” she had said. “It's the right thing to do.”
“You hate them,” David had reminded her as they got ready to leave that evening.
“I dislike them,” Carol had corrected, hands trembling.
“Look at you,” David had insisted.
“Look at yourself,” Carol had answered shrilly.
And then she regretted it. David had let himself go, though he was less than forty. He had a little belly and his father's heavy, sad dark face.
“Let's hope the baby doesn't look like me,” David had said bitterly.