Lieberman's Day (19 page)

“So, I sit in here and rot?” Tortereli said.

“And, I must tell you, the chances of your walking away from this one without doing some time are remote,” said Fiona. “You've got two priors. Lester Wiggs, who I am not representing has a long list of priors. The two detectives who handled the arrest are veterans with clean records and they were principle parties to the felony.”

“I can't believe this,” Tortereli said with indignation.

“Believe it,” said Fiona. “I'll do what I can, but I can't promise much. We can plea, maybe get you off with probation, but you'd have to agree to testify against Lester Wiggs. No guarantees.”

Fiona held her breath and succeeded, she was sure, in not looking anxious or looking down at her watch.

Jean Tortereli looked down at Fiona angrily, her red, recently repainted lower lip quivering. She reminded Fiona of Snow White's stepmother.

“I've got to think about it.”

“My guess is that the same offer is being made to Mr. Wiggs. His lawyer is Peter Michaelson. He was a classmate at DePaul. Same criminal-law classes. Since Wiggs's sheet is longer than yours, the state attorney's office will probably accept your offer of testimony. If he does, they put it to Mr. Wiggs and Mr. Michaelson and Mr. Wiggs is advised to plea to a lesser offense. You don't tie up a court date, the time of the public defender's office, and the cost of holding you.”

“I'll do it,” Tortereli said, reaching for the package of cigarettes she had left on the table.

“All right,” Fiona said, standing slowly and tucking her notebook into the briefcase her mother had given her when she graduated two years ago. “I make a call. You'll stay in here tonight if you sign some papers, or you can get taken to the women's lockup at County.”

“Here,” said Tortereli. “I've heard about County.”

“I'm fairly confident, if Mr. Wiggs pleas, that we can have you on the street with no charges by tomorrow afternoon. Questions?”

“What if he tries to pull me down with him?” Tortereli asked, shaking her head and trying to light her cigarette at the same time.

“His lawyer will advise him not to,” Fiona said. “It wouldn't do him any good since you'd both start increasing the ante and telling more than the police already know.”

“So, you're saying I should hold something back if I've got it, something that will keep Lester from trying to take me with him?”

“I'm saying what I've said,” Fiona answered. “You can interpret it as you wish.”

“O.K.,” said Jean with a big sigh.

“Good,” said Fiona. “I'll see you early tomorrow.”

Fiona didn't wait for any more conversation from her client. She opened the door and called for the lockup turnkey, who ambled over from wherever he had been taking a rest.

If she hurried, Fiona had just enough time to fill in the waiver of transfer of Jean Tortereli, leave a message for Kearney, and get home in time to be ten, fifteen minutes late for Peter Nathan, tops.

George was standing on the hill at the Eastern Market in Port of Spain. His mother was on an outcrop of brown rock from which a thin waterfall tumbled musically down to the stream. She was leaning over, elbows on her knees in her white dress, to get a better look at the old woman by the stream. The old woman was cutting leaves from a dachine plant. His mother would get some leaves and mix them with crabs, okra, and herbs to make callaloo soup.

George smiled in delight, his tongue going over his lips in anticipation of the meal. About thirty people, all of them black, most of them women, looked down at the old woman in black cutting the dachine leaves with the help of her sons.

Around George on the hill were his aunt, his sister, and people he didn't know, all of them watching the cutting of the dachine leaves.

There, a woman stood wearing a black dress with white circles, with a matching bandanna. There, a woman in a purple dress with a white lace collar that left her smooth brown shoulders and back showing. Below, a man in a straw hat stood with his arms behind his back next to the stream. There was a large colorful basket at the man's side, a basket, George knew, that waited for the leaves.

A woman in a purple dress and a purple bandanna stepped in front of George. He tried to move to one side, but she moved too. He moved to the other side. She followed without looking back, continuing to block his view.

There were too few moments like this to have a thoughtless woman ruin them. George grew angry, instantly angry. He looked to his mother but she was still leaning over trying to watch the old woman cut the leaves. Everyone but George could see. An “Ahh” escaped from the crowd, but George did not see what caused it.

His heart was pounding with fear and anger as he approached the woman in front of him. A small push and she would slide down the wet rock, get out of his way. His hands went out. He could see them. They were not the hands of a man. They were the thin brown hands and arms of a small boy. The fingers were almost touching the woman now. The smell of callaloo was sickening now. George's knees were shaking and he was afraid he would fall and everyone would turn to him and laugh.

Just before his fingers touched the woman, she turned. The turn was sudden. George backed away, almost falling, and let out a yelp. The woman was white. Her belly was big. She was smiling at him. It was the woman he had shot. There was the hole. Right there in her stomach.

Panic. His mother must not know, must not see this.

He turned from the smiling white woman and found himself facing the two men from whom he had taken the money. They were sitting at a table, the same table they had been sitting at when he took their money.

George looked for his mother and saw Raymond among the dark faces. Raymond was holding a gun. The gun was pointed at George. Raymond said something and George howled and opened his eyes to see a different white woman, a white woman in a white dress looking down at him.

“You are one lucky man,” the woman said.

She was heavy, more old than young, with hair too yellow to be natural.

“Callaloo,” George tried to say, but it came out a dry rusty blur of pain. The pain was surrounded by a dream. The pain was in his chest, in his nose, in his arms.

“You speak English?” the woman asked.

George nodded.

“Your throat's a little sore. Tube. It's out now,” the woman said, checking the glucose bottle that dripped into a tube leading to George's right arm. “Can you understand English?”

George nodded.

“Good. Can you talk? Softly. Not a whisper.”

“Yes,” George rasped. “I am in a hospital.”

“Very observant,” said the woman, moving to the foot of his bed and picking up a chart.

George turned his head as far as he could to the right. It wasn't very far. There was another bed in the room. The other bed was empty.

“Man wants to talk to you,” the nurse said, returning to his side and lifting his wrist to take his pulse.

“Man?”

“
The
Man,” the woman said. “Police. You had a couple of bullets in you. They have a certain curiosity about such things.”

“I'm very tired,” said George, closing his eyes.

“Man says he'll only be a minute. Doctor says if you're up and can talk we can go for it. I'll cut in after a minute or two.”

“Wait,” rasped George as the woman turned and left the room.

George tried to pull his thoughts and lies together. It was a difficult task when he was well, whole, and undrugged.

The door opened again and a man came in. The man was Chinese or something, in a leather jacket. He was hefty, compact, and about forty.

“George,” the Chinese guy said, moving toward the bed. “You look terrible.”

“I been shot.”

“I know. Who shot you?”

George shrugged.

“You don't know who shot you?”

“Man,” said George. “White man. Robber.”

“A white robber took you on in the middle of a prairie,” said the Chinese man. “Did he say what he wanted?”

“Money,” said George.

“Then why didn't he take it?” asked the man.

George's eyes blinked and looked around for an answer. “He didn't take any money?”

“That I can't say,” said the man. “But you were found on the side of the Dan Ryan Expressway with a bag of cash in your arms. Another question after you tell us who shot you: Where did you get the money?”

“I am very tired,” said George, closing his eyes.

“I'll bet you are,” said the cop. “Talk with your eyes closed.”

“I am very tired,” George repeated.

“Doctor says you should be dead,” the Chinese cop said. “Another question: Where did you get that hat?”

George's hands went up to his head. The movement tugged at the needle in his arm and pulled at the stitches in his back. The hat was gone.

“Robber,” George groaned wearily.

“White guy who didn't take your money,” the cop said flatly. “He gave you that hat?”

“Yes. Well, no, man. He drop it or somethin'. Where am I?”

“La Grange.”

“Is that near Florida?”

“Close,” said the cop.

George smiled, ignored the cop, and let himself be carried back to drugged sleep.

The policeman, whose name was Martin Fu, stood for a minute to be sure that George was really asleep, then he left the room and went to the nursing station.

“Phone,” he said.

“Local?” asked the older nurse with the tinted hair, looking at him over her glasses.

“Chicago.”

“All right,” the nurse said with a sigh, going back to the chart she was working on.

Martin Fu took his notebook from his pocket, fingered through it for the number he needed, and placed the call. What he heard on the other end when the ringing stopped was a harried voice saying, “Sergeant Briggs, Clark Street station.”

Beyond Briggs, Martin Fu could hear some woman screaming in Russian or something, then a man with a quivering voice in English.

“Lieberman,” Fu said.

“Not here,” said Briggs.

“Give him this message. My name's Fu, La Grange police. Got a guy in the hospital here fits the description that went on the line this morning.”

“Right,” said Briggs, as the woman and man in the background raised the ante, again.

Fu left his phone number and started to say that it might be urgent, but Sergeant Briggs had already hung up.

“Thanks,” said Fu. “One more call. Local.”

The nurse nodded and Fu called the station and informed his duty officer that he would be at the hospital waiting for a call from a Detective Lieberman in Chicago.

“How's the day, Francie?” asked Fu.

“Long,” said the woman on the other end of the call. “Long.”

Fu hung up, nodded at the top of the nurse's head, and moved back to the door of George's room. He had no real concern about George getting up and leaving, nor any real concern about whoever shot him tracking him down to finish the task. But if this was a suspect in the murder that had hit the noon news, it would not be a good idea to leave him unguarded.

Fu found a chair inside George's room and moved it outside the door. From the pocket of his leather jacket, he fished a compact electronic Tetris game his daughter had given him for Christmas. He pushed the button, heard the small ding, and sat down for what he hoped would be an hour or so of quiet meditation.

The heater had stopped working in the pickup truck, so Frankie had to give up his view of the entrance to the apartment building where Big Bear had taken Angie. The apartment was in a three-story, yellow-brick-courtyard walk-up. Frankie had watched the windows when the Indian and the old woman had gone in and in the near darkness of the Chicago winter afternoon he had seen the light go on in the apartment on the second floor.

The only thing left to do was wait and pray, but Big Bear didn't come out and the heater didn't work and Frankie knew he had to get out of the truck or freeze.

He didn't think it could possibly be colder outside the truck, but it was, so he decided that he would have to go up to the apartment even if Big Bear was there. He would simply carry the shotgun under his coat, and while it would stick out a little … He was opening the door to get the gun when he saw the lobby door open and the big Indian hurry out, hands in his pockets, collar up. He trotted out of the courtyard and onto the sidewalk as Frankie ducked behind the truck and watched until Big Bear was at the corner of the block at least forty yards away.

Then Frankie walked quickly to the entrance, entered the lobby, and tried the inner door. It was locked. He would have punched a hole in one of the door's glass panes but someone had beaten him to it. He reached in through the broken pane and unlocked the door from the inside. As he stepped in he smelled mildew and chill.

The steps were covered with ragged carpeting and the light bulb on the first landing between the two apartments was bare, yellow, and dim. The second floor was the same. Very slowly, patiently, he tried the door of the apartment where the light had gone on. It was locked. He knocked.

“Big Bear,” he called.

No answer. He knocked again.

“It's me. Frankie.”

Still no answer.

“Come on,” Frankie coaxed. “I've got the money for you.”

Beyond the door he heard movement, the creak of wooden floorboards.

“Who's there?” came Angle's frightened voice.

“Frankie. Tell Big Bear I've got the fifty dollars. I just want to give it to him and head back to Wyoming tonight.”

“Fifty dollars?”

“Fifty,” he confirmed.

He had used the devil's own tool, turned greed and corruption on the woman, tested her, and now, he was sure, she had been found wanting. A chain slipped, a lock turned, and the door opened just wide enough for Angle's face to show. The face was a puffy white, the eyes brown with a near yellow where the white had once been. Her hair was straight, gray-white, and less tangled than Frankie had vaguely remembered. She squinted at him.