Lieberman's Day (5 page)

Ranpur nodded again and motioned the two men toward the table.

“My manners, my manners, forgive me, let me take your coats.”

They handed the coats to Ranpur, who almost toppled from the weight but gamely staggered to a coatrack near the door, where he managed to hook the coats precariously. Then he returned to the two detectives, who were now seated at the table, and sat facing them, his thin, dark hands folded, a pair of rimless glasses now perched on his nose.

“What kind of practice do you have, doctor?” Hanrahan asked, looking around the room. There were eight certificates, degrees or diplomas, framed and mounted neatly on the wall behind the desk near the heavy wooden case, but they were too far for Hanrahan to read. Lieberman seemed to have little interest.

“I am by training a cardiologist. But I now limit my treatment to nutrition, holistic health, the same thing I practiced as a young man in Bombay and London when it had no name. Prevention through diet for those who are at risk. I get many referrals from other physicians, nutritionists. Surprisingly more work than I need to sustain my frail but healthy body. Would you like to venture a guess at my age?”

Hanrahan looked at Lieberman, who blinked his eyes with no hint of curiosity.

“Seventy,” guessed Hanrahan.

“Eighty and six,” Dr. Ranpur said with a satisfied smile, showing very white teeth. “I play the trombone and, weather permitting, walk five miles each and every day.”

“Admirable,” said Hanrahan, with a smile he hoped conveyed admiration and awe.

“Legumes and Dixieland,” said Ranpur, looking at both men. “They sustain me physically and esthetically. Do you find it too warm in here?”

“A bit,” admitted Hanrahan.

“I am sorry. By the time I turn it down and it comes into effect, you will probably have long left. You have questions other than the ones asked by the young man and woman in uniform?”

Lieberman tried to focus on the little man across from him, tried to pay close attention, but the memory of the telephone conversation he'd had with his brother, Maish, haunted him. They were in the car on the way to see Dr. Ranpur when the hospital had tracked Maish down outside the emergency room. Maish had not screamed, wailed, or cried.

“Maish, you there?”

“I'm here,” Maish had answered, his voice flat, the voice of a man who expects the worst. “Carol and the baby are alive.”

Maish had said he would get Yetta up and they would stay at the hospital for a while. Rabbi Wass was going to join them there.

“I'll meet you at the hospital later,” said Abe.

“It may kill her, Abe.”

“The doctor says …” Lieberman began.

“No, not Carol, Yetta. She's not a well woman. I don't know what to say to her. She's sitting out there. I can see her. I don't know what to tell myself. I don't know what to tell her. God help me, Abe. I hate my wife for having a baby that would grow up and get killed.”

“Maish …”

“It's all right, Abe,” Maish said with a sigh. “I'm just talking. I know it's not Yetta's fault. I'm just talking. You know how it is.”

Abe Lieberman had no words for his brother. The sigh on the other end of the line had been enormous.

“Abe, David is dead.”

And then Abe had heard the horrible wail and he knew that his sister-in-law, Yetta, was walking toward Maish, heard her husband's words. Abe imagined Yetta, a bulk of a creature, arms wobbling, staggering across the room in the first dress she had found in her closet, the bulky blue coat swishing as she moved.

“Abe,” his brother had said in confusion, and the line had gone dead.

“He didn't pick up the hat, Abe,” came Bill Hanrahan's voice; Lieberman returned to the hot room in which he was having trouble keeping his eyes open.

Both men were looking expectantly across the table at Lieberman.

“The hat?” Lieberman said, trying not to imagine the sad, resigned face of his brother.

“Dr. Ranpur didn't see a hat,” explained Hanrahan with a look of concern that Abe tried to dispel by joining the conversation.

“May I presume,” Ranpur said softly, “to prescribe something organic which may cause you some alleviation of your distress.”

“The man who got shot was his nephew,” Hanrahan explained.

“Ah,” said Ranpur, sitting up straight, “that explains much. My offer of the alleviation remains.”

“Thank you,” said Lieberman. “Maybe I'll take you up on that. Why don't you just tell us what you saw tonight, what you heard, what you did?”

Ranpur nodded, looked at the two men, and told his story while Hanrahan took notes.

“I shall endeavor to speak slowly,” he said. Hanrahan nodded in appreciation, though he had no intention of writing much of what the old man said. Other, younger, detectives and even some of the old-timers used little pocket tape recorders. Both Lieberman and Hanrahan had tried them and decided that they were too much work. You had to go back and listen to the whole thing again and take notes anyway. The tapes weren't admissible as evidence and they made a lot of witnesses uneasy about talking.

“I was soundly asleep upstairs,” said Ranpur, actually pointing upward. “I could use the room in the back as a bedroom so I would not have to climb stairs, but the climbing is good for me. I am a deep sleeper, but aware of approaches, changes in my environment, more a sense than a sound, you understand?”

Lieberman nodded.

“There have been four attempts in the past two years to break into the house, to rob me. All were thwarted by the alarm system, very noisy, lights, very upsetting to neighbors in the nearby apartments, but very effective.”

“So,” Hanrahan guided, “you thought you were about to be burgled.”

“Precisely, and I came awake. There were voices, a woman's voice and weeping, and I came down in darkness to determine if this was taking place inside or beyond my fence. Before I could get to the bottom of the stairs, there was the firing of bullets.”

“How many?” asked Lieberman.

“At first, two, three, four. I don't know. Then a pause and another shot and the woman shouted to her husband as I reached the bottom of the stairs. I turned on the lights and walked onto the porch. There was no one there but the poor young man and the stricken woman. I called the nine-one-one number, put on my coat, and attempted to minister to them.”

“Did you see anyone else?” asked Hanrahan.

“No.”

“Did the woman or the wounded man say anything else?”

“No. He was quite dead when I came to him and she was decidedly unconscious.”

“You said she called to her husband after the first round of shots,” said Lieberman. “How do you know?”

“She called him by name. ‘George,' she called.”

Hanrahan looked at his partner, but Abe was awake now and focused on the doctor.

“You sure she said ‘George'?”

“Oh, yes. My hearing is outstanding. I may have a bit of difficulty with discernment of range, but …”

“You sure it was the woman who said ‘George'?” asked Lieberman.

Ranpur considered the question seriously as he examined his hands and pursed his lips.

“The voice was high, but so was the wind. Perhaps it was not the voice of the woman. The name was called in horror and I assumed … but, perhaps not, perhaps it was one of the assailants.”

“Perhaps it was,” said Lieberman, getting up. “Thank you for your time.”

“Wait,” said Ranpur, rising and hurrying to the wooden case behind his desk as the detectives moved to their coats and began to put them on. Ranpur pulled a key from his pocket, opened the case, and retrieved a plastic vial of tablets, which jiggled as he hurried back across the room and handed the vial to Lieberman.

“Three times a day after meals,” said Ranpur, as Lieberman put the vial into his coat pocket.

“Thanks,” said Lieberman.

“You are, perhaps, wondering why it is that an old man like me lives and a young man is murdered,” said Ranpur, touching Lieberman's sleeve.

“No,” said Lieberman. “Maybe later when I have time I'll think of all kinds of things to torture myself, but …”

“Well then, perhaps, I was thinking it,” said Ranpur. “I see from your eyes. You sleep badly. The pills should help you. If you need more, please come back. There will be no charge.”

“Thanks,” said Lieberman, as the old man escorted them back to the porch and out into the predawn cold.

On the sidewalk Lieberman, hands plunged deeply in his pockets, said, “What've we got?”

“Not much,” said Hanrahan, enjoying the cold after the soporific heat of the house. “Pair of perpetrators, both black, Caribbean maybe, one maybe named George, and maybe they ran off with your nephew's hat. Not much, Rabbi.”

“Have faith, Father Murphy,” said Lieberman, starting to feel the cold again. “We'll see what the computer and some friends can come up with.”

“Not gonna find much at this hour,” said Hanrahan. “Want me to come home with you or back to the hospital?”

“No. I'll meet you at the station at eight.”

“It's Thursday, Rabbi.”

“So?” said Lieberman.

“The sting at Montrose House at nine-thirty. We can call it off or postpone it.”

“We might lose them,” said Lieberman, shaking his head. “O.K. I'll meet you there at nine.”

“Nine,” agreed Hanrahan. It would give him enough time to get back to his house in Ravenswood, no more than fifteen minutes away, take a hot bath with his eyes closed, get a few hours of sleep. “Want to come to my place?”

“Got to get home and tell Bess,” said Lieberman as they moved to the car parked alone on Sheridan Road.

“It's gonna be a hard day, Rabbi.”

“It's already a hard day, Father Murphy. It's also getting to be one hell of a hard rest of our lives.”

“We'll find them,” said Hanrahan.

“We'll find them,” Lieberman agreed, opening the car door. “Now, get in before you get hit by a drunk.”

T
HE ROGERS PARK POLICE STATION
on Clark Street just north of Devon was flanked by a Wendy's to the south and on the north by a long, five-story brick building with apartments on top of used-furniture shops, bars, and small groceries where Spanish was the language of choice. In one of the apartments, not long ago, Frankie Kraylaw had lived with his wife, Jeanine, and his son, Charlie.

Now Frankie sat patiently in the window of a reupholstery shop across the street watching the dark-stone police station with its lights always on behind thick opaque windows. The station had been considered modern and efficient when it was built in 1966 and opened with a ceremony featuring his honor Mayor Richard J. Daley himself. Now the building looked like a forgotten outpost of a besieged inner-city community college.

On warmer nights, prodded by the taunts of their friends, a young boy or girl might sneak up to the station to the sound of distant giggling and encouraging words in Spanish from shadowed doorways. The brave one would spray paint his girlfriend's initials or even her first name or a few words on the concrete walkway or even on the building itself.

Most of what was painted was in Spanish. Almost all of what was painted was hostile and obscene.

Frankie Kraylaw, who had an open smile of white, even teeth and a head of straight hair that tended to fall over his right eye, sat watching the entrance to the police station, waiting for the big Irish policeman who, along with the little Jew, had driven him from the city only months ago, driven him as Pharaoh had driven Moses from the land of Egypt, and like Moses, Frankie Kraylaw had returned to do the Lord's justice, had broken into the reupholstery shop from the rear and taken up his vigil in the window, waiting for the one called Hanrahan or the little Jew who liked to threaten.

Now it might come to pass, Frankie told himself, that neither of them would come in today or that they had been transferred or were on vacation or that the old one had retired. It might come to pass, but Frankie would find them. With the help of the Lord, he would find them. He would sit there until just before dawn and then nurse a coffee at Wendy's, with a view of the police station, for as long as he could.

He would find them. He would kill them.

Frankie Kraylaw had never killed anyone, though he had come close on many occasions. Generally, his potential victims had very little or no idea about what caused his sudden bursts of fury and violent explosions. It was not always terribly clear to Frankie either, but he knew it had to do with offenses to the Lord, offenses that Frankie was keenly aware of and found difficult to put into words.

But God did speak to Frankie Kraylaw, though the voice might be distant and muted like a bad connection from Edgewater to Uncle Saul back in Tennessee, and sometimes the God in Frankie Kraylaw's head did not use words. It would have been nice if the Lord could have been just a little bit clearer, the way he had been to Frankie's father before his father lost the channel to Heaven by losing first his soul and then his liver and life to drink. Amen. Amen and always Amen. Goddamn it. The ways of the Lord are many, mysterious, and not to be questioned.

Frankie shifted in the chair. There was no heat in the store, and the wool sweater and Mackinaw jacket he had picked up at the Goodwill couldn't keep out the cold. The gospel station on the pickup truck radio had said it was ten degrees with a below-zero wind chill. Couldn't be more than twenty degrees in the shop.

So be it. A trial by the Lord. A test of the will of Francis Jackson Kraylaw. So be it. He would meet the test and then some. Nothing he could not do if the Lord just kept speaking to him.

The two policemen had forced him out of the city of sin on a Greyhound bus, making him leave behind his wife and son. They had warned him never to return. Well, the Lord had told Frankie that he should return and reclaim his family, and the only way to do that and be safe was to smite the policemen.