Lieberman's Choice Read online

  Lieberman put down the phone and looked at Lisa as she opened the kitchen door and came in.

  Lisa was wearing her pink robe with a frilly collar. Her dark hair was tied back. She looked pretty. She looked young and she looked miserable. From the day of her birth, the Liebermans’ only child had been, in her father’s opinion, “serious.” She had been a beautiful child who took in everything and seldom laughed aloud. She had been a wonder student. She had gone to Mather High School and then to the University of Chicago, where she had met a serious young assistant professor of classics with a love of Greek tragedy. They had two children and lived, although Lieberman was not aware of it till a month go, discontentedly ever after.

  “I’m hungry, but I don’t want to eat anything,” she said, moving past him to the refrigerator. “I get depressed and eat. I eat and I get fat and I hate myself. I’ll look like Aunt Rose. I can’t afford to look like Aunt Rose and hate myself right now. I can be a little displeased with myself, but not hate. I heard the phone ring.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got to make a call and go,” he said, watching her eye the contents of the refrigerator critically.

  “A murder?” Lisa asked, reaching for a see-through bag of bagels Lieberman had brought home from Maish’s.

  “Yes,” he said, dialing the station. “There’s some cream cheese with chives at the back, on the second shelf.”

  Nestor Briggs answered the phone. Nestor always answered the phone at the Clark Street Station at night. Nestor liked to work nights and double shifts. Nestor did not like to go home. The only family Nestor had was an ancient one-eyed cat that Nestor called Sy Klops. Lieberman gave Briggs what he had and told him to track down Kearney.

  When Lieberman hung up the phone, Lisa asked, “You think a little cream cheese with chives would be bad for me?”

  “You’re a biochemist,” he said. “If you don’t know …?”

  “Abe,” she said, for she always used his first name when she was about to point out one of his many failings as a father, “do you know what I do? I mean what I do when I work?”

  “Precisely?”

  “Approximately.”

  “No,” he admitted. “Enzymes elude me. I respect them and you, but their function is an enigma. I’ve got to go.”

  She put the bag of bagels and the white carton of cream cheese and chives on the kitchen table.

  “Go,” she said, pulling a knife from the dish drainer on the sink. “You need the Times puzzles?”

  He dropped the book on the kitchen table and placed the pen on top of it.

  “You can finish that one and do the next. That’s it. You going to be all right?” he asked.

  She sat, surveyed the snack, and shrugged.

  “No. Maybe.”

  Lieberman walked to his daughter and leaned over to kiss the top of her head.

  “You wanna talk later?” he asked.

  “I’ll talk to Mom. Go rid the streets of crime.”

  “I’ll try to get back in time to take Barry and Melisa to lunch at Maish’s,” he said softly as he opened the door. His grandchildren were both asleep in the living room beyond. Barry, almost thirteen, was in his sleeping bag on the floor. Melisa, eight, slept in the pullout bed that had been a gift from Bess’s father more than thirty years ago.

  “It’s a school day, Abe,” Lisa whispered with a sigh, slicing a poppy seed bagel.

  “I’ll take them for ice cream tonight.”

  “Sounds fine,” Lisa said, lifting the top off the cream cheese carton.

  Fifteen minutes later, shaved, holster in place, Lieberman tiptoed past the closed kitchen door, through the living room, careful to avoid Barry on the floor, and out the door.

  The night was warm but not really hot. Lieberman needed a coffee. Normally, he ground beans when he got up, but since Lisa and the kids had come, he had not only stopped grinding in the morning to keep from waking them up, but he had also avoided turning on the microwave to heat leftover Bavarian Creme because the microwave hummed and rang.

  There was an all-night 7-Eleven run by Howie Chen’s cousin or uncle next to a Sari shop near Western, and it was on the way to the Shoreham. Howie was the only non-Jew in the Alter Cockers who hung out at Maish’s T&L on Devon. It was generally and incorrectly agreed among the Alter Cockers that every Chinese businessman in Rogers Park was related to or knew Howie and owed each of the Alter Cockers a discount.

  Lieberman took a less direct route to the Shoreham down Broadway so he could stop at the White Hen Pantry near Argyle. There was no one in the parking lot of the White Hen when he pulled in. And there was no one inside but the morning shift clerk, a puffy-faced young woman in a white smock.

  “Poli around?” Lieberman asked, going to the pots of coffee and pouring two into plastic cups.

  “You kiddin’?” asked the young woman, who folded her arms and watched him put the lids on the cups. “He doesn’t come in till eleven.”

  Lieberman brought his two cups of coffee to the counter.

  Up close the woman had the pale waxen look of a tracker. The white jacket had long sleeves. He looked at her arms anyway long enough to be sure she was watching him. She didn’t reach for her arms or hug herself or find something to do, which led Lieberman to the conclusion that she was probably clean.

  “Kraylaw,” he said, fishing out two dollars. “He still working here?”

  “Kraylaw,” she repeated ringing up the sale and giving him change. “The kid.”

  Frankie Kraylaw was almost thirty, but he looked like the friendly best buddy teenager in a “Brady Bunch” rerun.

  “The kid,” Lieberman agreed.

  “No. I don’t think so,” she said as another customer, a man in a night watchman’s uniform too warm for the weather, walked in and headed for the coffee.

  “I’ll check with Poli,” said Lieberman, heading for the door.

  “You a …?”

  “I am,” said Lieberman.

  “I heard the kid had some trouble with his wife or something.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Lieberman.

  “He’s a creepy guy,” the woman said with a look of distaste. “Not creepy like lots who come in here. Present company excepted, of course.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Creepy,” she said, “Big smile on his face like Uncle Ira.”

  “Uncle?”

  “Ira. In Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Nothing behind the smile like, like he was a puppet or something. Like …”

  “Howdy Doody,” he supplied.

  “Who?”

  Lieberman pushed the door open with his elbow as the weary night watchman poured coffee on himself and said, “Goddamn the hell.”

  Even if the streets hadn’t been almost traffic-free, and he had gone straight there, it would have taken Lieberman only fifteen minutes to get to the Shoreham from his house.

  He made it to the Shoreham in twenty even with the stop for coffee.

  When Abe Lieberman had entered his kitchen in the hope of an insomniacal retreat of coffee and crosswords, his partner, William Hanrahan, had stepped into the Shepard bedroom.

  Hanrahan was on nights because he had requested them, which meant he and Lieberman had been split for the month. Since Hanrahan had just come off sick leave after being shot during a murder investigation, the new captain, Kearney, had okayed the request without question.

  Lieberman knew the reason for his partner’s shift request. Hanrahan did not want to face the night. He could sleep during the day knowing that if he opened his eyes, there would be sun through his windows. It might be gray Chicago sun, but it would be sunlight and not the awful night loneliness.

  Hanrahan had recently celebrated his fiftieth birthday, an event the details of which he had reported to Lieberman.

  “I went to the Black Moon and Iris made me a Chinese birthday dinner, good stuff.”

  Hanrahan had been going with Iris Huang for more than two months. He had met her when he had a few too many drinks at the
Black Moon while he was supposed to be watching the apartment of a hooker named Estralda across the street. Hanrahan’s few drinks had probably gotten Estralda killed. Later, when Hanrahan had been shot, Iris had been at his hospital bedside almost every night after. And when he got out she had tended him at home. He had, as yet, not taken Iris to bed nor had he even asked her to spend the night.

  “Well, Rabbi,” he had told Lieberman, continuing about his birthday experience, “I’m eating, only customer in the place, a Thursday afternoon, mind you, and the music comes on, guy with a Chinese accent on a tape is singing ‘Happy Birthday,’ leaves the name out when he comes to it. Nobody sings my name, not even Iris. Her father’s back in the kitchen. I don’t think he knows my name or wants to. Who knows? Depressing as hell or what?”

  Now, his birthday four weeks and two days behind, Bill Hanrahan, his cheeks pink, his dark hair cut short but just thick enough to cover the scar on his scalp where he had been shot, stepped into the Shepard bedroom. His handsome flat Irish face was a little puffy. His shirt, blue as always, was neatly pressed, as was his dark red tie. Bill had not had a drink since he went into the hospital, but what he saw now made him hope that Shepard had at least a beer in his refrigerator.

  The young uniformed cop who stood off to the side of the bed, being careful not to step in blood or look at the corpses, said, “Neighbors say the guy who did it lives here, cop named …”

  “Shepard, Bernie Shepard,” Hanrahan supplied. “Ring any bells?”

  “Oh shit,” said the cop looking at the bodies, stunned. The young cop was about the age of Hanrahan’s oldest son, Michael, who spoke to his father only when asked to do so by his mother.

  “You got a way with words, son,” said Hanrahan. “That’s his wife and Andy Beeton, detective out of Edgewater.”

  “That’s Andy B …?”

  “If you’re gonna throw up and you can’t hold it, the john’s over there, through that door. Push it open with your elbow. Use the toilet if there’s nothing in it, flush it with your elbow and don’t wash your hands.”

  “I’m okay,” said the young cop.

  “Sure you are,” sighed Hanrahan. “You’re okay and I’m okay. Get out in the hall and help your partner keep everyone out of here.”

  When the young cop left, Hanrahan forced himself to the bed. He avoided looking at what remained of Olivia Shepard, but Andy Beeton’s one good eye looked at him with a question. He had no answer.

  Bill Hanrahan was a lapsed Catholic who, with the help of Father Sam (“Whiz”) Parker at Saint Bart’s, was making some small efforts to find his way back. This night was not helping.

  Hanrahan left the room and went back through the living room to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, considered a blasphemous thanks to the Virgin Mother, and pulled out a bottle of Molson dark. Then he opened the freezer door and let the frigid air tingle coolly against his face. Next he stepped back and let the door close. The beer bottle was cold. The beer bottle felt good. He put it back in the refrigerator and closed it.

  What was the line he liked so much in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance? Oh, yes, Edmond O’Brien, the town drunk who’s been told by John Wayne that he can’t have a drink, demands a beer saying, “A beer ain’t drinking.”

  “First medicinal wine from a teaspoon. Then beer from a bottle,” Hanrahan quoted aloud from The Music Man.

  The Music Man was Maureen’s favorite musical. When she had left, he had kept the album.

  He opened the door again and took out the bottle of Molson.

  The medics, lab crew, homicide—everyone would be coming as soon as he got on the phone. Television and radio crews, newspaper reporters, and who knew who else would be coming when the word got out that a cop had killed his wife and another cop. And someone, probably Sergeant William Hanrahan, would have to tell Andy Beeton’s widow before she got the news from a neighbor or her television set. Hanrahan tried to remember if Beeton and his wife had any kids. He also tried to remember if he had ever met Beeton’s wife.

  That was when he moved to the phone, considered using his handkerchief, muttered, “Shit,” picked up the phone, and called Lieberman.

  Alan Kearney had sensed the ringing in his sleep, had heard the low click that comes just before the first ring. Kearney had the phone in his hand before the first ring had ended. He was quick, but not quick enough. Carla Duvier stirred at his side, and he knew she was awake and listening.

  He didn’t bother to whisper into the phone.

  “Kearney.”

  Carla, nude, model-thin with firm, ample breasts that looked natural but, Kearney knew, were not, rolled toward him and reached for his stomach with her eyes closed. Her hand glided down playing with the hair below his flat belly as he listened to Nestor Briggs and said, “I’ll be there in half an hour. Yeah, I know where it is.”

  Kearney was forty-two years old, roughhouse good-looking with a broken nose and a reputation for common sense that had earned him the promotion and move to Clark Street.

  Word out was Kearney was a comer, a guy to watch, well-connected, well-liked, and only weeks away from marrying Carla Duvier, whose father was D. Wayne Duvier. D. Wayne owned. How much he owned and where was speculation, but it was a great deal.

  Kearney hung up as Carla’s hand went between his legs.

  “What’s up?”

  It was a familiar joke between them, but this time Kearney didn’t respond. He sat up looking into the past, hearing Bernie Shepard’s voice but not his words, seeing Olivia Shepard’s face but not her eyes.

  “A cop just killed a man and a woman.”

  Kearney removed her hand, kissed the palm, and then leaned over to kiss her lips before getting out of bed.

  “Do you know him?” she asked, sitting up.

  Kearney had both his underpants and trousers on before he answered, “Bernie Shepard.”

  3

  THE CORRIDOR IN FRONT of the Shepard apartment was crowded with tenants of all shapes, sizes, and ilks, more tenants than could possibly live on this floor. A young uniformed cop Lieberman recognized but whose name he didn’t know was trying to get information from the crowd, all of whom were eager to provide opinions about the Shepards, Russia, Ross Perot, and politics in the city of Chicago.

  Juggling the plastic foam cups of coffee he carried in each hand, Lieberman eased his way to the apartment. The door was slightly ajar. He pushed it open with his elbow. Standing a few feet in front of him, Bill Hanrahan was talking to a gray-haired old man in a robe who looked well beyond nervous.

  “Father Murphy,” said Lieberman, handing his partner a coffee. “They got a microwave? The coffee’s getting cold.”

  Hanrahan nodded and looked at the gray-haired man.

  “Thanks, Mr. Slovin. We’ll get back to you.”

  Mr. Slovin looked at the partly open bedroom door.

  “I can go?”

  “You can go,” Hanrahan said.

  Slovin moved to the door.

  “You want it open or closed?”

  “Closed,” said Hanrahan, and Slovin closed the door.

  Hanrahan took both coffees and moved into the kitchen with Lieberman at his side.

  “Lab’s having a busy night. They’re late, but Ryberg’s here,” said Hanrahan.

  “Saw his car downstairs.”

  “Microwave,” said Hanrahan, putting the coffees down and opening the microwave door.

  “Give it two minutes. Make it hot.”

  Hanrahan complied.

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes,” said Lieberman. “Kearney will probably be here soon.”

  “And?”

  “And you’ve got alcohol on your breath.”

  “A beer. One beer. Look in that bedroom and then blame me, Rabbi.”

  Lieberman walked to the bedroom. Behind him the microwave pinged softly. Lieberman needed a nice quiet ping like that on his microwave. He pushed the bedroom door open. Ryberg, the medical examiner, and his assistant
were examining the bodies. Ryberg looked back at Lieberman and smiled, a put-on smile. Ryberg was close to retirement, a thin gnarled man with arthritic knuckles.

  Lieberman closed the bedroom door and turned around to face Hanrahan, who handed him a coffee.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Lieberman.

  “My words exactly,” agreed Hanrahan, sipping the black coffee. “Bernie did it. We’re up to our asses in witnesses. I put a call out on him. Armed, dangerous. Old Rules-Is-Rules Shepard just broke every one of them. It’s going to be a long night.”

  Lieberman nodded. The coffee was bitter.

  “Abe, I have not been drinking. The beer is the first drink I’ve had. Would I lie to you?”

  “No,” said Lieberman. “You might lie to yourself.”

  “I’ve done that before, but I’m not doing it now.”

  The front door opened and a muscular black uniformed cop stepped in, holding an envelope at the corner with the tips of his fingers. The cop’s eyes were dancing with discovery.

  “Parnell?” asked Lieberman.

  “Parnell,” the black cop confirmed.

  “Close the door,” said Hanrahan as the crowd beyond gawked through the opening.

  Parnell nodded and pushed the door closed with his free hand.

  “Checked out a car parked across the street in front of a hydrant. I think it’s Sergeant Shepard’s. This envelope was on the front seat.”

  Lieberman took the envelope and set his half-finished coffee on the glass-topped table. Neat printed letters on the envelope said: TO THE DETECTIVE IN CHARGE OF THE SHEPARD CASE.

  Lieberman showed the envelope to Hanrahan.

  “Officer Parnell,” Lieberman said, “can you go back to the car and see what else you can find without touching anything?”

  Parnell nodded and left.