Lieberman's Law Read online

  “The truth is, Lisa, you don’t want the children. You’ll come here, take them, uproot them, put them in after-school programs, and regret the nights you have to deal with their growing up.”

  “Which means,” said Lisa evenly, “you don’t think I’ve grown up.”

  “That’s part of it,” said Bess wearily.

  Lisa hung up the phone.

  FIVE

  IBRAHAM SAID LOOKED AT LIEBERMAN who looked back at him. The message was clear. Said knew the beautiful young woman with the long, dark hair who was speaking to the crowd, and was suggesting that she might well be the one for whom they were looking.

  “Listen,” the woman said holding up her hand for quiet. “Listen, for the sake of the dead, for the sake of those who have died for a homeland for their children, for the sake of justice.”

  The crowd grew quiet and paid attention. A muscular young man with blond curly hair stood with his arms folded, shaking his head. He had heard this before.

  “Her name is Jara,” Ibraham whispered. “Jara Mohammed. One of the most militant of the Arab Student Response Committee. Her younger brother, Massad, is probably around someplace.”

  Lieberman didn’t bother to turn around. He knew a police photographer was getting the woman’s picture, a picture Lieberman could show to Anne Ready, the old woman who lived across from Mir Shavot.

  “Three of our people died yesterday,” the woman said, holding up three long fingers and snapping them down one at a time. “No more than a half-mile from where we now stand arguing. If we are not strong, the Jews like this one …” She pointed at the muscular young man with folded arms, “will slaughter us as they have slaughtered us for five thousand years.”

  “A body count?” the muscular young blond man said suddenly, shouting, angry, his hands held out. “I am an Israeli. I have seen body counts. I’ve been in the army on military patrols and seen the bodies of slaughtered Jewish children in a school bus. The numbers of our dead civilians, our children, our mothers is part of the attempt throughout history to eliminate the Jews and a Jewish State. The Nazis, the Arabs, the British have all tried and failed. They looked behind themselves and there was their dark shadow and they called it Jew and tried to destroy it, but you can’t destroy your shadow. Never.” There were some shouts of approval from the crowd and other shouts and insults aimed at the young Israeli.

  Lieberman knew the quadrangle of the University of Chicago well. Standing at the rear entrance to the Administration Building with Said at his side, Lieberman watched and listened and remembered. Twenty-five years ago, he had stood in about the same spot just off the grass. He had looked around at the matched, heavy gray stone buildings that made the university look English, ancient, and serious.

  Two and a half decades ago, the Weathermen, primarily a group of university students, had protested the war in Vietnam at a massive rally right where Abe now stood. With bullhorns, intelligence, hate, and paranoia, they had rallied a few hundred students into a boycott of classes and a take-over of the Administration Building, a sit-in until demands were met including the university’s pulling out all its investments in unacceptable companies and unacceptable countries. The targets were the U.S. government, South Africa, chemical companies. The students wanted change.

  Lieberman had been assigned to that protest. Even at thirty-five he looked at least fifty and was taken for a professor by most of the students. One of the Weathermen, a young man with long hair and skin as clear as a model’s, had approached Lieberman and asked, “Are you with us or against us?”

  Lieberman had answered that he hadn’t chosen sides.

  “Then you’re against us,” said the young man. “Don’t you know what’s going on here?”

  “A hundred or so students,” said Lieberman, “are going to go into that building and sit around making demands, getting their pictures in the paper, going to jail, accomplishing very little.”

  “Then we’ll think of something bigger,” said the young man with great sincerity. “Ask him. He knows.” The “him” who supposedly knew was a black photographer named Jim Cooper who had been hired by the university to take pictures of the crowd so that leaders could be identified and later expelled. The young man who had pointed to him certainly did not know that Cooper was employed by the university the young man was attacking.

  Jim was philosophical about the matter. He was older than Lieberman and had been through two wars carrying a camera. Now he made a living freelancing and shaking his head at all people who carried banners, made threats, and assumed he was one of them because of the color of his skin. Jim had told Lieberman over a beer at a bar on 57th Street that these were middle-class and rich white kids, smart, and feeling guilty because they weren’t black and poor and hadn’t had to live with hate and poverty and despair. “Headlines and a few busted heads,” said Jim.

  Lieberman had nodded, looking around the tavern at students and faculty slowly downing beers and eating cheeseburgers.

  Lieberman and Jim Cooper had stayed in touch over the years. Cooper had opened a studio just north of the Loop on Wells Street and had succeeded in making a living by doing everything from portraits to car collisions. But his big break came only a few years ago when he developed a secret process for printing color photos, mostly of musicians, so they came out looking like eerie suggestions of life, abstract disturbing forms. Jim won prizes, had articles written about him and his work, and actually sold most of his work at a price that kept him and his wife comfortable. So, given the fact that Jim Cooper was a success and was at least seventy it was no little surprise today for Lieberman to see Cooper, hair completely white, a slight stoop to his shoulders, standing at the fringe of the growing crowd, taking pictures with a telephoto lens, a black bag slung over his shoulder.

  A thin young man was the next to speak. He had conviction. He had zeal. He also had a pair of glasses that he had to keep on his nose with an occasional squint. He had no charisma.

  Lieberman told Said he would be right back and moved toward Jim Cooper who greeted him with a smile and a handshake. “What the hell are you doing here?” Lieberman asked.

  “Last time I was here for something like this,” said Cooper, “I felt something. I couldn’t get it in the photographs, the hate, confusion, the colors of anger and fear, the shapes. No, Abraham, this time I’m here for me.”

  “How’ve you been?” Lieberman asked, as Jim Cooper raised his camera to take the picture of an arguing group of young men and women who paid no attention to the young man with the bullhorn. Cooper clicked off about five photographs, held the camera at his side, and said, “Pretty good.”

  Bess Lieberman had spoken to Jim’s wife, Amanda, no more than a month ago. Jim Cooper had triple bypass surgery. He also had a stomach cancer that the Veteran’s Administration Hospital was managing to hold their own against.

  “How are you, Abraham?”

  “Nothing. A little cholesterol problem. Stomach. Kid doctors who know what they’re doing but don’t know people.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Cooper, looking down at his camera.

  “You gonna take a lunch break?” asked Lieberman.

  Someone was arguing vehemently with the thin man carrying the bullhorn. Someone in the crowd. The young bespectacled Arab with the bullhorn made the mistake of trying to reason with the crowd. “We must find a way to live in peace,” he said. “We, Arabs and Jews, are cousins fighting over the legacy of a common father, Abraham. The five pillars of Islam and the ways of Judaism are the same. We both bear witness to God’s oneness. We pray five times a day. You pray three. We have Ramadan, a time of soul-searching, fasting, self-examination. You have Yom Kippur. We must give alms and so must you. Islam has much more in common with Judaism than either faith has in common with Christianity. We …” Something orange, rotten, and wet hit the neck of the young Arab. He stood bewildered, bullhorn in hand.

  “Raincheck on lunch,” said Cooper, picking up his camera and moving around so he
could see the faces of those in the crowd.

  Lieberman moved back to Said. The crowd had grown to about forty. Uniformed police were in cars on the other side of the building, but they wouldn’t move without an OK from the campus police who took their orders from a vice president.

  “You should at least get your facts straight,” shouted the blond Israeli at the man with the bullhorn.

  “Your ‘straight facts’ are Jewish lies,” said the young man. He was standing on the steps of the administration building now, about three feet above the crowd.

  “I’ll give you dates, times, body counts of innocent Jews, children, murdered by Arab terrorists in my country,” shouted the Israeli.

  “And I’ll give you more accounts of Israeli attacks on the innocent in Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine,” said the man with the bullhorn.

  “All right,” said the Israeli. “Give them. You describe and I’ll describe, each mutilation, each threat to kill us all or drive us into the sea.”

  The Israeli, with a mixture of encouragement and boos pushed forward with the help of a pair of friends and strode up the steps reaching for the bullhorn. He was much bigger than the Arab student, with the arms of a weight lifter. Lieberman noted that one of the two men who had helped part the crowd so he could step up was Eli Towser, the man he had fired as his grandson’s bar mitzvah tutor. Towser looked around. His eyes met Lieberman’s for an instant. Towser shook his head and turned back to watch the coming battle for the bullhorn.

  But before the muscular Israeli could take the bullhorn, the young woman Said had earlier identified as Jara Mohammed reached for the horn. The bespectacled young man gladly relinquished it to her.

  Mohammed wore a sacklike green dress that covered her arms and went down to her ankles. There was no belt at her waist to show the shape of her obviously lean body.

  The young Israeli hesitated, reluctant to wrestle the bullhorn from a woman.

  “Listen,” she said into the bullhorn. “For the sake of the innocent dead. For the memory of those who struggled and died.”

  The muscular Israeli had heard this before. He folded his arms and looked at her with a sigh that said he knew what was coming.

  Lieberman did not turn around. He hoped and assumed that the police photographer would get a good enough photograph for Abe to show to Anne Ready.

  “For five thousand years, the Jews have slaughtered our people and taken their land,” she said. “Sometimes by the thousands. Sometimes one or two at a time. Yesterday, not more than half a mile from here, three Arab students were slaughtered.”

  “Ridiculous,” the muscular Israeli shouted, unfolding his arm, screaming so that the sinews of his neck stood out like thin red pillars. “For five thousand years the Germans, the British, the Arabs have denied us our small piece of land, have waged war against mothers and children, have vowed to drive us into the sea. We will not be driven into the sea. We will fight and we will win if we must. The countries that surround us are coming to understand this and come to a table of peace. It is Hamas and the mad men and women like this one who will be the cause of more slaughter, more dead, more hatred on both sides.”

  “They’re repeating themselves,” Lieberman said.

  “Yes,” said Said. “A bad sign. Violence will be next.”

  As if to fulfill Said’s prophecy, there were arguments in the crowd now. Small surging groups pushing, shoving, shouting.

  “Listen,” shouted the girl with the bullhorn. “This is not the time or place to fight. We will have justice, a justice we cannot expect from a country and a political system that sees Israel as the fifty-first state in the union.”

  Someone, it may have been Eli Towser, threw something at the woman. It was a ripe tomato that splattered against her breasts. She wiped it away ignoring the attack. “Those of you who now believe in our cause,” she shouted. “Those who knew Howard Ramu and our other dead brothers. Those of you who know the truth of what I have said should sign the membership list that is being passed among you. We must organize. Even if you are not an Arab. If you believe. If you know, it is your duty to join us, to sign, to be prepared to protect freedom of speech, to stand up for a maligned minority that seeks only justice.”

  The muscular Israeli threw up his hands in disgust and went back into the crowd where the shoving and arguing were growing more vehement.

  Lieberman tapped Said’s shoulder, turned his back on the scene and the growing noise. Fights would break out in the next seconds. The campus police would try to handle the situation. They might succeed. They might not.

  “She got what she wanted,” Said said as they walked. “Six or seven students have created a riot that will give them publicity on television and in the newspapers.”

  Now clear or the fringes or the crowd Lieberman looked back. Standing on the lowest step of the Administration Building, Jim Cooper was slowly, calmly taking pictures.

  “Lieberman,” a woman’s voice called. Rene Catolino was moving toward him, her voice raised over the battle behind him. She wore a light black jacket that billowed as she moved. “Hanrahan’s been trying to reach you. Says to meet him at your house fast. No one’s hurt, but something’s going down.”

  “Go, we will meet later,” Said said.

  Lieberman nodded at Catolino, who, hands on hips, watched the battle of people wielding books, fists, a bullhorn and one or two metal bars brought for the occasion. The tall young man with a limp took several steps toward Eli Towser and swung a bar at him. Towser blocked the blow with his arm and punched the man in the face.

  “These are the smart kids,” she said to Said as Lieberman moved as quickly as he could toward his car. “I went to Northern Illinois and we never had anything as fucking crazy as this.”

  “Intellect and violence are often in harmony,” said Said, his back to the battle. “It was the one problem with Plato’s theory of choosing the wisest man in the nation to be king.”

  “Because the wisest man wouldn’t necessarily be peaceful,” said Catolino, her eyes following the clumps of battle.

  “He might even be mad,” said Said. “In fact, I believe Plato would be puzzled by the number of wise men who lead their people into slaughter.”

  “You were a philosophy major,” said Catolino.

  “Theoretical Biology,” Said said. “Right here. In that building to our right. Excuse me.”

  Said turned around suddenly, scanned the crowd, saw what he was seeking, and sailed in. Without knowing where the man was going or why, Rene Catolino followed. They pushed through flying fists and screams of hate. Something hit Rene in the back of the head. She touched the spot. There was no blood. Said got to the front of the crowd with Rene close behind. He found Jara Mohammed sitting on the steps, dazed, blood coming down her forehead. Catolino helped Said lift the confused young woman. They moved to the entrance of the building. The door was locked. Rene led them to the edge of the steps where Jim Cooper took their picture as they moved down and through the edge of the crowd.

  The campus police were wading in weaponless, trying to calm small battles, talking, keeping their voices even, doing everything they had been taught to do in such a situation and wanting simply to bash a few heads, cuff a few of the worst, and get this over quickly. Instead they reasoned, got between combatants, and found themselves under attack. By the time the city police waded into the crowd, two campus police were down and ambulances were arriving.

  Rene Catolino and Ibraham Said moved away, the young woman between them, heading for an ambulance.

  “What else could you expect from them?” Jara Mohammed said, blood still trickling down her forehead in a rivulet past the right side of her nose and down along her cheek.

  “What else can you expect from yourself?” Said asked.

  Jara tried to grasp the question but before she could answer two medics took her in hand. “She been shot?” one of the medics, a very young man with a very thin mustache asked softly.

  “Hit by a tomato,”
Said said. “And probably on the head with a bullhorn.”

  The medic nodded and hurried to help Mohammed, leading her toward the nearby ambulance.

  “Well,” said Catolino. “We’ve got some work to do.”

  They both turned to look at the students running from the front of the building, running away from the Chicago police. A few sat on the ground either hurt or in protest. The two campus security guards who had fallen were being helped up. Television cameras turned silently.

  By this evening, the battle would be the subject of more than one talk radio show.

  They were waiting for Hanrahan outside of his house when he went home to change his shirt, right on his doorstep, hands folded in front of them. They could have been about to ring the bell or they could have been standing there for half an hour. Hanrahan recognized them immediately, Woo’s two “associates,” both immaculately dressed in matching blue slacks, navy blue jackets, white button-down shirts, and striped ties. Both men were Chinese, but the resemblance stopped there. One man was small and from his neck and the fit of his slacks, Bill Hanrahan could tell he was capable of significant damage without the need of a weapon. The other man was taller, broader, and wore a considerable bulge under the right side of his jacket. “Mr. Woo would like to see you now,” said the smaller man.

  “Mr. Woo will have to wait,” said Hanrahan to the men barring his way.

  Mr. Woo was a man of considerable influence in the Chinese community. Officially, he was an importer-exporter with a thriving business in Chinatown just off of Cermak Road. Unofficially, Mr. Woo was more than suspected of trafficking in a variety of goods including opium, prostitution, illegal immigrants, and stolen Asian art objects. Mr. Woo was a man to be feared in the Chinese community. He was a man to be respected, and it was respect he wanted most. At least this was the opinion of Iris Huang’s father who had known Woo in China. Woo had been a shoeless, orphaned street thief in Shanghai. He had moved up significantly with age and, with the help of several major bribes to Chinese communist officials, made his way across the border to Hong Kong where further bribes to British officials secured him official immigration to the United States. All that had occurred when Mr. Woo was young. He was no longer young. When he died, he planned to leave his considerable fortune to the Chinese community and have that fact announced immediately after his death. He planned for and was assured of the biggest funeral service in the history of Chinatown. Mr. Woo would prefer to have the streets lined with sincere mourners.