Lieberman's Day (25 page)

Hanrahan had parked in the small lot of the church, which had been neatly and efficiently shoveled, probably by Whiz Parker himself. There were two other cars in the lot.

The front door to St. Bart's had been open, and when he entered the warmth of the church interior had drawn him in. Hanrahan had looked at the crucifix inside the door, crossed himself automatically, and looked for the stained-glass window above the door. During the day the window let in blue-red light and cast a dancing image on the wooden floor in the open lobby. Now the glass image of Jesus being taken from the cross had the pale gray cast of winter. The dark lead that formed the crown of thorns on the head seemed faded and the four women in the glass looked weary and defeated, particularly the woman who reminded him of Maureen.

He had been in St. Bart's several months ago, and had had his first confession in more than twenty years. A woman had died, and though Hanrahan had come to the church in search of a witness, he had stayed long enough to confess to Father Parker his own sense of guilt over the murder. Bill Hanrahan had been assigned to watch the victim's apartment. He had gotten drunk at the Chinese restaurant across the street. He had gotten drunk and met Iris and the woman he was supposed to be watching had died. The next day, after confessing to Father Parker, Bill Hanrahan had gone on the wagon, cold, flat, frightened but determined, and he had remained on the wagon. No AA, no talks with the Overton district shrink.

Tonight Hanrahan had walked through the door in the church lobby and down the aisle past a lone skinny woman praying on his left toward the back and an old couple up in front on their knees looking up at the Virgin Mother.

Hanrahan knew where he was going and turned to the right several rows behind the praying couple, turned to the left, eased down the aisle of wooden pews, and moved past the confessional booths to the dark alcove behind which was Father Parker's office.

He had knocked, afraid that Parker wouldn't be there, afraid that he would fall apart and run for the nearest bar on Devon. But Parker had been in, lean, black, welcoming, and dressed in denim jeans, blue cotton shirt, and sneakers.

“Bill,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Father,” said Hanrahan, stepping into the office.

Parker looked at him for a few seconds, still holding the big policeman's hand.

“I'd like to say it's good to see you,” said Parker. “But from what I can see, I'd have trouble getting it out.”

“You got time to talk?” Hanrahan said.

“It's my job,” said Parker.

“You were on your way out.”

“Park district. Basketball league,” explained Parker. “My guess is they can play a half without me. Given the weather and the fact that the team we're playing is from South Shore, I have a feeling there may be no game. Have a seat. I'll go make a call and be right back.”

It was when the priest was gone that Hanrahan had roamed the room looking at old football photographs, some of which included a Whiz Parker who looked not much younger than he did now. The difference was that the Whiz Parker in the photos was still running on his own right knee, not one made of plastic, pins, and metal joints.

“Sorry,” said Parker, coming back into the room and closing the door. “Coffee? Tea? Water?”

“Nothing, Father,” said Hanrahan, sitting.

Father Parker didn't move behind his desk. Instead he pulled up a chair and sat a few feet away facing the troubled policeman.

“The ball's yours, Bill,” said Parker softly.

“I killed a man tonight, Father,” Hanrahan said, looking toward the dark window beyond the desk.

“You want to confess?” Parker said softly.

“That's the problem, Father,” Hanrahan said, looking back at the priest. “I don't want to confess. I murdered a man and I don't feel guilty. I murdered a man because I was sure that if I didn't he was probably going to wind up killing his wife and his son.”

“And …?”

“And,” Hanrahan repeated, shaking his head, “the wife and son lied for me. I killed the woman's husband, the boy's father, and they lied to save me.”

Hanrahan remembered Jeanine and Charlie beside him when Frankie Kraylaw pulled the trigger on the empty shotgun chambers, felt them, saw them.

“What do you want from me, Bill?” Father Parker asked.

“Should I let them live with that lie?”

“Are they Catholic?”

“What difference does it make?” Hanrahan said irritatedly.

“Let's put it another way, Bill. Do you want me to talk to them?”

“I don't know. Should I let them live with that lie?”

“Can you?”

“I ask you a question and you ask me a question and nobody answers questions. Nobody ever answers the damn questions and I can never make the damn decisions. Can you for Chrissake just tell me what to do?”

“No, for Christ's sake, I can't,” said Father Parker.

“Then tell me what you think.”

“I think if you hadn't killed this man, God's will would have been done.”

“Sam, he would have killed them,” Hanrahan said, getting to his feet and turning his back on the seated priest.

“Maybe,” said Parker. “Maybe you could have done something else.”

“Maybe,” echoed Hanrahan. “Then again, maybe not.”

“It's a question of belief, Bill.”

“That it is,” Hanrahan agreed, looking at the framed photograph of Willie Galimore with his arm around a small black boy who was certainly the priest sitting behind Hanrahan.

“Father, you can't believe if you don't believe. God built that in. Frankie Kraylaw said God talked to him, Jesus talked to him. He believed.”

“He was wrong,” said Sam Parker with a confidence that turned Hanrahan to face him again.

“How do you know you're not wrong?”

“I have to answer that?” asked Parker, getting out of his chair.

“Another question answers a question. No,” said Hanrahan, rubbing his face. He needed a shave. He needed to make up his mind. “Faith. You've got to have faith.”

“You've got it or you don't,” said Parker, “I can't just hand it to you. You can go through the motions, hedge your bets and make the right moves, but if you don't believe …”

“How about I just do the right thing to start with?” said Hanrahan. “And hope the rest comes.”

“Pray the rest comes,” the priest amended. “How many times have you been through this conversation since you were a kid, Bill? Straight answer.”

“With a priest?”

“With anyone.”

“Five, six. Couple of times with my father before he died. It's come up once or twice with my partner. There's a case. Abe's a Jew, a good man. Maybe he's got faith in his God. You can't both be right, Father.”

“How old are you, Bill?”

“Half a century.”

“Make a decision, Bill.”

The two men sat in silence and Hanrahan felt it coming a long way off, the memory of Maureen, the choking he felt when he listened to Sarah Vaughan tapes. The first sobs were small. He tried to hold them back, but they wouldn't stop. He looked up at Parker, whose face showed patience, patience and maybe sympathy.

“God damn it,” Hanrahan sobbed.

“Let's hope not,” said Father Parker.

The tears were coming now, not heavy yet, but coming beyond Hanrahan's control. He put his head in his hand and cried, “Jesus Christ.”

“Well, for him you've come to the right place,” said Parker softly.

Hanrahan let the tears come now.

“Father, I'd like to confess.”

“We can do it here,” said the priest.

“No,” said Hanrahan, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “Let's do it right. Like last time. Cassock and collar.”

G
ETTING INTO THE HOSPITAL HAD
been much easier than Raymond Carrou had expected, much easier than he had hoped for. In the car he had forced himself to come up with excuses to use if he was stopped. It would have depended on who stopped him. A nurse, a doctor he would have told that he was a new man on the cleaning staff. He was even prepared, if stopped by a security guard, to claim that he was a visiting physician in search of the radiology department. He had purchased a clipboard and some paper at a twenty-four-hour Walgreen's on Montrose and he consulted it frequently as he made his way through the hospital avoiding conversation.

Raymond's stomach had gurgled and twisted with fear. The gun had sagged conspicuously in his pocket. But no one had challenged him. People were too busy and he had moved briskly with the air of someone who knows where he is going and is running a bit late. He made sure, when passing anyone, to check his watch and clipboard and shake his head. What they saw was a tall, confident, good-looking black man whose face they would not remember.

The most difficult part was finding the woman. He had been in hospitals, when his uncle Monroe had the cancer, when his mother had the women's problem. He knew there was an intensive-care unit and that Carol Lieberman had been taken there. This he had discovered with a phone call to the hospital and the explanation that he was one of her coworkers who had heard about the tragedy on the radio. The directions to the ICU were clearly marked on walls and in the elevator.

When he got to the third floor, he made a right turn off the elevator and found an empty corridor. The ICU was at the end through double doors. Luck stayed with Raymond. He pushed through the doors and faced the nursing station expecting to see someone formidable behind the desk. But there was no one there. He could hear the authoritative voice of a woman coming from the open door of one of the rooms.

His plan had been to ask which room Carol Lieberman was in, because a flower delivery was coming. He would hold up his clipboard, look impatient, check something off, look at his watch. If that did not work, he would wait for a shift change and someone else at the desk. But the desk was empty and on a slate board behind the desk, written in ink on rough pieces of white adhesive tape, were the names and room numbers of each patient in the unit. Carol Lieberman was in Room 316. He turned, found 316 on his left, and quickly made his way back through the double doors to the corridor when he heard the authoritative voice of the woman through the open door say, “I'll check with Dr. Saper. If he says you can have juice or water, I'll be right back. Just lie still. Relax.”

Back in the third-floor corridor, Raymond found a custodian's closet. The door was open. He stepped in, turned on the light, and found that luck was still with him. Hanging on a peg was a pale gray custodian's jump suit. It was probably too big for Raymond, but that was far better man being too small. He changed quickly, quietly, heart beating faster and faster, and decided that he would watch the door to the ICU for the right moment, perhaps the ward nurse going to the toilet. At worst, he would slouch over and walk in carrying a mop and tell the nurse that there was an old woman in the waiting room holding her chest and looking for a nurse.

Few people passed while he waited. A bald man with glasses, wearing white, looked like a doctor. He had a bad cold. A limping little man in a robe hobbled by dragging a rolling stand with an IV connected to his arm. With his other hand, the old man did his best to keep the hospital robe from flapping open to show his skinny ass. Another old man in a rumpled shirt and jacket came off the elevator. He looked a little like a sad dog as he walked slowly to the double doors of the ICU and went in.

Raymond waited a few minutes more and checked his watch. It was 10:37. The doors opened as he looked up and a thin, gray-haired nurse with a pair of glasses dangling from her neck by a chain came out and made a turn to her left, moving quickly out of Raymond's sight.

He took a deep breath, checked the gun in the pocket of his custodian's uniform, stepped out, and moved quickly to the double doors.

Inside, in the dark hum of the reception area, he turned to Room 316 and was reaching for the door when a voice whispered behind him, “No, Carrou.”

Raymond turned quickly, starting to pull the gun from his pocket, but hard metal drove into his stomach.

“That's the barrel of a gun that can make a very big hole in your stomach,” Lieberman said. “A lot bigger than the ones you put into David Lieberman.”

“You don't understand, old man,” Raymond said, his hand still on the weapon in his pocket.

“Keep your voice down, Raymond,” Lieberman said. “And turn around, walk through the doors, and turn to your right. Don't say anything else, just walk, now.”

Raymond turned and felt the barrel of the old man's gun in his back now, low, cold. He walked through the double doors and, as he was told, turned right.

“You got to let me talk,” Raymond said.

“Walk, don't talk,” said Lieberman.

Raymond moved down the empty corridor, deciding that when they got to the exit door he would have to try, have to make his move, turn quickly, knock the old man's gun away. If he could do it quietly, he would drag the old man into the stairwell and kill him somehow. Then he would have to move quickly, get to Carol Lieberman, even if it meant killing the nurse. There were no more choices. It was all madness and survival now.

“Stairwell,” Lieberman said, and Raymond turned, pushing the hand of the old man to one side.

Raymond Carrou stood at least four inches taller than the man, outweighed him by twenty pounds, and was more than thirty years younger. Once the gun hand was pushed away, it should have been easy. The only problem should have been keeping the old man quiet.

But when he caught a glimpse of the sad hound face before him, Raymond hesitated. There was no fear, no panic, and the gun, which should have gone flying into the wall, was still in the old man's hand.

The old man's right hand came forward in a tight fist ramming deeply into Raymond's gut. Raymond staggered back, putting his hands behind him to keep from crashing into the ceiling-high windows at the end of the corridor. The old man stepped forward quickly and put the barrel of the pistol into Raymond's right ear.