Lieberman's Law (30 page)

Lieberman had found Towser by going to the young man's apartment on Peterson Avenue where Mrs. Towser, a slight, pale, blonde woman with short hair and a not particularly becoming green dress, reluctantly let him in when he showed his badge and gave his name.

The apartment was small and the woman young, nervous, and defensive. Lieberman liked her. For one reason, regardless of her fear, her eyes met his.

“What has Eli done?” she had said. “Eli is a good man, Detective Lieberman.”

“I know,” said Lieberman.

“Oh,” she said. “I'm sorry, please sit. I'll get coffee, tea?”

“Neither,” said Lieberman, sitting.

The room was rather grimly decorated, from the heavy dark couch and almost matching armchair to the pair of unmatched bookcases against the wall. There was a copy of a painting on the wall, a painting Lieberman had seen once before and which had haunted him for years, three little girls swinging solemnly around on a schoolyard thing that looked like a swing. Behind the girls were the ruins of a devastated city with buildings torn apart. Lieberman thought it was by Ben Shahn. He forced himself to look away from it.

“I need to talk to Eli,” he had said.

“If you leave your number, when he returns …” she began.

“I don't have the time. Tomorrow is Monday. Do you know what's going to happen tomorrow?”

Towser's wife was sitting on the sofa, her legs together. Lieberman was on the chair, leaning forward. The girl looked genuinely puzzled by the question. “No,” she said.

“Eli might,” said Lieberman. “He might be able to save lives, keep Jews from being accused of an atrocity.”

She smiled in disbelief, but stopped when she realized the man with the look of a sad dog was serious.

“How could Eli do that?” she said.

“Maybe he can't. I'll know when I ask him,” said Lieberman.

“He's at the public library,” she said. “His arm was broken at a rally. He can't go far without pain and he had something he said he had to look up. It's very hard to do one's prayers with one hand. Eli is not in a good mood.”

“Thanks for the warning,” said Lieberman, rising.

She had risen too. “Eli is a good man,” she repeated.

Lieberman nodded. He would withhold judgment. “You were at the rally,” Lieberman said, remembering a blonde in a dark dress near Eli Towser. He did not, however, remember seeing her in any of the photographs.

“Yes,” she said.

Lieberman thanked her and left, heading for the library, where he would have no trouble spotting Towser even had he not known him. The cast was on his left arm in such a way that it was bent at the elbow and resting in an awkward sling. He was sitting alone, his
kepuh
clipped to his curly dark hair.

Lieberman sat opposite Towser and waited patiently, hands folded. Towser was either too absorbed in what he was reading or refused to acknowledge the presence of his former employer.

Towser went on reading awkwardly. Lieberman was fairly sure from the young man's eye movements that he was not reading at all, just pretending. Finally, Towser put a pencil in the book as a marker and looked up at Lieberman. Towser touched his beard and waited, showing nothing and looking directly into his eyes as Sarah Towser had done.

“Tomorrow is Monday,” said Lieberman softly, though there was no one near their table.

“Thank you for coming all the way here to inform me of this important fact,” whispered Towser with a sincerity that made his sarcasm all the more biting.

He would, Lieberman thought, make an effective rabbi.

“Something is going to happen tomorrow,” said Lieberman.

“Something happens every day,” said Towser.

Lieberman touched his mustache and nodded his head.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “something bad is going to happen. We have reason to believe that a group of skinheads, perhaps with the help of a fanatic Arab individual or group, is going to do something violent, something they plan to blame on Jews, possibly, if they can, blame on your group.”

Towser shook his head. “My ‘group' is the Jewish people which is also your ‘group.' ”

“OK,” said Lieberman, holding up his hands. “I thought it was worth a try. The FBI hasn't come up with anything. Our informants haven't come up with anything. We're not even sure, to tell you the truth, that they plan to attack a non-Jewish group. They might be going after a Jewish restaurant or a temple while people are worshiping.”

Towser sat thinking for a moment while Lieberman tried to see what book the young man was reading. Towser turned the book around so that the detective could read it. The book was
Rejoice O Youth: Comprehensive Jewish Ideology
by Avigdor Miller. “This book made a great impression on me when I was younger,” Towser said, trying to shift his cast to a less uncomfortable position. “I had an urge to revisit it. I have no copy of my own.”

“And?” asked Lieberman.

“If one keeps an open mind,” said the young man, “one finds that the past is constantly changing and a book or person revisited may not be the entity we thought it before. It is the price we pay for spiritual growth. It is the reason the Talmud exists and why scholars continue to debate it.”

Lieberman waited. Eli Towser was not just lecturing. He was coming to a decision. “Wait,” he said, rising. “I have a phone call to make.”

Towser moved past the check-out desk toward the two phones near the front door of the library. Lieberman could see him awkwardly fish out a quarter, insert it, dial, and wait. Then someone came on the line. Lieberman couldn't hear it, but the discussion was apparently heated for the first minute or two and then moved to a calm with Towser listening. He hung up the phone after about three minutes and returned to the table.

People were coming into the branch library now, children holding their parents' hands, anxious to pull away and explore, a few of the homeless, and a dozen or so old men and women who came to spend a morning off the streets or away from the loneliness of their apartments.

Towser said, “You'll need to write this down,” making it clear that his own memory was sufficient so that he had not felt the need to write down the information while on the phone. It was also questionable, given his disabled arm, that he could have written down the information.

Lieberman took out his notebook and pen.

“Temple Emanuel in Albany Park is having an evening meeting of the Sisterhood. Muslims will meet for prayer in the following three locations.”

Lieberman wrote as Towser spoke softly.

“And,” Towser said, “the most likely target is a meeting of the so-called Honorable Martin Abdul and the board of the African Muslim Church, militantly anti-Semitic. Should be about sixteen senior members of the advisory board and maybe a guest or two. Abdul has, as you may have noted in the newspapers and on television, increased his verbal attacks on the Jewish people and his attempt to incite black people to attack Jews. He has furthered the division between two peoples who should be working in concert, political and defensive, from our mutual enemies.”

“A perfect target for a partnership of Arab terrorists and neo-Nazi skinheads,” said Lieberman.

“Kill them and blame it on us,” said Towser. “Get rid of a group of blacks who they hate and fear and blame it on the Jews, who they also hate and fear. And then the union between Arab militants, and Nazi skinheads will end in war between the two allies. The repetition of history.”

“Anything else?” said Lieberman.

Towser shook his head. Lieberman closed his notebook and put it away.

“Thanks, Eli,” he said.

“I gave you this information to try to protect Jews,” said the young man. “And as much as I despise Martin Abdul and what he represents, I do not wish him dead until his spewing forth of hate results in the first attack on a Jew. Though at the moment,” he continued, holding up his heavily cast arm, “there is little I can do in the way of retaliation.”

Towser awkwardly opened the book he had been reading and made it clear that the discussion had ended.

“We've looked at the photographs,” said Lieberman. “The man who broke your arm may be the Arab working with the skinheads, the Hate Mongers.” Towser looked up at Lieberman, blinked once, and went back to his book. Lieberman went into the children's room, directly to the line of books by Roald Dahl and picked out the only two he had not read to Melisa. His own daughter, Lisa, had read the Dahl books over and over. Her favorite had been
Matilda.

Lieberman walked past Towser, who did not look up as the policeman checked out the books, and left.

When Hanrahan had come home late the night before, his son Michael was sitting in the kitchen, a half-full cup of coffee in his hand, watching CNN on the small black-and-white next to the refrigerator. Michael was wearing a pair of white undershorts with a DePaul Blue Demon printed on the right leg. His T-shirt was a match, white with a Blue Demon in the center.

Hanrahan had already left his jacket neatly hung in the front closet. He still wore his holster and gun. He turned off the television and poured himself a cup of coffee.

“Not hot,” said Michael. “I microwaved this.”

Hanrahan's son held up his cup and gave a small smile. Hanrahan nodded and put his cup of coffee in the microwave. While it hummed, he turned toward his son who was clean shaven, hair still wet from a very recent shower.

“CNN was talking about military spending,” Michael explained after taking a sip of coffee.

Hanrahan, standing near the refrigerator, nodded once again. The microwave stopped humming and Hanrahan took out the mug. It was white, his old “Hill Street Blues” cup. Michael had given it to him on Father's Day a long time ago. The writing on it in dark blue said, “Let's be careful out there.”

Hanrahan sat across from his son and took a sip of the coffee. It was hotter than he liked, but he drank.

“How was your day?” Michael asked.

“I chased bad guys, tried to ignore aching knees, and called my son who wasn't here,” said Hanrahan, looking at Michael who forced himself to face his father.

“Must have been in the shower,” said Michael with a shrug.

“I called around noon,” said Hanrahan. “and then at two. How many showers do you take a day?”

“I was on the back porch reading part of the day,” Michael said. “Short story collection I brought with me. I think you might like some of it. I can mark the ones I think are especially good.”

Hanrahan nodded and said, “Which chair did you take out there?”

“I don't know. One of these. The one you're sitting on, I think, why?”

“Not a great day to be outside reading,” said Hanrahan. “The rain and all. And the eave leaks. But it accounts for your not answering the phone.”

“I felt cooped up in the house,” Michael said with a sigh “A little rain wasn't bad.”

“Michael,” Hanrahan said, leaning forward. “We stop the bullshit right now or you go upstairs and pack. You get dressed. I shake your hand, give you a hug, wish you luck and say ‘goodbye.' I'm a cop and I'm an alcoholic and I'm your father. Lying to me is a humiliation to you and an insult to me.”

Michael rose, moved to the sink, poured out what remained of the coffee in his mug, rinsed the mug, and put it in the dishwasher. His father waited patiently, quietly, drinking his coffee.

“It was just a couple of beers, for Chrissake,” said Michael, looking down at the familiar linoleum on the kitchen floor. It was well worn in front of the refrigerator and around the table. Michael remembered thinking when he was a kid that you could see the pattern of white with blue lines as squares or diamonds depending on where you stood. “You said you'd be home early and we'd …”

“Michael,” Hanrahan said. “You were drinking in the morning and afternoon.”

His son's head jerked up as if he had been dozing.

“Last chance,” said the father.

“The two beers were chasers,” said Michael. “For my first real day, compared to where I was a week ago, I d say that's not too bad.”

“It doesn't work that way, Mike,” Hanrahan said, motioning for his son to sit back down. Michael obeyed. “You stop. You get help and you stop. You decide that you want to stop. You may not be off it forever and you may need help the rest of your life, but you start by stopping.”

Michael glanced up at his father, back at the table, and then up again before saying in an angry whisper, “Where were you when this started, when I needed you? You were deeper in the bottle than I am.”

“True, but I'm out now and trying to make me feel guilty about the past isn't going to do you any good in the present or future. I was a half-assed, nonpresent alcoholic father. I never hit you or your mother or your brother, but I wasn't there. We're talking about you, Michael. You want to stop, I give Smedley Ash a call. You come to an AA meeting with me tomorrow night. You stay in the house and you don't have a drink during the day.”

“Is that part of the AA code?” asked Michael.

“The part about staying home alone all day is all my own idea,” said Hanrahan. “It's the deal. Last chance. Take it or not. If you decide to leave, I'd rather you did it in the morning so I can say goodbye, but …”

“Tough love,” said Michael.

“All love is tough,” said Hanrahan. He gave a single, short laugh. “I've turned second-rate Irish philosopher in my middle age. Pretty soon I'll bore myself.” He looked at his son for a response. “You know what I'm aching to do, Mike? I'm aching to tell you to get dressed so we can go to one of the bars I used to get drunk in. We could get happy, loving, remember the few good times when you were a kid, and I could tell you parts of my life story you don't know. We'd be pals, buddies, drunks together. It has its appeal, Michael, but it's not worth the price.”