Lieberman's Choice (10 page)

On the way to the door, with Ty Wheeler as his escort and the cheerful laughing voice of the mayor behind him on the phone, Hartz silently cursed the day he had decided to back Aaron Jameson's political career.

When Abe Lieberman had left his son-in-law and his home two hours earlier, he had headed for the expressway, going ten to fifteen miles above the limit. He hit the Kennedy in eight minutes and got off at North Avenue twelve minutes later. Forty minutes from his front door he stepped into the North Avenue Station, from which he had been transferred more than a decade earlier.

The North smelled just the way it had forever. Each police station has its own smell. It takes years to develop it and the final result is an unsubtle mixture of sweat, rot, mildew, drunks, forgotten burgers and pizzas, ancient doughnuts, and the tears of mothers and children. Ethnic changes also had their say. The North smelled vaguely of taco sauce and onions, a smell that, Lieberman decided, was a definite improvement over the past.

There were two people behind the bulletproof glass plate of the reception desk. One was a near-retirement uniformed bald egg of a man named Fullmeister. Fullmeister had been adjusting his collar for over thirty years in the hope that he would find the neck that was not there. The other person, also in uniform, behind the glass plate was a young Latin-looking woman with short no-nonsense hair and a serious look on her face.

“The Bloodhound returns,” called Fullmeister.

“How you been, Sid?” asked Lieberman.

“Surviving the war, which is all you can expect out of life,” said Fullmeister, adjusting his collar. “Hal's waitin' for you.”

“What's he got?” asked Lieberman, moving toward the narrow wooden stairway to the right.

“Del Sol,” said Fullmeister as Lieberman started up the stairs. “You talked to the X-man lately?”

The X-man was Xavier Flores, Lieberman's first partner, who had retired to Atlanta almost sixteen years ago.

“Spends his days at the zoo,” said Lieberman. “Nights at the ballpark. His grandson Tony's a big lawyer now.”

“I'm next,” said Fullmeister. “Breaking in my replacement right now.”

“Good luck,” said Lieberman, going up the first stair.

Behind him Lieberman could hear Sid Fullmeister whispering, “Would you believe that little bastard beat the shit out of both of the Guttierez brothers right in front of All Saints Church on a Sunday morning?”

“No,” came the incredulous voice of the Latin-looking woman.

The myth, thought Lieberman, going slowly up the wooden stairs. He had not beaten the shit out of the Guttierez brothers in front of All Saints Church a dozen years ago. He had stopped Manuel Guttierez, a drug dealer, a block away from the church and told him not to deal on Sundays. Guttierez, with his younger brother and Chinga Ramirez, had laughed at the little man with the baggy eyes who looked like a sad old dog. That had been a mistake. Lieberman had pulled his gun, stepped up to Guttierez, shoved the barrel into the man's gut and pulled the trigger. It clicked on an empty chamber and Manuel Guttierez had gone into seizure. He couldn't catch his breath. His brother and Chinga Ramirez had come to his aid as Lieberman raised his pistol and pulled the trigger. This time, within earshot of the All Saints Church, the weapon fired.

“You never know with these things,” Lieberman had said with a whimsical shake of his head.

“El viejo es loco,”
said the younger Guttierez.

“Quizás,”
said Lieberman. “You don't deal on Sundays.”

That was the way it had gone. It wasn't the only myth about El Viejo in the district. He was a legend who had gotten out just in time, before anyone tested the legend. He had traded Hispanic poverty on the near North Side for the far Northeast Side, Rogers Park, Edgewater, and a section of Uptown where the odds were even that a 545 call could turn up a Russian, Vietnamese, Hispanic, Southern white, Chinese, or Korean body.

Lieberman remembered these stairs, but they were higher and harder now. He had lost a little more cushion in his arthritic knees since the last time he made this climb. When he got to the top, he paused, not to catch his breath but to be sure his knees would not rebel and refuse to support him. It wasn't as bad as he feared.

The hallway was dark. It had been born dark in 1933, but Lieberman knew where he was and where he was going. He followed the voices in Spanish. They led him to the end of the hall, past the double door of the squad room, which he did not feel compelled to open for old times' sake. He had no impulse to look at his old desk in the corner near the cracked radiator.

Querez's door was closed but not locked. It was wood, windowless, and badly in need of paint. Querez's name was stenciled in white. Just above it, if one knew what one was looking at, was the name of the previous occupant which had been removed but had left an indelible shadow that only fresh paint could obliterate. The previous occupant had been Lieberman's old boss, Larry Doyle, cousin of a former fire commissioner. Captain Doyle had died in the line of duty shouting at a drug-dazed shoplifter, who had smiled as the captain grew ever louder and had a stroke.

Lieberman knocked at the door and Hal Querez answered, “Come in.”

Lieberman entered. Behind the desk in the yellow-walled room sat Sergeant Hal Querez, who looked vaguely like a thin George C. Scott, so thin, in fact, that he had to wear suspenders because he had no hips. Hal Querez also wore a perpetual smile that suggested that he had a secret. Hal Querez survived the insanity of his district by considering all of life a wonderful, horrible joke played by God. This was the secret he would gladly have divulged had anyone sincerely asked.

Across from Querez sat, or rather slumped, Emiliano “El Perro” Del Sol, who smiled at Lieberman. El Perro's smile was memorable, for his face was a map of wild scars leading to dead eyes. A scar from who knows what battle ran from his right eye down across his nose to just below the left side of his mouth. The scar was rough and red, and had probably taken an afternoon of stitches. The nose had been broken so many times that there was little bone, no cartilage. When lost in thought, which was seldom and most frightening, El Perro played with the flesh of his nose, flattening it with his thumb, pushing it to one side absentmindedly. His teeth were white but uneven, except for his sharp eye teeth, which had never grown down into place and made him look rather like a vampire. Emiliano's black hair was, as always, brushed straight back, and he liked to think that he resembled Pat Riley, the coach of the New York Knicks.

“El Viejo,” said Emiliano, sitting up. “My men are getting a railroad here.”

“I weep for you, Emiliano,” said Lieberman, moving to the last chair in the room, a metal folding chair with the paint chipping to show the dull metal beneath.

“I appreciate that,” El Perro said sincerely.
“Este puerco …
”

“What did I tell you?” Querez interrupted with a patient smile. “You watch your mouth, or you'll be learning sign language.”

“I like him,” said El Perro, pointing at Querez.

“We got two of Del Sol's gang on an armed robbery,” said Querez. “Wertzel's TV on Crawford. Witnesses, even videotape. One of them has a prior conviction, one of them has a pair.”

“Hey,” said El Perro, standing up and filled with indignation. “We ain't no gang. We're a club, Tentáculos. We do good stuff. You know that, Viejo. We play baseball. You want to see our bats and balls?”

“Sientase,
Emiliano,” Querez said, getting up from behind the desk.

“I think you should sit,” said Lieberman.

Emiliano Del Sol sat and played with his nose.

“They got Fernandez and Piedras,” said El Perro. “They wouldn't do a thing like that. You know that?”

Arturo Fernandez was a broomstick who always dressed in black and had a passion for very young girls. Piedras, whose real name was Jesus Montoya, was a violent hulk with no measurable IQ.

“How old are you, Emiliano?” asked Lieberman.

El Perro shrugged.

“You're twenty-eight,” Lieberman went on. “The last time I arrested you, you were fifteen.”

“You was the first cop to arrest me,” said El Perro with pride. “When I was a little crap-ball maybe nine, ten,
verdad,
Rabbi?”

“What do you want, Emiliano?” asked Lieberman.

“You're on the Shepard shit, right? Cop up there on that building who blasted shit out of his wife and some cop?”

“I'm on it,” said Lieberman.

“I know Shepard,” said El Perro.
“Duro,
hard, thinks he is El Dios himself. You gonna have a hard time getting him down. People gonna get dead.”

“Now I see,” said Lieberman. “You've decided to go straight. You're going to be a news analyst and you want me to get you a job on the
Tribune.”

El Perro stopped playing with his nose and laughed. He looked at Querez who was still smiling, and then at Lieberman, who wasn't smiling at all.

“I can get him,” said El Perro.

Lieberman and Querez said nothing. El Perro went on.

“When I was a kid, when you bust me I was the best burglar you ever seen, right?”

“You were talented,” Lieberman admitted. “But you got caught.”

“I was a kid,” he said impatiently. “I ain't been caught since I was fifteen, not that I done anything, except that one time by Shepard, and I got out of that. But it took you to really catch me, Viejo.”

“I'm honored,” said Lieberman.

“You should be. Hey, I can do stuff cops can't do,” whispered El Perro. “You know that. I go up there I got no rules.”

“And in exchange for this gracious act of public service?” asked Lieberman.

“Fernandez and Piedras walk,” El Perro said. “Innocent men walk.”

Lieberman looked at Querez, who blinked his eyes slowly.

Silence.

“Pues, dígame algo,”
said El Perro, looking at Lieberman.

Querez pushed a button on his phone and didn't answer. Less than three seconds later, two uniformed officers stepped into the room. Both of them were big. Neither was smiling.

“Find out where we can reach Mr. Del Sol if we need him,” said Querez. “And escort him to the street.”

El Perro stood up, looked at Lieberman and said, “I can do it, Viejo. You know I can.”

When the two officers and El Perro were gone, Lieberman looked at Hal Querez.

“The way I figure it,” said Querez, “off the record and it ain't my call, but what have we got to lose? That crazy shit goes up there, gets Bernie or gets himself killed.”

“Fernandez and Piedras?” asked Lieberman.

“No one got hurt at Wertzel's. They didn't get away with anything.”

“That the way you look at it, Hal, or the way you figure Hartz will look at it?”

“Abe, we got a choice here? If we don't let Hartz know about the offer and he finds out, you're back at the North and I'm ducking Uzis on the West Side. We're both too old.”

“And you figure Hartz'll take it seriously?”

“He's gonna figure the way I said, ‘What have we got to lose?'”

When he got back to the Shoreham half an hour later, Lieberman passed El Perro's offer on to Alan Kearney.

A
LAN KEARNEY SURVEYED THE
battlefield that had recently been recognizable as the stylish apartment of Dr. Jason Belding. Papers, phones, ashtrays, and empty junk food bags littered the tables, chairs, and floors. The white carpet showed dark and dirty indentations that might well be permanent. Two policemen were in the corner, one on the phone, the other filling in a log.

“You listening to me, Captain?” Alton Brooks said, breaking into his consciousness.

Kearney was sitting in a sofa, considering another coffee, but the idea turned his stomach. Brooks stood darkly over him, hands behind his back, waiting like Father Cronowyz at Saint Ignatius when a boy was brought up for discipline. Father Cronowyz, however, had learned the value of the pregnant pause, the long delay that set the prey on edge and made him ready to confess to any and all crimes in the hope of escape from those accusing eyes. Kearney had wondered if this was part of Jesuit training and if the Jesuits might be willing to take on the instruction of some Chicago police officers. Brooks would be high on the list.

“He's not going to let your men get a clean shot at him from below,” said Kearney.

“I think you need a few hours sleep here, Captain,” Brooks said in a lowered voice. “We're not talking about what he will or will not do here. We're talking about whether or not my men have the go-ahead to pick him off if they get a clean shot.”

“You've got it, but you won't see him.”

“And the door?” Brooks pressed.

“Hartz already told you to go ahead.”

“To work on the door, not what to do when we can open it. It's your operation. I'm not getting into any blurred lines of command if something goes foul when this thing is over.”

“Take the fucking door.”

“We've got the …”

Someone knocked on the front door of Belding's apartment. No one seemed to notice.

“Just be quiet and don't use the radio,” Kearney said, closing his eyes.

“Kearney, who do you think you're dealing with?”

“Sorry, Brooks. It's been a long night and the day doesn't promise to be much better.”

Whoever was knocking did it again, only louder, and the cop at the phone turned and shouted, “Just open the fuckin' door and come in.”

Carla Duvier opened the door and stepped in. The policeman at the phone and the one at the log joined Brooks in looking at her. Her hair was drawn back in a tight bun and she wore no makeup. She was wearing a yellow skirt and vest and a white silk blouse.

Carla Duvier was accustomed to being looked at. Usually she liked it. Now she had business. She crossed the room to Kearney, who opened his eyes.