Lieberman's Folly (23 page)

“Can you take this?” Nestor called holding up the phone.

“This don't hurt,” said Madera, spitting blood.

“I didn't mean your head, son,” said Nestor.

Lieberman moved toward Nestor, who was holding the phone out. Lieberman thought he heard an animal sob from the cage behind him, but he didn't turn. People were crying on him tonight. It was a night for crying.

“Call's for Hanrahan,” said Nestor, hand over the speaker. “Doorman at the Valdez apartment.”

Lieberman took the phone and said, “Hello.”

“You the guy works with Hanrahan?”

“I'm the guy,” said Lieberman.

“My name's Billy Tarton, the night doorman at—”

“I know,” said Lieberman rubbing his eyes. It was past midnight and the day had been long.

“Hanrahan said I should call him if Nikki Morales came back,” said Tarton. “She's back, but I don't think for long. She told me to get her a cab in fifteen minutes. She's going on vacation.”

“Don't get the cab,” said Lieberman. “I'll be there in ten minutes.”

S
HE WAS STANDING IN
front of the building, two suitcases at her side, looking down Sheridan Road for her taxi. Lieberman slowed down and pulled into the driveway, making the circle around the fountain and pulling up in front of the door. Behind the doors Billy Tarton saw Lieberman and pointed at the woman.

The woman glanced at Lieberman, who got out of his car, opened his trunk, moved to the woman's side, and picked up her suitcases.

“You a cab?” she said, looking at his car as he dropped the suitcases in and closed the trunk. Her voice was soft with too much effort. She sounded like a woman to whom the softness and accent weren't natural, but she tried hard to make them fit.

“Cab's not coming,” said Lieberman, moving around to the passenger seat and opening the door.

“This is … I'm calling a cop,” she said.

“I'm a cop,” said Lieberman, still holding the door open politely.

“You stole my bags,” she protested. “I can sue you, the police department, and the city of Chicago.”

“Young lady,” Lieberman said wearily, “my partner's been shot. My daughter's on the verge of divorce, and about fifteen minutes ago a very crazy young man tried to drive his head through my stomach. The threat of a lawsuit signifies a return to the normal world. Miss Morales, please get in the car.”

Nikki Morales stood glaring at Lieberman for about ten seconds, her hands on her hips, her ample red mouth pouting. She turned to the doorman for support but he was occupied with a phone call which, Lieberman would have bet, had no one on the other end.

Lieberman looked at the woman carefully. She was about Estralda Valdez's height and she was a looker, but not like Estralda. Nikki was fuller in the face, lighter of color, and, as Bess would describe her, full figured.

There was no way anyone could have taken her for Estralda. There was no way she could have fit into Estralda's clothes. She was also a good or not-so-good ten years older than Estralda. She was also not Guadalupe Madera, Estralda's sister.

“I'm going to the airport,” she said, getting in the car.

Lieberman closed the door, went around, and got in. He had left me motor running and the radio on.

As he drove onto Sheridan, a man's voice on the radio said, “And now, on a tape delay from this morning,
Mind Talk
with psychologist Jean Kaiser. Since this is a tape delay, please do not call the toll-free number that will be announced throughout the show.”

“God,” sighed Nikki, “another Dr. Ruth.”

“No,” said Lieberman. “I know this one.”

“Kaiser?” asked Nikki.

“Started in Chicago,” he said.

Jean Kaiser's voice came on, and Lieberman waited just enough to hear how she sounded. She sounded healthy, sane, and strong. He turned the radio off.

“Estralda Valdez,” Lieberman said, making a right turn on Foster and heading west toward O'Hare Airport.

Nikki Morales looked straight ahead out the window.

“Ever see
Detour
?” asked Lieberman. “Guy played by Tom Neal picks up a woman and she won't let him go, almost gets him killed.”

“She picks him up,” Nikki Morales corrected. “What's your point?”

“You've got Tom Neal's chance of getting to the airport if you don't answer some questions,” said Lieberman.

They drove past Swedish Memorial Hospital and over the bridge through River Park. Nikki was still not talking.

“When I hit Kedzie,” he said, “I turn and head back to the station. You call a lawyer. We call you a hostile witness to murder. The judge—”

“Murder?” she shrieked, her soft voice not quite breaking into whatever it sounded like normally. “I don't know who killed her.”

Lieberman looked at her without expression, pulled the car over, and parked across from a hot dog stand.

“No,” she said. “Don't bother saying ‘How did you know a woman was killed?' Columbo. I know Estralda was killed Friday. It went through the building.”

“Why did you pack and run?” asked Lieberman. “Want a hot dog?”

“A kosher with ketchup and grilled onions,” Nikki Morales said, shaking her head. “I want a lawyer.”

“No, you don't. You want to have a hot dog and catch a plane,” he said, removing the keys from the ignition and opening the car door. “Think about it while I get the dogs. What you drink?”

“Diet anything. I'm on a diet.”

Lieberman crossed the street, went into the hot dog stand, and ordered two dogs from a big black guy with white hair who was alone in the place mopping up. The place smelled of Lysol, hot dogs, and grilled onions.

“Shouldn't be out this late around here, Abe” said the guy, abandoning the mop and wiping his hands on his gray-white apron to make the sandwiches. “Get yourself mugged, cop or no cop. Neighborhood's changing.”

“How's life, Henry?” asked Lieberman. He looked through the window at Nikki, who was looking back at him.

“Changing,” repeated the man behind the counter. “Like I said. Drinks?”

“Two Diet Pepsis.”

Henry nodded and looked across the street where Lieberman was glancing.

“Can you place her, Henry?”

“I place her,” said the counterman.

“She in the business?”

“Nikki,” said the counterman, going back to draw the drinks. “Ain't seen her in, shit, must be five years goin'.”

“Where do you know her? Grilled onions on both. One with mustard. One ketchup.”

“She worked the clubs down on Oak and Rush,” said Henry, pulling the steamed buns and reaching for the boiling dogs with plastic tongs. “Bartender splits. I used to fill in at Mellow's, you know? They come in, Nikki and the rest, maybe every few nights when things was slow and the out-of-town Jaspers wasn't biting.”

“She moved uptown,” said Lieberman. “What's her real name?”

“Nikki …” Henry wrapped the two dogs in thin waxed paper as he tried to remember her name. “Fries with this?”

“No.”

“Last name's Hoffer,” said Henry, reaching for a brown paper bag. “Memory's not good as it was, Abe. Could be like that. She done short time once for cutting a hoop trying to pull in a customer.”

“Anything else?”

“She talk Baltimore?” he asked.

“Boston,” said Lieberman, taking the warm bag and drinks and handing Henry a twenty-dollar bill. Henry hit the cash button on the register but pocketed the twenty.

“Wanted to be a lady, did Nikki. Always did so. Summer of eighty-six Nikki put a knife into a tricky dick who started hurting,” said Henry, looking out the window. “Dick complained and your boys went looking for Jane but never found the right one. That the kind of anything?”

“The kind,” said Lieberman. “See you, Henry.”

“Any time,” said Henry, coming around the counter and heading for the mop.

“What's your name?” asked Nikki, taking the offered hot dog, napkin, and Diet Pepsi complete with straw.

“Lieberman,” he said.

“My plane's at two,” she said softly. “There's a motel about—”

“Miss Hoffer,” he interrupted. Nikki went silent. “Estralda Valdez was cut badly. You've got a prior for cutting. You've also got an outstanding for slicing a piece of white meat out of an out-of-town visitor.”

“I didn't kill her,” Nikki insisted after swallowing a bite of dog and bun.

“I think you got mine,” Lieberman said. “This one's got mustard.”

“I'm not trading,” said Nikki. “Live with it. With AIDS and things, I'm not trading.”

Lieberman considered pointing out the inconsistency but thought better of it and took another bite.

“All right,” Nikki said. “Estralda was trying to set up a stable. We were the first two. Idea was we get a dozen girls, set 'em up in apartments in the neighborhood, and work the phone from Estralda's. She would send the client to the right girl. Only one who'd know the phone numbers would be Estralda. Vice would have a hell of a night finding us all if anyone got busted. And she said she had connections, cops, you and your partner.”

“What happened?” asked Lieberman.

“Estralda called, said I might be getting a visitor, out-of-towner named Frank. Frank was to get a freebie. Frank was to be made nice to. Frank could fuck up the whole thing.”

“Friday?”

“Friday, right,” said Nikki finishing her hot dog. “I waited. Nothing. Then just before midnight, she calls, says forget it. They'll take care of Frank.”

“They?” asked Lieberman.

“Estralda and her sister. Her sister was there Friday. That guy in the hot dog stand you went into, over there. That's Henry Fives. He nailed me, didn't he?”

“Why're you running?” asked Lieberman.

“Henry's a pimp,” said Nikki.

“Was a pimp,” said Lieberman. “Now he sells fries and cleans floors. Why'd you run?”

“Didn't want to get busted. Estralda had a book. She said I wasn't in the book, but you think I believed that? And this Frank who probably cut her up. He had my name and apartment number, remember?”

“Where does Estralda's sister live?” asked Lieberman, taking the waxed paper from Nikki and stuffing it into the grease-stained brown bag.

“Don't know,” she said. “Saw her in the building a couple of times.”

“That's it?” asked Lieberman.

“That's all,” said Nikki.

“Nikki?”

“What?”

“You bite the inside of your cheek when you lie,” he said. “The word on Estralda's murder didn't get through the building that fast. You were packed and out before anybody but the police and the killer knew who got killed.”

“Shit,” said Nikki.

They sat quietly for a few minutes, watching the late-night trucks lumbering toward the city.

“OK,” she said. “Lupe, Estralda's sister, called me, told me to clear out, said Frank was coming for me. She was crying. I didn't even know Estralda was dead. I ran, read about the murder Saturday.”

“No plane tonight, Nikki, sorry,” said Lieberman, turning on the ignition.

Nikki slumped back in her seat.

“You want me to ID Lupe,” she said.

Lieberman made a U-turn.

“Yeah,” he said. “How about another dog?”

“Why not?”

By the time Lieberman had booked Veronica Alice Hoffer as a material witness to murder and a kid from the state's attorney's office who claimed to be a lawyer had done the paperwork, it was almost three in the morning. Lieberman called the hospital and found that Hanrahan was alive and that both Maureen and Iris were still there.

A few minutes after three-thirty Lieberman went through his front door, took his shoes off, and walked slowly toward the bathroom, navigating around the sleeping bag on the floor in which Melisa lay clutching her almost bald Flower Kid doll, around the end of the day bed on which Barry lay in a near-fetal ball snoring adenoidally. He padded past the open door of the kitchen, through which a yellow night light shone on the stove. He made it to the bathroom, closed the door, turned on the light, and looked at himself in the mirror. The man in the mirror was Abraham Lieberman's grandfather, though the white beard was only stubble and not flowing. The moist, red eyes, the dark sacks under them, the curled hair.

“An observation,” Lieberman told his mirror image quietly. “We do not become our parents. We become our grandparents.”

He undressed slowly, took a chance and turned on the shower. He waited for it to turn hot and got in under the shower massage that Maish's son Sam, the television producer, had given Lieberman and Bess for Chanukah. He let the spray soothe his knees as he shaved, and he wondered if it was worth getting into bed.

When he found himself nodding to sleep listening to the beat of the hot water on his skin, Lieberman turned off the water, got out, dried himself, and put on his pajamas. He threw his underwear, socks, and shirt into the clothes hamper, draped his jacket, slacks, and tie over one arm and his holster and gun over the other, and opened the door. Even when his grandchildren weren't there, Lieberman put the gun and holster into the drawer of the night table on his side of the bed, locked the drawer, and hung the key on the hook in the wall below the mattress level and over his head. Lieberman turned off the light, opened the bathroom door, and stepped into the dark hallway, where the man's voice came to him softly.

Lieberman dropped his jacket, pants, and tie and let the holster fall as he leveled the weapon toward the voice in the darkness near the door to Lisa's room.

“Abe,” the voice said again.

“Todd?”

Lieberman sighed and bent down to pick up the clothes and holster.

“‘My thoughts are swept away and I go bewildered. Where shall I turn the brain's activity in speed when the house is falling?'” said Todd dreamily. “Agamemnon.”