Lieberman's Folly (25 page)

“I'm sorry, Abe,” said Maureen.

“I am so very glad you arrived,” said Deep. “Mr. Hanrahan should have no visitation yet, but he is most agitated and insists on talking to you. I feel it would be best if you did so for just a minute. No more than a minute.”

Maureen touched Lieberman's arm and he looked at her. Age had found her overnight.

“Iris had to go to work,” said Maureen. “I like her.”

Lieberman gave Maureen a hug and followed Deep through the white double doors, where a nurse gave him a gown, cap, and mask and waited for him to put them on.

Machines were humming and beeping. Lights and voices were dim and the carpet muffled footsteps. Lieberman followed Dr. Deep into a room with a glass window. In the bed lay William Hanrahan complete with nose tubes, IV, and the pallid skin, open mouth, and closed eyes of the critically ill.

“Thirty seconds only,” Dr. Deep reminded Lieberman who advanced to the bed.

“Father Murphy?” Lieberman said, laying his hand gently on his partner's arm, careful to avoid the tube that was connected to it.

Hanrahan's eyes fluttered and opened. They sought the voice, looked in the wrong place, and slowly found Lieberman's masked face. Hanrahan's mouth formed the word “Rabbi,” but no word came out. Lieberman leaned forward, his ear almost touching Hanrahan's lips, and this time, when Hanrahan repeated “Rabbi,” Lieberman heard it.

“You're doing OK,” said Lieberman.

“You're a bullshit artist,” Hanrahan gasped.

“So your son just told me,” said Lieberman.

Hanrahan's lips quivered in a smile.

“Article,” Hanrahan said. “Newspa—”

“I've got it,” said Lieberman.

“Sister,” said Hanrahan. “Estralda's sister. Photograph in bedroom.”

“Same as the one in the article,” said Lieberman. “Estralda and her sister. Looks like they killed a couple of guys. Paper's from Corpus Christi, Texas.”

“Detective Lieberman,” Dr. Deep said. “I'm afraid we must stop for now.”

“Seen her,” said Hanrahan whose eyes were fluttering, fighting against drugged sleep.

“Estralda's sister?” asked Lieberman.

Hanrahan nodded.

“Where?”

And Hanrahan told him.

Before he left the hospital Lieberman went to the lobby and put in a credit card call to Mayor Carrol LaSalle of Corpus Christi. Carrol LaSalle had, according to the lady with a very heavy Texas accent, left a message with his office that any call from Detective Lieberman should be forwarded immediately, day or night. There was a click, a delay, and Patsy Cline singing something while he waited a good two minutes till LaSalle came on the line.

“Lieberman,” he said. “You got my little girl with the gun?”

“Looks that way, Mayor,” said Lieberman. “You might want your people to get the papers started.”

“Guadalupe Madera?” said LaSalle.

“Guadalupe Madera,” Lieberman agreed, watching a nurse wheel a young mother out in a wheelchair. The young woman, who looked both black and Asian, was carrying a small bundle in her arms. Lieberman couldn't see the baby's face. A nurse's aide followed with a cart of flowers. Beyond the glass doors at the entrance, Lieberman could see a waiting cab with open trunk and door.

“Best guess, Mayor. What will your people throw at her?”

“Best guess? Depends. She been a good girl? Shot any more people in the head? That sort of thing,” said LaSalle. “Life maybe. Out in five depending on the judge, the climate, and the collective memory. Shoot, she may get nothing. Remember what we said about you folks giving us a hard time on extradition.”

“I remember,” said Lieberman.

“You plan to point out to your people and whatever press might be around that you found her with the invaluable assistance of Carrol LaSalle?”

“That's my plan,” said Lieberman. “One more question. The newspaper article said a bartender named Frank was the first one on the scene after the murders. Happen to know Frank's full name and where he might be?”

Mayor LaSalle had no idea where Frank might be but he remembered him clearly and gave both a description of the man and his full name.

“Got to go now, Lieberman,” said the Mayor. “Big mall opening this afternoon. Think I'll hint that some unfinished business might be wrapped up soon. Watch your back, Detective, and get yourself a new partner, hear?”

Lieberman heard. He made another call and asked the man who answered for a favor. The man didn't understand the request but he agreed.

“It's about the murder we talked about Friday, right?” said the man.

“Yeah,” said Lieberman.

“Am I putting out a want ad sign?” the man said.

“I would.”

And Lieberman hung up. He sat in the hospital lobby for twenty-five minutes reading the
Sun-Times
, watching patients and visitors come and go, and trying to remember if it was Ann Savage or Ann Dvorak in
Detour
.

The cab pulled up to the door and the driver looked out to see who his fare was. Lieberman came slowly through the hospital door, walked to the cab, got in the back seat, and closed the door.

“Where to?” asked the driver.

“Does it matter?” asked Lieberman.

“Guess not,” the driver answered.

Lieberman removed his pistol slowly from his holster and, as the cab pulled into the street, he pointed it at the head of Francis Dupree.

“F
RANK,” SAID LIEBERMAN AS
the cab drove up Fifty-Ninth Street along the grassy Midway south of the University. “I'm seriously considering shooting you in the head.”

Frank Dupree simply shrugged.

“I figured when dispatch sends me from a job on Grand Avenue here, something is not kosher,” said Dupree. “But kosher, that's your area, right?”

“You shot my partner in the head, Frank,” said Lieberman evenly. “I'd like to know why.”

“I didn't shoot nobody, man,” said Frank. “You're not sticking me with no murders cause you think you got a dumb bayou boy to close some doors.”

Lieberman shot out the front window of the cab. Dupree let out a yell and swerved toward the curb, kissed a parked car, and straightened out.

“What the fuck you doin'? You crazy?”

“Turn right,” said Lieberman lazily and Dupree turned right. “We are now in a neighborhood where shots are frequently heard and police do not move quickly. Park.”

“Wait now,” said Dupree with a laugh. “You—”

“Park,” said Lieberman softly.

Dupree parked behind a rusting, abandoned Honda.

“Tell me what happened, Frank,” said Lieberman. “Tell me slowly and tell me the whole thing.”

“It'll all get thrown out,” Dupree said, turning in his seat and leaning toward the window. “You gonna get a confession with a gun in your hand and you think it's gonna hold?”

A pair of boys, both black, both about nine, looked through the broken front window of the cab at the two white guys just sitting there. The taller of the two was about to say something when he saw Lieberman's gun and decided to keep walking.

“That old man he got a gun,” said the boy.

“She-it he does,” said the other boy.

“I'm clearing away some of this glass,” said Dupree, agitated.

“Your hand touches the glove compartment and your head goes through the windshield,” said Lieberman.

“I'm just … I told you,” said Dupree with a deep sigh at Lieberman's inability to understand this simple need.

“Gun's in the glove compartment Frank, right?” asked Lieberman.

Dupree slumped. A call came over the radio. Dupree flipped the voice off.

“I shoulda changed my name,” he said. “But I didn't know what … Believe it, policeman. I came to this here city looking for work, got this cab, kissing my wandering good-by. Then one day she get into my cab.”

“Which one?” asked Lieberman.

“Estralda, the younger one,” he said. “She didn't change that much.”

“And you blackmailed her,” said Lieberman.

“Not saying I did, not saying I didn't. Just you and me in the car and you know when I get me a lawyer I'm gonna tell that judge I said nothing.”

“You blackmailed her,” Lieberman repeated.

“I asked her for money,” he said. “Not blackmail. Old times' sake.”

“Tell me about Friday,” said Lieberman.

Dupree glanced at the glove compartment and turned in his seat. Lieberman leaned forward and poked him with the barrel of the gun.

“Don't turn,” he said. “I can see your eyes and mouth just fine in the mirror.”

“She tole me to be on the corner of Foster and Sheridan at midnight,” said Frank. “She tole me she had to get out of town a while. Cops were giving her troubles. She give me everything I asked for.”

“Money and Nikki Morales,” said Lieberman.

Dupree's eyes met Lieberman's in the mirror.

“If you know, why you ask me?”

“Continue your story,” said Lieberman.

“All right, so I'm at the corner. I tell my dispatch I picked up a fare on the street, took him to Foster and Sheridan, and I'm getting a burger at the McDonald's that's two blocks from where Valdez lives. I get the call. I get back in my cab and drive over thinking, thinking.”

Dupree was tapping his head with the fingers of his right hand.

“I'm thinking,” he went on. “What's this? Why she don't just come out, walk two blocks, and give me the money? So, I go to the place and the door guy tells me to go up and help Miss Valdez with her luggage. Well, I know she's goin' out of town so I go up. Maybe, I think, cops are watching her and she figures this out to make it look like she's just calling a cab, but that don't make much sense. I go up to the apartment, through the door, which is open, and the place is a mess, you know? You know what happen, then?”

“Someone tried to kill you,” said Lieberman.

“You got that right,” said Dupree. “In the living room this bum is asleep. Right in the middle of the mess. I don't know who it is.”

“His name's Van Beeber,” said Lieberman. “He used to have a Hallmark shop in Holland, Michigan. He killed his wife ten years ago.”

“That a fact?” said Dupree. “Where was I … Oh, that's when she try to kill me. Estralda come out with a knife behind me. She stabbed me. I show you.”

Dupree lifted his shirt. Lieberman's gun pressed into his neck.

There was a bandage on Frank Dupree's back, a big bandage.

“Self-defense,” he said, letting the shirt down again. “I took the knife and there was like a little accident.”

“You stabbed her eight times,” said Lieberman.

“Self-defense. I threw the knife out the window into the lake and looked around. I was lookin' when the other one came in.”

“Guadalupe,” said Lieberman.

“Yeah. Different from Texas but her. She saw her sister and I could see she was in on it. She was gonna run but I stopped her and told her she had to get me out of the building or I'd turn her in. She got in one of Estralda's dresses and we went out.”

“She did something before you went out,” said Lieberman.

“Yeah, she pull up the window shade and stood looking out for a few seconds there, maybe crying. We went down the elevator, out on the street. She wave at somebody across the street. I look over and see this guy in the restaurant window.”

“Hanrahan,” said Lieberman. “My partner. The one you shot.”

“Not me,” said Dupree. “I took her where I said I took her, let her out, and tole her to come up with money or I'd turn her in.”

“Why did you follow my partner?” asked Lieberman.

The two boys had returned. This time with two older boys and a girl. Both of the boys were swaggering ahead of the crowd heading for the cab.

“I didn't follow your—” Dupree began and Lieberman shot a hole into the back of the front passenger seat. The bullet went through the seat and bounced off the dashboard, leaving a dent and a ringing of metal. The swaggering boys stopped, turned, and walked back to the girl and the kids. Together, they strode anywhere but here.

“You wouldn't shoot me, Detective,” said Dupree.

Lieberman could see the sweat on the man's forehead.

“You shot my partner in the back of the head, Frank. You shot a cop. I'm retiring in a few years. I shoot you and I get a medal when I go. Listen, Frank. I have arthritis, both knees.”

“I'm sorry,” said Dupree. “My mother had—”

“—and I've got a lot on my mind,” Lieberman went on. “The easiest thing for me to do is shoot you, walk back to my car, and drive north. Tell me a story, Frank.”

“I don't—” Dupree began but remembered the two shots that had been fired and changed his mind. “The money. I figured he was after the money they took from, whatever was left, Juan Hernandez. You know? I followed him around a little. What happened at that house was an accident. I am no killer. I'm a musician. Things just”—Dupree was crying now—“I just followed him in,” he wept. “I was gonna try to make a deal. I … I don' know what happened. I just … Next thing I know he was layin' there dead like my Uncle Dave when the gator got his leg. I got nothin' out of all this and I'm sorry what I done.”

With this Dupree slumped over sobbing.

“Let's head back north to the station,” said Lieberman. “You can tell your story to a public defender and complain about my brutality. Sit up and drive.”

“OK, OK,” said Dupree, sitting up and turning in his seat to face Lieberman. “Mind I ask you somethin'?”

“Ask,” said Lieberman.

But Dupree didn't ask. He had something in his left hand. Lieberman had a glimpse of the open glove compartment and a sense of metal in Dupree's hand, the hand with the missing fingers. Dupree's hand was coming down over the top of the seat when Lieberman fired. The bullet tore through the back of the driver's seat as the knife struck, pierced Lieberman's pants, and slashed his right thigh. Dupree lifted his hand to strike again. A trickle of blood came through the hole Lieberman's gun had just made in the seat. Lieberman aimed the gun at Dupree's face.