Lieberman's Folly (6 page)

But tonight's sermon was of special interest to Lieberman.

“The issue,” said the young Rabbi Wass, who was forty-eight years old, “is one our building committee has been exploring. The young have moved and are moving from our community. Can we continue to survive without new blood? Do we move where the Jewish families are moving or do we slowly fade and watch our numbers drop till we are in danger of losing even a morning
minyan
? More questions upon questions. Can we afford to maintain this building with fewer and fewer members? Your annual dues go up each year and the number of events we have has dwindled.”

Rabbi Wass was obviously engaged in a conspiracy with Bess, a conspiracy which might well require that Lieberman sit through the discussions to respond to and defend against it or at least slow it down. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. After all it would take time, possibly years and years, to find a new location, raise money, start building.

Ancient Ida Katzman, eighty-five, in her usual seat in the front row, put her hand on her cane and turned to examine the congregation. Her eyes met Lieberman's. Ida Katzman, whose husband Mort had died almost twenty years earlier leaving her ten jewelry stores, was the congregation's principle benefactor. Talk of fund raising was always, ultimately, directed at her, but Ida invariably looked around to see who might reasonably join her in her philanthropy. Lieberman was decidedly uncomfortable.

“The building committee has only this week reported to me,” said Rabbi Wass with a knowing smile, “that the Fourth Federal Savings Building on Dempster Street is available for purchase at a very reasonable figure, that it could be quickly and beautifully redesigned, and that a generous offer for the building in which we now sit has been made by the Korean Baptist Church Foundation. The money we could make on the sale of this building would more than cover the cost of purchase of the Fourth Federal Savings Building and most of the needed renovations.”

There was a stir of conversation around the room. Most, but not all, sounded to Lieberman like approval.

“Assuming we are to pursue this momentous change,” Rabbi Wass continued, “and I am well aware that it will take extensive discussion, though I remind you that the offer from the Korean Baptist Church and the price on the Fourth Federal Savings Building are subject to change if we do not move quickly, then we will need a fund-raising committee to deal with renovations to our new Dempster location. We will need a chair and …”

Lieberman had had enough. In thirty years he had never said a word during or following a sermon, but Rabbi Wass was trying to railroad this thing through.

Lieberman raised his hand, caught Wass's eye, and began to rise. Ida Katzman strained to see what was going on.

Before Lieberman could say anything, he felt a tug at his sleeve. He was certain it was Bess trying to get him to sit down and shut up. But this was the moment to act. He was Mr. Smith and Congress would listen. Rabbi Wass, who looked vaguely like a pudgy Claude Rains, would listen. The tug came again and Lieberman turned his head slightly.

“Mr. Lieberman, telephone,” said an old black man, who had been pulling his sleeve. Whitlock normally came into the sanctuary only to clean up. He seemed decidedly uncomfortable in front of the congregation, all of whom were looking directly at him.

“Man says it's emergency,” Whitlock repeated.

“Lisa,” said Bess. “Something's happened to …”

Lieberman and Bess followed Whitlock to the door and Lieberman was vaguely aware of Rabbi Wass saying. “Thank you. We have a renovation committee chair.”

The congregation applauded.

“Mr. Lieberman,” Rabbi Wass said, “please feel free to call upon me or any member of the building committee to assist you.”

Lieberman paused for an instant at the door of the sanctuary, turned to protest, and was pulled outside by Bess.

The phone was in the rabbi's office, a small wood-paneled box lined with shelves filled with heavy books. One window looked out on the parking lot. Lieberman picked up the phone and touched Bess's hand.

“Lieberman,” he said.

“She's dead, Abe,” came Hanrahan's voice.

Lieberman looked at his wife.

“She?” he repeated.

“Estralda Valdez,” said Hanrahan. He had trouble getting the name out clearly. Bill Hanrahan had been drinking. “I think you better get over here.”

“It's Bill,” Lieberman said covering the mouthpiece. “The woman Herschel mentioned. She's dead.”

“Thank God,” said Bess, sinking into the rabbi's swivel chair. And then she realized what she had said.

“I don't mean,” she went on. “I'm just glad Lisa and the children aren't …”

Lieberman patted her shoulder.

“Where are you, Bill?” Lieberman asked.

“Where? Oh, at her apartment.”

Lieberman hung up and put both hands on Bess's shoulders.

“I've got to go,” he said. “The Rosens will walk you home.”

Bess looked up at him with a smile and still moist eyes.

“You'll talk to Lisa tomorrow?”

“I'll talk to Lisa tomorrow,” he said. “Why don't you sit here for a minute or two before you go back in?”

“I'll do that,” Bess said.

The night air was still hot. The smell of curry from the Bombay Restaurant across California Avenue hit Lieberman as he headed back toward home and his car. Maybe it was time to think about moving, but he didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to think about his daughter's troubles. He didn't want to think about being chair of the temple's renovation committee, but all of these were preferable to thinking that Estralda Valdez was dead. He remembered Estralda the last time he saw her, beautiful, joking, planning, that morning. Next to him in the booth. He had smelled her. He remembered her the first time he had seen her, beautiful, defiant, speaking broken English. He wasn't looking forward to the next time he would see her.

Exactly four minutes before Bill Hanrahan entered Estralda Valdez's sixth floor apartment, Jules Van Beeber had lain drunk and apparently asleep a few feet from Estralda's body. Someone, he knew, had given him a drink, had led him to this place on the floor. That someone had not reckoned with Jules Van Beeber's needs. Jules had risen, oblivious to his surroundings, made his way to the kitchen, and downed the good part of a bottle of Scotch he found on the floor. Then, feeling more than a bit disoriented by the intake of something of reasonable quality, Jules had stumbled back through the living room to Estralda's balcony, clutching a small blue table lamp he planned to take with him when he left. The night air and the breeze coming off the lake lured Jules to the railing.

Jules had leaned over the railing and fallen just as Hanrahan had come through the door. Jules had spun three times in the air, cord of the lamp trailing behind him like a kite tail, and landed in a pile of Glad bags filled with grass.

Cushioned and blanketed by green plastic shining in the moonlight, Jules looked up at the stars in the August sky over Lake Michigan, smiled, and passed out.

At the same moment that Hanrahan entered the apartment and Jules Van Beeber went over the railing, not five blocks away, Ernest Ryan, a bartender known as Irish Ernie, fell down two steps after locking his tavern on Clark Street. Cold sober, Irish Ernie hit his head on the sidewalk and died. God makes some strange choices.

Jules, clutching the lamp to his chest like a protective teddy bear, slept through the police cars and sirens, the television crews and small crowds. He dreamed of a line of amber bottles, an angry man, a soft bed, a beautiful woman who spoke to him in a strange language. He saw the woman lying naked before him and he felt himself walking to a door, feeling the night wind, smelling dead fish on the shore, and flying.

The garbage bags Jules Van Beeber had fallen on were in the back of Sol Worth's truck. Worth's landscaping business had, after eight years, just started to turn a profit, partly because he had stopped using his wife's brothers as lawn workers and partly because he had paid off a Democratic alderman to put pressure on certain lakefront high-rises to use Sol's service.

It was just before ten when Jules took his night flight. No one had witnessed the miracle. When the drunk babbled his tale and dream the next morning, Sol had no reason to believe him. The police cars were gone. The television crews were taking pictures of a giant salmon washed up near Navy Pier. Sol had no reason to believe anything had happened the night before. He pulled the drunk from the back of his truck.

“Maybe the lamp is magic,” muttered Van Beeber, looking at the lamp he still held.

“Maybe I'll break both your arms I catch you sleeping in my truck again,” replied Worth. He resolved never again to leave his truck on the street overnight in front of a job again.

Sol had his two Korean workers to pick up, seven high-rise lawns to do. When he pulled away, Sol could see the drunk in his rearview mirror sitting on the curb and looking at his lamp.

When Sol was gone, Jules Van Beeber, who had once owned a greeting card shop in Holland, Michigan, where something had happened that he did not wish to remember, got up and wandered in the general direction of Lawrence Avenue. He remembered, or thought he remembered, a pawn shop there. He had a magic lamp to sell and a wondrous tale to tell if anyone would listen to him.

Sol didn't put the whole thing together till he got back home that night with an empty truck, an aching back, and a sore throat from yelling at his brother-in-law Bradley who, though safely off the lawns, was supposed to be answering phones in the office. Only when he was drifting off to sleep while his wife was reading her weekly pile of supermarket tabloids and listening to the ten o'clock news did Sol make a connection. Sol was only half-awake when the story came on the television and he realized that the woman the blonde anchorwoman was talking about had been murdered two blocks away from where he now lay almost but not quite asleep. She had been murdered in the building he parked his truck next to the night before. The truck in which he had found a drunk telling a crazy nuts story.

Sol sat up in bed, sending
Inquirers
and
Stars
flying. His wife hit him on the shoulder with her fist, but Sol didn't feel it.

“I think some drunk told me he killed that woman,” he said.

“Yeah?” said his wife.

“Right next to the building. Told me just like that and I let him walk,” said Sol Worth.

“So?” she asked.

“So, I'm calling the cops.”

Two hours before Jules Van Beeber went over the railing on the balcony of Estralda Valdez's apartment, William Hanrahan had called Estralda to be sure she was there and all right. He called from the Chinese restaurant in the Lakefront Motor Inn across the street from the Michigan Towers high-rise. The restaurant, the Black Moon, was the only commercial property on the block and Estralda had been right; there was a good view of the entrance to the high-rise from the window.

Estralda had told him she was fine. Hanrahan had said he would be watching all night but that there had to be at least two other entrances to the building, a service entrance and an entrance through the building's underground garage. He asked her to go to her window and pull the shade up and down. He found the window and when she got back on the phone he told her to leave the shade down but pull it up if she needed his help.

After that he had shown his badge to the pretty Chinese woman of no particular age who served him pork-fried rice and a double bourbon on the rocks. He had told her he would be sitting at that table till closing time.

The double bourbon was followed by a second and an order of egg foo yung. Customers came and went. People went in and out of the high-rise. Hanrahan watched the black doorman greet them, nod. No one suspicious. He watched Estralda's shade. It was still down.

When the last customer had left the Black Moon, Hanrahan motioned to the Chinese woman.

“You Irish?” he asked.

“Yes,” said the woman, confused.

“You're Irish?” Hanrahan said again, taking a serious look at the woman.

“Iris,” she said. “My name is Iris.”

“Didn't think you were Irish,” he said, relieved. “Irish and Chinese have a lot in common,” he said, looking at his empty glass. The woman said nothing. She was not just pretty, she was delicately pretty and, he decided, she was about Maureen's age. He was wrong. She was ten years older than his wife. “Want to know what they have in common, the Irish and Chinese?”

“Yes,” said Iris. She smiled at the policeman, who was definitely drunk.

“Children,” he said. “Family loyalty. We marry late and stay together. Like the Chinese.”

A couple went into the lobby of the Michigan Towers across the street. Hanrahan glanced at them. A taxi pulled up in front of the lobby a few seconds later. The cabby got out and went into the building.

“But never,” he said, “marry an Irishman. Are you married?”

“No,” said the woman.

“Ever go out with an Irishman?” he asked.

The thought had never occurred to her.

“No,” she said. She smiled a nervous smile.

“Would you like to?” Hanrahan said. “I've never been out with a Chinese woman. I mean I've been with a … Never been out with a Chinese woman. Did go out once with a Siamese lady, I must admit. Couldn't take the curry.”

She reached over and began to clear his plates. She called out something in Chinese to the kitchen and an old man's voice answered in Chinese.

“Calling for help?” asked Hanrahan, glancing out the window.

The cabby who had gone into the high-rise came out carrying two suitcases. He opened his trunk, put them in, and got into the driver's seat. The doorman opened the door and let out a woman. She was dressed in the same clothes Estralda was wearing that morning. She was also wearing a floppy wide-brimmed Annie Hall hat. She got into the waiting cab and waved to Hanrahan who lifted a hand in acknowledgment.