Read Online Lieberman's Folly by Stuart M. Kaminsky - Free Book Online Page B

People were laughing. Directly below him Hanrahan saw a truck filled with something shiny and green. He couldn’t see Jules Van Beeber who was passed out under three of the garbage bags clutching his lamp, dreaming of the naked woman who had spoken to him and handed him a present.
    Something moved behind Hanrahan. His gun was out and leveled at the door when the one person he least wanted to see at that moment walked in.
    Captain Dale Hughes looked at the scene, looked at Hanrahan, and muttered, “What the fuck’s going on here?”

3
    L IEBERMAN PULLED INTO THE Michigan Tower’s driveway between the ambulance whose lights were flashing and a blue-and-white Chicago police car. He got out, locked his car, and moved to the outer lobby where a uniformed cop he recognized as Clevenger was talking to the young doorman, who was trying to look cool but looked anything but.
    â€œSix-ten,” said Clevenger when he saw Lieberman.
    â€œI know,” said Lieberman as he moved through the now open inner door. Lieberman had never been to Estralda Valdez’s apartment. She had not been there very long, but he did know the address, did have the phone number in his book, and did know the number of her apartment. He was also sure that he would never forget any of these numbers.
    Lieberman hurried across the carpeted lobby to the elevator, which opened before he could push the button. Two men in their twenties in short-sleeved blue uniforms pushed a wheeled stretcher out. They were in no great hurry. The elevator door closed behind them and Lieberman stepped in front of them, his hand out.
    â€œYou her rabbi?” the first young man said, looking at Lieberman’s head.
    â€œHer …” Lieberman said reaching up and finding that his yarmulke from the evening Shabbat service was still atop his head. He took it off and put it into his pocket. “No.”
    He pulled out his wallet, flopped it open, and showed his badge. The paramedics eased off and Lieberman moved to the side of the stretcher and unzipped the plastic body bag to reveal Estralda Valdez’s white face.
    A middle-aged couple dressed for the evening came through the garage door next to the elevator. The woman said something about Genevieve and the man laughed. The laugh stopped suddenly when first he and then the woman saw the scene before them. Lieberman paused while the couple chose to go up the stairs instead of waiting for an elevator, and then he unzipped the bag the rest of the way. He looked at her wounds for a few seconds and the words of the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, began to come to him. He closed his eyes for an instant, opened them, and motioned with his head for the paramedics to take her away.
    Before they were out of the front door, the elevator was back. Lieberman stepped in, pressed six, and went up.
    â€œâ€¦ forty new cops, all grades,” Lieberman heard as he walked down the corridor on the sixth floor to the open door of Estralda Valdez’s apartment.
    The speaker was a young uniformed cop who, according to the name plate on his shirt, was named Witten. Witten was standing just inside the doorway, his arms folded. He wore no hat. The man he was talking to was a lab tech who Lieberman recognized but whose name escaped him. The lab tech was in the kitchen alcove dusting the counter top.
    â€œAnd,” Witten went on, “not only in Tampa, but Orlando, Florida is booming, paying top dollar, good pension plan.”
    Witten looked up at Lieberman, recognized him, and backed out of his way. Beyond Witten and through the living room Lieberman could see the back of Hanrahan and the front of Captain Hughes on the balcony. Their heads were close together. Hanrahan’s shoulders were down.
    â€œHughes’s reaming your partner,” the lab tech whispered without looking up. “Watch where you’re walking. All kinds of shit on the floor.”
    Lieberman moved into the mess of a living