Lieberman's Day by Stuart M. Kaminsky Read Free Book Online

hospital?”
    â€œNo. I’ll meet you at the station at eight.”
    â€œIt’s Thursday, Rabbi.”
    â€œSo?” said Lieberman.
    â€œThe sting at Montrose House at nine-thirty. We can call it off or postpone it.”
    â€œWe might lose them,” said Lieberman, shaking his head. “O.K. I’ll meet you there at nine.”
    â€œNine,” agreed Hanrahan. It would give him enough time to get back to his house in Ravenswood, no more than fifteen minutes away, take a hot bath with his eyes closed, get a few hours of sleep. “Want to come to my place?”
    â€œGot to get home and tell Bess,” said Lieberman as they moved to the car parked alone on Sheridan Road.
    â€œIt’s gonna be a hard day, Rabbi.”
    â€œIt’s already a hard day, Father Murphy. It’s also getting to be one hell of a hard rest of our lives.”
    â€œWe’ll find them,” said Hanrahan.
    â€œWe’ll find them,” Lieberman agreed, opening the car door. “Now, get in before you get hit by a drunk.”

Four-Ten in the Morning
    T HE ROGERS PARK POLICE STATION on Clark Street just north of Devon was flanked by a Wendy’s to the south and on the north by a long, five-story brick building with apartments on top of used-furniture shops, bars, and small groceries where Spanish was the language of choice. In one of the apartments, not long ago, Frankie Kraylaw had lived with his wife, Jeanine, and his son, Charlie.
    Now Frankie sat patiently in the window of a reupholstery shop across the street watching the dark-stone police station with its lights always on behind thick opaque windows. The station had been considered modern and efficient when it was built in 1966 and opened with a ceremony featuring his honor Mayor Richard J. Daley himself. Now the building looked like a forgotten outpost of a besieged inner-city community college.
    On warmer nights, prodded by the taunts of their friends, a young boy or girl might sneak up to the station to the sound of distant giggling and encouraging words in Spanish from shadowed doorways. The brave one would spray paint his girlfriend’s initials or even her first name or a few words on the concrete walkway or even on the building itself.
    Most of what was painted was in Spanish. Almost all of what was painted was hostile and obscene.
    Frankie Kraylaw, who had an open smile of white, even teeth and a head of straight hair that tended to fall over his right eye, sat watching the entrance to the police station, waiting for the big Irish policeman who, along with the little Jew, had driven him from the city only months ago, driven him as Pharaoh had driven Moses from the land of Egypt, and like Moses, Frankie Kraylaw had returned to do the Lord’s justice, had broken into the reupholstery shop from the rear and taken up his vigil in the window, waiting for the one called Hanrahan or the little Jew who liked to threaten.
    Now it might come to pass, Frankie told himself, that neither of them would come in today or that they had been transferred or were on vacation or that the old one had retired. It might come to pass, but Frankie would find them. With the help of the Lord, he would find them. He would sit there until just before dawn and then nurse a coffee at Wendy’s, with a view of the police station, for as long as he could.
    He would find them. He would kill them.
    Frankie Kraylaw had never killed anyone, though he had come close on many occasions. Generally, his potential victims had very little or no idea about what caused his sudden bursts of fury and violent explosions. It was not always terribly clear to Frankie either, but he knew it had to do with offenses to the Lord, offenses that Frankie was keenly aware of and found difficult to put into words.
    But God did speak to Frankie Kraylaw, though the voice might be distant and muted like a bad connection from Edgewater to Uncle Saul back in Tennessee, and sometimes