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

the God in Frankie Kraylaw’s head did not use words. It would have been nice if the Lord could have been just a little bit clearer, the way he had been to Frankie’s father before his father lost the channel to Heaven by losing first his soul and then his liver and life to drink. Amen. Amen and always Amen. Goddamn it. The ways of the Lord are many, mysterious, and not to be questioned.
    Frankie shifted in the chair. There was no heat in the store, and the wool sweater and Mackinaw jacket he had picked up at the Goodwill couldn’t keep out the cold. The gospel station on the pickup truck radio had said it was ten degrees with a below-zero wind chill. Couldn’t be more than twenty degrees in the shop.
    So be it. A trial by the Lord. A test of the will of Francis Jackson Kraylaw. So be it. He would meet the test and then some. Nothing he could not do if the Lord just kept speaking to him.
    The two policemen had forced him out of the city of sin on a Greyhound bus, making him leave behind his wife and son. They had warned him never to return. Well, the Lord had told Frankie that he should return and reclaim his family, and the only way to do that and be safe was to smite the policemen.
    Frankie was ready. He had gone back to Tennessee, and there had frightened his family—brother Carl, sisters Beth and Luann, three aunts, an uncle, and even some cousins—into giving him enough money to buy Roy Willett’s 1984 Honda pickup and still have enough left over for gas and living for maybe a week.
    They had all thought Frankie’s going back to Chicago for Jeanine and Charlie a good idea. They had encouraged him, told him he should get his family back and go someplace safe. They all assured him, every man, woman, and Pastor Griggs, that Codgetown would not be a safe place to bring his family. No, they said, in their own ways or together, the police would find him easily in Codgetown. Take some sandwiches, the cash, and a tankful of gas, and go with their blessing. Send a card, maybe, when it felt right, but go. And he had gone back to the cold and that which must be finished.
    Cars came by, more as daylight neared. Policemen, never the right ones, came and went, sometimes in uniform, sometimes not, heads down against the cold and wind, holding on to their hats and holsters. A runaway aluminum garbage can came cling-clanging down Clark Street, caroming off parked cars, heading south out of sight.
    Patience.
    His plan was simple. When one of them came in and went out again by himself, Frankie would follow him in the Honda pickup, come on him when he was alone, with the old double-barrel shotgun his daddy had bought right after he came back from Korea, a shotgun Frankie had used to hunt with for years. Frankie would tell the sinner before him to tell him where Jeanine and Charlie were and then he would shoot him after he let the son of Satan pray. And if he didn’t speak, if neither of them told where his family was, then Frankie would shoot them dead anyway, and be able to search the city for them without fear of the two policemen. Satan would probably make them watch from Hell while Frankie tracked his wife and son and made them understand their sins and come with him.
    If Jeanine and Charlie didn’t want to come, well, Frankie had beaten them before and it had put the fear of husband and God in them and he would beat them again and again and again and again …
    Frankie was pounding his fists against his own chilled legs, pounding them so hard that the pain got through his reverie and made him stop.
    And then although he thought he was saying it to himself, he muttered aloud, “Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?”
    And far down Clark Street out of sight the aluminum garbage can running amok answered him by crashing through the window of a television repair shop.
    As Frankie Kraylaw sat looking out of the window of the Sanchez Brothers’ Reupholstery and Used Furniture Shop,