Lieberman's Choice (11 page)

“Let's talk,” she said softly.

“You've been watching the news,” said Kearney, getting up.

“Is it true?”

Kearney looked around at Brooks and the two policemen, who weren't even pretending to do something else. Kearney nodded toward the bedroom door and led the way. Carla followed him as he entered, turned to the cop at the phone, and said, “Just leave the fucking door closed and stay out.”

With that, she shut the door behind her and faced Kearney.

Jason Belding's bedroom had been reasonably untouched by Operation Seven. A few people had taken short rests on the bed, used the bathroom, but it could be saved. Alan Kearney wasn't so sure the same could be said of him. He turned to face Carla, who stood with her arms folded just below her breasts.

“It's true and it's not true,” he said. “I knew Olivia before she married Bernie. I went out with her. I went to bed with her once, but it was nothing either one of us wanted to do again. Once. That was it and was before I introduced her to Bernie. After they were married, I stayed away from her, both of them, asked for a transfer and got it and a promotion.”

“Then,” asked Carla, “why is he doing this?”

Kearney felt the stubble on his cheek and lifted his arms.

“I'm not sure,” he said. “He wants to blame somebody, anybody but Bernie Shepard, and it looks like I'm the somebody.”

“And that's all?”

“That's all. I'm sorry. I'm not happy about it.”

Carla moved forward and took his face in her hands.

“I'm not happy about it either, but we'll ride it out.”

Kearney examined her beautiful face and saw the tension in her tight lips.

“And your father?”

“He doesn't watch television.”

“He has other people who do it for him.”

“I'll handle my father.”

And with that, she kissed him.

“Brickass Brixton would love this weapon,” Carl said, holding his rifle barrel up to the window. The sun shone down the ribbed tunnel, and Carl was happy. Chuck Norris, eat your goddamn heart out. Dave's rifle lay in his lap. He was breathing softly and watching “Divorce Court” on TV. He glanced down to watch the ice-cream bar tattoo on his chest ripple with his breath.

Dave McAulife was not too gung ho keen on this whole plan, but he hadn't had a major thought of his own since he met Carl Binyon four years ago. Carl had talked him into the army, into coming to Chicago, into whatever shit they were about to get into. Now Dave was doing something that resembled thinking, and Carl didn't like it.

“What is so hard? I mean what is so goddamn difficult here?” asked Carl. “We had worse shit patrols in Saudi. Remember that town. Town, shit, that oil rig with the tin shacks? What was that called, Ali Khan, some shit like that? What did we get for that? Bumper stickers.”

“That was a while back, Carl.”

Carl put the rifle down, stood, and pointed at the television set.

“Did you see the TV? Were you lookin', Dave? With your eyes open?”

“I was lookin', but …”

“But my ass,” said Carl, pointing to his ass in case David in his newfound inquiring mood might have forgotten where it was. “We go up there, take this guy out, and we'll be fuckin' heroes. Interviews. Geraldo, Oprah, Donahue. Women. What'd that guy say on Joan Rivers? The
Enquirer'll
pay two grand easy to interview us. Maybe there's a book.”

“I don't think so,” said Dave, looking at the window.

“You don't …” Carl kicked a crumpled potato chip bag and shook his head in disgust. “We got no jobs, running out of money. Cops try to kick our butts out of here and call us pigs, and you don't think so. You got a better idea?”

The few ideas he had put together this morning had given Dave a headache. There was no way he could come up with something better.

“Well …,” Dave said, giving in. “What the hell, right? I've got my shoes.”

Carl nodded grimly, picked up the rifle, checked the action, and pointed to the rope ladder on the table next to the sink full of crusty dishes. Dave got up and moved toward the ladder. A thought started to come to him. He cursed it away and imagined himself on “Geraldo,” Carl on one side of him, Hulk Hogan on the other, applauding when Phil introduced David McAulife, the Rambo of Chicago.

In the stairway, behind the steel door leading to the roof of the Shoreham Towers, Officer Anthony Spiza, drenched in sweat, worked the crowbar under the upper hinge while Officer Donnie Howell, one step below, sprayed oil on bar and hinge. They had a battery-powered lantern on the top step pointing up at the door. The lantern made Tony's dark face hollow-eyed. To Donnie Howell, his partner looked like a zombie in one of those Living Dead movies. Donnie's black face looked pretty much the same to Tony Spiza.

The smell of sweat, oil, and dust on the narrow stairway suggested that it might be a good idea to take a break and throw up.

Tony applied pressure, steadily, slowly, carefully. He and Donnie had been chosen for this honor because they were the strongest team on the North Side. Both worked out daily. Both had won departmental awards for weight lifting. Donnie had, before becoming a cop, been in the Golden Gloves, a middleweight. With a 32–2 record, Dancing Donnie Howell could have had a pro career, but he was smart enough to know that he would never have been a real contender, that he would have never made a big dollar.

The crowbar slipped, screeched along the door. They could sense the SWAT sniper, below them at the foot of the stairs, go tense.

“Goddamn,” muttered Tony.

They held their breath and listened. They could hear nothing on the roof beyond the door—no dog, no man.

“Sweat,” Tony explained.

Donnie handed his partner the now-dirty towel.

Sergeant Lieberman had asked them for an estimate of how long it would take to get through the door. Donnie Howell had instantly replied, “Twelve hours. We could do it in one or two with a little noise.”

Tony had nodded in support of his partner, knowing that Donnie had no way of knowing whether it would take six hours or six days. Donnie was ambitious. Donnie had a future ahead of him and Tony planned to ride along with him. If Donnie had said they could get through the door in three minutes and have Shepard tied and delivered a minute later, Tony Spiza would have nodded yes. He would have wondered if his life was about to fall apart. He would wonder if Donnie had gone nuts, but as his father, Dominick, had often said, you belt yourself to a torpedo and you ride it to the end.

When Donnie had given Lieberman the timetable, Abe Lieberman had answered, “Go ahead. No noise. When you're a fingernail away from breaking through, let me know.”

“I can take this hinge with one or two busters,” whispered Tony. “We're makin' so much fuckin' noise anyway, what's the difference?”

Donnie considered Tony's question and his future. At the end of the corridor on the top floor of the Shoreham, as the crowbar had slipped, Carl and Dave had stepped through a stairwell door. Had the sniper not been focused on the dark space between Officers Spiza and Howell, he might have heard, seen, or sensed the two men behind him carrying rifles and a rope ladder.

Carl motioned to Dave and they stepped inside an alcove out of sight of the sniper. There was an apartment door in front of them, just as they knew there would be though they had never been up here. The layout on every floor of the Shoreham was exactly alike.

“What the fuck they doin'?” whispered Dave, listening to the painful, almost quiet screeching of the crowbar on the steel door.

“I don't know,” whispered Carl. “Be quiet.”

Carl took the chisel out of his pocket and handed his rifle to Dave. Timing his efforts to those of Spiza and Howell, Carl worked at the lock on the door in front of them.

On the roof of the Shoreham Towers, the dog looked up at the door and growled, a slow, low growl. Bernie Shepard, who was sitting back, eyes alert behind dark sunglasses, snapped off the news on his radio, turned up the volume on his two-way radio as he got to his feet, picked up his shotgun, and moved toward the door.

“Who's on the horn?” he said into the radio.

“Lieberman.”

Shepard hoisted the rifle with his right hand and hit the switch on the radiophone with his left.

“Lieberman, you've got ten seconds to tell whoever's working on that door to back off.”

“Both of the men on that door are married,” said Lieberman. “One has two kids. Tony Spiza. You know him?”

Shepard was on one knee now, the radio on the roof beside him, the dog facing the door. He raised the shotgun toward the door.

“That's one of the reasons I wanted you up here, Abe,” Shepard said. “No lies, no bullshit. I know Spiza. I'll kill him or anyone else out there if that door comes down. You've got five seconds. This is over when I say it's over. Not when Kearney or Hartz or the mayor or the president says it's over. It's over when Kearney comes up here.”

“I'm stopping it, Bernie,” sighed Lieberman. “Listen.”

The ten seconds had run out. Shepard didn't have to check his watch. He had learned to gauge time by his pulse, by the beating of his own heart.

“Spiza, Howell,” said Lieberman. “Stop now. Pack up and come down to Operations. Answer.”

“We read,” came Howell's voice. “We're almost …”

“You're shut down,” said Lieberman.

“Shutting down,” agreed Donnie Howell, and clicked off.

“Got that, Bernie?”

“Got it, Abe.”

“No promise that we won't try again,” said Lieberman.

“I didn't ask you for any promises,” said Shepard, standing. He was aware of a new sound from the door. And then the radio crackled with the voice of Captain Alton Brooks.

“Lieberman, what the hell is going on up there? No one, repeat, no one has the authority for an assault, and you're breaking goddamn radio silence. Get those men back up there.”

Shepard looked at the door, then at the dog, who had turned to the edge of the roof. He picked up the radio and said, “Good try, Abe.”

“Bernie, you're dealing with free enterprise,” said Lieberman. “Don't make things worse.”

“There is no ‘worse,'” said Shepard, turning off the radio and walking toward the edge of the roof, shotgun ready. The dog loped after him.

In the corridor of the top floor of the Shoreham, Spiza and Howell were throwing their weight against the door, not the door to the roof but the door to the apartment through which Carl and David had gone a few minutes before. The sniper had heard them. They had gotten the door closed as they heard the sniper's voice call to the two policemen on the stairwell.

When Tony and Donnie threw themselves at the door, Carl was already out of the window. Dave had pushed a sofa against the door, but this was a door to reassure the tenant, not to keep out the determined burglar. The door quivered.

“Move it, Carl,” Dave called, and Carl moved it.

From the street below Alton Brooks looked up toward the roof of the Shoreham and watched a man with a rifle slung over his back climb out of the window of the top-floor apartment. The man had already flung a flimsy rope ladder up to the narrow crop of concrete just below the edge of the roof. He had done it with one smooth throw, as well as any of Brooks's men, better, but this was no one on his team. The man started to climb the ladder. Moments later a second man, smaller, also with a rifle over his shoulder and wearing no shirt, climbed out of the apartment window.

“Who the …?” Brooks muttered and realized that his radio was on
SEND.

Spiza and Howell hit the apartment door for the fifth time and felt the lock snap. Both men drew their weapons, and Spiza kicked at the door, sending the sofa squealing across the wooden floor.

The room was empty, but the window was open. Howell went for the window with Spiza at his side.

Alton Brooks was in a cold frenzy of hate and fear, hatred of whoever those two fools were who were climbing toward the roof, and fear that if they didn't succeed, Bernie Shepard might do something to make Brooks's team look very bad.

As the two men reached the ledge just below the rooftop and crouched down, another person, a black policeman with a radio, appeared at the window.

“Two civilians, armed,” said Howell into his radio. “They may be going up there to join Sergeant Shepard.”

“They're going up there to join their ancestors,” said Lieberman with a sigh. “Call them back. Don't worry about making noise. Sergeant Shepard's listening to us.”

Crouched on the ledge, just below the low wall of the roof of the Shoreham, Carl whispered to Dave, “Over and ready.”

Dave didn't like it one bit.

“You two,” came a voice below them. “Come down. Fast.”

Carl went over, rolling in the gravel of the roof, and came up, weapon ready as he had been taught. Dave leaped over just behind him and moved to the right. Gravel tore at his bare chest.

Nothing in front of them. Nothing but a water tower beneath which was a low wall of gray concrete blocks.

Carl motioned at Dave for the assault and got to one knee. Before he could get to the other, the dog leaped over the low wall of concrete blocks, skittered across the roof, and hurled itself at Carl, sinking its teeth into his shoulder.

“Son of a bitch,” Carl screamed, dropping his rifle and ripping at the ears and eyes of the dog. Dave turned his weapon toward the dog and Carl and then heard or sensed a figure rising behind the concrete wall. He tried to bring his rifle up as Bernie Shepard fired. The blast tore into Dave's face and chest, turning his ice-cream tattoo bloody.

At the blast, the dog let go of Carl's shoulder, dropped to the roof, and turned to Dave, who looked at his friend with a question in his torn face before he fell forward.