Lieberman's Choice (17 page)

Shepard lifted his shirt to reveal the bloody hole in his side. From the kit, he removed a large gauze pad, which he pressed hard against the wound, clenching his teeth to keep from making a sound. He hissed and, with one hand holding the pad to his side, pulled out a roll of surgical tape. He ripped off a piece of tape with his mouth and pressed it to the pad, taping the pad awkwardly against his flesh. Then, with both hands now free, he tore more tape to fix the pad firmly against his flesh. He willed himself not to pass out as he tore off strips of tape and pressed them to pad and flesh to keep the blood from seeping through.

“Three more hours,” he said between his teeth. “Just give me three more hours.”

William Hanrahan leaned against the wall of Jason Belding's living room. He and Alan Kearney had listened to Abe Lieberman's side of the conversation with Shepard, had heard the shotgun blast. Now they watched as Lieberman placed the radio on the table near the window and Chief Hartz burst into the room.

“What was that shooting?” he shouted. “Where's Del Sol?”

“He went up ten minutes ago,” said Kearney. “Bernie did the shooting.”

“How do you …?”

“Emiliano didn't go up with a gun,” said Lieberman.

“He didn't …?” Hartz asked incredulously, moving to the window and looking out as if he expected El Perro to be lying in the street.

“Maybe,” he said hopefully, “he took one of Shepard's guns and shot him.”

“Bernie's alive,” said Kearney. “And we have reason to believe that the roof is wired with explosives.”

Hartz turned from the window. His uniform was looking a little shabby now. The shirt was wrinkled and his tie loose.

“Three hours,” said Hartz, checking his watch. Without a trace of conviction, he turned to Alan Kearney and added, “You are not going up there, Kearney. With these two officers as my witness, I am telling you that you are not going up there.”

Hartz looked from Hanrahan to Lieberman as Kearney let out a short, bitter laugh.

“I'm not? I don't go up there and Bernie Shepard blows the neighborhood into chicken shit. He dies some kind of screwy martyr or something, and I'm the bastard who survives even though I turned Olivia Shepard into a whore, the dirty cop who was afraid to face the wronged and righteous husband.”

Hartz tried not to look at Hanrahan and Lieberman now as he tried for sympathy in his voice. “You're being hard on yourself. We'll get through that door, and …”

“And Bernie will blow the building,” said Kearney.

“What else can we do?” asked Hartz reasonably.

“Let's have two Fourth of Julys,” said Lieberman. “Clear the neighborhood, cut off Shepard's contact, and tell him to go ahead and press his button.”

“Well …” said Hartz, doing his best to look as if he were seriously considering the suggestion.

“That the way you want it, Chief?” asked Kearney. “You want to give me a direct order not to go up there? Tell the papers and the TV people and sound like you mean it?”

Hartz was silent; Kearney looked at Lieberman, who opened his mouth as the phone rang. Hanrahan moved to the phone and picked it up. The others stood silent, listening.

“Hanrahan,” he said. “No. … No.”

He hung up the phone and turned.

“Anxman,” he said. “Channel Nine wants to talk to Captain Kearney. I said …”

“We heard,” said Hartz impatiently. “You were right. Captain Kearney, I've already told you not to …”

Kearney was shaking his head. Wound up tight, he stepped toward Hartz, who didn't back away.

“This has all been the way Bernie Shepard wants it. Since he parked out there, walked into that building, and killed his wife and another police officer. He wants me up there. You want me up there. The mayor wants me up there. I'd guess almost every good citizen wants me to go up there. Shoot-out on the roof, good guy, bad guy. Which one am I, Chief? Who are you betting on, Chief?”

Lieberman stepped between the two men.

“Let's let the building blow,” he said gently. “Something smaller, uglier can go up. A Seven-Eleven. All of this will be a confused memory in two years.”

“That what you want to do, Chief?” asked Kearney.

Kearney and Hartz were almost eye to eye now. Hartz didn't reply.

“That's what I figured,” said Kearney, stepping past the chief of police, going out the apartment door, and slamming it behind him.

Mayor Aaron Jameson and Ty Wheeler sat drinking coffee in the mayor's office. A cigar burned in the ashtray next to the mayor. The world did not know the mayor smoked. It was not just the heart attack he had suffered the year before but the image he knew he projected when he was photographed with a large cigar. The news flickered and hummed soothingly on the television set. The mayor had removed his shoes, and Wheeler considered whether His Honor should go through the waiting members of the press clean shaven or looking as if he had had a long, difficult day. Wheeler would decide that later when the drama on the rooftop was settled. Newspapers were piled on the desk and floor.

“… less than three and a half hours from now,” came the soothing, confident voice of the television anchor. “Minutes ago, as you saw, Police Chief Hartz expressed his full confidence in Captain Alan Kearney, saying that he was sure Kearney would handle the situation properly. Kearney is the man who Shepard claims seduced his wife and is therefore indirectly responsible for the deaths of four people in the last twenty-four hours. Shepard, one of the most decorated officers in the Chicago …”

“Enough, enough,” said the mayor. “Turn that shit off.”

Wheeler reached over and turned off the television set.

“You'll turn it back on in a minute.”

The mayor laughed.

“A morbid addiction. An act of masochism. Watching one's minor claim to history footnoted by an insane renegade cop. I'd go up there myself if I thought it would do any damn good.”

“No, you wouldn't, Aaron.”

The mayor lifted his left leg and rubbed his foot.

“No, I wouldn't,” he said. “Not unless I was sure I'd make it down alive. But think of how this would translate into votes if I did talk that crazy son of a bitch down.”

“I don't think about what we can't have,” said Wheeler. “What we have is Kearney, and we've got to get him up there.”

“And then?” asked the mayor, reaching for his cigar.

Wheeler allowed himself a long pregnant pause as he poured himself another cup of coffee.

“We pray,” said Wheeler, reaching over to turn the television set back on.

On the street a block from what he now thought of as Shepard's Tower, Alan Kearney stood alone, looking at the moonlight that stretched across the rippling waves of Lake Michigan.

He pounded his fist angrily against the top of his car. Something behind him, possibly the sound of laughter, made him turn. In the shadowed walkway between two buildings across the street stood Emiliano Del Sol. Kearney watched him for a second or two and then El Perro turned and disappeared. The urge to follow him, the anger that surged through him, moved Kearney to take two steps toward the walkway. A sound of footsteps on the sidewalk behind him stopped him.

“Alan,” said Carla Duvier. “We've got to talk. Now.”

Abe Lieberman was tired. This fact he confided in William Hanrahan, who in turned confided that his head was throbbing.

The two men sat in Jason Belding's kitchen, drinking Jason Belding's Artesian water.

“You know what this is?” asked Lieberman, holding up his glass. “Seltzer for a buck a bottle. We used to get it delivered to our door by Joey Schoenberg, in siphon bottles, a dime a bottle plus a nickel deposit.”

“The kind of bottle like they spray in people's faces in the movies,” Hanrahan said.

“The kind,” confirmed Lieberman. “You talk to the doctor about the pain?”

Hanrahan shrugged and shifted his weight.

“He says that's the way it is. May always have it. I've got pills. Consider the alternative, Rabbi.”

“Consider the alternative,” Lieberman conceded, holding his Artesian glass up in a toast.

They clinked glasses.

“You call Bess?”

“I called,” said Lieberman. “The kids want to go to a mall tomorrow if this is over. I hate malls. They make my knees ache.”

“I hate Disneyland and Disney World and all that stuff,” said Hanrahan. “Iris says she wants to go. I've been thinking I want to go to New Mexico.”

“You gonna go to Disney?”

“I'm gonna go,” said Hanrahan looking at the almost empty glass in his hand. “You know, Abraham, the worst thing about not drinking is I can't stop thinking about drinking. Before, I just drank and didn't think about it. I had time for other things. You know what I mean?”

They were silent for a long time, listening to the refrigerator hum, expecting voices in the next room.

“Kearney's going up,” said Hanrahan.

“He's going up,” agreed Lieberman.

Bernard Shepard's eyes were closed, but the sweat probed under his lids, stung the corners, and pried him into consciousness. The carbine on his lap slid to the roof. He had replaced the shotgun with the lighter weapon when he realized that he could feel only the slightest sensation in his left hand. He coughed, reached for the cup of water he had poured earlier, took a drink, and coughed again. The cough ate into his side. He bit his lower lip, adjusted his glasses, turned on the flashlight, and looked at his watch.

There were still two hours to go.

He turned on his side and watched the dog lap at the spilled water. Shepard was vaguely aware that the bottom of his pants were wet. Blood, urine, the spilled water? It didn't matter. He started to close his eyes again and then, sensing something, he reached for the rifle and looked toward the end of the roof.

The two bounty hunters were walking toward him. The big one and the one with no shirt and the ice cream tattooed on his stomach.

Shepard pulled himself up, using the carbine as a crutch. Sensing something wrong, the dog looked around in confusion and saw nothing but Bernie Shepard raising the small rifle. Shepard fired at the first figure, the big man, who fell. Then the other dead man with the tattoo on his stomach stepped over his partner and advanced on the swaying Shepard. Shepard fired again.

As the tattooed man fell, yet another figure, Andy Beeton, a bloody Andy Beeton, stepped over both men and moved toward Shepard. The dog cowered behind Shepard as Shepard wiped his sweating brow.

Shepard fired a third time and Beeton went down.

Shepard squinted into the darkness. When no new apparition appeared, he tucked the rifle under his arm, reached into his shirt pocket, and came out with a plastic bottle of Tylenol and codeine. He had taken four pills after El Perro had left. Breathing hard, he took four more, swallowed, chewed, gulped, and gagged them down, trying to find saliva but finding only the taste of metal, the metal of Emiliano Del Sol's knife blade.

The dog kept its distance now and watched the man carefully, uncertain, knowing that the man now saw or sensed something the dog could not understand.

The man suddenly spun, rifle in hand, in the direction of the water tower. His face was moist and pale as Olivia Shepard, bloody, in a billowing nightgown, stepped out of the darkness over the fallen bodies.

“I haven't got time for bad dreams,” he said.

Olivia paused a dozen feet in front of him.

“No time,” he said, his finger closing on the trigger. “No time.”

His finger would go no further. He couldn't fire.

“You're not there,” he said as another figure stepped out of the darkness. Alan Kearney, his old partner, the cause of the hell he had gone through, stepped to Olivia's side, took her hand, turned her toward him, kissed her deeply, hungrily, his hands going under her gown.

“No,” shouted Shepard. “No.”

The dog ran to the steel door as Shepard fired, and fired and fired again until there was nothing left to fire with or to fire at.

And suddenly they were gone. Olivia, Kearney, Beeton, the bounty hunters. Shepard staggered to the spot where the ghosts had stood and fallen. He stood there silently for a few seconds and then moved to the edge of the roof and shouted into the night, “Kearney, no more games. You hear? No games. I want you. The real you. Look at your watch, you bastard. I want you in two hours. God, how I want you.”

Two minutes before Shepard had fired at the first apparition, Alan Kearney and Carla Duvier had sat in Kearney's car, finishing a brief conversation. Carla had said, “Obviously, then, there's no real point in …” But Kearney was only half listening to her. His thoughts floated toward the roof behind them, and when he forced them back down he heard her say, “… our simply having our names, our lives turned into …”

The first shot cracked through the night. Kearney opened his car door.

“Alan, close that damned door and listen to me. What the hell do you think I am, some frontier woman, crippling myself over the dirty laundry while my man goes off with the posse?”

Kearney got out of the car and looked up and then down the street at Lieberman, who was moving toward him.

“Captain,” said Lieberman. “I think it's time to clear our people out of the area.”

“He's not going to blow anything up before he gets his shot at me,” said Kearney as the second shot came.

He was aware of the opening of the car door and the clatter of Carla's shoes on the street, but he didn't turn toward her.

“There are levels of crazy,” said Lieberman.

“I know what Bernie Shepard's going to do. I lived with him ten hours a day for six years.”

“Alan,” said Carla softly, reasonably. “If you turn your head, you'll see me standing here. I suggest you do it because it may be the last time you see me.”