Lieberman's Choice Read Free Page B

here?”
    â€œKraylaw,” she repeated ringing up the sale and giving him change. “The kid.”
    Frankie Kraylaw was almost thirty, but he looked like the friendly best buddy teenager in a “Brady Bunch” rerun.
    â€œThe kid,” Lieberman agreed.
    â€œNo. I don’t think so,” she said as another customer, a man in a night watchman’s uniform too warm for the weather, walked in and headed for the coffee.
    â€œI’ll check with Poli,” said Lieberman, heading for the door.
    â€œYou a …?”
    â€œI am,” said Lieberman.
    â€œI heard the kid had some trouble with his wife or something.”
    â€œYeah,” agreed Lieberman.
    â€œHe’s a creepy guy,” the woman said with a look of distaste. “Not creepy like lots who come in here. Present company excepted, of course.”
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œCreepy,” she said, “Big smile on his face like Uncle Ira.”
    â€œUncle?”
    â€œIra. In Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Nothing behind the smile like, like he was a puppet or something. Like …”
    â€œHowdy Doody,” he supplied.
    â€œWho?”
    Lieberman pushed the door open with his elbow as the weary night watchman poured coffee on himself and said, “Goddamn the hell.”
    Even if the streets hadn’t been almost traffic-free, and he had gone straight there, it would have taken Lieberman only fifteen minutes to get to the Shoreham from his house.
    He made it to the Shoreham in twenty even with the stop for coffee.
    When Abe Lieberman had entered his kitchen in the hope of an insomniacal retreat of coffee and crosswords, his partner, William Hanrahan, had stepped into the Shepard bedroom.
    Hanrahan was on nights because he had requested them, which meant he and Lieberman had been split for the month. Since Hanrahan had just come off sick leave after being shot during a murder investigation, the new captain, Kearney, had okayed the request without question.
    Lieberman knew the reason for his partner’s shift request. Hanrahan did not want to face the night. He could sleep during the day knowing that if he opened his eyes, there would be sun through his windows. It might be gray Chicago sun, but it would be sunlight and not the awful night loneliness.
    Hanrahan had recently celebrated his fiftieth birthday, an event the details of which he had reported to Lieberman.
    â€œI went to the Black Moon and Iris made me a Chinese birthday dinner, good stuff.”
    Hanrahan had been going with Iris Huang for more than two months. He had met her when he had a few too many drinks at the Black Moon while he was supposed to be watching the apartment of a hooker named Estralda across the street. Hanrahan’s few drinks had probably gotten Estralda killed. Later, when Hanrahan had been shot, Iris had been at his hospital bedside almost every night after. And when he got out she had tended him at home. He had, as yet, not taken Iris to bed nor had he even asked her to spend the night.
    â€œWell, Rabbi,” he had told Lieberman, continuing about his birthday experience, “I’m eating, only customer in the place, a Thursday afternoon, mind you, and the music comes on, guy with a Chinese accent on a tape is singing ‘Happy Birthday,’ leaves the name out when he comes to it. Nobody sings my name, not even Iris. Her father’s back in the kitchen. I don’t think he knows my name or wants to. Who knows? Depressing as hell or what?”
    Now, his birthday four weeks and two days behind, Bill Hanrahan, his cheeks pink, his dark hair cut short but just thick enough to cover the scar on his scalp where he had been shot, stepped into the Shepard bedroom. His handsome flat Irish face was a little puffy. His shirt, blue as always, was neatly pressed, as was his dark red tie. Bill had not had a drink since he went into the hospital, but what he saw now made him hope that Shepard had at least