Authors: Stuart M. Kaminsky

Big Silence (37 page)

Lieberman sat, cup of coffee in his hand, his eyes going from the thin black man in the bed to the screen.

The man in the bed had been shot in the chest. The wound, Lieberman has been told, was serious but probably not critical. The bullet, which broke a rib and grazed a kidney, has been removed and internal bleeding stopped.

His name was Billy Johnstone. He was almost seventy-one and, like Lieberman who was sixty-one, looked far older than his years. Johnstone’s mouth was partly open, eyes closed, a tube through his left nostril. The hospital gown was open enough so Lieberman could see the chest of curly white hair slowly heaving in and out.

Lieberman drank some coffee. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good, but it was coffee. He wasn’t supposed to drink caffeinated coffee. He didn’t know if this coffee was decaffeinated. He didn’t care. He sipped and remembered his Snickers bars. He put his cardboard cup on the nightstand, pulled a candy bar from his pocket, unwrapped one end and took a bite.

A uniformed Yuma police officer sat outside the closed door. Billy Johnstone wasn’t going anywhere, not for a while, and then to jail to wait for the legal wrangling, a deal to be made, or prison time. This was Yuma’s case, but Abe’s prisoner had been killed and he needed to know why, not only to satisfy his own curiosity but also to put in his report, a report he definitely was not looking forward to writing.

Lieberman closed his eyes and heard a raspy thin voice say, “You got blood.”

Lieberman looked at the man on the bed. His eyes were open but the lids were fluttering.

“Enough to keep me going,” said Lieberman.

“No, I mean you got blood on your shirt there.”

Johnstone tried to raise a bony arm to point at Lieberman’s shirt.

“Sorry ’bout that,” Johnstone said.

“It’ll wash out.”

“I know, but …”

“Want a Snickers bar?” asked Lieberman.

“Like ’em, but I don’t think I’m supposed to eat anything,” said Johnstone.

“You want to talk?” asked Lieberman.

“Not ’specially.”

“Just a few questions.”

The old man blinked his eyes and nodded, indicating a few questions would be about all he could handle.

“Why’d you shoot him?”

“He’s dead? For sure?”

“He’s dead.”

The old man smiled and closed his eyes.

“Thought I’d be, too. That was the plan. He was a bad man, a killer, that right?”

“He was,” said Lieberman. “That why you killed him?”

“Just felt like it.”

“Just something to do on a rainy morning in Yuma,” said Lieberman flatly. “Get a gun, sneak it into the airport, shoot a bad man.”

“Something like that,” Johnstone said.

“Someone paid you.”

“Hmm. You a baseball person?”

“Yes,” said Lieberman.

“Good. Two kinds of people. Baseball and not baseball. You know what I’m saying?”

“Yes.”

“Back some forty-five years ago it looked like I might make it to the major leagues,” Johnstone said. “You imagine that? Looking at me now, you imagine that?”

“Who’d you play for?”

“Kicked around some. Ended with a Red Sox Triple-A team. Thought I’d go up. Went down and out instead. My last season I drove in fifty-four runs and had a batting average of two-eighty right on the button, right on it. Got sent down. Just when things were lookin’ right. Shot down. Sent down. Down and out.”

“Why did you shoot the man in the airport?”

“You know I’ve got cancer of the liver and some other parts,” Johnstone said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Not half as much as I am,” the old man said with a sigh.

“The question,” said Lieberman.

“You got children?” He squinted at Lieberman and said, “Grandchildren?”

“A daughter. Two grandchildren.”

“How old?”

“Twelve and nine. Boy’s twelve. Girl’s nine.”

“I’ve got three. Grandchildren. Smart. College smart.”

Lieberman was about to speak when Johnstone raised his right hand palm up for him to stop.

“Takes a lot of money to send kids to college,” Johnstone said.

“A lot of money.”

The man in the bed closed his eyes and was silent for about thirty seconds. Lieberman thought he was asleep, but with closed eyes Johnstone said quietly, “You see where I’m going with this?”

“I think so. Someone paid you a lot of money for you to kill Gower. You’re going to give it to your grandchildren to go to college.”

“A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Seen those ads?”

“I donate to the United Negro College Fund,” Lieberman said. “Who paid you to shoot Gower?”

“So the man I shot was named Gower? First name or last?”

“Last.”

“You had a photograph of Gower in your pocket.”

“But not his name. Never knew his name till you just said it. You ever kill a man? I mean you being a cop?”

“A couple of times.”

“Thought I’d feel bad,” said Johnstone. “I do, but physical not mental. Ever been shot?”

“No. The person who hired you to kill Gower wasn’t a good man,” said Lieberman.

“Maybe so. Maybe no. But he was a man with money.”

Johnstone leaned a little toward Lieberman and lowered his voice.

“Between you, me, and your Snickers bar, I already put the money where only my grandkids can get it. Add that to my insurance money and it’s a nice amount. You can’t take it from me.”

The oscilloscope let out a series of blips. The green line was frantically drawing the dark landscape.

“I don’t want to take your money. I want the name of the man who paid you.”

“Can’t do it,” Johnstone said. “I think I better … there water in here?”

“I’ll call the nurse. They told me not to give you water.”

“But they didn’t say anything about candy bars?”

“I’ll call the nurse.”

“No.” He held up a thin arm, bone and veins showing. “No more talk now,” Johnstone whispered and then he was definitely asleep.

Lieberman got up and moved toward the door. He would come back later.

“You understand?” Monty said. Monty the barber looked like a twig, a bald twig with wide brown suspenders. Monty had blue eyes and peppermint breath. He popped Certs like Wayne’s cousin Kenneth had popped uppers back in the eighties when they were kids.

“Yes,” said Wayne looking at himself in the mirror, watching the hair fall in ringlets as Monty cut and talked, narrow knobby shoulders huddled holding today’s suspenders.

The Clean Cut was old, ceiling a patterned plaster, floor white tile blocks with cracks that ran like meandering rivers, walls covered in paper with repeating pictures of ancient airplanes.

Monty was alone today. The other barber chairs sat empty and only Mr. Photopopolus, who lived in the Garden Gables Assisted Living Facility in a three-story off of Morse near the El, sat waiting. The bus had driven Mr. Photopopolus from the Garden Gables. It would be back for him in an hour. Mr. Photopopolus didn’t care if it was five hours. He liked the smell of the barbershop. He liked fingering the curled edges of the magazines that flopped on the small table next to him. He liked listening to Monty and throwing in an observation when he could.

“So, it’s a miracle,” Monty said. “All this.”

He paused to wave his comb and point it around the shop. Wayne could see him in the mirror.

“You gotta think about it, Wayne,” he went on. “People were on the earth with nothing, nothing at all, no thing at all. Just people and the earth and the animals and whatever was growing. And they made from it houses and cars and computers and cake mixers.”

“And streets and telephones and airplanes,” said Mr. Photopopolus.

“I’m going to shoot someone today,” said Wayne softly, looking at the elegant letters painted on the window more than forty years ago by his father saying this, indeed, was the Clean Cut barbershop.

“That a fact?” said Monty.

“Yes.”

Monty had heard crazier things in his decades of scissors, razors, and combs. Wayne was harmless, a little off, but harmless. Customers babble. You listen, nod your head, let them tell you they were about to make millions or shoot the latest blond rock star.

“Something eating you?” Monty said.

“No, nothing special. It’s just the day I’m going to shoot someone,” said Wayne again, very softly, calmly, looking in the mirror to be sure Monty was cutting his hair just the way he liked it, not too short. Too short and his face looked like a balloon, like John Candy.

“You got to kill somebody, kill Dwight Spenser,” said Mr. Photopopolus. “No loss there. You gotta kill somebody, kill Spenser, get it out of your system, rid the world of an anti-Greek. I thought a couple times about braining him with a bedpan.”

“I don’t know Spenser,” said Wayne.

“Room next to mine,” said Photopopolus. “Must be a hundred years old. God’s keeping him alive to punish those around him who’ve screwed up their lives. I’m eighty-six. He’ll outlive me. The bad die ancient. You know what I’m saying?”

“I know what you’re saying,” said Wayne. “But I’ve got to kill someone important.”

“Like who?” asked Photopopolus.

“Lee Cole Carter,” said Wayne.

“And that’s who?” asked Photopopolus.

“Country singer,” said Monty dreamily, still thinking about the miracle of the world, the wonders of a comb, the marvel of the scissors in his hand. “Mother and father live in one of the high-rises on Sheridan. Top floor I hear. Lee Cole Carter won the Grammy last year for singing something about dirty women.”

‘“Hard Drinking Woman,’” Wayne said. “Youngest country-and-western singer to win a Grammy. He’s in the city now visiting his parents. Heard it on the radio.”

“Done,” said Monty, sweeping the sheet out from under Wayne’s chin so that the hairs on it floated neatly to the floor like snowfall in a glass bubble. Monty twirled the sheet like a toreador and laid it neatly in one movement on the empty barber chair next to him. It was Monty’s trademark. That little move. Been doing it for thirty-six years.

Wayne got out of the chair. He always gave Monty a dollar tip. Wayne always said, “Thank you kindly, Mr. Czerbiak, sir.”

He did this time, too. Photopopolus had put down the magazine and was walking slowly, stoop-shouldered toward the chair. He looked like a gnome with a secret. Photopopolus had perfected the knowing look to hide his basic lack of intelligence.

“You got a gun?” Monty asked Wayne, wrapping the cloth around Photopopolus’s wrinkled neck. “You going to shoot someone, you need a gun. Am I right or am I right?”

“Yeah,” said Wayne. “I’ve got a gun.”

Wayne went out the door and onto the sidewalk in front of the mall shops. The gun in his pocket belonged to his father. Kept it loaded in a drawer in the shop. Until today.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

cover design by Jim Tierney

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