"I'll try to get home early," he said.
'Today, not tonight."
"I'll be at the T and L for lunch, maybe two, maybe a little earlier."
"I'll be there."
"You're not working?"
"Not today," she said.
Lisa hung up the phone as Hanrahan returned with two cups of coffee. He handed one to Lieberman and sat down.
"With caffeine?" Lieberman asked, looking at the cup, which had AMSTERDAM CRUISES printed on it in purple letters.
Hanrahan shrugged. Lieberman drank.
"Let's go see if we can make a hole or two in our grief-stricken husband's story."
"If…" Hanrahan began shifting in his chair to get a few more inches away from the inferno belching out of die heating vent.
"Hold it," Lieberman said, picking up on something Francis Acardo was saying on the phone a desk away.
"Francis," Lieberman called.
Acardo put his hand over the receiver and said, "Shooting, at Doc Berry's office. Officer down. Cars are rolling. As usual, confusion reigns."
Both Hanrahan and Lieberman got up and, without speaking, ran for the squad room door. They were less than twelve minutes from Argyle Street in normal traffic. They made it with flashing lights in eight. Black and whites, three of them, with lights flashing, were blocking the street. People, most of them Oriental, lined the sidewalk, held back by two female uniformed officers. Lieberman pulled around the police car blocking Broadway and double-parked.
The rain had stopped, at least for now. The street was wet and the clouds gray and grumbling.
They moved past the officers holding the crowd back and saw a young patrolman kneeling over the contorted body of a young black boy. The dead boy's hands were clutching his stomach as if he had a terrible cramp and his face was distorted in agony. He had curled up like a fetus to die.
"This one's dead, Abe," the kneeling patrolman said. "A knife in his pocket, two bucks and some change. No wallet, no ED."
"Officer down?" asked Hanrahan.
The kneeling patrolman pointed to me entrance of Jacob Berry's office.
A clot of people, all police, seemed to be sitting down for a coffee break on the steps. An ambulance wailed outside and not far away. And somewhere up the stairway a man was screaming in anger.
A third female officer, Shea, stood up when she saw the detectives, and Lieberman could now see that an older cop at the bottom of the stairs, Hugh Jensen, was cradling the head of Guy Matthews in his lap. Matthews was covered in blood. Matthews was gasping for air, his chest heaving.
"Lung, I think," said Jensen. "Looks worse than it is. Maybe. If that goddamn ambulance would just get here and clear the blood…"
"What happened?" Hanrahan asked.
The voice above, words unclear, was screaming again.
"Looks like a shoot-out in the doc's office upstairs," said Shea. "Perp down up there. Two of them ran out in the street. Matthews followed them. He was already shot."
She pointed to a trail of blood on the stairs.
"Seems they had a car waiting," said Jensen, "but someone stole it while they were in the doc's office. The dead one out there had a gun. Matthews shot him. The other one ran. I don't like the way he's breathing," he said, looking down at the wounded officer.
Matthews was gasping for air now, eyes closed. Hanrahan stepped forward, knelt, and pried the wounded officer's mouth open with his fingers. He turned Matthews' head down to the right and reached into his mouth to pull out a squirming clot of blood. Then he put his mouth to that of the gasping man and began to suck out blood, spitting it onto Jensen's shoes. Officer Shea bit her lower lip but didn't turn away.
The ambulance was close now, wailing just outside the door. Lieberman went up the stairs. The screamer was at it again. Inside Dr. Berry's office/examining room Abe Lieberman saw a solid tree stump of a young black man, his hands cuffed behind his back, being restrained by two uniformed officers. The young man was seated in the same chair Lieberman had sat in two days ago but kept trying to stand. Blood was oozing through a hole in his right pants leg.
"That fool," the young man screamed in a high voice, looking across the room at Jacob Berry, who sat, stunned, behind his desk. On top of the briefcase before him sat the gun that Jacob had purchased the day before. "Where's Lonny? What you doin' with lago? Man, I want me a lawyer. I want me a doctor, but not that fool."
"Shut up," said one of the two cops through clenched teeth, pushing the screaming man back down on the chair. The cop was big. Both cops were big. They had to be to keep the screaming man down.
Lieberman moved to Jacob Berry, who was staring at the screaming young man as if he heard nothing, as if he had just been awakened and was trying to make some sense of the chaos that greeted him.
"You all right, Doc?" Lieberman said, touching his shoulder.
Jacob nodded. "I shot him," he said, removing his glasses and looking up at Lieberman.
"Yeah," said Lieberman.
"No, not him," Jacob said, looking at the angry young man across the room. "The policeman shot him. I… I think… I know I shot the policeman. I should help him. I'm a doctor. I should do something."
"You wouldn't be much good," said Lieberman. "Where'd you get the gun?"
"Gun? Bought it from somebody, a man, yesterday. I was afraid."
Lieberman sighed. The young black man had gone sullenly silent after uttering one more, "Damn fool."
"So you bought an illegal weapon," said Lieberman. "I told you I'd help you."
"Couldn't wait," said Berry, throwing up his hands.
A scrambling out the door and down the stairs, voices of paramedics.
"I've got to help," Jacob Berry said, wiping his eyes with his sleeve and rising.
"Sure," said Lieberman, stepping out of the way.
Jacob Berry didn't glance at the restrained man who had cursed him. Instead Dr. Berry rushed to help the man who may have saved his life, me man he had shot. Lieberman rubbed a finger across his mustache and stepped over to the seated young man.
"You get me a fuckin' doctor," the young man screamed. "I'm bleedin'."
"His name is Albert Davis," said one of the officers.
"Social Security card, four dollars, a condom, and a photo ID from a drug store in his wallet. Address is on MLK Drive near Michael Reese Hospital."
Lieberman nodded and turned to Albert Davis.
"One of your friends is dead," he said.
"Dead?" Dalbert said, looking at each of the two uniformed policemen for confirmation. "Which one?"
"What do this lago and Lonny look like?" Lieberman said.
"How you know their names?" Dalbert said in panic.
"You told them to us a minute ago, Albeit," Lieberman said calmly. "You want to know which one is dead and which one got away?"
"Got away? lago's a skinny kid. Lonny's big, got a scar like lightning over his eye."
"Last names, Albert," Lieberman pressed.
"Nobody calls me Albert. Dalbert. I'm Dalbert. Get me a damn doctor. Who's dead?"
"Names, Dalbert?"
"I don't know no last names," the young man said sullenly as a paramedic in blue hurried into the room.
"lago's dead," Lieberman said.
Dalbert bit his lower lip, nodded, and went silent as the paramedic knelt to rip away his trousers and examine the bullet wound.
'Touch nothing and call Evidence," Lieberman told the two officers. "Leave the weapon where it is."
Both cops nodded.
There was nothing on the steps as Lieberman walked down, nothing but a trail of Guy Matthews's blood. Outside, the door to the ambulance was just closing. A second ambulance was rolling down the street.
The crowd had grown. Jensen and Shea had moved forward to help control it, but the sight of Bill Hanrahan, blood covering his mouth and face, was enough to restrain even the most adventurous of the gawkers. Hanrahan was doing his best to remove the Wood with a handkerchief, but he wasn't making much headway.