Read Lieberman's Folly for Free Online

figure of speech,” Lieberman supplied, though that wasn’t quite what he needed.
    â€œA figure of speech,” El Perro repeated. “Carlos, pay viejo . You got balls, old man. Every grifter, drifter, ladrone , and ramera in the neighborhood from the old days respects you Rabbi, because you don’t give a shit. Hey,” El Perro went on, turning to the Tentaculos. “This old cop here with the sad face, one day he walked into the Mazatlan Bar couple years back and shot a hole in Pedro “The Train” Ramirez’s hand. My brother was there. Ramirez had tore the place apart for the second time that month, and was coming at this old cop here with a broken tequila bottle. I wasn’t there but my kid brother, who shouldn’t have been there either, told me about it. Viejo here walked over the tub of guts on the floor, took the broken bottle from his fingers, all covered with blood, patted Ramirez’s cheek, pulled Ramirez’s wallet out of his pocket, took all the money, and handed it to Manuel Ortega, the Mazatlan bartender. My brother saw Ortega put the bills in his pocket instead of dropping them in the till. You didn’t know that, did you Lieberman?”
    â€œI didn’t know that,” Lieberman acknowledged, pretending to drink from his bottle of beer.
    â€œBut the viejo didn’t arrest Pedro Ramirez,” El Perro went on. “How you like this story?”
    â€œBueno,” came a chorus from the dark and El Perro grinned with satisfaction and went on.
    â€œMonths later, even before his bandages were off, dead drunk, Ramirez stabbed a mailman named Perez. He took him for Manuel Ortega. So what’s the moral, here?”
    â€œNail ’em when you get the chance,” Hanrahan said.
    â€œI’m gonna forget you said that,” said El Perro. “You’re lucky you caught me on a good day.”
    â€œLucky we did,” Hanrahan agreed.
    A hand came over Lieberman’s shoulder with two hundred-dollar bills in it.
    â€œI got no change,” came Piedras’s voice.
    â€œSomeone come up with forty cents,” El Perro said.
    Hands came from all directions plunking coins on the table.
    El Perro laughed. Everyone in the place laughed. Lieberman picked out four dimes and put them in his pocket.
    â€œYou like to know what we did with that stuff we bought from your amigo Resnick?” asked El Perro.
    â€œNo,” said Lieberman, getting up.
    El Perro shrugged and, as Hanrahan finished his beer and rose, asked, “Cubs gonna win it this year?”
    â€œThey’re gonna win it every year,” Lieberman said. “Only way to think.”
    â€œThey need pitching,” he said. “They need that little fat guy.”
    â€œValenzuela,” Lieberman said. “He’s not what he used to be.”
    â€œToo bad,” said El Perro.
    Two minutes later Hanrahan and Lieberman were back on the street.
    â€œI seriously considered shooting the little bastard,” Hanrahan said when they were back on the street.
    â€œNo you didn’t,” Lieberman said.
    â€œHard to shoot a man who hands you a cold beer on a hot day,” Hanrahan said. “Never heard that story before, about you shooting the Mex in the bar.”
    â€œNever happened,” Lieberman said as they headed down the sidewalk.
    The street smelled of bodies, gasoline, and Mexican food. If your nose was good you could also smell the blood of Polish sausages and frying kielbasa. The scent was mixed, like the people on the street, mostly dark-skinned and Latino but with a few older, round pink-white faces and heavy bodies that didn’t want to or couldn’t move from the neighborhood that used to be theirs.
    â€œI used to live a few blocks from here,” Hanrahan said as they walked down the street. “Went to St. Leonard’s right across the park. When my mother shamed me into going to mass at St. Leonard’s, these