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of America just as he had refused to speak Russian in the old country. He spoke and read Hebrew in his prayers and spoke Yiddish in his home and that of Abraham’s mother and father. He had insisted that the boy and his older brother, Morris, accompany him to services, hours of standing and sitting, praying in a language the boys didn’t understand, dreading the knock of their grandfather at the door to take them back to the mysterious boredom of the synagogue on the West Side. Neither Abe nor Maish had ever had faith. And when their grandfather had died, and old men and an ancient rabbi had told them that their grandfather had been a great and pious man, both boys decided that they had seen their last days as practicing Jews.
    When he had married Bess, who came from a Conservative Jewish family, they had agreed that she would continue her practice and he would be left alone. At first he had joined her in only a few annual social events. Then he had decided to accompany her once to Friday night services, just to see if it brought back the same feelings, the ghost of his grandfather.
    There were no ghosts at the service. There was almost as much English as there was Hebrew and though he thought he would feel uncomfortable at praying and thanking a God in whom he did not believe, Abraham Lieberman found himself briefly at peace. He could still read the Hebrew he had learned more than thirty-five years earlier. He still could not understand what he was reading, but it gave him a meditative calm, and gradually, it put him at peace with the ghost of his grandfather. There were even times when Lieberman had gone to services alone, especially when the horror and pain he was forced to witness in his work made him wonder at the meaning of his own life. There were never answers, but there was solace and comfort.
    And now, he looked around the chapel, his refuge, and knew the fear, memories, and images of the Holocaust would slap each member of the congregation, would sting.
    Leo Benishay arrived speedily with a team of photographers and techs and they set to work, Leo giving Abe a sorrowful and sympathetic look as he surveyed the damage. Leo Benishay was a devout Jewish atheist, as Abe had once been, but he would work at this because, atheist or not, he was a Jew and he was a good cop. That, however, was not going to stop Lieberman from finding who had done this in the very room where his grandson was to be bar mitzvahed, the room where he had found some peace. What Lieberman felt was more powerful than Hanrahan’s rage; it was a resolve that no one could be allowed to come into his home and that of his people, and get away with doing this. No one. Somewhere in the Torah it was written that the wrath of the Lord could, when He deemed it, be swift, powerful, and without mercy.
    Even if the Lord didn’t tell him what to do, and Lieberman was certain that the Lord would not since He had never done so before, he would emulate the Lord.
    And then, in the middle of the desecration, he thought of Eli Towser, the unforgiving rabbinical student he had fired no more than an hour ago. And Lieberman knew that even with what he saw about him now, he would still have fired the wild-eyed young man.
    Within half an hour, they began to come to Mir Shavot. The first to arrive were Abe’s brother, Maish, an older, heavier, even sadder version of Abe, and Maish’s wife, Yetta. With them were the Alter Cockers, the klatch of old Jews and one Chinese, Howie Chen who, it had been established long ago, was a distant cousin of Iris Huang, Hanrahan’s fiancée. Terrill, the new short-order day cook, was with the Alter Cockers, Terrill had spent three years in Stateville on a drug count. Lieberman had set up the job for Terrill after his release, and he turned out to be the best short-order cook the T & L Deli had ever had.
    â€œClean-up squad,” said Syd Levan.
    â€œLet’s get to work,” said Herschel Rosen, a gnome