Lieberman's Folly by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page A

using his wife’s brothers as lawn workers and partly because he had paid off a Democratic alderman to put pressure on certain lakefront high-rises to use Sol’s service.
    It was just before ten when Jules took his night flight. No one had witnessed the miracle. When the drunk babbled his tale and dream the next morning, Sol had no reason to believe him. The police cars were gone. The television crews were taking pictures of a giant salmon washed up near Navy Pier. Sol had no reason to believe anything had happened the night before. He pulled the drunk from the back of his truck.
    â€œMaybe the lamp is magic,” muttered Van Beeber, looking at the lamp he still held.
    â€œMaybe I’ll break both your arms I catch you sleeping in my truck again,” replied Worth. He resolved never again to leave his truck on the street overnight in front of a job again.
    Sol had his two Korean workers to pick up, seven high-rise lawns to do. When he pulled away, Sol could see the drunk in his rearview mirror sitting on the curb and looking at his lamp.
    When Sol was gone, Jules Van Beeber, who had once owned a greeting card shop in Holland, Michigan, where something had happened that he did not wish to remember, got up and wandered in the general direction of Lawrence Avenue. He remembered, or thought he remembered, a pawn shop there. He had a magic lamp to sell and a wondrous tale to tell if anyone would listen to him.
    Sol didn’t put the whole thing together till he got back home that night with an empty truck, an aching back, and a sore throat from yelling at his brother-in-law Bradley who, though safely off the lawns, was supposed to be answering phones in the office. Only when he was drifting off to sleep while his wife was reading her weekly pile of supermarket tabloids and listening to the ten o’clock news did Sol make a connection. Sol was only half-awake when the story came on the television and he realized that the woman the blonde anchorwoman was talking about had been murdered two blocks away from where he now lay almost but not quite asleep. She had been murdered in the building he parked his truck next to the night before. The truck in which he had found a drunk telling a crazy nuts story.
    Sol sat up in bed, sending Inquirers and Stars flying. His wife hit him on the shoulder with her fist, but Sol didn’t feel it.
    â€œI think some drunk told me he killed that woman,” he said.
    â€œYeah?” said his wife.
    â€œRight next to the building. Told me just like that and I let him walk,” said Sol Worth.
    â€œSo?” she asked.
    â€œSo, I’m calling the cops.”
    Two hours before Jules Van Beeber went over the railing on the balcony of Estralda Valdez’s apartment, William Hanrahan had called Estralda to be sure she was there and all right. He called from the Chinese restaurant in the Lakefront Motor Inn across the street from the Michigan Towers high-rise. The restaurant, the Black Moon, was the only commercial property on the block and Estralda had been right; there was a good view of the entrance to the high-rise from the window.
    Estralda had told him she was fine. Hanrahan had said he would be watching all night but that there had to be at least two other entrances to the building, a service entrance and an entrance through the building’s underground garage. He asked her to go to her window and pull the shade up and down. He found the window and when she got back on the phone he told her to leave the shade down but pull it up if she needed his help.
    After that he had shown his badge to the pretty Chinese woman of no particular age who served him pork-fried rice and a double bourbon on the rocks. He had told her he would be sitting at that table till closing time.
    The double bourbon was followed by a second and an order of egg foo yung. Customers came and went. People went in and out of the high-rise. Hanrahan watched the black doorman greet them, nod. No