Free Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail! by Gary Phillips, Andrea Gibbons Page A

persisted.
    â€œI expect someone in his organization could tell you,” Adari said.
    â€œHe was suing you for invasion of privacy,” Oliver said, “so we can assume he wasn’t happy about it.”
    â€œHe knew a lot about invasion of privacy,” Adari said.
    The lawyer took her firmly by the arm and steered her from the room.
    â€œGood of you to join in the interrogation there at the end,” Oliver said to Liz when the women had left. “I thought you’d turned into a deaf-mute on me.”
    Liz smiled. “I’m the rookie, remember? I’m learning from you.”
    â€œYou’re the big-mouth licking Finchley’s ass. Why don’t you use your tongue on Culver’s kids. It’ll give you practice for when you have some of the little darlings yourself.”
    â€œAnd what will you be doing while I’m honing my daycare skills?” Liz demanded.
    â€œDr. Adari hired someone to investigate Culver. That’s worth investigating.”

    Liz rented the third floor of a converted workman’s cottage on the city’s northwest side, but when she finished interviewing the Culver children, she headed to her grandfather’s apartment in Rogers Park, near the lake.
    After her mother was killed in a botched police raid when Liz was nine, her grandparents had raised Liz and her brother Elliot. Grandma Judith had been dead for some years now and Grandpapa lived alone in their old apartment. Even though he’d retired from Temple Etz Chaim, he was still the wisest man Liz knew.
    She hadn’t always felt that way. As a teenager, she’d battled with him furiously over her mother. She had fought with Elliot, who said their mother was asking for trouble by being part of an anarchist cell, and with Grandpapa, who, she said, sided with the police against the poor. She announced she was an anarchist who didn’t believe in Gd, hoping to spark rage in Grandpapa, but he only reacted by calling her “My little anarchist,” when he gave her his blessing.
    When she told him she wanted to join the police, he’d been troubled, and asked her pointed questions about her motives. “Do you imagine yourself as some kind of resistance hero, infiltrating the police so you can read their covert files?”
    It was their last serious argument, because she didn’t want to admit how close he was to the truth. Grandpapa hadn’t believed she could be a happy cop, but she’d actually taken to the work. Seven years on patrol and then she’d passed the exam to become a detective.
    â€œDetective Anarchist!” Grandfather greeted her when she arrived this evening. “Still keeping order in an unorderable world?”
    He didn’t follow the news; he hadn’t heard about Culver’s death and she didn’t tell him, just asked about his arthritis, about Mrs. Gelinsky and Mrs. Mannheim, who were competing for his attention, and about the cat, Bathsheba, who ruled the house in the absence of a human female.
    â€œYou hear from your brother?”
    â€œEvery day, Grandpapa. If you would learn to text, you’d hear from him, too.” Her brother Elliot was in Denmark, testing and repairing computer security at his firm’s Copenhagen headquarters.
    She went into the kitchen to make supper, knowing her grandfather wouldn’t have bothered to cook a meal just for himself.
    â€œAnd what’s troubling you, little anarchist,” he asked when she’d put an omelet in front of him.
    â€œNothing. Why can’t I stop by to make you supper just because I love you?”
    He smiled. “I’m grateful, even if you’re telling only a portion of the truth.”
    â€œOmitting the truth, Grandpapa. How big a sin is that?”
    He nodded: she had revealed the real reason for her visit. “The rabbis put a great deal of thought into that, and the answer is, it all depends. If you’re protecting someone