Free Lieberman's Law by Stuart M. Kaminsky

nigger, but a smart one. He had big bucks.
    Ever since Mr. Grits had shown up, Berk’s financial prospects had risen considerably. He had first been contacted by Mr. Grits the night after he had spoken to the Mongers, their girls and some people, many of them older, some of whom he knew were friends of his family, in the park not two blocks from where he had grown up. The police were there. They were always there. They always found out, showed up, ready to break up the crowd if they got the call from a sergeant watching from a car that it was getting too big or surly. They could always stop him for lack of a public permit, but it was easier to let him speak, even come close to inciting riot, though there was no one within miles of the neighborhood whose family wasn’t Irish, Polish, German, or British. There was a family of Indians who ran a 7-11 on Oakton, but they weren’t worth the trouble of bothering. Not yet anyway.
    Berk had spoken loudly to cheers: two of his brothers in the audience including Jimmy, Jr., people saying, “He’s right,” laughter at his jokes. When he finished, he went with two of his people to an all-night place on Touhy where the waitress and manager weren’t happy to see them, but treated them with polite blandness.
    Three young men had approached Berk’s group at a table, said they wanted to join. Berk welcomed them. So did the others. One said he’d probably lose his job clerking at a shoe store when he shaved his head but he wanted to be a Monger. Berk said he could get him other work.
    That was when it happened. The waitress, a skinny rag in a wrinkled uniform with heavy bags under her eyes had come to the table and said, “One of you Berk?”
    â€œYeah,” Berk had said.
    â€œPhone,” the waitress had said and then headed for the kitchen and their meager orders. She didn’t expect much of a tip and was fairly sure they’d hang around until the place closed. She shuffled away and Berk went to the front of the coffee shop where one of the two pay phones was off the hook resting on the metal platform.
    â€œBerk?” asked the man with a smile in his voice and the joy of a car salesman.
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œHeard you talk tonight,” said the man who would never give his name but because of a slight Southern accent, Berk would always think of as Mr. Grits. “Son, you were good. Right up there with the best.”
    â€œThanks,” Berk said, going over the faces of the people who had been in the crowd, not being able to put one of those faces to this voice. Berk didn’t ask how the man had found him, gotten the phone number. He knew the man must have followed him and must be calling from not very far away.
    â€œYou should be much bigger,” said Mr. Grits. “Doin’ much bigger things. More doing, less talking. We’ve been talking about the niggers, the Jews, the Chinks, the Indians for more than a hundred and twenty years. It’s time for doing.”
    â€œYeah?” said Berk not sure if he might be talking to a cop or even the FBI.
    â€œI can get you cheap briefcases filled with unmarked money,” said Mr. Grits. “Not Washingtons wrapped in bank paper and lined up in neat lines so it looks like a lot but turns out to be a few thousand. I’m talking about big money for you, personally. Handle it the way you want. Just get a job done for us, a job that will fit quite nice with what I heard in the park tonight.”
    â€œWhat jobs? How do I get the money?”
    Mr. Grits had hung up. Berk had asked the night manager behind the counter, an older male duplicate of the waitress, if he had seen anyone come in and look at or use the phones. The man shrugged, said he’d gone to the can, thought maybe he had seen a man in a suit, wasn’t sure.
    Mr. Grits returned three days later. Berk had run three miles and went back to his apartment, his sweatshirt soaked. Pinned to the