Always Say Goodbye: A Lew Fonesca Mystery

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Franco looked puzzled.

  “‘The fool should just stay home,’” Angie translated. “When do you want to eat?”

  “If I sleep more than three hours, wake me up,” Lew said, putting his empty glass on the tray, picking up and chewing on the lemon moon.

  They nodded and Lew went to Teresa’s room, closing the door behind him. He hadn’t remembered his niece’s room, hadn’t remembered how small and neat it was, bed against the wall now covered by a sky-blue blanket covered with soap-bubble circles, her grandmother’s rocking chair in the corner near the only window, an old walnut teacher’s desk complete with inkwell. A computer keyboard and mouse sat in front of a darkened monitor. Next to the desk stood a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, its shelves shared by books, CDs, DVDs and colorful three-ring notebooks.

  If it weren’t for his search for Catherine’s killer, he would have darkened the room, taken off his shoes, gotten into bed, curled into a ball and slept for a day, a week, forever.

  On the bed was the thick envelope. He was reaching for it when there was a knock at the door.

  “You sleepin’?” asked Franco.

  “Not yet.”

  Franco opened the door. In his left hand was a bag of potato chips. He popped a handful into his mouth. A single orange-red crumb floated to the floor.

  “Lewie, we’re worried about you. Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it. You missing it, Lewie?”

  “You got that from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

  “Doesn’t make it wrong. There’s a lot of truth in movies if you really listen.”

  He held out the bag.

  “Instant energy,” he said.

  Lew nodded.

  “Angie’s making dinner. It’ll be ready whenever you want. Want some?”

  Franco held out the bag. Lew took two. Franco stood there chewing and Lew sat there chewing.

  “Okay, so we’re goin’ to find this guy Pappas?”

  “Yes,” Lew said.

  “Say, listen, Angie’s worried about you. We run into trouble looking, I’ve got guys who’ll be there whenever you give the word. Billy Bavitti, Marty Glickman, Tony Danitori. Guys you know.”

  “Thanks, Franco. If we need them …”

  “You’ll tell me. Want me to leave you what’s left in the bag?”

  Lew took the bag from him and he left. He sat eating potato chip crumbs and looking at the envelope. When the bag held nothing more to search for, he picked up the envelope and opened it, pulling out a stack of reports, leaving salty grease smudges. The unmarked envelope had been dropped off by Milt Holiger who, like Lew, had been an investigator for the Cook County State Attorney’s Office. Catherine had been Milt’s favorite prosecutor. Unlike Lew, Milt was still there. He had done a lot of work for Catherine. Milt and Lew were working friends.

  Lew had called only two people when he decided to come back to Chicago, his sister and Milt, whose help he needed. By giving him what was in the envelope and violating the confidentiality of the State Attorney’s Office, Milt had taken a big chance. He and his wife Ruthie had a son in his second year at Northwestern and a daughter who had been accepted by Vanderbilt.

  The only question Milt had asked Lew was, “Will this help you find who killed Catherine?”

  Lew’s right hand had a slight tremor, real or imagined. He did not want to be here. He would find the person who had killed Catherine. That would close one door behind him but the slow circling ball of depression would stay safely inside him. And if he somehow managed to lose it, he was afraid he would lose what he had left of Catherine.

  The copy of a brief, neatly typed Illinois traffic accident report was on top of the pile. The investigating officer, a detective named Elliot Cooledge, had gotten the call at 3 P.M. and arrived at the scene, Lake Shore Drive and Monroe, at 3:22 P.M. Traffic was backed up. Catherine’s body was on the side of the drive. Cooledge talked to two people standing over her. Both the man and the woman who had been witnesses stated that it had been a hit-and-run driver. Cooledge called the office of Emergency Communications and requested a Major Accident Investigation Unit be dispatched immediately.

  The next report was by a Major Accident Investigation Unit detective named Victoria Dragonitsa. It was nine-pages long. Distilled, the report said that the hit-and-run driver was in a small red sports car, probably foreign. Both the witnesses agreed that the car appeared to be deliberately targeting the victim who, they thought, saw it coming a second or two before it struck her. The red sports car speeded up after hitting Catherine. Her body bounced and thudded to the side of the drive. Neither witness had clearly seen the driver, but both, in spite of the sun on the windshield and the fact that they were watching a woman dead or dying, said there was only one person in the car. The driver was thin, not very tall and wearing a baseball cap. The woman witness, Eileen Burke, said the driver was wearing glasses. The man, Alvin Fulmer, said he saw no glasses. Both witnesses said Catherine had not been carrying anything other than the black purse flung over her shoulder.

  Lew put the report down on the bed on top of the traffic accident report. The grease-stained envelope lay next to the slowly growing pile.

  Why was Catherine heading toward their apartment building at three in the afternoon on a weekday? Lew and his wife both usually worked till about six, got something to eat in the Loop, walked home together talking about the real and false anger, real and false tears of people who had compiled a trail of evidence that proved they had stolen, robbed, beaten, maimed or murdered. They tended to agree on movies and television shows. The night before she died they had argued over the film Sea of Love. For Lew, Al Pacino could do no wrong. Catherine had punctuated that conversation with the word ham. Their voices had not been raised as she set the table and he boiled the water for the spaghetti. The contents of a jar of Prego sauce was heating in a metal pot. It started as smiling banter, went flat, serious and determined as they dug into the pasta and the argument. Then, when it looked as if it would burst and hurt, Catherine has smiled and said, “How about an armistice and some more Italian bread?”

  What could he give and who could he give it to to relive that night, any night? He could find her killer and pray to his imagination, but that wouldn’t be enough, not nearly enough.

  His own parents had never fought, at least not in front of Lew and Angie. At dinner, both of them had an unwritten list of things to say at dinner. Most of the things were about aunts, uncles, cousins on both sides of the family. Almost all of the conversation came from Lew’s mother while his father ate and nodded, grunted with understanding and smiled at the right times. Lew’s father had eaten, torn pieces of bread from the loaf, and looked tired. Was that long ago?

  If Catherine had been going home for the day, why didn’t she tell Lew and why wasn’t she carrying her briefcase?

  Two more documents to go. He skipped the next one and went to the twelve-page printout he had requested. It included all the automobile violations on Lake Shore Drive that day between 2 P.M. and 5 P.M. The printout covered everything from Wilson Avenue North to 61st Street.

  The listing of Catherine’s killing was on the fifth page. It was no longer than any of the others: hit-and-run vehicular death. 3 P.M. Victim: woman, white, Catherine Fonesca, thirty-five. Vehicle: red sports car. Last seen heading south.

  Lew flipped through the report, looking for a red sports car or even a red car in one of the notations other than the one about Catherine. There was one listing that might be a match and the timing was right. At 3:18 P.M. near the 55th Street exit in Hyde Park, a speeding red sports car brushed its passenger side against a green Toyota driven by a woman named Rebecca Strum, eighty, who almost lost control.

  Rebecca Strum’s name was familiar, not just to Lew but, he knew, to probably millions of people around the world. He had seen two of Rebecca Strum’s books on the bookshelf near the kitchen in Franco and Angie’s house. She was a visiting faculty member at the U
niversity of Chicago. She had won a Nobel prize for her writing and lecturing on the Holocaust. She was a death camp survivor. The driver of a red sports car had killed Lew’s wife and may have come close to killing the person frequently recognized as the most important woman in the world.

  Before picking up the last report, Lew closed his eyes and clasped his hands together. The tremor was still there. He opened his eyes and saw his hands. Had he been praying? He picked up the report. If there is a god or gods, He, She, It, or They had nothing to do with what Lew had decided to do.

  The last report was the coroner’s. Lew had seen hundreds of these reports. He had always tried to be as clinically dispassionate as the people who had dictated the reports appeared to be. This one would be different.

  Catherine had almost certainly died almost instantly. Her hip and left foot had been broken and her skull had been cracked in six places as her body tumbled. Internal bleeding was massive. Her brain had ruptured and filled with blood. That’s what it came down to. That was it.

  Angie, Franco, Uncle Tonio would try to get him to go to the cemetery, but Lew wouldn’t go. Catherine was not there, only broken bones and decaying body.

  If there was a soul, it wasn’t hanging around her grave. He hoped it wasn’t. If there was a soul, as he had been taught and rejected by the time he was ten, it would come to him. He would welcome it, but he didn’t expect it.

  Lew slowly put the report on the pile, returned the documents to the envelope, put the envelope in his carry-on and went through the door. The smell from the kitchen was a kickback memory to better times, his grandmother’s garlic pasta with shrimp. He followed the smell and the sound of a young woman’s voice into the kitchen.

  Angie and Franco were at the table watching CNN where someone who looked like Catherine was saying that thirty-one people had been killed by terrorists in New Delhi. Angie and Franco looked up at Lew, whose eyes were fixed on the woman reading the news. She was a young, pretty, long-haired blonde with perfect skin and a very red mouth. She really didn’t look like Catherine. She only blurred his memory of his wife.

  “You okay?” asked Angie, getting up.

  He nodded yes and said, “Garlic pasta and shrimp?”

  “When do you want to eat?” she said.

  “When Franco and I get back I think I need to do something first.”

  “When you get back?”

  “When I get back,” Lew said.

  Franco pushed back his chair and got up.

  She wanted to ask Lew where they were going, but held back. Franco would tell her everything when they returned.

  When they left the house, Franco asked, “Okay if we take the truck or you want me to get one of the cars from Toro’s?”

  “Truck’s fine.”

  “Good,” he said.

  The sun was still up. No clouds. Cool October Chicago weather. The next day the temperature could rise or fall twenty degrees. It might even snow.

  When they got in the truck, Franco asked, “Where to?”

  “Pappas.”

  Franco grinned, drove past Cabrini Hospital, made a left on Racine.

  “Angie’s office,” he said, leaning over Lew to point out the sign, ANGELA MASSACCIO, REALTOR, in black letters on the window above Gonzalez’s Hardware Store.

  “She’s doing great,” Franco said. “Want the radio?”

  “No.”

  When Lew had to drive, he liked to drive alone or with Ames McKinney who was silent unless Lew asked him a question. Lew liked to listen to a voice, any voice turned low. No music. Talk. Evangelists, Pacifica Radio, NPR, Limbaugh, Springer, any talk show. Company he could ignore or turn off.

  “Think I need a haircut? Angie thinks I need one.”

  Lew looked. Franco could use a haircut. Lew told him. Lew cut his own hair, what remained of it, with a comb, scissors and disposable razor. His father had taught him how, saying only “Like so. Like so. Like so,” as he cut, clipped and combed. For the past four years he had given himself haircuts looking into the pitted mirror of the men’s room of the building he lived in behind the Dairy Queen on 301 in Sarasota.

  Ten minutes later they were heading west on the Eisenhower Expressway.

  Franco knew Pappas’s address, remembered it from the fax Rich had sent him, but he wanted to be asked.

  “You remember the address? I do.” Franco beamed.

  “My job. Hey, I know the streets. You know how to find people. We’re gonna be a great team.”

  Lew didn’t remember becoming part of a team.

  “Yes,” Lew said.

  Lew thought about Rebecca Strum, wondered if when she was a young girl in a concentration camp they had given her a tattooed purple number.

  “What do we do when we get there?” Franco asked.

  “We talk. We listen.”

  “That’s the plan?” asked Franco.

  “There is no plan.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Franco, adding, “Yellow light on?”

  “Why not,” Lew said.

  “Indeed,” Franco said, flicking a switch on the dashboard.

  The spinning light on top of the roof of the truck flicked yellow on the truck’s hood. Franco began to weave through early rush-hour traffic. Lew tightened his fists and looked at the dashboard clock. Three in the afternoon. The time when Catherine was killed. Lew fought to hold onto that memory of Catherine’s face, smiling as if she had a secret. He fought to hold onto it, knowing that another image of her was forming, an image of her crushed and bleeding face.

  He tried. He lost.

  The house was surrounded by a ten-foot-high wall of stone painted a conservative burnt ash. The metal gate was simple, wrought-iron painted black, each spike sharply pointed and level with the wall. There was a white button in the wall to their left. Lew pushed it and a man’s voice from nowhere said, “Yes?”

  “We’re looking for John Pappas,” Lew said.

  “State your business and leave,” the man said.

  Franco leaned over and whispered in Lew’s ear, “That’s from The Twelve Chairs.”

  “Two men driving your car were following me this morning,” Lew said.

  “So?”

  “I’d like to know why.”

  “Idle curiosity,” came the voice, “or are you going someplace with this?”

  “My name’s Lew Fonesca. I want to know who killed my wife.”

  “I don’t know who killed your wife,” came the voice. Something in the voice, even filtered through the speaker, made Lew say, “But you know who did.”

  “Come in,” the voice said wearily. “I’m clicking. Just push the gate and be sure it clicks locked behind you.”

  Franco and Lew pushed the gate open, stepped inside and Franco pushed the gate closed behind them.

  “I’m supposed to be impressed,” said Franco as they walked down a wide brick-lined path toward the big two-story wood-frame house set back on a broad green lawn with a spotting of orange and yellow leaves from a nearby tree. A breeze rustled. More leaves floated down.

  “I’ve seen bigger houses with cars in garages that looked great and had to be towed because there was crapola under the hood and the owners were always afraid of what it would cost to fix ’em.”

  “You don’t like rich people,” Lew said.

  “Not until and unless I become one,” said Franco. “Then I’ll join ’em.”

  Franco reached down and touched the gun tucked in under his jacket.

  While Lew was knocking the second time, the door opened.

  Standing in front of them was the driver who Franco had pulled from the car on the Dan Ryan. He didn’t look surprised to see them. He motioned for Franco and Lew to come inside. The house smelled of something baking, something sweet and familiar.

  They followed the driver up a flight of highly polished light wood stairs. On the landing, he went to a closed door and knocked.

  “Come in,” came a deep voice with the touch of an accent. “Come in.�
��

  Sitting in an armchair, hands on his lap was the one-eyed young man. At the window, his back turned, was a man with white hair, wearing dark slacks and a yellow sweater over a white shirt with a button-down collar.

  The room was a combination den and office—antique wood desk and chair, two matching armchairs, a sofa that challenged the rest of the room but seemed right. There were three painted portraits on the wall to the right, all of one woman.

  “John Pappas,” Lew said.

  The man at the window slowly turned. He was lean, dapper, had a weathered face and too-perfect false teeth as white as his equally full head of white hair. According to his driver’s license, Pappas was fifty-seven years old.

  “Have a seat,” he said with a smile, pointing a hand at the sofa.

  Behind them the driver, arms folded, leaned back against the wall near the door. The one-eyed man in the armchair looked at him and then back at Pappas.

  Lew and Franco sat. So did Pappas after hitching up his pants, a low glass coffee table between them.

  “We begin by being polite,” he said. “Though you have met, I don’t believe you know the names of my sons. This is Dimitri.”

  He turned his head toward the driver.

  “He prefers to be called Dimi. Why? I don’t know. That’s what they called the young priest in The Exorcist, right?”

  “Right,” said Franco.

  “And that,” Pappas said, looking over his shoulder at the one-eyed young man, “is Stavros. He has no diminutive.”

  Pappas raised his right eyebrow, looking for a sign of recognition at his vocabulary. He got none from Lew and Franco.

  “You’re Greeks,” said Franco.

  “Your powers of observation are quite remarkable,” Pappas said. “So, you have questions, ask.”

  “Who killed my wife?”

  “Perhaps the person who would like to kill me and would not hesitate to … please make an effort to sit still.”

  The last, delivered with a smile, had been aimed at the fidgeting Franco. Franco folded his arms, looked at Pappas and decided to make the effort.

  “Thank you. Conversation is a medium,” said Pappas, sitting back. “Like film, video, a blank canvas or an empty screen, when used with respect, it deserves our full attention. Am I right?”