Two old ladies behind them argued while they stared at the dead man half sprawled out of the car, arms out, eyes closed, mouth open.
The old ladies were speaking Italian.
“Anyone here see what happened?” said Manny, turning to face the group.
All the head shakes were negative. Manny knew the routine. If there were a chance the man slumped out of the car was alive, Manny would be working on him, but the deep purple hole in his neck surrounded by slowly drying blood and the open mouth decided it for him. He looked dead. He smelled dead. He was dead. He would wait for the detectives to make it official. Manny would not risk touching something or doing something that might contaminate the scene. Last time he had done that had been eight years ago when he picked up what looked like a silver dollar at a rape scene. The silver dollar was an aluminum foil condom packet. The condom wasn’t in it and the person who owned the packet had left fingerprints that were then under those of Patrolman Emanuel Joshua Lowen.
“You okay, Franco?” Manny asked.
“No,” Franco answered. “These crazy sons of bitches are turning my street into a graveyard. I’m a simple guy, Manny, a simple guy with a simple new mission in life: to kick the crap out of whoever is killing people in front of my house.”
A blue car, revolving light on the roof flashing, pulled up and parked in the middle of the street.
“I’m gonna have to tell them, Franco, about the other night,” Manny said as two detectives drove up. Longworth was short, heavy, white and breathing hard, and Trahairn, who was almost as heavy, was three inches taller than his partner, and in possession of a deep purple birthmark on his neck. They got out of the car slowly. They weren’t in a hurry.
“I know,” said Franco.
The two detectives stepped next to the dead man’s car and looked down at him.
What Franco knew was that Manny would have to tell the detectives, if they didn’t already know, that two men who had parked in this same spot were also dead. He would tell them about talking to Angie and Franco. That would lead to Lew and lots of questions about all these dead people and what Lew had to do with them. Longworth and Trahairn told Manny to do what he already knew he was supposed to do, keep the citizens from touching the car.
The detectives put on white plastic gloves, took out flashlights, reached over the dead man and looked into the car. They popped the trunk with the switch on the floor. Without touching anything, they came to the same conclusion, except for the blood, the car was clean, not even a gum wrapper or a bitten-off fingernail. And, except for one of those plastic spare tires, the trunk was even cleaner. For more, they would have to wait till someone from the crime scene division showed up.
“People walk by and don’t see a dead man on the street?” Longworth asked the crowd.
“He wasn’t on the street,” said Franco. “Not till I opened the door.”
“You have the key?” asked Traihairn.
“Don’t need one,” said Franco, looking across the street where Angie, dressed for work, was standing in the doorway with a cup of coffee in her hand.
“Who’re you?” asked Trahairn.
“Tow-truck driver.”
Lew’s second call from the phone booth at Shoney’s was a little trickier. He couldn’t reverse the charges. He had a pile of quarters piled next to the phone, five dollars in quarters.
“Texas,” said Big Ed when he answered the phone at the Texas Bar & Grille in Sarasota.
“Fonesca.”
“You back?”
“No.”
“Things interesting?”
“Yes.”
“You are a payload oil gusher of information, amigo. I’ll get Ames.”
Lew watched a stringy woman in her sixties paying her bill at the cashier’s counter. At her side was a rotund boy about four years old. His hair was thin and the color of corn. His cheeks were pink. His beltless pants were slipping and his principal task was keeping them up. The boy looked at Lew.
“McKinney,” came Ames’s deep raspy voice. “You okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“You find him?”
“Yes.”
“Turn him in? Shoot him? You in jail?”
“No to all three questions.”
Ames knew where the line was between what he should and should not ask his friend.
“Earl Borg, remember him?” said Ames.
Lew remembered the man, the name, the sight of the dying boar and the snarling pit bill, the happy little girl, the smell of blood, sweat, tobacco. Lew remembered Earl Borg.
“Yes.”
“Wants to see you. Says now isn’t soon enough and yesterday might even have been too.”
“Tell him tomorrow,” Lew said.
“Told him that yesterday.”
The fat little boy was holding his pants up with both hands and staring at Lew, who stared back. Then the woman took the boy’s hand. The untended right side of his pants drooped. As they walked away, the boy smiled over his shoulder at Lew, who did his best to smile back. He held the smile, turned and examined it in the mirror on the wall. He saw the face of regret.
“I’ll tell him again,” said Ames.
“I’ll call him as soon as I get to Sarasota.”
There should be more to say, to tell, but Lew couldn’t do it. Ames would listen and somewhere inside him he would judge. His code was simple, right out of John Wayne. There was right. There was wrong. You didn’t need a god or a devil to tell you that. Ames would judge in silence and support his friend. The listener who did not judge, Ames knew, was Ann Horowitz.
“Good enough,” said Ames.
They hung up.
By the time Lew parked the car back at Toro’s and walked to Cabrini Street, the dead man in the car across from Angie and Franco’s house had been taken away, and the car towed. The small crowd was gone. Franco and Angie stood in front of their house, coffee mugs in hand.
“Cold?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said. “Think it’s too early to call Terri?”
“Nah. Let’s do it.”
They had just hung up when Lew came through the door.
“Lew,” Angie said. “You look …”
“I need a shower. Franco, are you busy today?”
“I’m as busy as I want to be,” said Franco. “If I wanna hustle, there’s always plenty of work. You need a ride or something ?”
“A ride and something,” said Lew, heading for his niece’s room.
Lewis,” Angie said. “A man was killed in a car across the street last night.”
“Looks like the drawing you’ve got of that Posno,” said Franco. “They’ve even got ID.”
“And the police know about those other two,” said Angie. “That they were looking for you before they got killed.”
“Santoro and Aponte-Cruz,” said Franco. “Manny had to tell the detectives.”
“I know,” said Lew. “I think I’ll take a shower now.”
In his office-home in Sarasota, Lew had no bath, no shower, just a sink and a toilet stall that he shared with other tenants in his building and whatever homeless person may have made his or her way there. He did his showering at the YMCA, where he worked out. Teresa’s shower, however, had something his building and the Y didn’t have: privacy.
He shaved, soaped, rubbed and shampooed, hoping to not lose more hair, and rinsed. He dried himself with the towel Angie had laid out for him, then brushed his teeth, and brushed back his hair. Showers had their own sense of humor. When water pelted, the mirror told Lew that his hairline had decided to beat another hasty retreat. The battle line was moving back.
He put on fresh clothes, packed, called the airline to change his ticket, put on his Cubs hat and met Angie and Franco in the dining room. There was half a lemon cake on the table. Angie cut a slice for her brother and put it on a plate.
“I’m going back tomorrow,” Lew said, accepting the fork his sister handed him.
“And the guy who ki
lled Catherine?” she asked. “You don’t have to be here to testify or something?”
“No.”
He dug into the cake. The taste and smell brought memories without images.
“Guy’s got to be punished, Lewie,” said Franco. “Taken down, put away.”
“He’s punishing himself.”
“Something happened here this morning,” Angie said, nodding in the general direction of the street. “Before you got here, remember?”
“ID., photo,” said Franco. “It was Posniti.”
“Posnitki,” Lew corrected.
“Right,” said Franco.
Lew nodded, ate and asked if he could use the phone. Before he could, Angie said, “Someone broke into the locker in Uncle Tonio’s warehouse. He didn’t see who but he almost shot him.”
“Uncle Tonio’s okay?”
“He’s fine.”
“It ends today?” Angie said. “I mean what you came back to do?”
“It ends today.”
“Sure?”
“No.”
Lew picked up the phone, punched in the numbers and waited two rings.
“Hi,” he said. “I found him.”
“Good, and—,” said Milt Holiger.
“That’s all,” said Lew.
“That’s all? Who is it? Did you kill him? Is there … ?”
“No more,” said Lew. “If I told you and something happened that led to an investigation—”
“Then all I could say was you told me you found the person who killed her, but you didn’t tell me anything about him.”
“Or her,” Lew added.
“Got it.”
“One more thing,” said Lew. “Andrej Posnitki was found dead in a car parked across the street from my sister and brother-in-law’s house. Can you find out when it happened and what killed him?”
“Not a problem,” said Milt. “I’ll tell whoever’s handling the case that it might be linked to the killings of Santoro and Aponte-Cruz.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll call you when I have something. You’re going back to Florida?”
“Yes. Tomorrow.”
“Cup of coffee and a couple of sinful donuts before you go?” asked Holiger.
“Let’s see how the day goes,” said Lew.
“Call you later.”
Lew said, “Goodbye.”
12
THE MAN ACROSS THE DESK was James Edward Simms. Lew didn’t have to ask him. The name was embossed on his office door and the brass plate on the desk. Simms, slim and smiling, looked like a white-haired doctor in a magazine ad for overcoming erectile dysfunction. He put the printout sheets in an envelope, and handed the envelope to Lew.
“Thank you,” said Lew.
“Please call me directly if you have any questions or need anything,” said Simms.
It wasn’t the right time or place to ask for a joke. Simms probably had some good ones, ones Ann would appreciate. Simms probably had a safety deposit box filled with jokes. Lew didn’t ask. He stood up and Simms came around the desk, guided him out of the office and escorted Lew to the front door.
“I’m glad you came by, Mr. Fonesca. Have a good trip back to Florida. Goodbye.”
Franco was parked to his left in a bus stop. When Lew got in the truck, Franco handed him the phone.
“Holiger,” he said.
“Lew? I just got off the phone with a guy in the P.D. The body in the car may have had Andrej Posnitki’s wallet in his pocket, but he isn’t Posno. Traced the fingerprints. Dead guy’s name is Terrance Chapel, fifty-five, picked up twice for panhandling using some very aggressive persuasion, two more times for petty theft, meaning grabbing fruit and potato chips from street-vendor carts. No known address. Chapel was homeless. Conclusion: Posno is still out there.”
“Maybe,” said Lew.
“The dead man isn’t Posno, Lew,” said Holiger.
“Three o’clock good for you?” asked Lew.
“Three? Fine. Where?”
“Dunkin’ Donuts on Jackson,” said Lew.
“See you then. Maybe I can come up with something more? Lew?”
“Yes.”
“How are you holding up?”
“Just fine,” Lew lied. “See you at three.”
When he put the phone back on the charger pad, Franco reached past Lew, pushed open the glove compartment and took out two Snickers bars. Lew managed to catch a Milky Way that tried to escape. He put it back in the compartment, and accepted the Snickers bar from Franco.
“Where to now?” asked Franco tearing the wrapper.
“The Dark Tower,” answered Lew.
Franco understood.
“Suits me,” he said, pulling into traffic.
There were no cars on the street in front of the Pappas house. The sun was bright, air cool. Lew remembered reading about the note left by a Mexican poet who jumped off his apartment balcony twenty years earlier: “The sun is bright. The clouds are beautiful. The air is warm and I am in a good mood. It is the perfect time to die.”
The door opened about fifteen seconds after Lew had pushed the button. The smell that met them was a temptation. Bernice Pappas stood in the doorway. She looked at them, wiped her hands on her dress and said, “We’re celebrating. Come in.”
Lew and Franco followed her inside.
“The door,” she said.
Franco closed it. It locked automatically.
The woman started walking to the left.
“I’m still cooking,” she said. “John and the boys are upstairs. Tell them lunch is in half an hour.”
She took two more strides, put her hand on the kitchen door, turned her head toward them and said, “You’re Christians, right?”
“Yeah,” said Franco.
“Then you’re invited to lunch.”
She went through the door. Lew and Franco went up the stairs toward the music. The door to Pappas’s sanctuary was closed. Lew knocked.
“Come in. Come in,” Pappas called.
Pappas was standing with Stavros and Dimitri in the center of the room. Each held a wineglass. The wine was white. The music was a man singing in Greek.
“We’re celebrating,” Pappas said, looking at Lew.
“We know,” said Franco. “Your mother told us.”
The three Pappas men looked somber.
“We’re invited for lunch,” Franco added. “Because we’re Christians. But to tell you the truth …”
“Posno,” Lew said.
“I heard he’s dead,” said Pappas, holding up his glass in a toast. “I know. We’re celebrating his demise and we’re respecting his memory. We were partners, even friends for a long, long time. Well, maybe not friends, but close.”
“I know,” Lew said.
“I can go outside now,” said Pappas, taking a full sip of wine. “Maybe. Maybe I’ll try tomorrow. Oh, manners. Stavros, get our guests some wine. Karipidis winery. They still make it like it was made six thousand years ago.”
Stavros blinked his good eye at Lew and moved to the bottle and glasses on the desk.
“Can we talk in private?” Lew asked.
“Private? I’ve got no secrets,” said Pappas.
Lew met his eyes.
“All right. My sons, Mr. Fonesca and I will talk in here. Give Mr … .”
“Massaccio,” said Franco.
“Stavros, give Mr. Massaccio a glass of wine and you two take him to see the garden.”
“The garden?” asked Dimitri. “What’s there to see in the garden?”
Pappas shrugged and said, “That’s what you’re supposed to say in situations like this. Go, play pool in the den or something.”
“I think I’ll stay with Lewis,” said Franco, accepting the glass of wine from Stavros whose good eye met both of Franco’s.
“It’s okay,” Lew said. “Go with them.”
Franco reluctantly followed the brothers Pappas out of the room, looking back over his shoulder at Lew.
When they were alone and the door was closed, Pappas took another sip of wine and said, “Sure you won’t have a little? It’s good.”
“No, thank you.”
“Want to sit?”
“No.”
“You don’t look happy,” said Pappas. “But then, you never look happy. What makes you happy?”
“Safe children laughing,” said Lew.
“We should both be happy today, Fonesca. Posno is dead. He killed your wife. He wanted to kill me. He—”
“He didn’t kill Catherine,” said Lew. “I found the man who killed her.”
Pappas looked surprised.
“Good for you,” he said, refilling his glass and holding it up in a toast. “So it wasn’t Posno? Well, did you kill him, this man who ran down your wife?”
“No.”
“Will you?”
“No.”
“Well, then, have him arrested,” said Pappas. “Or better, tell me who it is and he will be dead in forty-eight hours, as God is my witness.”
“The man the police found dead with Posno’s identification wasn’t Posno,” said Lew.
Pappas paused, glass almost to his mouth. Then he took a long drink.
“Posno is dead,” Pappas said, pointing a finger at Lew. “I know it. I feel it. He did not get away. Somewhere he is dead.”
“The way most people would look at it, he can’t be dead.”
Pappas reached for a remote control on the desk, pushed a button, and stopped the music.
“Why not?” asked Pappas.
“Posno never existed except in your imagination,” said Lew. “You made him up to take the fall for everything you did, everyone you killed. It wasn’t Posno who was afraid of what Catherine had in her files. It was you.”
“You’re a crazy person, Fonesca. Maybe that’s why I like you. Crazy people are interesting as long as they’re harmless.”
Pappas poured himself more wine and sat down, legs crossed, trousers straightened smooth.
“Posno exists,” he said. “Believe me.”
“There are no authenticated photographs of him,” said Lew. “No fingerprints on record. He was never arrested. No one but you has ever seen him.”
“My son Stavros—”
Lew shook his head no.
“Posno tried to kill him, took his eye.”
“You told your son that Posno was after you. You were the one doing the shooting. My guess is you were keeping Posno alive. You wanted to come close, but you accidentally almost killed your son.”
Always Say Goodbye: A Lew Fonesca Mystery Page 16