Always Say Goodbye: A Lew Fonesca Mystery

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Pappas finished the wine in his glass, put it on the table in front of him, tapped Lew’s knee and said, “Door’s closed. Just you and me. You’ve got an imagination. Okay, I’ve got one too. It’s the poet in me. I think the police are going to find that the man with Posno’s identification was dead before he was shot. Heart attack, stroke, who knows. Died in a doorway on Roosevelt Road. Who knows? Then someone shot him and drove him to your sister’s house. Just a guess, but …”

  “Who knows,” Lew repeated.

  “Stavros set up that Posno Web site?” asked Lew. “Never mind. I’ll ask him.”

  “Hey,” said Pappas, standing suddenly. “I killed nobody this time around. Not your wife. Not the homeless guy who, by the way, was the work of an idiot. You get what you pay for. And for the record, whatever that means, I did not kill or have killed those two others.”

  “Santoro and Aponte-Cruz,” Lew supplied.

  “Yeah, them. I didn’t kill them, didn’t have them killed.”

  “You’re clean?”

  “Clean?” Pappas said with a smile and a shake of his head. “Hell no. I just didn’t kill those two guys, but between you, me and the floor, I’ve killed people, all but one of them men. No regrets. I’ve got it worked out with God. I only killed people who deserved it. On that I’m clean. But, between you and me and Bobby McGee, I’ve got an inoperable brain aneurism. That’s not clean. I know it’s there. Can pop anytime. Could kill me just like that.”

  He slapped his hand down on the table.

  “Worse,” he went on, “it could leave me living the life of a pickled artichoke. So, clean is not the word I’d think of for me.”

  “Pain?”

  “Not really,” said Pappas.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You know what? I believe you.”

  “I believe you’re in pain,” said Lew. “I don’t know about the aneurism.”

  “My doctor—”

  “I’d get a second opinion,” said Lew. “Unless you’re just making up the aneurism and the doctor telling you about it and the myth of Posno.”

  Pappas was shaking his head no and smiling tolerantly.

  “Why would I lie about an aneurism?”

  “To get your family to do anything you wanted them to do,” said Lew. “Mind if I talk to your doctor?”

  “Yes,” said Pappas, looking passively at the drink in his hand. “Doctor and patient … you know.”

  “I know you have no palsy,” said Lew. “Your pupils aren’t dilated. You don’t show any signs of double vision or pain above your eye or localized headache. No signs of nausea or vomiting, or stiff neck or—”

  “You’re a doctor and a process server,” said Pappas. “Interesting combination.”

  “I know a bail bondsman in Sarasota who also sells pizzas,” said Lew. “My father died of brain aneurism. I watched it happen. I can find out about you. It’s what I do.”

  “I wish you would not tell any of this to my family,” said Pappas.

  “Or you’ll kill me?”

  Pappas looked at Lew and shook his head.

  “No, it would be too awkward in my own house and it was clear when I first met you that you had no fear. Fonesca, why do you think my mother keeps baking rooms full of pastries? Why do you think my sons do whatever I tell them to even though they don’t agree with any of it? Because they’re scared shitless they’ll be on their own. And maybe, just maybe, they love me. What do you think?”

  “I think you need a second opinion,” Lew said.

  “Now, what are you doing here, Fonesca?”

  “I don’t think Catherine’s file on you is in that locker at my uncle’s warehouse, or in the State Attorney’s office. Too many people have looked. If there is a file, it’ll turn up and there you’ll be.”

  “If there is a file,” said Pappas. “And if it turns up. I’m not worried.”

  Lew looked directly at Pappas’s face and said, “No. I guess you’re not.”

  “Simonides was Posno’s favorite poet. Sixth-century. Doesn’t translate well into English. You’ll stay for lunch?”

  Lew looked at the clock on the wall. There was plenty of time before his next appointment.

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” said Pappas, moving next to Lew and putting an arm around his shoulder. “Perhaps we’ll set an empty place for Posno. What do you say?”

  Pappas escorted Lew to the dining room where Dimitri, Stavros and Franco were already seated. On top of a sun-orange tablecloth were six place settings, each with a blue-rimmed plate, a knife, fork, spoon, napkin and wineglass. Pappas took his place at the head of the table and Lew sat at his right. In front of Pappas was a large dark bottle of wine. Pappas picked up his napkin, revealing a black metal handgun. The only sounds in the room were Franco chewing on a macadamia nut and a bustling of metal-on-metal, dish-on-dish from the kitchen.

  No one mentioned the gun.

  Pappas reached for the wine, noticed that the cork had been pulled and rested in the mouth of the bottle. He removed and examined the cork, looked around the table and nodded his approval.

  No one mentioned the gun but everyone at the table looked at it.

  “Dimi opened this bottle,” Pappas said, leaning toward Lew with a smile. “Impatient. Look at the cork. Bruised. Small bruises, yes, but in wine you need to strive for perfection.”

  Bernice Pappas bustled into the dining room carrying a large tray with platters piled with food and hot bread.

  She did not see the gun next to her son’s plate.

  “Smells like nearly forgotten memories,” said Pappas.

  “Lazaridi Amentystos,” said Pappas, pouring a full glass of wine for Lew, doing the same for himself and then handing the bottle around as his mother hovered between her grandsons.

  When the food was laid out, Bernice Pappas sat across from her son and saw the gun. Her eyes went from the weapon to her son’s reassuring face.

  Pappas smiled and said, “Lam Paldakai, thin slices of lamb with my mother’s own sauce. Begin, please.”

  And the family began, silently taking small servings of lamb, peas, black olives, salad saturated in olive oil. Bernice Pappas put nothing on her plate.

  Franco broke the silence.

  “And that?” he asked, nodding at the gun on the table near Pappas’s hand.

  Pappas stopped chewing and looked at the gun as if he had just noticed it.

  “Ah, that. It’s just desert. An acquired taste. Most people I’ve known taste it but once.”

  Pappas looked past Lew at Franco and kept smiling, raising his glass in a toast to his mother.

  “Johnny.”

  It was Bernice Pappas. John Pappas seemed to be frozen in his smile at Franco, who met his eyes but didn’t smile.

  “Johnny,” she repeated.

  “Pop,” said Stavros. “Please.”

  “I always try to please,” said Pappas, holding out his arms. “Let’s talk about the Bears, bird flu, the oil crisis, global warming, if Shakespeare was Shakespeare and if Homer was really four different writers. Pick a subject, Mr. Fonesca. Not what we talked about a little while ago. There’s time for you to talk about that with Stavros and Dimi and my mother after we finish, if you must.”

  Franco dug into his food, eyes up and darting from face to face in this family he couldn’t quite figure out.

  “The Bears are going to have a great season,” said Franco.

  “I don’t think there are any Greeks on the team,” said Pappas.

  A game was being played between Pappas and Lew with Pappas conducting it, Franco in the middle, and Lew quietly eating his peas.

  Dish after dish, subject after subject was consumed and disappeared from the table and from memory.

  Gone were the salad bowls; Dimitri helping his grandmother clear the table.

  “The Bears are doomed forever to be up and down. Cycles,” said Franco. “Professional football is about cycles.”

  All about cycles. Pappas
nodded his approval.

  “There isn’t going to be any bird flu,” said Stavros nervously, his good eye fixed on his father, his glass eye staring at something interesting on the wall. “It’s all Chicken Little. The sky isn’t falling.”

  The sky is falling, thought Lew.

  “Global warming?” asked Dimitri of no one. “People didn’t cause it. It’s natural. Turn off your engines and walk eighteen miles to work. Besides, a warmer earth means longer summers, more music. You still want to blame someone, blame God. It’s all his idea.”

  “God is oil,” said Bernice Pappas, head down, thin darkly veined hands slowly, shakily spearing a piece of lamb and guiding it to her mouth. “Oil is a miracle. How many goddamn dinosaurs you think died and left their oil. King Kong would have been up to his ass in dinosaurs and that still wouldn’t have come close to accounting for the oil we’ve sucked out of the ground. Now they’re finding it in the dirt in Canada, billions of gallons,” she rambled.

  “Oil, that’s the real X-File. Did my husband Alex see that? Hell no. Did he say anything, hear anything I ever said to him?”

  She stood across the table, steak knife in hand.

  “Did he? Shit, look at all of you. You’re not listening either.”

  “Momma, please sit down,” said Pappas gently.

  “Then put that goddamn thing away,” she said, pointing at the gun, knife still in hand.

  “Momma, please sit,” Pappas said firmly.

  She sat, defeated.

  “I’m sorry,” Pappas went on. “My mother …”

  “She gets very intense,” Stavros explained.

  Bernice went back to silently eating.

  Franco was working on his second glass of wine, Pappas his third, Bernice her third, Stavros and Dimi their first. Lew had only sipped the wine. Now he looked up at his host.

  “Well, I think it’s time for desert,” said Pappas with a grin. “It’s a beautiful fall day. The grass is green, the leaves a cascade of color, the clouds a fine cotton white, the sun bright and I am together with my family and some new friends. It won’t get better than this.”

  “Don’t,” said Lew, looking up at Pappas, who met his eyes.

  The others at the table, except for Bernice, looked puzzled. She kept up her eating pace.

  “Will there ever be a better day to die?” asked Pappas, picking up the gun.

  Franco was on his feet, chair kicked back, dish in his hand. Olive oil was dripping from the plate. Stavros and Dimi rose together and said, “Pop.”

  Pappas nodded at Stavros, smiled at Dimitri, looked at his mother who continued to look down, a glass in her hand. He winked at Lew who quietly repeated, “Don’t. I know you didn’t—”

  “But,” interupted Pappas. “There is trial, prison. Secrets exposed. Shame.”

  “Pop,” said Stavros. “Please.”

  “I choose Greek tragedy, not courtroom farce,” answered Pappas, turning the gun and firing into his own left eye.

  No one screamed. No one jumped up. The only voice was Franco’s saying, “Holy shit.” For an instant, the only movement was Franco’s, who crossed himself.

  Then Lew got up, leaned over the blood-covered face. The two sons knocked over their chairs and went to kneel and weep in their father’s blood. Franco stood behind them. At the far end of the table, Bernice Pappas said, “I didn’t make any desert.”

  “She knew,” said Dimitri. “She knew he was going to do this. Why the hell did he do this?”

  He looked at his dead father, then at his brother and finally at Lew.

  “What did you say to him? What did he say to you?” asked Stavros.

  “The sky is falling,” said Lew.

  Stavros stood up and said, “Dimitri, get Grandma to her room, give her one of her sleeping pills. No, give her two.” Dimitri rose, looked back at his father’s torn face and hurried to his grandmother.

  “You two,” Stavros said. “You don’t have to be part of this. Go.”

  Franco placed a hand on Pappas’s neck to be sure he was dead and then stood.

  “He shot himself in the same eye as me,” said Stavros quietly while his brother coaxed his grandmother from her chair at the other end of the table. “Why don’t I feel anything?”

  Lew knew, but he didn’t say. Stavros would have to make his own deal with his father’s ghost.

  13

  AT FIVE MINUTES TO THREE, Franco dropped Lew in front of Dunkin’ Donuts and went to park the truck. The sky grumbled an introduction to a promise or threat of rain. At a newsstand four doors away, two men stood arguing. Lew stopped. He recognized one of the men. The one he didn’t recognize had a round belly, blue sweatshirt, rolled-up sleeves and arms moving to the beat of his anger. The angry man pointed a threatening thick finger at the sidewalk as he said, “Right here. Right now. You got a brother could help you. Fine. Get him here fast so I can lay him on his ass and get back to work.”

  The man he was talking to was about the same height as the angry man but from another world. His belly was still under control. He wore a dark suit with a tightly knit, loosely wrapped purple tie. The tie had little spots of sunlike orange. His hands were folded against his chest and he neither turned his head nor lashed out at the raving man who was in his face.

  People flowed around them. No one had yet struck a blow, no one had addressed the passing crowd.

  “What’s it about?” a slouching man in a well-worn khaki Army surplus topcoat asked Lew.

  The man was black, in need of a shave or a good beard trim. He pulled and shifted from leg to leg as if he were cold and tugged at his dirty red watch cap. At the side of the watch cap was an orange T.

  “So waddya gonna do about it?” the hairy man said.

  “You from Tennessee?” Lew asked the man next to him.

  “Been there, been there,” the man in cap said sagely, “but born right here in Detroit.”

  “We’re in Chicago,” said Lew.

  The man in the cap looked around at the buildings, the street signs, the people and said, “Chicago? I need to wake up and call Leanne. Leanne, that’s my daughter. She lives here in …”it

  “Chicago.”

  “Yes. You see I’ve been a little under the weather since the war.”

  “Which war?” Lew asked as the hairy man began to poke the well-dressed man in the chest with a finger.

  “Pick two, your choice,” said the man with the cap, hunching up his shoulders, hands in his pockets, moving from foot to foot. “World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Kosovo, Afghanistan, good old Iraq, some secret places I couldn’t even pronounce when I was there and a couple I never knew the name of. Pick two and I’ll jab them in your eyes like Moe in the Three Stooges.”

  The hairy man was inches from the well-dressed man now. The hairy man was now shouting, insisting, “Cash, now, all of it.”

  “I didn’t take your newspaper,” the well-dressed man said calmly.

  People were pausing now. Something was about to happen. It had to. The hairy man became aware of the gatherers and tried to up the language ante.

  “You have taken that which is rightfully mine,” he said, face turning red. He slapped his open fist against his chest, making a thumping sound like that of King Kong.

  “This paper is mine,” the well-dressed man said calmly, wearily. “Brought it from home this morning.”

  “I saw you take it, you lying son of a bitch.”

  The hairy man’s spittle sprayed the other man, but the other man showed no emotion.

  “You’re wrong,” said the well-dressed man.

  The hairy man swung a brick-sized right fist at the other man’s head. The well-dressed man stepped to his right and the hairy man’s momentum took him into the unwelcoming arms of a couple from Duluth celebrating their fifty-ninth anniversary.

  “Just like on the television,” said the man in the red cap. “Someone ought to help that fella.”

  Lew wasn’t sure which “fella” he was suppo
sed to help.

  The hairy man, fists clenched, making growling sounds, was striding toward the man in the suit. The man in the suit didn’t move.

  “Which one?” asked Lew.

  “Which one? Donald Trump with a good haircut, that’s who? I’d bet you a buck against him if I had a buck.”

  “You’d be picking a loser,” said Lew.

  “You know somethin’ I don’ know, right?”

  “Right,” said Lew.

  “Well, I know other stuff you don’t know.”

  “I’m sure,” said Lew as the hairy man moved in.

  “Just this A.M., over by the drain over there at Navy Pier, a guy named H. Lee zwooped a knife right into the arm of another guy name of Crazy Proof, on account he carries an old shit-up piece of paper says he’s crazy. How’s your day, man?”

  The hairy man was moving slowly now, determined to end the show, satisfy the onlookers.

  “I had a nice lunch and watched a guy shoot himself in the head,” said Lew.

  The man in the cap nodded knowingly and said, “I seen stuff like that too. Guy named Willie, Silly Willie they called him, jumped off a roof. Splatter, you wouldn’t believe ’less you saw it. Your guy? Lot’s of blood?”

  “Lots of blood.”

  The hairy guy feinted with his body, shouted, “Newspaper !” and threw his weight into a decent right cross. The well-dressed man grabbed the lunger’s sleeve as he punched and helped his momentum carry the man through a space made by the crowd.

  The hairy man landed on his face, tried to get to his knees, groaned and looked around. He had temporarily lost track of time and space. The fight was over without a punch landing. The crowd clearly felt cheated. The man in the red knit cap said, “Well, least we didn’t pay for a ticket.”

  “Small blessings,” said Lew.

  “Amen, brother. You think you might …”

  Lew fished a handful of change from his pocket and handed it to the man.

  The crowd was almost gone. The well-dressed man was helping the dazed gladiator to his feet, being careful not to cover himself in blood.