Always Say Goodbye: A Lew Fonesca Mystery

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

“I’m a trendsetter,” Ames said, putting the book in his jacket pocket. “How did it go?”

  “Found the man who killed Catherine. Watched a man shoot himself. Talked to a man who had killed a lawyer and a bodyguard and stolen Catherine’s and my savings.”

  Ames didn’t ask for further explanation.

  “Busy few days,” said Ames, pushing away from the wall. “Got a busy one for you today.”

  “What are you reading?”

  Ames touched the pocket of his jacket into which he had slipped the book and said, “Ivanhoe, Scott. Wanna put your pants on, chief?”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Lew opened the door, stepped into the cool morning facing the fully risen sun. Twenty steps to his right was the washroom. It was the only washroom for the six offices in the two-story building.

  No one was inside when he entered. Sometimes a vagabond from Genesis, a tattered soul cast out of Eden by a vengeful God, would make the cracked tile floor his home for the night. The two toilet stalls had doors that wouldn’t stay closed and a sink with a perpetual slow drip that had left a dark stain leading to the drain. The room had two pinging overhead fluorescent lights. At the moment, they both worked.

  Lew looked in the mirror and saw his mother’s face. It was impossible to avoid the resemblance, the pouting lower lip, the dark, sad face, brown eyes. He took off his shirt, hung it over the top of a toilet stall, washed, shaved, brushed, combed back his hair. It was the best he could do. It was all he wanted to do. While he liked to keep himself, his living space, his clothes clean and neat, he wasn’t obsessive. The world was chaotic. He wanted his part of it to be reasonably free of that chaos.

  When he got back in the office, Ames said, “Borg.”

  Lew moved into the other room and raised his voice. “You saw him?”

  “Talked to him on the phone. Don’t know what his problem is but he won’t go to the police with it.”

  When Lew dressed in jeans, a white dress shirt and his Cubs baseball cap, he said, “I’ve got a hundred and nine thousand dollars.”

  Ames looked at him.

  “Catherine’s insurance,” Lew said. “About a quarter of it. The other three-quarters was stolen.”

  “Way you live that could stretch you for four or five years,” said Ames.

  “It could,” Lew agreed. “I’ll think about it.”

  They drove to Long Boat Key and straight up Gulf of Mexico Drive to the entrance of Conquistador Del Palmas. The uniformed guard at the gate was old, with perfect false teeth and a smile. Lew’s name had been left at the gate and he and Ames were waved in.

  Earl Borg’s condo was in an eight-story building. Borg was on the sixth floor. He buzzed them in and they crossed the highly polished azure tile lobby to the elevator, which took them silently to the sixth floor. The door to 604 was closed. Lew knocked.

  “Come in. It’s open.”

  The apartment wasn’t large. A dining-room table and four chairs sat to the left in front of an open kitchen. Another door was open to Lew’s left. Beyond the door was a fully made double bed, ebony end tables and a matching dresser. To the right of the living room in which they were standing was an office-den. The leather smell of the den furniture dominated the apartment. On the small balcony across from Lew and Ames sat a man facing the Gulf of Mexico.

  Something didn’t look right, feel right about the place or the man. Lew looked at Ames and knew that he sensed it too.

  “Drink?” Borg asked. “I’ve got sangria out here. Ice. Glasses.”

  Ames and Lew went out on the small balcony. There were two white canvas-backed director’s chairs.

  “No, thanks,” said Lew.

  “I’ll take one.”

  “Mr. McKinney,” said Borg, without looking up. “I recognize your voice. Distinctive.”

  “Montana mostly.”

  And then Lew realized what was wrong with the apartment and the man. There was no television set, no computer, no paintings on the walls. There was no reason to put them there. Earl Borg was blind.

  Lew and Ames sat, their backs to the Gulf.

  “You figured it out,” said Borg, reaching slowly for the pitcher. “I’ve learned to read pauses, silences, inflections, hesitations over the past two years. I do have a television in the den and a computer that likes to talk.”

  He found the pitcher and a glass and carefully and accurately poured till the glass was more than half full.

  “Mr. McKinney?” he said, holding up the glass.

  “Thanks,” said Ames, taking it.

  “You wanted to see me?” asked Lew.

  “Very much, but since I’m blind, that won’t be possible. I’ll settle for straight talking. I’m diabetic, knew it would take my sight someday. Took my father’s too and I’m pretty sure my grandfather’s. Happen to remember the little girl back at the hog-dog?”

  “I remember.”

  “That little girl is my daughter. She’s thirteen now. She has also been kidnapped. I want you to find her and take her back to her mother.”

  “The police,” Lew said.

  “Officially, I’m not the child’s father and I’m certainly not nor ever was Denise’s husband. Denise wants me to pay the money. She won’t tell the police. She’s afraid of what might happen to Lilla. They’ve had her three days. Denise is now convinced they might kill her.”

  “Are you convinced?” Lew asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Borg said, taking a long sip of his drink. “I know them, know what they’re capable of.”

  “You know who they are?” Lew asked.

  “Yes, you met them at the hog-dog. They’re my sons, Chet and Matt. Different mother than Lilla. Mr. Fonesca, Mr. McKinney, I have many regrets, those two boys being high on the list, but that girl is the lone glow in my life of darkness. I live simple, but there’s not much meaning to it without that one pinpoint of light whose name is Lilla.” He paused and then said, “I laid it on a little too heavy-handed, didn’t I?”

  “A little,” Lew said.

  “Are they in Kane?” Lew asked.

  “I don’t know, but I’m confident you can find them. You found me four years ago. I’ve asked some people who know people who owe people and I know you’re good at situations like this. They know about you.”

  “They?” Lew asked.

  Borg kept staring toward the horizon. Lew resisted looking at whatever it was Borg seemed to see out there.

  “In my often wicked business, I meet and use and am used by people who have connections below the line of legality,” said Borg.

  Lew looked at Ames, whose nod of yes was almost imperceptible.

  “I need some information,” Lew said to Borg.

  “Whatever you want,” said Borg. “Want to talk money first?”

  “How much is she worth to you?” Lew asked.

  “My fortunes have diminished a bit since you last saw me, but I’m far from impoverished. So, I’ll pay, at the far end of reasonable, whatever you ask if you bring her to me or her mother safely and get those two whelps the hell out of Florida forever.”

  Lew looked at Ames, who met his eyes. Across the table Earl Borg stared between them.

  “Gas, car rental, expenses, reimbursement for any information I have to buy.”

  “That’s it?” asked Borg.

  “There’s a children and family services fund in the county,” Lew said. “Give them a donation.”

  “Four thousand?”

  “Four thousand,” Lew agreed.

  “Best deal I’ve ever made if you don’t count the time I got four acres of downtown Sarasota from a half-wit named Tarton Sparks,” said Borg. “Ask your questions. Take your time.”

  Three hours up I-75 through heavy snowbird and normal traffic they passed a jackknifed truck that lay dead on its side. The truck’s hood was open like a King Kong dinosaur. After the gapers’ block, traffic moved faster, but not much. Early in the afternoon, Lew pulled into the same gas station and general store he had
gone to the last time he had come to Kane. The boiled peanuts sign was still there, now peeled away so that it read: B ST OILED PEA TS IN THE SOUT.

  Another change from the last time Lew had come to Kane was that Ames McKinney was with him and armed with an impressive long-bareled revolver in the pocket of his yellow slicker. The revolver was there courtesy of Big Ed and the Texas Bar & Grille. Big Ed told people that the gun, which usually rested in a glass-covered display case on the wall behind the bar, had belonged to John Wesley Hardin. Ames doubted the legend, but admired the weapon. Ames’s job, among his others at the Texas, was to keep the display guns clean and in working order.

  Lew filled the tank with gas.

  The overweight woman behind the counter was the same one who had been there the last time. It even seemed to Lew as if she were wearing the same dress. She looked at Ames and then at Lew and back at Ames. Her hands were facedown on the glass countertop.

  Lew handed her a twenty-dollar bill.

  “Sixteen-twelve out of twenty,” she said as if making the transaction were a burden.

  She opened the cash register with a soft grunt, deposited the twenty, counted out change, closed the register and faced Lew and Ames with a gun in her right hand.

  “Why the gun?” asked Lew.

  “Everyone in this town has a gun,” she said. “When a couple of new folks come to town and one is carrying a gun under his slicker, you consider if you might be on the wrong end of a holdup.”

  “Makes sense,” said Ames. “But it’s not so.”

  “I’ve been in here before,” said Lew.

  “Don’t remember you,” she said, gun steady.

  “Guess not. You know a girl named Lilla Fair, a woman named Denise Fair?” asked Lew.

  The gun was steady in her hand. Her expression didn’t change.

  “I know everybody in and around Kane,” she said. “All four hundred and eighty-two of them.”

  “How many are named Lilla Fair?” Lew asked.

  The woman’s eyes moved back and forth from Lew to Ames.

  “Why?”

  “She’s missing,” Lew said.

  “No,” said the woman, shaking her head. “She’s with the Manteen boys. Left two days ago, stopped for gas. Ask me, I’d say Denise is some kind of fool to let Lilla go anywhere with Chester and Matthew. Lilla’s not a baby girl anymore, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know,” said Lew. “Would you mind putting the gun down?”

  “You related to Denise?”

  “No,” said Lew. “Lilla’s father wants to be sure she’s safe.”

  “Well, he will not soon have his wish,” she said. “Long as that girl is with those nutcrackers, he will not have reason to be sure she’s safe.”

  She put the gun back under the counter and handed Lew his change.

  Denise Fair stood on the wooden stoop of her two-bedroom, one-story box of a house. The house was about a two-minute drive from the gas station. From the look on her face, both Lew and Ames concluded that the overweight woman had called to announce that they were coming.

  She wore tan slacks and an extra-large orange University of Florida sweatshirt. Her arms were folded against her chest. She looked like a college student, hair tied back in a ponytail, skin clear, pretty.

  “My name is Lewis Fonesca. This is my friend Ames McKinney. Earl Borg has asked us to find your daughter.”

  She looked at the two of them and was clearly not impressed.

  “Tell Earl,” she said evenly, “that I am still begging him to pay what they want. They wouldn’t hurt Lilla. They’ve known her all her life. They may be stupid, but they’re not going to molest or hurt their own half sister, especially if Earl gives them the goddamn few hundred dollars. Problem is that Lilla is diabetic. Her medication is gone. She took it when they … I think she has enough for …”—she shook her head and went on—“I don’t know. I know Matt and Chet. Lilla likes them, but they’re not … no, they wouldn’t hurt her.”

  Both Ames and Lew knew she was trying to convince herself and was failing.

  “Any idea where they might take her?” Lew asked.

  “Earl’s still in Sarasota?”

  “Yes,” said Lew.

  “They don’t have much in the way of imagination,” she said. “They’d go where they could be close to the money they hoped to get from Earl.”

  “Sarasota,” said Ames.

  “Sarasota,” Denise Fair confirmed.

  “Chet and Matt’s mother,” said Lew. “Is she in town?”

  “Alma Manteen died last week,” she said. “May account for why they’re doing what they’re doing.”

  “You have a photograph of Lilla we could borrow?” Lew asked. “A recent one.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll get it for you. You don’t have to return it. Give it to Earl. Yes, I know, he can’t see it, but he can hold it. Give it to him and tell him to pay them. He’s stubborn, but the Lord knows Earl loves Lilla. If he won’t pay, then I pray the Lord guide you to her.”

  “We’ll find her,” said Ames.

  “Lilla’s all I’ve got,” she said. “I lost my son in Iraq.”

  “Fred,” said Lew.

  She looked at him.

  “I was there when Lilla named the hog,” Lew said.

  Denise Fair, arms still folded, went back into her house to find a photograph of her daughter.

  15

  IF THE PHOTOGRAPH OF the girl was close to her reality, than Lilla Fair was not destined for beauty. She was thin, long dark hair over a smiling face, showing large teeth, round surprised eyes, and a night sky full of freckles. She looked more like Borg than she looked like her mother, but she really didn’t look that much like him either.

  The bonus in the photograph was that a group of people in the background were standing with beer bottles in hand. Except for one, they weren’t paying attention to Lilla. The one looking at her was either Chet or Matt. The other twin was next to him in profile. He was hoisting a blur of a beer bottle toward his mouth.

  The first thing Lew and Ames did when they got back to Sarasota was to make ten wallet-size machine copies of the photograph at Office Max on Bee Ridge. The second thing they did was walk to the end of the mall and have dinner at the nofrills home cooking restaurant that featured mini-burgers.

  “Dinner’s on Borg,” Lew said when they were seated across from each other at a small booth.

  Lew had three mini-burgers with cheese. Ames had a steak, salad and mushroom soup.

  When they finished, Lew gave Ames five of the copies of the photo and made a list of places and the people they should give the photographs to. Ames looked at the list and then at Lew.

  “Let’s do it,” he said.

  The list consisted of people whose names Ames recognized.

  “Let’s do it,” Lew agreed. “I’ll take you back to the Texas. Then we split up. Take the ones I marked.”

  “Sure you want it that way?”

  “I’m sure,” said Lew.

  “Suit yourself,” said Ames.

  “I’m glum.”

  Matt Manteen made the pronouncement from the bed in Room Six of the Blue Gulf Motel on Tamiami Road. His cap was perched on his head, his hands folded over a pillow on his stomach. He had always slept or taken a nap with a pillow on his stomach. He didn’t know why, and no one had ever asked, so he didn’t have to think about it. Matt had heard someone say, in a movie or something, “I don’t think about what I don’t think about.” It was his protective motto when asked to give an opinion on almost anything.

  Matt had lots of opinions, all of them donated willingly by his dead mother and his brother. He would have welcomed a few more from his father, but he had given up on that. His father, when he had seen him, mostly at the hog-dog, had given orders, not opinions. Now he and Chet were giving their father orders.

  Couldn’t help it though. Matt was glum.

  The shower was running behind the door about ten feet from the foot of the be
d. A television on a table against the wall was on but mute. On the screen, an old man with big white teeth and toupee that didn’t match the color of what little hair he had left was holding up a white plastic thing like it was first-place prize in the county fair. He was looking right at Matt, talking, saying nothing.

  “I’ll call him back in an hour,” said Chet, sitting in a chair, his feet propped up on the bed he would share with Matt again that night if they were still in Sarasota. Lilla, if she were still alive, would sleep on the couch again, which was fine with her. Matt kept looking at the old man on the television screen. To Chet, the old man seemed happy as shit.

  Behind the closed door, Lilla wasn’t singing.

  “What are we gonna do about Lilla’s medicine?” asked Matt.

  “She’s got enough of the stuff for a couple of days.”

  The pause was long.

  “What if he won’t pay?” asked Matt.

  Chet was the longer-term thinker of the Manteen brothers, which was not a fact that merited pride. Life for him was a checkers game he could handle only one move at a time. Matt couldn’t even play the game. It had nothing to do with intelligence. It was about concentration. When they were in grade school, every other day, as they had been ordered by their mother, they had taken the pills Dr. Winenholt had given her. Hadn’t helped. They were put in a “special” class. That didn’t help. They were as smart as some of the other kids who didn’t go special. The Manteen brothers just couldn’t think ahead. Same thing in high school. “Jumpy,” that’s what their mother had told the teachers and principals. “My boys are jumpy.”

  “Remember, if he won’t pay, we kill her,” said Chet. “It’s what we said we’d do and we’ve got nothing much in the world but our word.”

  Matt shook his head, clutched the pillow more tightly to his stomach and said, “Killing Lilla won’t get us the money to make it to Montana. What it’ll get us is we’re murderers with no money instead of being not murderers with no money.”

  “What are you talking about?” Chet asked, sitting up.

  “I don’t know,” said Matt.

  The shower thundered on. Chet glanced at the bathroom. A thin fog of steam lazily wisped under door.

  “We are murderers,” said Chet.