Always Say Goodbye lf-5

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “A very bad person,” Lew repeated.

  The young man pointed to his glass eye, giving a hint of how bad this person could be.

  “Here they come,” said Franco, standing by the driver who was still shaking.

  The police car inched its way through the traffic, flashing its lights. Cars and trucks made room.

  “This bad person kill my wife?”

  “I don’t know,” the young man said. “Probably.”

  The police car pulled in and parked in front of the tow truck.

  “Why does he want me dead?”

  “You have something he wants,” he said, turning his head toward the police car from which two uniformed officers emerged, both black and with weapons in their hands.

  “What do I have and why did he wait so long to kill me?”

  “He didn’t know where you were. He found your name somewhere, an article perhaps on the Internet,” said the young man. “Then you bought an airline ticket. If we could find out about that, he can find it. I flew to Tampa and stayed with you from the second you got to the Southwest counter.”

  “Why do you want to help me?” Lew asked, but before the young man could answer the police were too close to continue.

  “Everybody just hold it where you are,” said the older of the two cops.

  He was lean, homely, dark and serious.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  He and his partner, who had television star good looks, moved toward them.

  “Roadside assistance,” said Franco. “That’s my tow truck. He called me.”

  “That’s right,” said the driver.

  “We got a call saying someone was being pulled out of the window by a man who looked like Mike Ditka.”

  “Hear that, Lew? Not the first time someone thought I looked like Iron Mike,” said Franco with a smile.

  “Hey,” the older cop called impatiently over the madness of the cars and trucks rushing by in both directions.

  “Right,” said Franco. “Driver here was in a panic. Froze. Thought his car was about to blow up or something. I pulled him out.”

  Franco looked at the driver.

  “Right,” the driver said.

  “What’s wrong with the car?” the older cop asked, suspiciously looking at Lew and then at the one-eyed man.

  “Short,” said Franco. “He smelled burning wire. It’s fixed now.”

  “I owe this man,” said the driver, glaring at Franco.

  The cops looked at each of the four men in front of them. The older cop decided that the group looked a little strange maybe, but not formidable. Both cops holstered their weapons but kept a hand on them.

  “Move out,” said the cop. “You’re tying up traffic.”

  “One second,” Franco said. “He hasn’t paid me yet.”

  Turning to the driver, Franco said, “That’ll be fifty dollars. Cash.”

  The driver looked at the one-eyed man who reached into his pocket and came up with two twenties and a ten. He handed them to Franco. Lew had a lot to ask the one-eyed man but he had moved into the car along with the driver. Franco tapped Lew on the shoulder and Lew followed him to the tow truck.

  “Now that was fun, huh, Lewie?” he asked, hitting his horn, easing into traffic.

  “One couldn’t wish for more,” Lew said, reaching into his duffel bag and pulling out his Cubs cap.

  “Still got that?”

  “Still got it,” said Lew who put the cap on his head.

  Ann Horowitz had said that Lew wore the cap for many reasons. She said that one obvious reason was to cover Lew’s balding head. “That,” she had said, “is good. It shows that you still care about how you look to the world and how you look to yourself. It’s a sign of ego. It’s a very small tear in your precious depression. If it is, I want to find the tear and sew it up. Don’t worry. We’ll apply a very local anesthetic.”

  Lew felt that his depression was too important to him to lose. Ann knew this and knew about what he might have to deal with if it were gone.

  Ann also believed that the cap was an attempt to hold onto something positive from the past, memories of Banks, Williams, Santo, Dawson, Sosa, Cey, Sandberg. Lew liked that interpretation. Whatever the cap might mean, he always felt a little better, a little more protected, when he wore it.

  Franco’s cell phone, now back in the dashboard charger, buzzed. Franco asked Lew to get it as he worked his way toward the outer lane.

  “Hello,” Lew said.

  “Hey, where’s Franco?”

  The caller, who had a raspy voice like Lew’s Uncle Tonio, was chewing on something.

  “Driving. Traffic on the Dan Ryan’s backed up. I’m Franco’s brother-in-law.”

  “Hey, Lewie? Is that Lewie?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Rick. Heard you went nuts.”

  “Yes.”

  “You better now?”

  “No,” Lew said.

  “Hey, it happens. Think you’re nuts, you should see my sister-in-law. She’s like fruitcakes all the time, you know?”

  The outer lane was moving and they were on their way. Lew could no longer see the one-eyed man’s car.

  “Got a pencil, something?” asked the voice.

  “Yes,” Lew said, taking out his notebook.

  “Car belongs to a John Pappas.”

  Rick gave him the owner’s address and said he was faxing a copy of Pappas’s driver’s license to Franco’s house.

  “I’m looking at it now,” said Rick.

  “What’s he look like?” Lew asked.

  “Fifty, maybe a little more, maybe closer to sixty,” said Rick. “Hair white. Looks a little like that guy on Law and Order, Dennis whatever. Guy that used to be a Chicago cop.”

  Pappas was definitely not the driver Franco had pulled out of the window.

  Franco reached for the phone. Lew handed it to him.

  “Hey way, Rick,” he said. “That lunch’s gonna be on me.”

  He paused, listening, nodding his head, smiling and then said, “Ditkaland forever. See ya.”

  He handed the phone back to Lew. Lew hung it up.

  “Rick’s not a cop,” Lew said.

  “No, but his daughter Maria, thirteen, smart, knows how to use the Internet like you wouldn’t believe,” said Franco.

  “It’s not legal,” Lew said.

  “So’s jaywalking. You care?”

  “No.”

  “We’ll find him,” Franco said. “The son of a bitch who killed Catherine. We make a good team, huh?”

  “Yes,” Lew said.

  “In the compartment between us, in the armrest, I’ve got packages of that spicy beef jerky.”

  Lew opened the compartment and found about twenty wrapped thin ropes of dark red jerky. He took one and handed one to Franco.

  “Love those things,” he said, opening the wrapping of his jerky with his teeth. “Hey, give Angie a call. Tell her where we are.”

  Talking to his sister would be another step into the past. He had only been in Chicago for about an hour and had had already taken dizzying steps.

  “Just hit forty-seven,” Franco said, pointing at the phone.

  Lew picked up the phone and hit the numbers. One ring and Lew’s sister was on the phone.

  “Franco, you got him?”

  “Angela, I’m back.”

  John Pappas stood at the window on the second floor of his house in suburban River Grove, “the Village of Friendly Neighbors.” In one hand he held a white porcelain cup and saucer. Next to the cup was a still warm, honey-covered slice of baklava. His mother had finished baking the treat less than an hour ago. Her phyllo was almost see-through thin, the nuts and raisins it held touched the right edge of sweetness and memory.

  Pappas, hair white and full, his face a sun-etched almost-almond, slightly pocked, reminded most people of someone they had met, although they couldn’t recall who.

  Pappas looked across the lawn to the tree-lined street with
fall leaves falling and little traffic. He sipped the thick coffee and took a comforting bite of pastry, careful to avoid any honey that might drip off and stain his white shirt. He wore a fresh white long- or short-sleeved dress shirt every day.

  He stood thinking of Andrej Posnitki, known as Posno. Posno was never far from his mind. Posno was the reason Pappas was nearly imprisoned in this house. Posno was the reason his son Stavros had lost an eye. John Pappas took the last morsel of his delicacy, licked his honey-dappled fingers and imagined what Posno might be doing at this moment.

  Andrej Posnitki, in his own apartment on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, looked out his window at a sailboat on Lake Michigan, driven by a gust of wind.

  Short, broad, head shaved, skin almost white, he could be described as either a barrel or a crate. He weighed almost three hundred pounds and every ounce could and had been delivered many times though his fists. He preferred his hands to a blade or a gun, but he had been known to use whatever was available to threaten, maim or slay his enemies.

  He had no family. He had no friends.

  “The devil always provides,” he said.

  Posno worked alone. His fees were fixed and no one who hired him questioned or failed to promptly pay.

  His appearance was calculatingly menacing, but his voice was calm and he had a passion for poetry. He read it, listened to it on CDs, even gave occasional open microphone readings of his own work at a small bookstore and coffeehouse within walking distance on Broadway.

  One of Posno’s enemies, his primary enemy, was John Pappas. Not long ago the two had been inseparable, partners.

  Pappas had been in the kitchen at the back of the Korean restaurant on Clark Street when Posno had picked up a butcher knife, its blade still carrying globules of animal fat. He had brought the blade down at the weeping man kneeling in front of him. The man had tried to cover his head. Two severed fingers spun past Posno’s face. Blood gushed from the Korean’s split head, turning the man’s apron from dirty white to a moist splotch of red.

  Pappas stayed in the corner, watching. No blood touched him.

  Pappas had been in the hallway behind Posno who rang the bell. The tones inside played the first nine notes of “Anything Goes.” This was followed by footsteps and a woman’s voice behind the door saying, “Who is it?” Pappas had answered, “Your neighbor upstairs.”

  “Mr. Sweeney?” she had asked.

  “Yes, I need some wine, any kind, for a dish my wife has just started cooking.”

  She opened the door. The man who stood in front of her was definitely not Mr. Sweeney. It was Posno, who stepped forward quickly, and put his thick hands around her neck before she could scream. Pappas had stayed outside.

  And there was Jacobi, right on Maxwell Street, among the crowd in front of a shop that sold shoes, seconds. Shoes, paired and tied together by their shoestrings, were piled high on a cart in front of the store. Posno had a thin, sharply pointed steel rod up his sleeve. Jacobi was rearranging shoes to keep the stack from falling. When Posno struck, deep under the man’s ribs, the shoes came tumbling as Jacobi grabbed the side of the cart. Posno had jumped out of the way. The heel of a shoe hit him above his right eye. He knew the thin rod was leaving a wet trail inside his sleeve that he would have to clean himself. Pappas had watched. He had no jacket to clean, no blood on his hands.

  Yes, they had been partners. Pappas had the connections, could get the clients, but Pappas couldn’t kill. It had been a good partnership.

  Pappas came from a large, extended Greek family, a tradition, a culture. Posno had arrived from nowhere, alone, throbbing with anger balanced by poetry.

  Pappas had distanced himself, came close to ending his very existence. They both knew that if the Fonesca woman had left her evidence file and it was found, it would be Posno who went down. He would take Pappas with him. He would be better off if there were no Pappas and he knew Pappas would be better off without him. The two men had much that separated them but much more in common than either liked.

  Posno turned from the window, reached into his pocket, took out his mini tape recorder, pressed a button and slowly spoke, not knowing whether the words were his own or something that had fixed to his memory, something waiting for this moment.

  Speak not of tomorrow or how long a man may be happy.

  Change, like the shifting flight of the hummingbird or the dragonfly, is swift and sudden.

  He hit the pause button and, still watching the sailboat heading toward the horizon, pushed it again and said, “Catherine Fonesca.”

  2

  Franco got off the Dan Ryan at Jackson Boulevard, went east to Racine and then south on Racine to Cabrini Street in the heart of Little Italy. A block away was Taylor Street, both sides of which were crowded with Italian restaurants brought back to life when Lew was a kid by the University of Illinois Chicago campus. The university had embraced the neighborhood, threatened to engulf it, and eventually came to a mutually advantageous understanding.

  Lew had grown up in this neighborhood of stubborn, proud, often brilliant and sometimes crazy, first, second and a third generation of primarily Sicilian immigrants. He knew the streets, the parks and many of the families that had not been pressured out from the west by the constant expansion of the University of Illinois Medical Center, and from the east by the university’s ever-growing Chicago campus.

  Some thought the university had saved the neighborhood with dollars. Some thought the university had ended the neighborhood. Some lost their homes and had to move out, mostly to Bridgeport near the White Sox’s Cellular Field and an enclave of Italian-speaking residents within the mayor’s Irish home turf.

  Franco and Angela had stayed in Little Italy in a three-bedroom, eighty-year-old frame house on Cabrini Street across from Arrigo Park. There was a newer model Ford Pinto in the driveway, but not enough room for the tow truck.

  “So, remember Toro’s Garage?” Franco asked, pulling into a parking space on the street. “Still there. I throw business his way. He lets me park my cars. Got five now. Toro, he fixes ’em up, sells ’em. We split the profits. You need a car, you got your pick. I usually park at Toro’s and walk home, but today…”

  He parked between a Lexus and a dingy gray Saturn.

  They got out. Lew’s sister was in the doorway, hands at her sides, examining her brother as he crossed the street. Angela and Lew were born a year apart. He was the older. The family resemblance was clear, but there was something strong, almost pretty about her. She was wearing jeans and an orange long-sleeved pullover. Her dark hair was pulled back and tied with an old-fashioned orange ribbon Lew had given her for her twelfth birthday.

  She came forward to meet them.

  “Lewis,” she said. “All right if I-”

  “Yes,” he said, putting down his bag.

  She took five quick steps and hugged him. He felt her breasts, large like his mother’s, press warmly against him. He tried to hug her back, wanted to hug her, couldn’t. He didn’t want too many doors open, not now, not yet.

  Franco stood quietly a dozen feet away.

  “Welcome home,” she said, finally stepping back. “Hey, I’m crying. I was always the crier, right? Me and Pop. Let’s eat.”

  “Wait,” said Franco. “I picked up fifty bucks on the way home from a guy who was having car trouble. Let’s celebrate. Il Vicinato. Pollo Vesuvio. ”

  Angela looked at Lew and knew what to do.

  “Tomorrow, maybe,” she said.

  As they moved into the house, Angela said, “I’ve got that envelope. Thick. Guy brought it here a few days ago. Well-dressed, little pudgy, you know?”

  Lew knew who he was.

  “It’s on your bed, Teresa’s bed,” she said, taking his duffel and handing it to Franco who walked off with it.

  Nothing had changed except for the large screen television in the living room. Sicilian memories pre-1950s. Nothing modern. Everything comfortable, musky dark woods. Chairs and a sofa with muted dark-colored pill
ows that showed the indentation of three generations of Fonescas who had lived here.

  “Drink?” she asked, touching his shoulder as Lew sat in the chair Catherine always sat in when they came here. “Sangria? Just made a batch from Uncle Tonio’s wine.”

  “Sure,” Lew said.

  “Coming up,” she said with a smile.

  When she left, Franco came back in the room and moved to the window.

  “I figure they know how to find us,” he said. “They got my license plate number. They’re doing the same thing to us we’re doing to them.”

  “I know.”

  “What do we do now?” Franco asked, moving from the window with a smile and a clap of thick hands.

  “Drink sangria, close our eyes, hope the wheels slow down, have something to eat,” Lew said as his sister came back with a tall green and blue ceramic pitcher on a tray surrounded by three tumblers. The pitcher, which Lew had forgotten, had been made by his great-grandfather when he was a boy in Palermo. Seeing it, Lew remembered.

  He wanted to go back to Sarasota. Now.

  “So, after dinner?” Franco asked, holding his beaded glass of sangria.

  “I’ve got some reading to do. And then I need a nap.”

  “Okay,” Franco said.

  “A toast,” Angie said.

  The glass felt moist and cold in Lew’s hand and the almost transparent slice of lemon floating on the wine looked like the reflection of the moon.

  “Great to have you back, Lew,” said Franco, holding up his glass.

  “Find peace,” said Angie.

  They waited for Lew.

  “ Cu a fissa sta a so casa, ” he said.

  It was one of no more than a dozen things Lew could say in Italian. They drank.

  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.