He shrugged and continued.
“So, the artist can engage the medium and create art. Let us strive for conversational art.”
“Let us,” Franco said.
Pappas raised his right hand and his sons left the room.
“They are going to get us coffee and something special. They will also check the video monitors to see if anyone is watching the house. One does not know when an enemy might approach and mark it well, for in truth there is an enemy out there and the enemy has a name. I am under siege in my own home. This is my Troy. And I must be sure I don’t let a gift horse enter. You understand?”
“Yes, you’re paranoid,” said Lew.
“And you are not,” he said with a sigh. “You should be.”
“I’m depressed,” Lew said. “That’s all I can handle.”
Pappas nodded and folded his hands against his chest.
“The one who has made me a prisoner in my own home and may have killed your wife is called Posno. His full name is Andrej Posnitki. I think he is Hungarian, but that doesn’t matter. When she was so foully murdered, your dear wife was gathering evidence against Posno, evidence that he committed murder, evidence of his life of crime which, I am sorry to admit, I participated in, though only at the edges.”
Pappas raised his right hand and let it float toward an unmarked periphery.
“The important documents supporting her evidence could not be found in her office desk or your apartment. Posno’s plan when your wife died was to find you and torture you, something he is very, very good at, and get you to tell him where those documents were, if you even knew. But you were not to be found. You fled, vanished, flew.”
Pappas let his right hand, fingers fluttering, move up. Then he brought his hand back to his lap.
“Posno is not a genius, but he is clever and determined. He has almost certainly found you the same way I found you. Stavros found your name on the Internet. Something about your being involved in the shooting of some professor. That was a week ago. I sent Stavros to Sarasota to keep an eye on you.”
“Funny,” said Franco.
“Oh, I see,” said Pappas with a smile. “Because my son has only one eye to keep on you. You want to know how he lost that eye? He was shot by the man who is looking for you. Now, I’ll tell you how to find him.”
“Why do you want to help me?” Lew asked.
Pappas rose from the chair and went to the window.
“Nine years ago your wife was the prosecutor in a murder case. I was arrested, charged. My record, I must tell you, is not without blemish but this crime I did not do.”
He put his right hand on his chest.
“She talked to the witnesses, got experts to look at the signature on a hotel register… That’s not important. She believed me, dropped the charges against me in exchange for my testifying against Andrej Posnitki, who had set me up. It was a sweet deal if you ignore that Posno is a maniac who, between the three of us, is responsible for the demise of more than forty-one people. Still I owe your wife and when my family has a debt, we pay it no matter how long it takes.”
“I appreciate that,” Lew said. “Posno wasn’t convicted.”
“Good lawyers, lots of money. He got off. Since then he has found my presence on this earth intolerable. Putting him in prison or, better yet, death row, would greatly ease my paranoia. Your wife would not give up, as you well know. She continued to build a new case against Posno. So finding your wife’s records might well keep us both alive. She didn’t tell you about all this?”
“We didn’t talk about cases except the ones I was working on for her,” Lew said.
“Smart,” said Pappas, pointing to his head and looking at Franco. “You don’t know. You can’t testify.”
There was a gentle double knock at the door and Pappas, with a smile, said, “You’re gonna like this.”
One-eyed Stavros backed in balancing a large, round golden tray. He walked over and placed the tray on the glass table. The other son, Dimitri, came in with a smaller tray, balancing three small cups of almost-black Greek coffee. There were also three small plates with a fork on each. Pappas, Franco and Lew each took a cup and a plate.
Stavros leaned next to his father and whispered in his ear. Pappas nodded and whispered something back to him. It was Stavros’s turn to nod.
The brothers left the room, closing the door softly behind them.
“ Glykismata, ” Pappas said after a sip of coffee. “Greek deserts. This one is amygdalopita, nut cake covered in clove syrup. These are loukoumathes.”
He pointed to six round balls, which he said were Greek donuts covered with honey and cinnamon.
“Good with coffee,” Pappas said with a knowing nod. “And these cookie twists are koulourakia, glaktobouriko, egg custard baked in phyllo, and baklava. Everything baked today by my mother. Did you know Aristophanes mentions baklava in one of his plays?”
“No,” said Lew.
“Ah,” said Pappas with a shrug. “Why should you? Take.”
They put down their coffees. Lew took one of the cookies. Franco piled his plate. Pappas smiled.
“These are great,” said Franco, his mouth full.
“You’ll meet my mother on the way out,” Pappas said, his eyes meeting Lew’s. “As long as you have the blessing of your mother, it does not matter even if you live in the the valley of the dead. That’s a Greek saying. I have her blessing and, pardon me for saying it, you are treading in the valley of the dead. It is not a good place to be.”
He looked around the room and added, “Though I am under siege, I still have resources, which is why Posno has not gotten to me. I live in this comfortable prison. I would like to walk beyond the glass-covered walls that define my exile. To the extent that I can, I will extend my protection to you, but you must be quite careful. Find that evidence.”
He held up a finger and added, “Put Posno away. You like those, huh?”
Lew was eating one of the phyllo deserts filled with custard.
“Yes,” Lew said.
“Good,” he said. “You have anything else you wish to ask me?”
“You know any jokes?” Lew asked.
“Jokes? Sure.”
Pappas was smiling, puzzled by the question. Franco’s cheek was full of baklava, his fingers honey-sticky, his eyes moving from Lew to Pappas as if they were suddenly talking Greek.
“You want me to tell you a joke?”
“Yes.”
Pappas told Lew a joke and smiled, his teeth a huge wall of white. Lew took out his notebook and pen and wrote down the joke.
“Okay joke?” Pappas asked.
“Yes,” Lew said, putting the notebook back in his pocket.
“You didn’t smile,” he said.
“I don’t smile,” Lew said.
Franco finished his baklava and wiped his fingers with a napkin.
Pappas shook his head, put down his plate and empty coffee cup and walked to the window, looked out, sighed and turned around.
“When you arrived, my sons covered your license plate with clay in case he came by this afternoon, the circling vulture Posno, appearing whenever he wishes, reminding me that I am his prisoner and that the day of execution is coming.”
Franco put down his plate and cup and moved to the window.
“I do not think he knows yet about your tow truck, but he’ll wonder, and with good cause, why your license plate number is covered. He almost certainly has a photograph of you, Mr. Fonesca, but not…”
“Franco,” said Lew’s brother-in-law.
“Franco,” Pappas repeated. “I suggest you go out the front gate as you came, get in your truck and drive around the first corner. Mr. Fonesca will join you there.”
“No,” said Franco. “I’m going down there and if anyone gives me trouble I’ll ram the holy shit out of this Posno’s car.”
“Not advisable,” said Pappas with a shake of his head. “He is not likely to use a weapon unless you provoke him. You are not his prey.”
“Lew?” Franco asked, fist clenched, turning to Lew as he stood. “The son of a bitch mighta killed Catherine.”
Lew looked at Pappas, who pursed his lips.
“It may not be Posno,” said Lew.
“It may not be,” Pappas agreed with a shrug, “but I can think of no one else who would park in front of my house.”
“We do it your way,” Lew said to Franco. “Front door. Both of us, but no ramming. Let’s go.”
“As you wish,” said Pappas, leading the way out the door.
“That’s from The Princess Bride, the ‘as you wish,’” Franco whispered as they followed Pappas down the stairs. “Lew, let’s just get the bastard.”
At the bottom of the stairs stood a short, thin, overly made-up woman with electric badly dyed red hair. She was holding a shoebox-size white box tied with a string. Pappas introduced her as his mother. She smiled and handed Lew the box. The smell of baked phyllo and honey made it clear what was inside.
Pappas handed Lew a Greek fisherman’s cap and moved to his mother’s side, arm around her shoulder. Lew handed it back, took his Cubs cap from his pocket and put it on his head.
“Stylish,” said Pappas.
“Thank you,” Lew said to the woman, looking into her eyes.
Her smile faded.
“Sure,” she said.
“We’ll be watching over you,” said Pappas as Lew and Franco went through the door. It closed behind them. The night had come. The air had gone cool and the wind whistled by. The box in Lew’s hand was warm.
There was a car about twenty yards behind the tow truck, a black Lexus, and there were two people inside.
“I don’t like this, Lewis,” Franco said when they were in the truck with the doors closed. He took the gun out of his pocket and placed it in a panel slot in front of him.
“I know,” Lew said, who sat with the box on his lap as Franco made a leisurely U-turn and looked down at the car with the two men as he drove toward the Eisenhower.
“Nice people,” said Franco. “I mean the Pappases. That John’s a little… you know?”
“Very nice people,” Lew said. “Pappas lied. Catherine didn’t have any case going against anyone named Andrej Posnitki. She would have told me.”
“They’re following,” said Franco. “Well, the old lady was nice.”
“ Her I remember,” said Lew. “Not Catherine’s case, Peter Michaels’s case. Milt Holiger did the legwork. Bernice Alexander Pappas. Five or six years ago. She got off. Lack of evidence. Witnesses disappeared.”
“What’d she do?” asked Franco, pulling onto the Eisenhower and heading toward downtown.
“Killed her husband and her husband’s cousin with a very sharp baking knife.”
“Maybe she…”
“Stabbed them about a dozen times each in the neck and face,” said Lew, removing the string from the box.
The fresh-baked scent penetrated the smell of grease.
“Shit,” Franco said, reaching for the box and putting his hand inside. He came up with a cookie. “You never know.”
“You never know,” Lew agreed.
“But she can bake. And you gotta admit, Pappas may be a phony, but he’s a good son.”
“He was an assassin for hire, probably still is,” said Lew. “Suspect in at least fourteen murders.”
“With this Posno guy?”
“Maybe.”
Franco bit, chewed and went silent for a beat and then, “So Catherine never helped them?”
“No. Why would she?”
“I don’t get it,” he said. “What do we do now?”
“Go home.”
“Don’t think so,” said Franco. “That Lexus is right behind us. Want me to lose them?”
Lew reached for the car phone, punched in Angela’s home number, and when she came on he asked her a question and when she answered, he asked her for a favor. Lew hung up and told Franco what to do.
Less than half an hour later they were back in Little Italy, driving slowly. They pulled into a one-car driveway and got out of the truck. The outside houselights were on and the lights beyond the windows sent out orange-white beams.
“They parked across the street,” Franco whispered.
The front door was open. They went in. Franco locked the door behind him.
“Now?” he asked.
Lew turned out the living-room lights so they couldn’t be seen from the street. Timing could have been better but it wasn’t bad. No one got out of the Lexus, whose lights and engine were turned off.
When Lew had called Angie from the truck he had asked her if she had an unoccupied house for sale in the neighborhood. She did. He asked her to go there, take the FOR SALE sign down, turn on the lights and leave the door open. She had. If they didn’t already know, Lew didn’t want to lead whomever was in the Lexus to his sister’s house.
Franco had called one of his cop friends from the truck.
“I’ve got a joke, Lewis,” he said.
“Yes?”
Five minutes later a Chicago P.D. patrol car glided down the street and pulled next to the Lexus. Two uniformed street cops got out, one on each side of the car, hands on their weapons. They had left their headlights on. White light surrounded the Lexus. Lew opened the front door a few inches.
“Please get out of the car,” said the beefy officer who had been driving.
Two men, one man in his forties, wearing a suit and tie, and the other, a man about thirty, wearing a sports jacket, white shirt, no tie, his hair tied back, slowly got out of the car, careful to keep their hands in sight.
The man in the suit, who had been the passenger in the Lexus, looked at the partly open door beyond which Lew stood.
“Hands on the roof, spread your legs,” said the cop.
They knew the drill. The younger cop moved forward and patted them down. He didn’t miss a space. Found nothing.
“Identification,” said the beefy cop. “Slow, so slow I can almost swear you’re not moving.”
The two men exchanged looks and reached into their jacket pockets, pulling out their wallets. The younger cop took the wallets and brought them to the beefy cop.
“Santoro,” the beefy cop said, looking up from the open wallet.
Santoro, the passenger, didn’t respond. He kept looking at the door as if he could see Lew in the darkness.
“And Cruz.”
“Aponte-Cruz,” said the man with the tied-back hair.
The beefy cop handed the wallets to his partner who knew what to do, call in their identification. He moved back to the police car.
Franco and Lew left the house, moved to the tow truck and climbed in.
“What are you doing here?” the beefy cop asked Santoro.
“Here?” asked Santoro, watching Lew. “We just parked for a few minutes, talk a little before we get something to eat. Here’s as good as any place.”
“You’re loitering,” said the beefy cop.
Santoro looked down at the hood of the Lexus and shook his head with a smile.
Franco backed the tow truck into the street. Franco and Lew looked down at the men named Santoro and Aponte-Cruz. Santoro met Lew’s eyes and smiled. Lew couldn’t read the smile.
3
Dinner, rigatoni with shrimp, had reminded him of his grandmother’s cooking, Sundays at her house. She hadn’t learned any of her recipes in Sicily. She had learned them from cookbooks, mostly written by second- or third-generation American recipe gatherers, most of them Jewish. Her food was good. Lew’s mother had not carried on the tradition, but Angela had picked it up like a loose football and run with it. Franco had been a lean Massaccio when they were married.
Franco’s friend Manny Lowen, the beefy cop, still in uniform, had come by. He had a bowl of rigatoni with grated Parmesan and told them that the two men in the Lexus were Claude Santoro and Bernard Aponte-Cruz and that Santoro owned the car.
“Santoro’s a lawyer,” said Manny, working on a coffee and o
ne of the last of the Greek deserts Angie had put out on a plate. “No criminal record. Lots of money. Lots of friends. Office up high on LaSalle Street. You want to find him, he won’t be hard to find. He’s in the phone book. The other guy, Aponte-Cruz, another story. He’s a leg breaker for rent. Did four years downstate for breaking up a restaurant owner on Elston Avenue in front of witnesses. Owner came out on the other side with a limp, a twitch and a tendency to look over his shoulder a lot.”
When Manny had left, Angie said, “You need my car tomorrow?”
“I can drive him,” said Franco, failing to resist the last Greek cookie.
“Lewis?” Angie asked.
Lew didn’t like driving anywhere. He didn’t like driving in Chicago in particular. These weren’t streets. They were bumper-to-bumper miles of memories. He accepted Franco’s offer.
The phone had rung while they were still at the table and Franco had answered.
“Franco… got it… fifteen, twenty minutes tops.”
He hung up, said, “Work,” and kissed Angie on the cheek as she patted his hand. “Lewis, see you in the morning.”
And he was gone.
“Can I ask?” Angie had said, folding her hands on the table when Franco had left.
“Yes.”
“You going to see the rest of the family?”
“Not this time.”
“Uncle Tonio?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
He started to reach for the last baklava on the plate and changed his mind. What he really wanted was a DQ chocolate cherry Blizzard. He knew his comfort food and that was it, something he had not tasted before Catherine was killed.
“You’re thinking about giving up, aren’t you?” Angie said. “Thinking it wasn’t such a great idea, your coming here?”
“Something like that,” Lew said.
“Don’t,” she said.
She got up, came around the table, hugged her brother from behind and kissed the top of his head. There was nothing more to say. Not now. He helped Angie clear the table and put the dishes in the dishwasher. Then he went to Teresa’s room where he called Ann Horowitz.
“It’s me,” he told her when she answered the phone.
“We start with a joke,” she said. “You have one?”
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