Always Say Goodbye: A Lew Fonesca Mystery

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Lew got his card from his wallet and handed it to Showalter who looked at it and handed it back.

  “Florida? You’ve come a long way. What did Lee do in Florida, murder the governor?”

  “He didn’t do anything in Florida,” said Lew.

  “You want to show me the papers you are serving on Victor Lee?”

  The man who weighed well over two hundred pounds set his legs slightly apart and blocked the way to the staircase.

  “I’m not here to serve papers, just ask him a question.”

  “Yes,” said Showalter slowly. “And that question is?”

  “Did you kill my wife?”

  “Did I … ?”

  “No, that’s my question for Victor Lee: Did you kill my wife?”

  “You think Victor Lee killed your wife?”

  “Yes.”

  Showalter shook his head and thought, Stay focused, Ving. Shit happens. You’ve seen worse and more will come. Just keep your focus on the investment. Clean the apartment, rent it if you can, remember you’ve got a two-month check in your pocket and you don’t have to return the deposit.

  “You know anyone looking for an unfurnished efficiency apartment?” Showalter asked.

  “Maybe, a security guard at Mentic who’s retiring, looking for something small, month to month.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” said Showalter. “What’s his name?”

  He had a pocket-sized leather-bound notebook in his hand now.

  “Can I take a look at it first?” Lew said, looking at the door.

  Showalter tapped the notebook against his leg and said, “Why not.”

  He opened the door and they walked in. A single wooden-floored room with a small bed against a wall, a desk and chair and a refrigerator and sink. Only one wall had windows, two of them looking down at the street. On the opposite wall was an open door to a small bathroom. The only thing on the walls was a small framed painting of a rainy empty city street at night, office buildings looming like black shadows, the only spot of light coming from a tiny window in one of the shadow buildings.

  The room was also clearly and completely clean, sparse and orderly. The room seemed familiar to Lew. He knew why.

  “As you can see, the apartment comes furnished,” said Showalter, walking to the bathroom. “Including towels. But if the tenant has his or her own furniture, we can clear everything out.”

  Lew moved to the desk and opened the middle drawer. The only thing in it was an unframed and folded university degree.

  “Okay if I take this?” Lew asked, holding up the degree.

  “I don’t—” Showalter began.

  “Owen Keen,” Lew cut in. “The man who might be interested in renting. His name is Owen Keen.”

  “Owen Keen,” Showalter said, writing the name in his notebook. “I’ll give him a call. Mentic Pharmaceuticals, you said?”

  “Yes, can I take the painting too?” Lew asked, tucking the folded sheet of paper carefully into his pocket.

  Showalter looked at the dark noir canyon on the wall. “Sure,” he said, moving to the window. “You want to give Mr. Keen a call and tell him?”

  “I will,” said Lew, moving to the painting and taking it from the wall.

  “Is that valuable?” asked Showalter, glancing back at Lew. “If it is …”

  “In money? No. I don’t think so.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Showalter said, now looking down at the street. “He’s back.”

  Lew, framed painting tucked under his arm, was at Showalter’s side. There were plenty of spaces on the street. The gray Kia SUV was pulling into one of them directly across the street.

  “Changed his mind,” said Showalter with disappointment.

  Victor Lee, lean, shoulders slightly slumped, got out of the car, adjusted his glasses and started across the street.

  “No,” said Lew. “He forgot to take something with him. He’s coming back for it.”

  “What?” asked Showalter.

  “This,” said Lew, holding up the painting. “All right if I give it to him?”

  “He can have it,” Showalter said.

  Victor Lee looked up at the apartment window. He stopped. He saw two figures, sun glinting, hiding their faces. His head dropped. He turned and moved back to the SUV. Lew moved quickly past Showalter. As Lew went through the door, Showalter called, “Call Keen, right away, okay?”

  9

  MAN SAID it was urgent,” said Ames.

  He was sitting at Lew’s desk, blinds open, sun dancing in dust, sending a yellow band across the floor. Outside beyond the Dairy Queen lot, a sports car whoomed up a few gears and shot away.

  “How each of us sees urgency is a matter of perspective,” Ann Horowitz said. “What is urgent to this man may not be to Lewis.”

  She was in her office on Bay Street, a patient sat in the closet-sized waiting room beyond her wooden door. Ann was purposely keeping the patient, Stephen Mullex, waiting beyond his appointed time. Mullex should complain about his hour being cut short. She wanted him to complain, to assert himself. If he didn’t complain, she would make that the issue of the session.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ames said evenly.

  “One man might well say he has an emergency, and mean it and sound like it, screaming, crying, when his car won’t start and he will be late for a tuna match.”

  “Tuna?”

  “Tennis,” Ann corrected herself, wondering what, if anything, her slip might mean. Age? The ghost of Freud?

  “Another man might call the police from his home and calmly announce that his family was being murdered by two men with axes downstairs and add that there was no hurry because everyone was dead.”

  “Were they?” asked Ames.

  “Hypothetical,” Ann answered. “How would you react?”

  “Find a gun, knife, chair, lamp and go down after the guys with axes,” he said. “By the time the police got there, they’d all be dead.”

  “Unless he killed his family,” said Ann.

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s possible. If Lewis calls you, would you please have him call me at the Texas Bar and Grille. I left a message on his sister’s phone, but he hasn’t called back.”

  “I do have another number,” she said.

  Ames said nothing, waited.

  “He asked me not to give it out. It’s his brother-in-law’s cell phone.”

  “Ma’am.”

  She looked at the digital clock on her desk. The numbers were large. The time was ten minutes after the hour. Stephen Mullex had been kept waiting long enough. Ann gave Ames the number of the phone in Franco Massaccio’s tow truck.

  “I can be disbarred for betraying this confidence,” she said.

  “You’re not a lawyer. You’re a psychologist.”

  “Then getting disbarred won’t hurt my career, will it?”

  “No ma’am, it won’t.”

  “I was making a joke, Mr. McKinney.”

  “So was I,” said Ames. “Thanks for the number.”

  “Have Lewis call me.”

  She hung up. So did Ames. He dialed the number Ann Horowitz had given him, got an answering machine and said: “Lewis, it’s Ames. Call me at your office.”

  Ames McKinney had a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in civil engineering. He had, less than a decade ago, been rich. He had written a book published by the University of New Mexico Press, Some Things a Man Can’t Walk Around: Individual Responsibility in Nineteenth-Century America. The book had been well-reviewed in journals and even a few newspapers in New Mexico, Texas and Colorado. It had even been nominated for a Chino best nonfiction award. He had never mentioned the book to Lew or anyone else. When Ames’s partner had taken all the money in their business and hid in Sarasota, Ames had come here, found him and the two had shot it out on South Lido Beach. The partner died. Ames had spent minimal time in jail because he had a witness, Lewis Fonesca. He owed his sad little Italian friend, but beyon
d that Ames liked him.

  Ames called the Texas Bar & Grille and told Big Ed that he’d be coming back late. The collection of old guns on the wall, the choice of twelve different beers, the thick all-meat nearly raw burgers the size of a pie plate and Ed were the prime attractions of the Texas Bar & Grille. Ed, who grew up in New England, had decided one day to sell his chain-link business, part his hair down the middle, grow a handlebar mustache, buy a shinny vest and go West to become a saloon keeper. He got as far as Sarasota. He was red-faced and happy.

  “Do what you gotta,” said Ed.

  Ed was also fond of saying, “There are some things a man just can’t walk around,” “Suit yourself,” “I said I’d do it and that I full intend to do,” “I’m a peaceable man so let’s not have any trouble here.” He had always avoided “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” There are some clichés a man’s just gotta walk around.

  Two hours later, after finishing the paperback copy of a Larry McMurtry novel, Ames picked up the phone and dialed the number Earl Borg had given him.

  Pappas sat on the sofa listening to a CD of Dionysious Savopoulos’s Garden of the Fool. The singer was one of his favorites, had been since he first heard his voice on on a Greek radio station almost forty years ago in Philadelphia. Philadelphia was home, had been home. It was where the good memories were, at least many good memories plus the ghosts of many friends and enemies. Philadelphia, in Greek, means “City of Brotherly Love.” Savopoulos had been a kind of Greek combination of Frank Zappa and Bob Dylan with strong traditional Greek influences.

  Pappas wanted to squeeze the coffee cup, but if he did, it would break. One of the reasons for using the delicate cups was that they were so delicate. They reminded him that he should have a soft touch. Sometimes, however, he forgot.

  Loose ends. Holes. Sticky fingers. Weak sons. Weak knees. Mother is always right. Like Hell. If mothers were like Bernice, they were wrong at least half the time and when they were wrong, they were wrong big time. I mean, I’m telling you, big, big time. But a mother is a mother. This one could kill and bake and loved her family.

  Enough. Tomorrow he would personally take care of Posnitki. Their relationship was far too dangerous for Pappas and his family. The dead Posno would take to darkness behind the wall of death whatever information he had on Pappas. Posno would also take with him responsibility for all he had done in Pappas’s name. He would even take with him responsibility for crimes he didn’t commit. The door would be open.

  Pappas felt his legs bouncing nervously. He got up, cup still in hand, and began to sytros, the traditional dance move that was simply part of him, the dance move popularized in Zorba The Greek, Never On a Sunday and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Right foot out, arms up, circle counterclockwise in a shuffle-drag. The music wasn’t quite right, but the dance was of the blood and the song in Greek.

  It was a celebration now, a wake, a near-ecstasy. He smiled, eyes closed. He didn’t hear the door open or close, but he did sense a presence near him. He could smell his mother, sweet of honey, crisp of phyllo. He opened his eyes. She was dancing next to him and smiling.

  He imagined Posno next to him, dancing, smiling. Posno, his dark round face, bald head, deep eyes, heavy lips. Posno dressed in black knit shirt, slacks, shoes and jacket. Had they once danced like that? Pappas wasn’t certain.

  “Tomorrow,” Pappas said. “He will die.”

  “Tomorrow,” his mother repeated. “It will be easy.”

  “Yes,” he said, moving his shoulders to the distinct beat, but he knew it would not be easy.

  The SUV stayed inside the speed limit and out of the passing lane as it moved south on I-56. Three cars behind, Lew Fonesca knew where Victor Lee was heading. Lew had been down this highway before, before and after it had been widened.

  Lew had no change of clothes, no phone, no credit cards. He had three hundred and eighty-two dollars in his wallet, all of what was left of the cash he had brought with him to Chicago. It should be enough. It would have to be.

  He would have to call Angie and Franco as soon as he could, but that might not be soon. Victor Lee had stopped only once, at an Exxon station to fill his gas tank and buy something in a paper bag, probably a sandwich and a drink. Lew was parked at a pump four lanes over. He filled his own tank, went in to pay, looked out the window and saw Lee leaning back in his seat, rubbing a finger on the skin above his nose.

  Lew took a chance, got a handful of change, moved to a phone against the wall near a window and fed the slot keeping his eyes on Lee, who now sat up and turned on the ignition.

  “Massaccio Towing,” said Franco.

  “Franco, I’m following the guy who killed Catherine.”

  “Where are—?”

  “Franco, listen. I have to go. I’ll try to call tonight, but I won’t be back till tomorrow, maybe later.”

  “Lewie, McKinney is trying to reach you.”

  “I’ll call him when I can.”

  “Lewis, what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, and hung up.

  He hurried out of the Exxon, but he didn’t run.

  The direction they were going, the diploma, the university degree Lew had taken from Lee’s desk, pointed the way. Somewhere Lew had a similar diploma from the same institution. It too had been in a drawer, probably still was in Uncle Tonio’s warehouse.

  He turned on the radio, pushed buttons, flashing past Chicago FM stations he could still pick up, Spanish, Polish, Japanese, Swedish. Searching for a voice, any voice. He hesitated at a Greek station. Whatever song was playing made him hesitate and think of Pappas. He listened to the plaintive music that somehow felt right and left it on.

  On the seat next to him was Lee’s painting of the dark mountains of the city with the one spot of light.

  In two hours, they would be in Urbana-Champaign.

  Lew knew the way to I-56 and south through the corn fields, seed towers, bales of hay, dairy cows who had long ago stopped looking up at passing cars and noisy trucks, turnoffs for small towns, roadside diners with names like Mom’s, Eat Da Voo, Minnie & Zane’s.

  What was it Ames had said once when they were driving across Florida from the Gulf Coast to Miami on the Atlantic Coast? They had passed farms, horses, cows and penned-in hogs.

  “Government pays people not to raise hogs, not grow tobacco,” Ames had said. “Some people even buy farms just to not grow or raise something. You don’t and I don’t raise hogs or grow tobacco. Why doesn’t the government give us money? Or better, why don’t they stop giving money to people for not raising anything.”

  It was easy to remember this on-the-road exchange because it was the longest single speech Lew had ever heard from Ames McKinney. Lew hadn’t said anything after the speech. He wasn’t sure if Ames was or wasn’t joking. Lew didn’t want to find out. He did wonder what his friend would make of the massive fields on both sides of the highway.

  Lew picked up a Springfield FM radio station. An English professor who specialized in the history of the early eighteenth-century British novel at Sangamon State University was taking on the president of the United States, solemnly doing his part to condemn and execute the president for everything from how he liked his eggs prepared to what he was or wasn’t doing to stop the three-hundred-year-old battle between two small tribes in Gabon. The professor, with a reedy, excited voice, seemed to have memorized or was reading a list of offenses about which the professor had strong opinions. Lew listened through oil drilling in Alaska (the professor was against it), housing for the homeless (he was for it), saying Jesus in school or Wal-Mart (he was against it), abortion (he thought it was a good idea), intelligent design (he didn’t see much evidence for it).

  There was a call-in number. If he had a phone, Lew would have called in and asked if the man had any jokes he could share.

  Lew turned off the radio when Lee stopped at a gas station to refuel and pick up a cup of coffee and a prepackaged box of half-a-dozen glazed chocolate
donuts. Lew hurried to the men’s room, past the urinal and into the stall that had a door that closed but didn’t lock.

  Lew finished and started to get up. The outside door to the men’s room opened. Under the partition Lew could see Victor Lee’s legs as he moved to the urinal.

  “You’re driving the white Cutlas?” Lee asked flatly.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re following me.”

  “You?”

  “The SUV,” Lee said.

  “I’m driving down to Urbana,” Lew said. “Class reunion. I think I did see you on the road but …”

  “Forget it. Sorry,” said Lee, flushing the urinal.

  Lew waited till he heard the door close. Lee was going out the front door with his coffee and donuts when Lew moved to the refrigerator case, pulled out a sandwich wrapped tight in see-through plastic, grabbed a bottle of vanilla Diet Coke and pulled out his wallet to pay the skinny sullen girl behind the bulletproof glass window. Lee was just pulling out of the lot. Lew thought he could see the man holding up a donut.

  “No protein,” Lew said.

  “Fresh out,” the girl said, brushing back her stringy straw-colored hair. “Had some last week I think.”

  “Some … ?”

  “Protein.”

  She handed him his change.

  “I was talking about the man who just left,” Lew said.

  “Your friend, the Jap guy?”

  “He’s not my friend and he’s Chinese.”

  “Same difference,” she said, sliding the change to Lew through the two-inch gap at the bottom of the glass plate. “All gonna get our jobs. Indians, Japs, Chinks. We’re fuckin’ obsolete.”

  She looked at him, arms folded, waiting to see if he would agree.

  Lew shrugged. Lee’s car was out of sight and he was probably two donuts to the wind.

  “Got nothing against them,” the girl said, brushing her hair back again. “Sister’s husband is one of ’em. Good guy. Works in a tire shop in Chester. Oh, shit, almost forgot. Chink guy with the donuts and no protein told me to give you this.”

  She picked up a small lined sheet that had been torn from a notebook and slid it to him. It had been written quickly, was hard to read: Boneyard Tavern tonight.