Always Say Goodbye lf-5

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Yeah,” agreed Stavros. “Posno goes down, our father is safe, and Dimi and I head for California.”

  “A one-eyed actor?” said Franco.

  “Go,” said Tonio, helping the groaning Stavros to his feet. “And do not come back. You hear what I’m saying?”

  Franco lifted the still-gagging Dimitri and stood him up.

  Stavros and Dimitri nodded that they understood. Tonio picked up Stavros’s fallen gun and handed it to Lew who now had two guns he didn’t want.

  “How did you lose your eye?” Lew said.

  Stavros brushed his hair back with his hand.

  “Told you, Posno.”

  “When, how, the story,” Lew said.

  “Okay, Dimi and I went with our father to a doctor’s appointment in Cicero. Afternoon. Dimi was the driver. I was the shotgun. That’s what our father called me. I didn’t have a shotgun. I had a gun in the holster under my jacket and another in my pocket. Posno could come anywhere, anytime, our father always said. Watch, be ready.”

  “We weren’t ready,” said Dimitri.

  “We parked in front of the office building,” said Stavros. “Pop went in. Dimi stayed behind the wheel. Street looked empty. I got out and stood by the door where I could keep an eye on things. Only then I had two eyes. Maybe five minutes later, three shots.”

  “Maybe four,” said Dimitri.

  “Maybe four,” Stavros agreed. “Four shots from I don’t know where. I felt an itch I had to scratch under my eye but I pulled out both guns and started to shoot. I didn’t know where I was shooting. Even if I did, I’m a rotten shot and by then I only had the one eye.”

  “You see the shooter?” Lew asked Dimitri.

  “No,” he answered. “I ducked down. Almost got killed. Stavros put two shots through the windshield.”

  “Couldn’t see. Couldn’t shoot all that straight even when I had two eyes,” Stavros said.

  “Then?” Lew prompted.

  Franco and Uncle Tonio listened and kept an eye on the brothers.

  “Pop came out,” said Dimitri. “Heard the shots. Pop had his gun out. He saw Stavros on his knees, his hand over his eye, blood coming down. Pop went nuts. He was looking around like a looney. I think he said, ‘Where?’”

  “He said, ‘Where,’” Stavros confirmed.

  “So Pop looks at me,” Dimitri went on. “I point ahead of the car. Pop goes running that way. I get out of the car and said something.”

  “You said, ‘Stavros, stop shooting at me,’” said Stavros.

  “Your father?” Lew said.

  “Turned into an alley,” said Dimitri. “Couldn’t see him. Shots. Pop comes back, gun in his pocket and says, ‘Posno.’”

  “They put me in the car and took me to the hospital,” said Stavros.

  “What does Posno look like?” Lew asked.

  “Like a bald Sylvester Stallone with a beard,” said Stavros. “Broken nose, white scar on his chin. Doesn’t smile. Pop says he doesn’t have the beard some of the time.”

  “Wait,” said Tonio. “How’d you two get in here?”

  “Broke a window in back,” said Stavros.

  “Herman, how much is a window?” asked Tonio.

  “One hundred and fifty would be fair,” said Herman.

  “I’m not trying to be fair,” said Tonio. “I deserve a small profit for having my place of business violated.” He looked at Dimitri and Stavros. “Two hundred and fifty dollars.”

  With fifty dollars from his brother added to the two hundred he had in his wallet, Stavros came up with the cash and handed it to Herman.

  “Now?” asked Franco.

  Lew nodded.

  Franco and Uncle Tonio marched the wounded brothers through the warehouse and out onto the loading dock. Lew followed, a gun in each hand. Stavros and Dimitri walked wounded across the shipping dock, went down the stairs, got in their car and drove away.

  “I’ll take those,” said Herman.

  Lew placed the guns in Herman’s hands.

  “They should go to the police to be checked against the bullet that killed a lawyer named Claude Santoro,” Lew said.

  “Our fingerprints are all over them,” said Franco.

  Herman tucked one of the guns in his pocket, took the other, disassembled it, looked down the barrel. He did the same thing with the second gun. The entire process took him no more than two minutes.

  “Neither of these guns has ever been fired,” Herman said, handing the weapons to Tonio who looked at Lew.

  “Want me to put them someplace safe?” he asked.

  Lew nodded.

  “You want that sandwich?” asked Tonio.

  “Sure,” Lew said.

  A few minutes later, seated behind the desk on the same wooden swivel chair Lew remembered as a kid, Uncle Tonio told them about the time Sam Giancanna had bumped into him when Tonio was coming out of Donellini’s.

  “I fell on my ass,” said Tonio, holding a potato chip up to the light. “Guy with Giancanna picks me up. Giancanna apologizes. I know who he is. I say, ‘Sure, no harm.’ Giancanna nods. Guy with him reaches under his jacket. I figure they’re going to make me full of holes. Guy hands me a bunch of twenty-dollar bills folded over. I thought about handing the money back.”

  “Not a good idea,” Franco said.

  “No,” Tonio agreed. “I pocketed the money. Took Herman back to Donellini’s the next night and spent it.”

  “ Vitello Picata and pasta,” said Herman, who sat on a wicker chair that would have dropped a heavier man, like Franco, into a comic pratfall.

  “Think there’s a fixed rate for everything?” asked Franco, chewing on a sausage sandwich. “I mean like this Posno. You know, like four or five thousand for a broken arm or leg? Maybe a hundred thousand to kill you?”

  “Twenty thousand,” said Herman.

  “And that’s on the high side,” added Tonio. “You want it done nonprofessionally, you can get it for less than five hundred dollars, a crackhead for less. A good pro, you get to choose your method and whether you want it to look like suicide. Want something exotic, you pay a price, you get it.”

  “Can opener,” said Herman.

  “Right,” said Tonio, remembering. “We read this book by-”

  “John Lutz,” Herman completed.

  “Right,” said Tonio. “Guy kills another guy with a can opener.”

  “How?” asked Franco, his cheek bulging with the last of his sandwich. “Wait. I don’t want to know.”

  “Lewis,” said Tonio. “You got someone you want killed?”

  “No,” Lew said, getting up. “I’ve got someone I want to talk to.”

  “Who?” asked Franco, rising.

  “Rebecca Strum.”

  5

  May be you should call her, be sure she’s home,” said Franco as they headed south down Lake Shore Drive.

  “We’ll try,” Lew said.

  The phone beeped as they passed Soldier Field. Franco picked it up and handed it to Lew.

  “Milt,” Holiger said. “Lewis, I’ll give you the ruthlessly edited version of what I’ve got. Can’t do more now.”

  Lew could hear street sounds behind him.

  “Santoro, the dead lawyer. Can’t find a connection. Never represented Pappas or Posnitki. Never faced them as witnesses in court as far as I can tell. I’ll keep digging.”

  “No Posno?”

  “Name came up on a couple reports, a few newspaper articles, on Web sites. Just the name. No arrests. No convictions. Same photograph of him appears on three Web sites.”

  Milt described Posno. The description matched the one Stavros had given. He gave Lew a Web site address. Lew wrote it in his notebook.

  “Thanks, Milt.”

  “Lew, the police want to talk to you and Franco. They have you on video at Santoro’s building and one of Santoro’s partners says he saw the two of you outside their office. You’re not suspects. Santoro was shot long before you got there. But you left the scene.�
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  “We called 911.”

  “Right,” said Milt. “Might want to call the detective handling the case, Alan Dupree.”

  “Little Duke,” Lew said.

  “Yeah. Know him?”

  “Yes,” Lew said.

  “I’ve got to go,” said Milt. “Call me later.”

  He hung up. Lew held the phone in his hand and told Franco what Milt had said. Then he pulled out his notebook, found a number and punched it in. He asked for Detective Dupree. A woman came on.

  “Your name?” she asked.

  He told her.

  “Please hold,” she said.

  Lew held, heard a double click and Little Duke’s raspy voice. Dupree was black, about six-two and one hundred and eighty-five pounds. His body was lean and hard, his hair short and curly, and he would have been handsome if it hadn’t been for the pink raised scar that jutted from the right corner of his mouth to below his chin line.

  Little Duke was a workaholic, a cop who doled out street-corner and bar room justice. Crime in his area was a personal affront. Dupree had been the principal detective in four of Catherine’s cases. Lew had done the legwork and research on the cases for the State Attorney’s Office.

  “Lewis Fonesca?”

  “Alan Dupree.”

  “We need to talk,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “Where do you want me to be anytime after four?”

  He told Lew and added, “You’ve got another guy with you. Bring him too.”

  “I’ll bring him,” Lew said.

  Lew looked at Franco who shrugged. Little Duke had hung up.

  They found Rebecca Strum’s apartment building in Hyde Park about four blocks from the University of Chicago campus. Franco parked illegally, turned on the flashing red light.

  “Nobody tows a tow truck,” he said. His mantra.

  No doorman. Neat, clean, no-nonsense empty lobby with lots of glass and no framed prints on the walls. There were three black benches with no backs.

  Next to the elevator was a telephone and a list of tenants with a number to punch in. The elevator slid open and two people came out. The man was lean, short, a pink-faced man wearing denim pants and a red-and-brown flannel shirt. The woman was tall, young and very pretty with smooth black hair. She wore denim pants and a blue sweater. She towered over him.

  As the pair passed, the man, excitedly and with much hand movement, said, “If Samuels really meant what he said, if he followed through to the logical, the only conclusion, he would realize that his entire premise had been toppled.”

  “Victor,” the young woman said patiently, “that would not be the only conclusion.”

  They had paused at the entry door. Franco motioned Lew to join him in the elevator.

  “All right,” said the man with resignation. “You’re the professor. Explain.”

  Lew got into the elevator just as the woman said,

  “It’s the Posno fallacy.”

  Franco reached over to hold the closing elevator doors. Lew stepped out. The couple had already gone outside. Franco and and Lew hurried after them.

  They were standing on the sidewalk, facing each other. He was talking again, arguing over whether Mahler was superior to Bruckner.

  “You said something about Posno,” Lew said.

  “Yes,” the woman said. “You think Posno was right?”

  The man looked at Franco and plunged his right hand into his pocket.

  “Who is Posno?” Lew asked.

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, enlighten me.”

  “Posno,” she said, “is a maniacally ambitious, talented economics professor at Sanahee University, a self-proclaimed expert on not only micro-and macroeconomics, but politics, philosophy and astrophysics.”

  “Andrej Posnitki,” the young man said, eyes on Franco. “Grad students and faculty call him Posno to evoke a name that suggests a mythical monster.”

  “Grendel, Cronos, Scylla,” she said.

  “Where can we find him?” Lew asked.

  “Library,” said the man.

  “Which library?” Lew asked.

  “Almost any library,” said the woman. “Andrej Posnitki, Posno, is a character in Campbell Restin’s novel More Fool That.”

  “Won the Ledge Award, the Millman Award and was a strong contender for the National Book Award in 1978,” the woman said.

  The man and woman moved down the sidewalk. His voice rose with animation with the name Bruckner.

  “What the hell’s going on, Lewis?” asked Franco.

  “We’re looking for someone who borrowed a name,” Lew said. “Or a mythical monster.”

  The corridor on the eighth floor smelled of Lysol and gardenias. The carpeting was gray, the walls muted white. They moved to Rebecca Strum’s door.

  “I don’t believe this, Lewie. Anyone can just go up an elevator and knock at Rebecca Strum’s door. She’s…”

  “Famous,” Lew said, using the brass door knocker and stepping back. The door opened almost instantly.

  Rebecca Strum, no more than five feet tall, hair thin and white, skin clear, a thin book in her left hand, stood looking at them with a smile that made Lew think she knew why they had come to her door.

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Lewis Fonesca. This is Franco Massaccio. You had a car accident four years ago, a car bumped into you on Lake Shore Drive.”

  “I remember,” she said, pulling up the drooping sleeve of her olive-colored sweater.

  “About ten minutes before that my wife was killed on Lake Shore by a hit-and-run driver in a red sports car.”

  “I’m very sorry for your loss,” she said. “Red sports car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come in.”

  They followed her into the living room. The windows looked out toward downtown Chicago. The room was neat, uncluttered, only one picture on the wall, a large blown-up photograph of a harbor surrounded by tree-covered hills. The rest of the wall space was lined with shelves filled with books evenly lined up, most of them hardcovered. Facing the window was a desk nestled between two bookcases. On the desk was a pad of yellow lined paper, about half the pages tucked under it, and an open laptop computer. Nothing else.

  They sat on three identical chairs padded with green pillows and matching arms. Rebecca Strum kept the thin book in her lap and said, “Coffee?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “No,” echoed Franco, looking at the shelves of books.

  “Can you tell me again what happened?” Lew asked.

  “It was more than four years ago,” she said. “Why now?”

  “I’ve been asleep,” Lew said.

  She nodded in understanding and said, “The driver was a man, Asian, probably Chinese, about forty-five. His eyes were moist. I think he had been crying. He may have been drinking, taking drugs or suffering from a mental disorder or possibly a trauma. His driving was erratic, weaving back and forth. He… never mind.”

  “What?” Lew asked.

  “The look on his face was very much like yours right now, the same look of grief and mourning of people who have had their pretenses, illusions, masks, torn from their faces. Gaunt, haunted in despair, a legion of brothers marching to hell.”

  “You wrote that,” Franco said.

  “Yes.”

  “ The Dirt Floor, right,” said Franco. “That’s the only thing I memorized and I wasn’t trying. My wife is the real fan. No fan isn’t the right word. Respecter, admirer?”

  Rebecca Strum nodded and smiled.

  “In the window of his car the red sports car,” she said, “there was a yellow-and-red parking permit about the size of a sheet of typing paper cut in half.”

  “Did you tell the police this?” Lew asked.

  “I didn’t remember till several months ago when I saw a permit on a car exactly like it parked on 51st Street. I didn’t think the police would be interested in a minor traffic accident after four years. Had I known your wife had bee
n killed by this car, I would have called the police. Not a sin but a misdemeanor of omission. ‘Had I but known’ is the historical cry of people who do not accept their responsibility, their guilt. How can you heal if you don’t accept that you are ill? The Germans in the town next to the concentration camp where my family died and I… I’m sorry.”

  She placed her book next to her on the arm of her chair and tugged at her sleeve. She had pulled it back just enough for Lew to see the first three numbers tattooed on her right wrist.

  “Now, may I anticipate your next question?” she asked. “First, yes, I would recognize the man in the red sports car. I told this to the detective who talked to me after the accident. Second, the parking pass in the window of the car on Fifty-first was for Mentic Pharmaceuticals in Aurora. Now, I’m sorry but I must finish rereading this today,” she said, putting a hand on the book. “Dante’s Inferno. I’m having a discussion of it on campus tomorrow with some graduate students who will understand it but won’t feel it. It’s not their fault. Have you read it?”

  “No,” Lew said.

  Franco nodded no.

  “You might want to,” she said, looking at Lew. “It’s about the poet Dante’s descent into Hell and Purgatory and then to Heaven.”

  She looked at the book and then at her shelves.

  “At lectures, discussions,” she said, “I ask people if they have read Dante, Moby Dick or War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, The Iliad, Sister Carrie. The answers are always the same. They say they have read them all. When asked to tell me something about the book, it becomes clear that the reading was far in the past and forgotten and perhaps they have deluded themselves into believing that they have read the classics. They feel guilty. They vow to themselves to immediately read something by Thomas Mann. You understand?” she said.

  Lew nodded. Franco said, “Yes.”

  “It is human nature,” she said, “to believe you have learned from the past, that you remember it when, in fact, you must make the effort to keep the past alive. I did it again, didn’t I?”

  “What?” asked Franco.

  “I lectured to you.”

  “No,” said Franco.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ve been doing it long enough to recognize my somber certitude when I hear it.”