Always Say Goodbye: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (4 page)

Read Always Say Goodbye: A Lew Fonesca Mystery Online

Authors: Stuart M. Kaminsky

BOOK: Always Say Goodbye: A Lew Fonesca Mystery
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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.”
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 pillows 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.
If it weren’t for his search for Catherine’s killer, he would have darkened the room, taken off his shoes, gotten into bed, curled into a ball and slept for a day, a week, forever.
On the bed was the thick envelope. He was reaching for it when there was a knock at the door.
“You sleepin’?” asked Franco.
“Not yet.”
Franco opened the door. In his left hand was a bag of potato chips. He popped a handful into his mouth. A single orange-red crumb floated to the floor.
“Lewie, we’re worried about you. Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it. You missing it, Lewie?”
“You got that from
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
.”
“Doesn’t make it wrong. There’s a lot of truth in movies if you really listen.”
He held out the bag.
“Instant energy,” he said.
Lew nodded.
“Angie’s making dinner. It’ll be ready whenever you want. Want some?”
Franco held out the bag. Lew took two. Franco stood there chewing and Lew sat there chewing.
“Okay, so we’re goin’ to find this guy Pappas?”
“Yes,” Lew said.
“Say, listen, Angie’s worried about you. We run into
trouble looking, I’ve got guys who’ll be there whenever you give the word. Billy Bavitti, Marty Glickman, Tony Danitori. Guys you know.”
“Thanks, Franco. If we need them …”
“You’ll tell me. Want me to leave you what’s left in the bag?”
Lew took the bag from him and he left. He sat eating potato chip crumbs and looking at the envelope. When the bag held nothing more to search for, he picked up the envelope and opened it, pulling out a stack of reports, leaving salty grease smudges. The unmarked envelope had been dropped off by Milt Holiger who, like Lew, had been an investigator for the Cook County State Attorney’s Office. Catherine had been Milt’s favorite prosecutor. Unlike Lew, Milt was still there. He had done a lot of work for Catherine. Milt and Lew were working friends.
Lew had called only two people when he decided to come back to Chicago, his sister and Milt, whose help he needed. By giving him what was in the envelope and violating the confidentiality of the State Attorney’s Office, Milt had taken a big chance. He and his wife Ruthie had a son in his second year at Northwestern and a daughter who had been accepted by Vanderbilt.
The only question Milt had asked Lew was, “Will this help you find who killed Catherine?”
Lew’s right hand had a slight tremor, real or imagined. He did not want to be here. He would find the person who had killed Catherine. That would close one door behind him but the slow circling ball of depression would stay safely inside him. And if he somehow managed to lose it, he was afraid he would lose what he had left of Catherine.
The copy of a brief, neatly typed Illinois traffic accident
report was on top of the pile. The investigating officer, a detective named Elliot Cooledge, had gotten the call at 3 P.M. and arrived at the scene, Lake Shore Drive and Monroe, at 3:22 P.M. Traffic was backed up. Catherine’s body was on the side of the drive. Cooledge talked to two people standing over her. Both the man and the woman who had been witnesses stated that it had been a hit-and-run driver. Cooledge called the office of Emergency Communications and requested a Major Accident Investigation Unit be dispatched immediately.
The next report was by a Major Accident Investigation Unit detective named Victoria Dragonitsa. It was nine-pages long. Distilled, the report said that the hit-and-run driver was in a small red sports car, probably foreign. Both the witnesses agreed that the car appeared to be deliberately targeting the victim who, they thought, saw it coming a second or two before it struck her. The red sports car speeded up after hitting Catherine. Her body bounced and thudded to the side of the drive. Neither witness had clearly seen the driver, but both, in spite of the sun on the windshield and the fact that they were watching a woman dead or dying, said there was only one person in the car. The driver was thin, not very tall and wearing a baseball cap. The woman witness, Eileen Burke, said the driver was wearing glasses. The man, Alvin Fulmer, said he saw no glasses. Both witnesses said Catherine had not been carrying anything other than the black purse flung over her shoulder.
Lew put the report down on the bed on top of the traffic accident report. The grease-stained envelope lay next to the slowly growing pile.
Why was Catherine heading toward their apartment building at three in the afternoon on a weekday? Lew and his wife both usually worked till about six, got something to eat in the Loop, walked home together talking about the real and false
anger, real and false tears of people who had compiled a trail of evidence that proved they had stolen, robbed, beaten, maimed or murdered. They tended to agree on movies and television shows. The night before she died they had argued over the film
Sea of Love
. For Lew, Al Pacino could do no wrong. Catherine had punctuated that conversation with the word
ham
. Their voices had not been raised as she set the table and he boiled the water for the spaghetti. The contents of a jar of Prego sauce was heating in a metal pot. It started as smiling banter, went flat, serious and determined as they dug into the pasta and the argument. Then, when it looked as if it would burst and hurt, Catherine has smiled and said, “How about an armistice and some more Italian bread?”
What could he give and who could he give it to to relive that night, any night? He could find her killer and pray to his imagination, but that wouldn’t be enough, not nearly enough.
His own parents had never fought, at least not in front of Lew and Angie. At dinner, both of them had an unwritten list of things to say at dinner. Most of the things were about aunts, uncles, cousins on both sides of the family. Almost all of the conversation came from Lew’s mother while his father ate and nodded, grunted with understanding and smiled at the right times. Lew’s father had eaten, torn pieces of bread from the loaf, and looked tired. Was that long ago?
If Catherine had been going home for the day, why didn’t she tell Lew and why wasn’t she carrying her briefcase?
Two more documents to go. He skipped the next one and went to the twelve-page printout he had requested. It included all the automobile violations on Lake Shore Drive that day between 2 P.M. and 5 P.M. The printout covered everything from Wilson Avenue North to 61st Street.
The listing of Catherine’s killing was on the fifth page. It
was no longer than any of the others: hit-and-run vehicular death. 3 P.M. Victim: woman, white, Catherine Fonesca, thirty-five. Vehicle: red sports car. Last seen heading south.
Lew flipped through the report, looking for a red sports car or even a red car in one of the notations other than the one about Catherine. There was one listing that might be a match and the timing was right. At 3:18 P.M. near the 55th Street exit in Hyde Park, a speeding red sports car brushed its passenger side against a green Toyota driven by a woman named Rebecca Strum, eighty, who almost lost control.

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