Stuart Kaminsky - Always Say Goodbye

Milt Holiger had told Lew that he and two Assistant State Attorneys had gone through all of the files in Catherine’s two cabinets and the contents of the drawers of her office desk. Nothing was surprising in them, nothing about an upcoming case that might lead to someone running her down. Lew believed him. Milt was good, but Lew was another set of eyes, another history.

“The active files,” Milt had said, “were turned over to other lawyers in the department. The closed-case files have been crated and stored.”

Lew decided that in the morning he would move again, go through the motions, do the one thing he did well, find people, let them talk. He got up. He hadn’t unpacked anything from his duffel bag. He didn’t intend to. He unzipped the blue cloth bag, took out clean socks, underwear, a folded white button-down shirt, a folded blue shirt, a rolled-up black T-shirt with the faded words THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE, and a Ziploc plastic bag containing his toothbrush, toothpaste and disposable razor. He laid them out on one side of the bed next to his zippered denim jacket.

Teresa had a small bathroom inside her room, no bath, just a shower. Angie had put out a pair of towels on the sink. Ten minutes later Lew turned out the light and lay in bed, looking up at the ceiling at the swaying shadows of the branches of the tree outside of Teresa’s window.

Just before he fell asleep a name came to him: Rebecca Strum.

A thousand miles south in Florida, the hurricane season had begun.

Lew was up early, the sun warm across his eyes. He covered his face with his arms, but thoughts, names, memories cometed through his mind with fleeting images he almost recognized. This time he wasn’t dealing with someone else’s missing husband, wife, mother or child. He wasn’t losing himself in someone else’s loss. This Chicago pain was all his.

Dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved, reasonably ironed blue shirt with a collar that could have used a couple of stays, Lew tucked his Cubs cap on his head, put on his white socks and sneakers, checked for the first signs of daily stubble on his cheeks and neck and looked at himself in Teresa’s mirror.

Catherine said that he looked particularly good in blue shirts. She seemed to mean it. He didn’t think he had looked particularly good when she had said it and he certainly didn’t think so this morning.

Lew put on his denim jacket.

Franco was sitting in his overstuffed chair in the living room. The chair had been sat into exhaustion by three generations of Massaccio and Fonesca men. Franco was drinking coffee from a white mug with a black-and-white photograph on it of the DiMaggio brothers-Joe, Vince and Dominick-in uniform, arms around one another’s necks, grinning the toothy DiMaggio grin.

“Hey, Lewis,” he said, getting up. “Angie had a client coming into the office early. Coffee’s on. Want some eggs, something? How about I put some butter in a pan and fry you up some spaghetti and meatballs?”

Lew checked the wooden clock on the wall, Roman numerals. It was a little after seven. Lots of time. The imagined smell of a recooked dinner jolted him with the memory of his standing over a black iron skillet and preparing almost the same breakfast Franco had just offered.

“That breakfast I smell?” Catherine had asked, wandering in, still in a blue-and-white-striped nightshirt.

She stood behind him at the stove, kissing his cheek and looking down at the sizzling skillet.

“Smells good,” she said.

This was a few weeks before his wife had been killed.

Something about the way she spoke, the lack of a morning hug, the surface-only kiss, came back to him. Was he imagining it? Should he have said something?

In his mind’s eye Lew looked over his shoulder at Catherine who, cup of black coffee in front of her, sat at the tiny kitchen table. She drank slowly, looking out the window at the morning traffic. The morning was overcast. Normally, the downtown Chicago skyline was a panorama in front of them. Not that morning. She ran her fingers through her disheveled hair. Normally, she turned on the television on the counter to watch the morning news. She did not turn on the television set. That morning had been forgotten until now.

“No, thanks,” Lew said to Franco. “Just coffee.”

“Want the last of Norman Bates’s mom’s pastries? We saved it for you.”

“Sure.”

An hour and a half later Franco and Lew were at the law offices of Glicken, Santoro and Turnbull. The offices were on LaSalle Street in the heart of the Loop, fifteenth floor. Franco had parked the tow truck in a four-story garage two blocks away where the hourly rate was eight dollars an hour for off-the-street and six dollars an hour for daily customers. Franco would be charged neither. He knew the night manager and the day manager who steered breakdown calls his way and got a finder’s fee.

Lew tucked his blue Cubs cap into his pocket.

The large, gray-carpeted reception area had six black leather armchairs and a reception desk with a telephone, computer, pad of lined yellow paper and three pens ready for the day. On the wall were large side-by-side color photographs of the partners smiling confidently. Glicken was dark, curly-haired and definitely Jewish. Turnbull was Black. Claude Santoro was either Hispanic or Italian.

Lew never found out.

Santoro’s name was on the door on their right in the small waiting area. His door was slightly open. The lights were on. No voices.

Lew knocked and then knocked again. Franco reached past him and pushed the door all the way open. Santoro was seated behind the desk in front of them. His eyes were open. He seemed lost in thought. There was a black hole over his right eye, another in his neck and a third just above his mouth. All were ringed by blood.

“He’s fucking dead,” said Franco.

Lew said nothing. Blood had oozed out of the bullet holes and dried up.

Franco reached for the phone on the desk in front of the dead man.

“No,” Lew said.

Franco jerked his hand back.

“Hey, Lewie, come on. We’ve got to call the cops.”

“Don’t touch anything.”

“Okay.”

Lew sat across the desk from Santoro.

“We call the police right?” Franco said.

Santoro’s eyes were open, fixed on Lew’s face. They were staring each other down. Santoro would win. He was dead.

“Lewie, you all right?”

“Yes.”

“We call the police, right?” he said.

Lew didn’t move.

“Or we get the hell out of here fast. Lewis, come on. Lewie, what’s going on here?”

What was going on was that there was no way of getting around the truth. If Santoro’s death was not connected to Catherine’s, Lew faced a very large coincidence.

He got up and moved around the desk behind Santoro.

“You can wait outside,” he said, looking at the top of the desk.

“You think I want out because of the dead guy?” Franco asked, shaking his head. “I’ve seen dead guys, kids on the roads like roadkill. I’m a tow-truck driver, remember?”

“I remember,” Lew said.

“You want help?” he asked, looking at the closed door to Santoro’s office.

“No,” Lew said.

There was a fresh, lined, yellow legal pad with a pen next to it. The top page was blank. There was an empty in box, an aluminum football with a clock imbedded in it, facing Santoro. Next to it was a fresh box of Kleenex with a red wood cover. At the right was a flat, black cell phone holder-charger. There was no phone. Franco mumbled something to himself. Lew took a small stack of tissues.

“You know what your sister’ll do to me if we get arrested?”

“No.”

“I don’t either,” said Franco, clearly frustrated. “But I won’t like it. I know that.”