Stuart Kaminsky - Always Say Goodbye

Franco’s near panic had been transformed into quiet resignation. He would not be surprised if the killer burst through the door, guns in both hands, firing away. He wouldn’t have been happy either, but he wouldn’t be surprised.

There were four desk drawers. Lew opened and went through them, flipping papers with the tissues. Then he went through Santoro’s pockets the same way. A little more than four hundred dollars in his wallet. Lew put the wallet back.

He wanted to touch Santoro’s shoulder. Then he paused and looked down at the dead man.

“Lewis, you okay?”

“Yes, let’s go.”

“I can live with that,” Franco said, moving ahead of Lew to the door. “You find anything?”

Lew reached past him, opened the door with the tissues and wiped down the knob. Then he realized that while he was erasing their fingerprints, he might well be removing those of the person who had killed Santoro.

They walked past the reception area, into the hallway outside and then to their right, back toward the elevator.

“Find anything on him?”

It wasn’t what Lew had found, but what he hadn’t found. Santoro’s phone was gone. He had no appointment or notebook in his pockets. Whoever had killed him had taken any phone and notebook he might have had.

“No,” Lew said.

“Stairs?”

“No.”

There were surveillance cameras in the building’s lobby, at the entrance and even one in the wooden mesh grid of the elevator’s ceiling. They were on tape. That would be fine. If Lew were right, the tape and medical examiner would prove Lew and Franco had entered the building at least eight hours or more after Santoro was dead. That wouldn’t stop the police from having questions.

The elevator pinged and the doors slid open almost silently. In front of them stood a large black man in his forties. He was wearing a blue suit and matching tie and carrying a briefcase. He looked exactly like his photograph on the wall of the reception room of Santoro’s law firm.

The man was Turnbull of Glicken, Santoro and Turnbull, or, to be more current, Glicken and Turnbull.

He took Lew and Franco in and moved toward the offices Lew and Franco had left seconds earlier. Franco and Lew stepped in and Lew hit the Lobby button.

They were only a few blocks from the County Office Building. Lew headed toward it with Franco at his side, looking back over his left shoulder.

“I’m not gonna ask,” said Franco.

People hurried to their offices or jobs serving the people going to their offices. Lew could tell by how they were dressed, by the color of their skin, which were the served and which the servers. Lew was definitely a server.

They stopped on the broad stone courtyard in front of the building where Lew had worked, where Catherine had worked. Too many demons were being faced too quickly and he had been in the city for less than twenty-four hours.

Franco looked at the three pay phones in front of the building and then at Lew who nodded.

“Just say, ‘Attorney Claude Santoro murdered in his office’ and hang up.”

Franco moved toward the phones to call 911.

I had a dream last night,” Franco said as they watched the doors, waiting for Milt Holiger to come out.

Lew had used Franco’s cell phone to call Milt and ask him to come down. Holiger had said he would be down in a minute. About five minutes had passed.

Lew’s body had changed. Four years in Florida had made a cool Chicago October morning feel like the inside of an ice-cream truck. The dead man they had found a few blocks away contributed more than a little frost.

“You want to hear it?”

“Sure,” Lew said without looking at Franco.

“Craziest damn… anyways, you and me and Ange were watching the Bears playing the Eagles. Bears have the ball. Got it?”

“Got it,” Lew said, eyes fixed on the glass doors.

“Bears quarterback gets the snap, steps back, throws. Ball sails right into the hands of the referee. Ref cradles it like a pro and starts chugging it toward the goal like Thomas Jones. The other refs block for him. Touchdown. Refs celebrate. Crowd goes nuts. Now what the hell does that mean?”

“It’s not just the good guys and the bad guys you have to watch out for, you’ve got to keep your eyes on the peacekeepers because they might steal the ball.”

Franco looked at Lew who didn’t look back.

“You think?” he asked.

“No,” said Lew.

“I’m talking a little nuts like this because of the dead guy, right?” asked Franco.

“Probably.”

“You feel…?”

“Yes,” said Lew, eyes still focused on the door.

“You don’t show it,” Franco said.

“No.”

“It doesn’t mean you don’t feel it, right?” said Franco. “Yeah, I know. I sound like Angie.”

Milt Holiger came through the door. He plunged his hands into his pants pockets. Lew remembered that Milt’s hands and feet were always cold.

“Heredity,” Milt had once explained. “Father, brothers, uncle. We all wear socks in bed.”

Milt was stocky at forty and working to maintain and nurture his still controllable belly. Lots of brown hair with perfect sideburns, Milt looked like the generic weary television series police captain or lieutenant whose shoulders were stooped from hunkering down to ward off the blows of word and fist.

Milt dodged a pair of arm-gesturing lawyer types and walked to his right.

“That him?” asked Franco.

“Yes.”

“Where’s he goin’? Doesn’t he see us?”

“He sees us. He’s dropping bread crumbs,” Lew said, following Holiger through the morning crowd.

Three blocks later they joined Holiger at a table in the rear of a dark narrow inauthentic deli that served neither good Jewish or Italian food. Holiger looked at Franco.

“My sister’s husband,” Lew said. “Franco.”

They shook hands. The morning crowd had dwindled down to six customers besides the three of them. The place smelled as if it had been fried in something sweet and fatty.

“Better off not having people in the office see us together,” Milt said. “I give you information, someone connects the wires and I’ve got trouble.”

“You mean you can’t help anymore?” Lew asked.

“Who said that?”

He put his right hand to his chest. A heavy-legged waitress in a uniform that had once been yellow but now was a forlorn amber placed cups of coffee in front of them. They all ordered toasted onion bagels with cream cheese.

“Okay,” said Milt, picking up his cup. “What do you need?”

“You’re sure there was nothing in the things Catherine left at the office that might make someone want to kill her?”

“Nothing,” said Milt. “Of course you never know, but nothing, no secret deposition, overlooked piece of evidence, name of a bombshell witness, nothing.”

“Active cases?” Lew asked.

Franco was working on his second cup of coffee, his eyes moving from Lew to Milt to the front door of the deli behind the gray shadow where they sat.

Lew, I-”

“I know,” Lew said. “But things changed about an hour ago; a lawyer named Claude Santoro was found murdered in his office on LaSalle Street.”

“Excuse me,” said Franco, getting up. “I’m going to the men’s.”

When Franco was gone, Lew asked, “You’ve heard of Santoro?”

“Not a criminal defense lawyer far as I know,” said Milt. “Want me to check him out?”

“Yes.”

He took out his notebook and wrote.

“Andrej Posnitki, Posno,” Lew said.

Milt wrote and said, “Rings no bells. What else?”

“John Pappas,” Lew said.

“Maybe.”

“He’s the son of Bernice Pappas, father of Dimitri Pappas and Stavros Pappas.”