Stuart Kaminsky - Always Say Goodbye

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.”

“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.”