Stuart Kaminsky - Always Say Goodbye

“Lew? You there?” asked Milt.

“I… yes,” Lew said.

“I’ll call you when I have something.”

“Thanks, Milt.”

The call ended.

“You see that clown back there?” Franco asked.

“Whiteface, tufts of red hair, down-turned painted mouth, cigar.”

“Huh? I meant the clown in the SUV who cut us off. You okay, Lewis?”

“Sure.”

But Lew knew he was decidedly not okay.

Little Duke Dupreesat across from Lew and Franco in a window booth at the Tender Restaurant on 76th Street. Little Duke had parked where he could see both his car and Franco Massaccio’s tow truck through the window.

They drank coffee, ate the Tender Restaurant’s famous oversized chocolate coffee donuts. The donuts were brought to the table by a powerful-looking black man who walked with a limp.

The Tender had been Little Duke’s suggestion, a very strong suggestion. People were talking in other booths and at tables. Neat, clean, good food, the Tender was an eye-blinding contrast to the South Side bars in the neighborhood Little Duke had roamed for more than two decades, keeping the peace when he could, showing that he was the sheriff carrying the biggest gun and reputation, most of it myth, some of it true. Lew had seen him in reaction and action twice.

Little Duke Dupree dressed the part, black pressed slacks, black shoes, a black turtleneck shirt under a black cashmere sports jacket.

Franco and Lew were the only white people in the Tender. The same was true of the pedestrian traffic outside.

“Santoro,” said Detective Little Duke.

It wasn’t a question. It was a name put on the table for Franco’s and Lew’s reaction.

“We didn’t kill him,” said Franco, huge half-eaten donut in hand.

Little Duke looked at Lew and put both hands flat on the table.

“You could have gotten around the cameras in the building, come in during the night, got away. Then you could have come back, let the cameras pick you up. Visual and timed video that when you were in Santoro’s office, he was long dead.”

“We didn’t do it,” Franco said.

“I believe you,” said Little Duke. “What were you doing in his office?”

Lew told him the whole story. He didn’t start it with the date he was conceived or born and he didn’t include the heart of the story, the people. Little Duke took no notes. From time to time Franco nodded in agreement or said, “That’s right.”

Lew told him about Pappas and his sons, Posno, Rebecca Strum, the Asian driving the car that had killed Catherine. He told it in ten minutes. Told the story but not the characters. Lew knew that Little Duke would check police reports, first, to confirm that Franco and Lew had a run-in with Stavros and Dimitri on the Dan Ryan Expressway and second to confirm that Santoro and Aponte-Cruz had been questioned by the police.

Little Duke closed his leather-bound notebook and put it back in his pocket.

“We’ve got Aponte-Cruz,” he said. “No weapon. The appointment book was missing from Santoro’s desk.”

Lew knew where this was going.

“Yes.”

Little Duke looked at Lew, his eyes unblinking.

“Want some advice?” Little Duke asked. “Don’t talk religion with a Baptist and don’t try to stare down a violent crimes detective.”

“I wasn’t,” said Lew.

“He wasn’t,” said Franco. “He stares like that a lot.”

“I do?” asked Lew.

“You do, Lewie.”

“You have it?” asked Little Duke patiently.

Lew had witnessed that same patience the last time he had seen Little Duke Dupree. Lew had been trying to find a possible witness in a fraud case. Little Duke had accompanied him to a house not far from where they were now sitting.

Two young men, black, stood in their way. One of the young men wore a black sleeveless shirt with a white thunderbolt on the front. He had the body of a weight lifter, the tattoos of an ex-con and the attitude of a drug dealer.

Little Duke had been patient. Word was that Little Duke’s wife had left him after being there too many times when he had been patient. Word was she was now dead. Lew had heard the word. When it was clear that patience and reason were not going to move the two men from the doorway, Little Duke’s gun had suddenly appeared. He had slammed the butt into the face of both young men, who were unprepared for the instant change in the policeman from a Father O’Mally to Jack Bauer.

Little Duke had broken both of their noses and wiped the bloody handle of his gun on the thunderbolt T-shirt of the man who was kneeling and holding both hands to his face to slow down the bleeding. Little Duke had stepped past them. Lew had followed. They found the witness, a pregnant girl no more than sixteen, in a second-floor apartment.

In the booth at the Tender, Franco looked at Lew, waiting for an answer to the question Lew couldn’t remember. Franco’s left cheek was bulging with donut. Then Lew remembered.

“Do I have what?” Lew said.

Little Duke looked very patient. He held out his hand palm up. There was a thick gold band on one of his fingers. Lew reached into his back pocket and came up with Santoro’s appointment book. He handed it to Little Duke, who tapped the edge of the notebook on the table and opened it.

“He didn’t have any appointments until ten,” Lew said. “We were gone by then.”

“You didn’t have an appointment?”

“No.”

“So what were you doing there?”

“He was looking for me,” said Lew.

“Why?” asked Little Duke.

Franco’s eyes moved back and forth between the detective and his brother-in-law, amazed at Lew’s sleight of hand.

“Hey,” said Franco, “we didn’t kill him-”

“What’s in the book?” asked Little Duke, ignoring Franco.

“Dinner and bar appointments with Bernard Aponte-Cruz,” Lew said. “Appointments with people, dinners, addresses and phone numbers of theaters, friends, restaurants, bars…”

“Gay bars,” said Little Duke, sitting back.

“I didn’t check-” Lew began.

“I will, but we found enough from Santoro’s apartment town house to figure it out.”

Franco wiped his chocolate fingers on a napkin.

“Hey,” said Franco. “Let’s say Santoro wanted to break out of the relationship. Right. Aponte-Cruz is a hit man, right? People who hire him who are not exactly sympathetic to alternative lifestyles, right? Santoro threatens to expose him and-”

Little Duke looked at Lew and said, “Bernard Aponte-Cruz was not a hit man. He was the security guard at the door of the Chelsea.”

“The disco place,” said Franco.

“Disco is as dead as Santoro,” said Little Duke. “The Chelsea’s the right-now hot spot, painful music, kids looking for drugs or sex they won’t find. Gays of both genders looking for sex which they will find, and Bernard Aponte-Cruz at the gate.”

“Aponte-Cruz and Claude Santoro were queer with each other,” said Franco. “I mean they were lovers or something?”

“Yes,” said Little Duke.

“Him and his brother-in-Law? Okay,” tried Franco, rubbing his lower lip with a thick finger and coming up with, “Aponte-Cruz threatened to expose that Santoro was gay and-”

“Exposure wouldn’t mean much to Santoro,” said Little Duke, looking out the window. “In this city, inside the Loop, it might bring him more business. Outside the Loop, a successful good-looking guy like Santoro, it would make him very popular.”

Three men in their late teens or twenties saw him and hurried by.

“Okay,” said Franco. “So Aponte-Cruz killed Santoro? You just go pick him up, right?”

“Aponte-Cruz is dead,” Lew said.

Little Duke drank some coffee and nodded.