Stuart Kaminsky - Always Say Goodbye

“Suit yourself,” said Royale.

Pappas dropped his apple core in what looked like a ceramic bowl big enough to hold a bowling ball. The bowl was decorated with white figures of almost-nude men chasing one another around the bowl. Dr. Royale had been told it was ancient Greek. Pappas was using it as a garbage receptacle.

“Want me to walk you to the door?”

“No,” said Royale.

“You know, Doctor, you should get more exercise, work out a little. Forgive me, but you’re a little overweight. You’re busy, okay, but there’s always a little time.”

“I’ll consider it,” Royale said with a smile.

Taking advice from a neurotic patient who wouldn’t listen to advice himself was not a likely scenario for Donald Royale.

“Oh, wait, almost forgot,” said Pappas, snapping his fingers.

He moved to his desk and picked up a white paper bag. He handed it to Royale who knew from the smell that he was holding a bagful of loukoumathes, Greek donuts. Royale had considered trying again to convince Pappas to be seen by a therapist, but the prospect of losing the retainer and the goody bags of homemade Greek pastries was more than Dr. Royale could bear.

Pappas’s mother, amazingly healthy, was beyond help. He was sure of that. Bernice Pappas, multiple murderer, made him uneasy. Whenever he treated her, she had looked at him with unblinking eyes as if he were an uncooked pork loin ready for roasting. At least it felt that way. Pappas? Well, there was definitely something wrong inside the head to which his patient had occasionally pointed. Pappas was alternately grandiose, paranoid, given to long ramblings about everything from Mayan Indians to the difficulties of establishing colonies in outer space. Royale couldn’t give it a name. Crasker could and, if given the opportunity, would give it a name. Donald Royale really didn’t want to know his patient’s secrets, certainly didn’t want to know the body count for which these people were responsible.

The sons might be salvageable. Probably not, but Royale was the family physician and he took his responsibility seriously.

Dimitri seemed almost normal, in need of his father and grandmother’s approval, unwilling to step out of the circle of his family. Stavros, whose eye socket had healed well, was loyal to his father and dedicated to getting the man who had turned him into a cyclops, the man who was his father’s enemy, the man whose name Royale had heard whispered. Posno.

When the front door had closed behind Royale, Pappas went down the stairs and to the kitchen where his mother sat drinking coffee and reading her favorite magazine, Cottage Living. She looked up over her glasses.

“The ulcer,” Pappas said, touching his stomach.

“Stress,” she said. “You’ve got too much stress in your life. Get rid of the stress. Get rid of Posno and then just kill the little Italian.”

He nodded. She was right. She was a great cook but more than a little crazy. It ran in the family. His grandfather, Bernice’s father, he had been crazy too, killed some people with a shotgun in a fishing village in Greece, had to get out of the country.

“They were looking at me with eyes of the devil,” the old man had explained once, a year before he died.

Yes, his mother was nuts, but she was also right.

“The boys are out looking for Posno,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “It’s time for Posno to die.”

She kept repeating that. She was right, but she kept saying it and he wanted her to stop.

“It’s time,” he agreed.

A remnant of forgotten nightmare burst open. The doorbell had been ringing, ringing. Pappas had hurried to open it. When he flung it open, there stood Posno, grinning.

“Is this a bad time?” Posno had asked.

The doorbell had not been ringing. Posno was not there. But even Posno in his fleeting daydream had been right. It was a bad time.

Posno knew that Stavros and Dimitri were trying to find him. He had played with them, dangled hints, whiffs, suggestions through the words of a doorman, a waitress, a drugstore clerk.

Now he looked down at the street as the car parked and the brothers got out. They would go to his apartment. He had already moved out, but he had left hints, clues-a parking stub, a receipt for dry cleaning, a pad of paper with names and phone numbers. All of it was invention, none of it led to him. He enjoyed the moment. He liked the boys, was even sorry that he had shot Stavros. The shot had been a warning to the father. He had not meant to hit the son.

Couldn’t be helped now.

While the brothers bumbled on, Posno came down the stairs in the building, went through the alley door and to his car parked a few feet away.

Fonesca. He had to find and kill Fonesca. Posno had decided that Fonesca couldn’t be allowed to find Catherine’s file. Something might go wrong. He might turn it over to the police before Posno could take it. Fonesca might not even find it, at least not this time, but would he come back? Wherever the file or files were, someone finding them, if anyone ever did, might not know they were important. No, the biggest threat to Posno was Fonesca. If he lived, the little man with the idiotic baseball cap could be the end of Andrej Posnitki.

Posno drove to his new apartment.

As Lew Fonesca pulled out of Toro’s Garage on Taylor Street, the killer sat drinking a fresh too-hot cup of coffee. The cup was white ceramic with a quotation from his favorite

president, Teddy Roosevelt, printed in red block letters: DON’T HIT AT ALL IF YOU CAN HELP IT; DON’T HIT A MAN IF YOU CAN POSSIBLY AVOID IT; BUT IF YOU DO HIT HIM, PUT HIM TO SLEEP.

He had entered Claude Santoro’s office just after the sun had come up and found the lawyer behind his desk. Santoro had looked up with four seconds remaining in his life. Santoro had recognized the man who entered his office and took four steps toward his desk. Santoro couldn’t remember the name of the man who now raised a gun and pointed at his face. If he had time, he might have remembered who his killer was, but probably not. If he had time, lots of time, he might think of a reason why someone would want him dead, but he had no time. If he had time, he might have done something to save his life.

The man with the gun had fired. The silencer had worked. He wasn’t sure it would. He had never used one before.

He unscrewed the silencer, dropped it in his pocket, and tucked the gun into the holster under his jacket. Then he had gone around the desk, checked the drawers and the dead man’s pockets and stuffed the things he had taken into a jacket pocket. He had left enough to make it appear nothing had been taken. He had flipped through the dead man’s appointment book. The killer’s name wasn’t there. He hadn’t expected it to be. As he left, he was careful not to leave any fingerprints. His, if found, would be easy to match.

He had stood up and found himself looking into the dead eyes of Santoro, who had not even had time to register surprise.

He had neither hated nor disliked the lawyer. The two times he had met him briefly he had found Santoro pleasant, even likable. This had not been about hate or retribution. It had been necessity. If Santoro lived, the man who faced him now would go to prison. He would lose everything: his freedom, his home, his family, his self-respect. He had seen no choice. For a few moments just before entering Santoro’s office, he had considered shooting himself, but that had passed. He had too many promises to keep. There were too many dark streets to drive down before he could sleep.

And, he recalled, carefully sipping the too-hot coffee, having once killed, it had been easier to kill Bernard Aponte-Cruz. Aponte-Cruz had been in Santoro’s apartment when the killer got there to search through the dead man’s papers.