Stuart Kaminsky - Always Say Goodbye

Aponte-Cruz had a gun on the table a few feet from where he sat. A heartbeat later, the killer, who had killed no one before that day, was a double murderer.

And then Fonesca. He had followed Fonesca and his brother-in-law to the South Side diner, had parked in the alley, had waited. He saw Little Duke Dupree come out of the Tender. He knew Little Duke. When the detective was out of sight, the four young black men had moved from the sidewalk where they had been laughing, chattering.

He had heard one of the young men say, “Let’s have us some fun.”

“Pa-thetic,” said another young man. “Messin’ with couple of scared white civilians. Pa-thetic. That’s all we got to do?”

“GG, just lean and be cool, chill, freeze,” said another member of the group. “Dry ice.”

“Whatever,” said GG, leaning against the tow truck and crossing his arms.

And then Fonesca and his brother-in-law had come out and the hassle had begun and Franco had grabbed one of the young men and then

… the killer had fired.

He was not a bad shot. He wasn’t a great shot. The bullet had pinged into the truck door a few inches from Fonesca’s head. It wasn’t until he had actually fired that the man who had already killed twice with this same gun realized that he had not meant to kill Fonesca. Had he killed him, the killer could have lived with it. He had been living with his guilt for four years and he had added murder to his shopping cart. But he couldn’t kill Lew Fonesca unless he had to. Maybe the other thing he had done to deal with the Fonesca problem would be enough to send the man back to Florida empty-handed. Then again, it might not be enough.

As Lew Fonesca pulled out of Toro’s Garage on Taylor Street and passed the thin small tree waving to him, the man who had run down Catherine four years ago and almost killed Rebecca Strum rose from his desk and looked around. The cardboard box he had filled with things from his drawers and on top of his desk sat on the floor near the door. He didn’t pick it up. He had sort of planned to take the box, to the extent that he had planned anything.

He walked through the open door and down the hall past the cubicles on his right where people worked silently and seldom looked up. He had withdrawn all of the money in his bank account. The thick wad of bills was wrapped inside a blue dish towel in the trunk of his car. It wasn’t the same car he had been driving when he killed Catherine Fonesca. He had gotten rid of that car, sold it at a loss to Ralph Simcox, the mechanic.

It was early. He would go to the cafeteria and watch the clock. He would finish out his last day. No one would care. They would be happy to see him go. There was no denying that he had been drinking, though he had done his job, but there was also no denying that he brought an aura of gloom and doom when he entered the Mentic Pharmaceuticals building each morning. His expertise would be missed, but he could be replaced. Everyone can be replaced.

He was alone in the cafeteria. The lights weren’t on but the sun was still high and the windows were tall and wide. The light on the coffee machine was glowing red but he didn’t get a cup. He sat facing the brace of trees across the well-trimmed lawn.

As Lew Fonesca pulled out of Toro’s Garage on Taylor Street and passed the thin small tree waving to him from the small circle of dirt in the cracked concrete sidewalk, Dimitri and Stavros Pappas were waiting.

They followed in the car they had rented, Dimitri driving because he had two eyes. Fonesca knew their car, which was why their father had told them to rent this one, a bronze Mazda.

“We’re really going to kill him?” asked Dimitri, staying back, being careful, remembering a few days ago when they had been cut off by the tow-truck driver.

They followed as Lew headed for Dan Ryan.

“You’ve got a gun. I’ve got a gun,” said Stavros, his head and eye turned forward.

Stavros put his hand on the white paper bag between them, reached in and came up with two small, round cheese tiropeka. He held out one to his brother who took it and said, “That’s not an answer. I like the guy. I feel sorry for him. Why does Pop want us to kill him?”

“To keep him from finding the papers, files, whatever his wife left. There’s something in them that could hurt Pop. Hell, Dimi, you know that.”

“I thought there was something in the files Pop could use to get Posno off our backs.”

“There is,” said Stavros.

“Then why did we stop looking for Posno? I could see us shooting him.”

“We can’t find him. Fonesca is right in front of us.”

“I know that,” said Dimi.

They drove. Ten minutes. Twenty.

“We’ve never killed anyone,” Dimi finally said, as much to himself as his brother.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Stavros said, reaching into the bag for another pastry.

His stomach would surely bother him later. He was lactose intolerant. He had forgotten his pills. His grandmother always made her pastries with cream. It always gave him a stomach problem even when he took the pills, but he couldn’t stop himself. No one in the family could resist his grandmother’s cooking. Immediate brief comfort won out over common sense. It always did. He pulled out a sticky square of baklava.

“Five of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sons became successful composers. You didn’t know that.”

“No, I didn’t,” said Stavros. “What’s your point?”

“I want to go home and practice on my viola. My chamber group has a concert tomorrow. You remember that?”

“No.”

“Well, we do. I want to play music, not kill people.”

“We’ll put that on your headstone: Dimitri Pappas. He wanted to play music, not kill people.”

“Okay, so laugh.”

“Hah.”

“You want to be somewhere quiet, creating Web pages, inventing computer programs, whatever it is you do. You don’t want to kill people either.”

“Have a melomakarona.”

He handed Dimitri a Greek Christmas cookie. Dimitri popped the whole cookie into his mouth. Ahead of them Fonesca weaved the white Cutlas through traffic into the right lane. They followed. When he exited, they slowed down.

“We lost him,” said Dimitri.

“He’s right there,” said Stavros, pointing at the car ahead of them.

“I don’t see him,” said Dimitri. “I think we should turn around and tell Pop we lost him. I think we should tell Pop that we’re not going to kill anyone. If he wants someone dead, fine. He or Grandma can do it. They’ve done it before. They’ve got the experience.”

He pulled the car off the road and stopped. Fonesca joined a stream of traffic moving away from them. Stavros turned and looked at his brother.

“We lost him,” Stavros agreed, handing his brother the last pastry in the bag. It was another Christmas cookie.

His name, Keen, was in capital black letters on the bronze rectangular badge pinned to his pocket. Keen’s gray uniform, a size too large, sagged. He was somewhere in his late sixties, maybe he was seventy. His white hair was done in a buzz cut and his skin was the color of a flamingo.

Lew felt that if he touched the guard-receptionist’s cheek, which he did not intend to do, he would leave a permanent white circle in a sea of pink.

Keen had been working on a fifth of Dewar’s under the desk for almost an hour. It was the first time he had ever taken a drink while on the job, but today he had his reasons.

“Yes, sir,” said Keen, seated behind the curved desk in the lobby of the five-story main building of Mentic Pharmaceuticals.

His voice echoed in the marble-tiled space sparsely filled with chrome-and-black leather chairs. The walls were empty except for one that held dozens of color photographs of smiling men and women.