Stuart Kaminsky - Always Say Goodbye

Lew had no change of clothes, no phone, no credit cards. He had three hundred and eighty-two dollars in his wallet, all of what was left of the cash he had brought with him to Chicago. It should be enough. It would have to be.

He would have to call Angie and Franco as soon as he could, but that might not be soon. Victor Lee had stopped only once, at an Exxon station to fill his gas tank and buy something in a paper bag, probably a sandwich and a drink. Lew was parked at a pump four lanes over. He filled his own tank, went in to pay, looked out the window and saw Lee leaning back in his seat, rubbing a finger on the skin above his nose.

Lew took a chance, got a handful of change, moved to a phone against the wall near a window and fed the slot keeping his eyes on Lee, who now sat up and turned on the ignition.

“Massaccio Towing,” said Franco.

“Franco, I’m following the guy who killed Catherine.”

“Where are-?”

“Franco, listen. I have to go. I’ll try to call tonight, but I won’t be back till tomorrow, maybe later.”

“Lewie, McKinney is trying to reach you.”

“I’ll call him when I can.”

“Lewis, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and hung up.

He hurried out of the Exxon, but he didn’t run.

The direction they were going, the diploma, the university degree Lew had taken from Lee’s desk, pointed the way. Somewhere Lew had a similar diploma from the same institution. It too had been in a drawer, probably still was in Uncle Tonio’s warehouse.

He turned on the radio, pushed buttons, flashing past Chicago FM stations he could still pick up, Spanish, Polish, Japanese, Swedish. Searching for a voice, any voice. He hesitated at a Greek station. Whatever song was playing made him hesitate and think of Pappas. He listened to the plaintive music that somehow felt right and left it on.

On the seat next to him was Lee’s painting of the dark mountains of the city with the one spot of light.

In two hours, they would be in Urbana-Champaign.

Lew knew the way to I-56 and south through the corn fields, seed towers, bales of hay, dairy cows who had long ago stopped looking up at passing cars and noisy trucks, turnoffs for small towns, roadside diners with names like Mom’s, Eat Da Voo, Minnie amp; Zane’s.

What was it Ames had said once when they were driving across Florida from the Gulf Coast to Miami on the Atlantic Coast? They had passed farms, horses, cows and penned-in hogs.

“Government pays people not to raise hogs, not grow tobacco,” Ames had said. “Some people even buy farms just to not grow or raise something. You don’t and I don’t raise hogs or grow tobacco. Why doesn’t the government give us money? Or better, why don’t they stop giving money to people for not raising anything.”

It was easy to remember this on-the-road exchange because it was the longest single speech Lew had ever heard from Ames McKinney. Lew hadn’t said anything after the speech. He wasn’t sure if Ames was or wasn’t joking. Lew didn’t want to find out. He did wonder what his friend would make of the massive fields on both sides of the highway.

Lew picked up a Springfield FM radio station. An English professor who specialized in the history of the early eighteenth-century British novel at Sangamon State University was taking on the president of the United States, solemnly doing his part to condemn and execute the president for everything from how he liked his eggs prepared to what he was or wasn’t doing to stop the three-hundred-year-old battle between two small tribes in Gabon. The professor, with a reedy, excited voice, seemed to have memorized or was reading a list of offenses about which the professor had strong opinions. Lew listened through oil drilling in Alaska (the professor was against it), housing for the homeless (he was for it), saying Jesus in school or Wal-Mart (he was against it), abortion (he thought it was a good idea), intelligent design (he didn’t see much evidence for it).

There was a call-in number. If he had a phone, Lew would have called in and asked if the man had any jokes he could share.

Lew turned off the radio when Lee stopped at a gas station to refuel and pick up a cup of coffee and a prepackaged box of half-a-dozen glazed chocolate donuts. Lew hurried to the men’s room, past the urinal and into the stall that had a door that closed but didn’t lock.

Lew finished and started to get up. The outside door to the men’s room opened. Under the partition Lew could see Victor Lee’s legs as he moved to the urinal.

“You’re driving the white Cutlas?” Lee asked flatly.

“Yes.”

“You’re following me.”

“You?”

“The SUV,” Lee said.

“I’m driving down to Urbana,” Lew said. “Class reunion. I think I did see you on the road but…”

“Forget it. Sorry,” said Lee, flushing the urinal.

Lew waited till he heard the door close. Lee was going out the front door with his coffee and donuts when Lew moved to the refrigerator case, pulled out a sandwich wrapped tight in see-through plastic, grabbed a bottle of vanilla Diet Coke and pulled out his wallet to pay the skinny sullen girl behind the bulletproof glass window. Lee was just pulling out of the lot. Lew thought he could see the man holding up a donut.

“No protein,” Lew said.

“Fresh out,” the girl said, brushing back her stringy straw-colored hair. “Had some last week I think.”

“Some…?”

“Protein.”

She handed him his change.

“I was talking about the man who just left,” Lew said.

“Your friend, the Jap guy?”

“He’s not my friend and he’s Chinese.”

“Same difference,” she said, sliding the change to Lew through the two-inch gap at the bottom of the glass plate. “All gonna get our jobs. Indians, Japs, Chinks. We’re fuckin’ obsolete.”

She looked at him, arms folded, waiting to see if he would agree.

Lew shrugged. Lee’s car was out of sight and he was probably two donuts to the wind.

“Got nothing against them,” the girl said, brushing her hair back again. “Sister’s husband is one of ’em. Good guy. Works in a tire shop in Chester. Oh, shit, almost forgot. Chink guy with the donuts and no protein told me to give you this.”

She picked up a small lined sheet that had been torn from a notebook and slid it to him. It had been written quickly, was hard to read: Boneyard Tavern tonight.

There was no signature.

There was no need to hurry.

“You’re from Chicago, right?” the girl asked.

“Right.”

“Been there,” she said, looking over her thin shoulder in the general direction of Chicago. “Too big. Been to St. Louis too. Too big in a different way. Know what I mean?”

“Yes.”

Lew looked down at the sandwich. It was tuna salad on white. He unwrapped it.

“How old are you?” he asked.

She turned to face him.

“Young, mostly. Seventeen. You?”

“Forty-two.”

“You hitting on me?” the girl said with a smile. “Wouldn’t be the first.”

“No,” Lew said. “The man who left this note…”

“The chink,” she said.

“Did he say anything?”

“To me? Just ‘Give this to the guy in the washroom.’ He did say something to himself though, come to think on it. He said, I think he said, “‘No more.’”

Ames McKinney waited for two hours. The sun was going down and a quartet of teens who said fuck a lot were laughing in the DQ parking lot beyond Lew’s office window.

He picked up the phone and punched in the number Earl Borg had left. It took Borg one ring to answer.

“Yes.”

“Name’s McKinney. I work with Lewis Fonesca. He’s out of town.”

“And you can help me?”