Stuart Kaminsky - Always Say Goodbye

“I can try,” said Ames. “Till he gets back.”

Silence.

“I have an thirteen-year-old daughter,” Borg said. “She’s missing.”

“Called the police?”

“No. If I told them what happened, they wouldn’t believe me. I have a… let’s call it reputation and history with the police that make me less than reputable. The problem is that my daughter does not have my name. Neither does her mother. We were never married. I have no evidence, except the word of the girl’s mother that she is mine. And I doubt if the girl’s mother would vouch for my paternity to the police.”

“You think she was kidnapped?”

“I’m certain.”

“Know where she might be?”

“Yes, and who took her. There is a reason I can’t look for her myself.”

“Tell me what I need to know,” Ames said.

“Don’t do anything till you talk to Fonesca,” Borg said.

“Won’t.”

“Okay,” said Borg, who told his story.

When Ames hung up the phone, it began to ring immediately.

Inevitable. He had put it off. He didn’t want to do it, but he had, he was sure, very few options. From the alley on the South Side, he had fired a single bullet in the hope that it would get Lew Fonesca to back off, let his wife’s memory rest, go back to Florida. It was a hope he had no faith in even when he fired, the shot coming closer to Fonesca’s head than he had planned.

Okay, so he could simply shoot himself, which he had no intention of doing for many reasons. It would cancel any insurance payments. He could kill Lew Fonesca. That he did not want to do. It wasn’t that he was against killing. He had done it before, twice in the last two days. No, he truly liked Fonesca. Fonesca, sad as he was, didn’t deserve to be murdered.

Fonesca wanted to know who had killed his wife and why. Not unreasonable, but if he kept looking, Fonesca would find out what he had done. It would end the shooter’s life, his reputation, his family, his freedom.

Fonesca had to die.

The Boneyard Tavern was a little under a mile from the east end of campus. When Lew was an undergraduate, it had been two miles from campus. Eventually, the university would embrace the the Boneyard Tavern, which wasn’t yet an institution and wasn’t a student or faculty hangout. It was, and had been since it opened in 1934, a neighborhood tavern. University people did come, eat the burgers, have a beer, in a place that didn’t blare the walls with music, a place where people could talk to and hear other people. It was a place where the wood-paneled walls were always polished, the light a soothing, isolating amber, and the photographs on the wall were of past and present owners on pier decks solemnly pointing at large puzzle-eyed fish they had caught hanging next to them. It had been Lew’s getaway of choice in Urbana when he was an undergraduate.

It was the place where a couple who looked like they had grandchildren and maybe great-grandchildren sat, showing photographs to the tubby bartender who smiled and nodded at each picture. It was the place where three men and a woman sat at one of the six round wooden tables playing cards. All four wore black lined zipper jackets with the words U.S. AIR FORCE printed on the back in red script. It was the place where Victor Lee sat at another table, watching Lew come through the door and head toward him.

In front of Lee was a nearly full glass of dark liquid. Lew sat across from him and handed Lee the painting he had carried in under his arm.

“I was coming back for it,” said Lee, looking at the dark cityscape and then gently propping it on the table against the paneled wall. “That was you in my apartment, you and my landlord?”

A long pause, a double beat. One of the card players laughed at something, and the bartender looking at the photographs said, “This is Jason? Got big like his dad.”

Lew took Lee’s folded B.S. degree and handed it to him.

“Forgot that,” Lee said, taking the sheet and placing it alongside the painting.

“You’re the husband?” asked Lee, looking down at painting and document.

“Yes.”

Lee nodded and went on, “I’ve been waiting for you for four years.”

“You could have found me,” said Lew.

The bartender called, “What are you drinking?”

“What he has,” said Lew, nodding at Lee’s drink.

“It’s root beer,” said Lee.

“Got you,” called the bartender.

“I couldn’t…” Lee began and trailed off, looking at the city canyon. “I killed her, your wife.”

Lee took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt.

“I know.”

“I’m… sorry isn’t enough, is it?”

“It’s a start.”

“It’s not enough for me,” said Lee, rubbing his eyes and shaking his head. “I thought that when I told you… but it doesn’t work that way, does it? I killed her.”

“Why?” asked Lew.

The bartender placed the glass of root beer in front of Lew, took away the small empty wooden bowl on the table and replaced it with an identical bowl filled with pretzels and beer nuts.

“Hey, Larry, take a look at this one,” called the woman at the bar, holding up a photograph. “It’s a hoot.”

The bartender moved from the table. Victor Lee ate a pretzel, gulped and took a drink.

“Thirsty,” Lee said.

Lew nodded. It had come to this, sitting across from a shaken man who needed a haircut, a man who had lost his family, his confidence, his life. There was evil out there, in the canyons and forests of cities and towns and jungles, and sometimes Lew sat across from evil, but more often then not, as it was now, he sat across from someone lost who had committed someone’s sense of their own sin.

“What happened?”

“What happened?” Lee repeated.

Victor Lee told his story.

Lee was certain he would be offered the job. The interview over lunch and drinks had gone more than well. Doctor Mitchell Waltrop, Executive Vice-president for Research of Permigo Pharmaceuticals, the third-largest drug manufacturer in the United States, had all but promised him the position of head of Experimental Research. It was more than a step up.

Lee, his wife and baby daughter, would have to move near Permigo corporate headquarters here in Skokie or nearby. No problem.

The only problem was that Victor Lee did not drink, never, but Waltrop had not given him an option, had poured him a full glass of wine over lunch to match his own. Waltrop talked, asked questions, poured a second glass, talked more, listened, another glass of wine.

Lunch had ended with a handshake, the promise of a call as soon as Waltrop had conferred with the CEO and the president of Permigo.

Then the ride back.

There was a better way home, a faster way, but Victor didn’t know it. He had seldom left the far-south suburbs, ever expanding with malls, traffic, developments like the one in which he lived. He took the safe way, the way he knew after he had stopped to call his wife, tell her the news.

The ride back.

South on Skokie Boulevard. He remembered that. South. He drove, turned left on Dempster. Had he turned right, in less than ten minutes he would have hit the expressway. What was this street? Did he remember it? Chicago Avenue. Right on Chicago. He was lost. He had laughed. Victor Lee could follow and remember the theoretical variations of a strain of repellent-resistant fleas for seven generations and project it for more than seven thousand more. City streets, however, puzzled him even when he was quite sober, which was always, with the one exception of this day.

Older brick buildings, storefronts, resale shops, television-repair shops, faces on the street black instead of white. Hispanic faces now. IHOP, bars, a bank. Asian faces, restaurants. Vietnamese, Koreans, no Chinese. Didn’t matter.