Stuart Kaminsky - Always Say Goodbye

“Is it loud?” asked Lew.

The man wiped his nose with the towel and said, “Silent as the few seconds before a church hymn.”

The man reached under the counter and came up with a key. He held the key till Lew handed him a twenty and a single.

Lew filled out the guest information card.

“Don’t have all the amenities,” said the man. “But the place is quaint. We still use real keys ’stead of those plastic things with black strips and blue arrows and such. Room Six should do it. Clean towels, washed ’em myself, soap still wrapped, sheets clean.”

“Can you hear the road from six?”

“Well. Can’t tell you a lie, mister. Truth is I can. I know all the rooms down to the names of the roaches and the scratches in the wall behind the night tables. I’ve got a cultivated memory.”

He looked around the small office and added, “But not all that good so’s I could make a career out of it. Tried though. Three years of college at Southern Illinois.”

He looked up at the bottom of the dangling towel drooping down from his head. “History major, but my job, which I owe to my uncle Willy Hart, is my comfort and my tomb and my real passion now is old license plates. Got ’em from all states and lots of different years. Trade some time with a guy owns a barbecue place outside of Towson Falls, North Carolina.”

Lew tried to smile.

“You think that’s stupid, don’t you?”

“No,” said Lew. “Politicians tend to be stupid. License plate collectors tend to be honest.”

“You know a lot of politicians?”

“A few.”

“License plate collectors?”

“One, you.”

“Don’t talk much do you, mister?”

“No,” said Lew. “Room six is fine.”

“Great,” said the man. “Hey, take some M amp;M’s out of the bowl. It’s okay. They’re wrapped six in every bag.”

Lew reached into the bowl on the desk and took four packets of M amp;M’s.

“Phone in the room?”

“I can turn it on,” said the man. “Local calls free. Outside the county, you’re on your own. Credit cards or collect calls.”

Lew nodded.

“Oh, yeah, hell, almost forgot, the TV in Six is fritzy. You know picture sort of sizzles. Channel seven is clearest. Sometimes it’s bright and clear. Other times it sizzles. If you can’t live with that

…”

“I can live with that,” said Lew at the door.

The clerk looked down at the card Lew had filled out and then looked up.

“You’re a vagabond from Genesis? What the hell is that? Wait. Now I get it. You’re with that rock group Genesis, and you’re the bass guitar player, Vagabond.”

The clerk looked at Lew and dug into his memory.

“You don’t look like a rock musician-type person.”

“I need a joke.”

“A joke? A rock music joke?”

“Any joke,” said Lew.

The clerk had been behind the counter every night and all night for the past eleven years. The sad, mad, scary, touching, religious, famous-if you count Bob Denver’s accountant-biking, ugly and beautiful had stopped, usually for no more than one night. They had been too tired, high or low, or lost to go farther. Most were cordial. A few were friendly, but the rest… Never before had he seen a vagabond from Genesis. Maybe they all were vagabonds from somewhere.

“Anything else?” the clerk asked, wishing to hell that the sad-faced bald guy at the door would say no and walk back into the night with the key to Room Six in his hand, but he didn’t.

“Just the joke.”

“Clean, dirty? Know a few about license plates. Heard a lot of good ones sitting in here. Forgot most of them.”

“Clean,” said Lew.

“Clean,” the clerk said, tilting his head to one side and running a hand down his tie. “I’ll think about that one.”

John Pappas knew exactly where Posno would be, exactly. Posno would be in a car across from the house of Lew Fonesca’s sister’s. He would wait patiently, for days if he had to, till Fonesca returned. No one would notice. John Pappas knew that no one would see him.

Posno’s plan would be to simply shoot the little Italian, drive away and disappear, maybe for years, maybe forever. That would depend on whether Catherine Fonesca’s files were ever found.

That would be his plan.

Posno, Pappas was certain, would be composing poetry as he sat. Many nights and days Pappas had sat with Posno in a car, heard the torpedo-shaped killer compose or recite not only Greek poets, modern Greek poets, but his own poems. Posno was most prolific and creative just before he killed. He existed to hurt and kill and when the job was done he disappeared.

One of Posno’s poems, unbidden, returned to Pappas. It was not surprising that he remembered it. He had heard Posno reciting it, revising it dozens of times. Besides, it was short:

If we link our arms, none but a demon can with all his charms break the chain of man.

John Pappas took a frigadelia, fried and rolled slices of lamb stomach filled with seasoned strips of calves’ liver, from the blue bowl on the window ledge. There were three left. His mother’s favorites were pastries. She was an artist in the kitchen with a butcher’s block table and a warm oven. But there were some specialties her son loved and frigadelia was one of them.

Her son had many things to worry about, but food would never be one of them.

John Pappas ate the first frigadelia so quickly that when he plucked up the second one, it was still quite warm to the touch.

After eating the packets of M amp;M’s, Lew turned up the heat in the room, stripped to his shorts, placed his shirt on a wire hanger and his pants on a wooden one, turned on the hot water in the shower and hung his clothes over the curtain rod where the water wouldn’t hit them. Then he laid back in the bed, lights out, listening to the running water beyond the bathroom door, hearing the whirr of cars and bumping trucks on the highway a little over a hundred yards away. He was too tired to watch television. It was too late to make any more phone calls but one.

He had called Angie and Franco, told them he was all right, that he was no longer looking for the man who had killed Catherine, and that he would be back late the next morning.

“Lewis, remember Ames McKinney wants you to call him,” said Angie. “Says it’s important. You have his number?”

“Yes. I’ll call tomorrow,” he had said, carrying the phone, walking a small, slow circle.

“Lewis,” said Angie. “You sound like shit.”

“What does shit sound like?”

He could hear the rain thudding harder against the roof of a car pulling into the parking lot of the motel outside his window. Lew pushed back a slat in the faded yellow plastic window blinds and looked out.

“Lewis, where are you?”

“Not sure, but I’m on my way. Tomorrow, Angela. When there’s sun. I have to make some stops first.”

“Lewis, maybe it’s enough. You know? Let it go. If you can’t let it go, live with it. Every day spent thinking about the last day is a wasted day.”

“Rebecca Strum,” he said.

“Paraphrase,” said his sister.

By the single light atop the twelve-foot post to his left, he could see the lean, slump-shouldered figure, eyes slightly open, hair pounded forward and dripping.

Victor Lee was speaking to someone who wasn’t there. Lee looked up at Lew’s window and their eyes met. Lee’s lips moved. Whatever he was saying, he had to know that Lew couldn’t hear it. Lewis let the slat drop.

“Lewis?” said Angie. “You hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Wherever you are, you should be somewhere else.”

“I know.”

The next morning about an hour before Herman came to work, Uncle Tonio got to fire his carbine for the first time since Korea. He had always thought, and often said, the compact, light rifle was the best weapon ever invented. As a sergeant in the Signal Corps responsible for storing electronic equipment, primarily phones, Tonio had carried a carbine. It didn’t shoot as far or quite as straight as an M1, but it wasn’t a weight on his back, a constant reminder of where he was and what he was doing.