Stuart Kaminsky - Always Say Goodbye

Ames handed her the photographs and said, “You see any of these people, call me or Lewis.”

Adele looked at the photograph and then at Ames, a question in her eyes.

“The twins in the picture kidnapped the girl.”

“She reminds me of someone,” Adele said, still holding the photograph. “Me. Can I get you a coffee, Pepsi?”

There was no alcohol in Flo Zink’s house. Temptation had been cast out for almost two years.

“No, thank you. Got to deliver more pictures.”

“Did he find out who killed his wife?”

“He did.”

“And?” she asked, looking at Catherine who looked as if she were about to lurch forward.

“Best he tell you when he’s ready.”

In the next hour and a half, Ames gave copies of the photograph to several of the neighborhood’s bartenders and also to the clerks at 7-11, Circle K, Burger King, McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken, and asked them to call him if they saw the twins or the girl. He told each of the people he talked to simply, “They may mean the girl harm. Her mother and father are worried for her.” Everyone he talked to had listened. On the back of each picture, Ames had printed his name, Texas Bar amp; Grille, and the phone number of the Texas.

Ames didn’t get back to the Texas on his motor scooter till after one in the morning. The Texas was closed and dark except for the nightlights. He let himself in the back door, put the gun back in the case behind the bar, and went to his room where he showered, shaved, put on his khaki pajamas. Then Ames got his reading glasses from the case on the table and read The Marble Faun. He finished the book a little before three in the morning and turned out the lights.

He would have four-and-a-half hours until he had to get up and start his chores. He needed no more. As he grew older, he found that he needed and was satisfied with less sleep.

Lew had given the photograph to the red-haired girl at the DQ window and shown it to the bartender at the Crisp Dollar Bill across the street from his office.

Then he went back to his office. It was too late to call Sally Porovsky, tell her what had happened in Chicago, ask if she could go out for a pizza after work tomorrow. He decided he wasn’t ready to tell her what had happened and was happening. He knew that once he started to talk about Chicago, about Victor Lee, about Earl Borg and the missing girl named Lilla, he would discover things he wasn’t ready to deal with. It was all tied together, knotted together inside him, but he didn’t know how.

There was someone else he would have to talk to before he could face Sally.

He looked at Dalstrom’s painting alone on the wall, the dark jungle with the spot of light and then he looked down at the photograph of the twins and Lilla.

The phone rang. It was two in the morning.

“Fonesca,” Earl Borg said calmly. “My idiot sons called. Ironic. For the first time in their lives, they think for themselves and their first decision is to kidnap their sister and demand money from their father. They want the money, in cash, forty thousand, or they’ll kill her. I told them I’d do it. But I won’t. You know why? Because, though my voice does not show it, I am fucking mad. In addition to which, those morons might just kill Lilla even if I pay them. Or they might take her with them wherever they plan to go even if I pay them and rape her or… who knows what.”

“Where are you supposed to pay and when?”

“They’ll call at nine in the morning, let me talk to Lilla,” said Borg. “And then I have half an hour.”

“They know you’re…”

“Blind, yes. I told them I’d send someone. Can’t be you. They’re not bright, but they don’t have Alzheimer’s. They might recognize you from the hog-dog business and you might not be able to get close enough to them. Your lanky friend will do quite nicely.”

“Pay them,” Lew said.

“I will not,” said Borg. “I told you once and I told you why. It needs no further elaboration. Goodbye, Mr. Fonesca.”

Borg hung up. Lew did too and went to the window.

Lew moved to the office window, lifted the blinds and gazed at the traffic beyond the DQ parking lot. Traffic was almost nonexistent at two in the morning, but the few cars that did go by sent out a soft whistle of wind as they passed, leaving a lull Lew found comforting.

Then the headache came. Lew knew it would, expected it, almost welcomed it. He went into his room, closed the door, closed the blinds tightly, unfolded a blanket he took from his closet and draped it over the window.

Lew’s family had a history of headaches. His mother, Angela, Uncle Tonio, the others, all got headaches, all the same, always on the right side of the head. When it got bad, the only thing that helped was darkness and moaning. Moaning was essential.

When the headaches were really bad, Angie heard music that wasn’t there. Uncle Tonio saw flashing colored lights. Lew sometimes smelled gardenias or barbecue sauce. This time he smelled, heard and saw nothing.

He turned off the light, rolled himself in a ball on the cot and welcomed the darkness and the pain. When he lived in Chicago with Catherine, when the headaches came, he would strip to his undershorts and curl in darkness on the cool tiles of the bathroom, his head on a bath towel.

Catherine understood. She asked no questions, offered no help because there was none to give.

Lew slipped into a deep sleep.

When he woke up, the headache was gone. He tried to go back to sleep but fleeting images snapped by like photographs on a home projector: Pappas smiling with his gun to his head; Santoro slumped over his desk; Milt Holiger’s pleading and defeated eyes; Victor Lee sitting in a tavern in Urbana and blankly looking at nothing to do and nowhere to go; and then Catherine being hit by the car, a series of flying shots, ending with a close-up of Catherine at the instant of impact, surprise and pain. Lew had not been there when it happened, but it was the most vivid of his images.

He sat up, got a towel from the closet, dried himself, deposited the towel in his small hamper and put on a short-sleeved gray garage sale pullover with a collar and the words TOP SAIL embossed on the pocket.

He took the blanket from the window, letting in the sun. He looked at his watch. It was a few minutes after seven in the morning. Lew went into his office, picked up the phone and punched in the number of the Texas Bar amp; Grille.

Half an hour later, Ames came up the cracked concrete steps. He didn’t use the rust-tinged railing for balance. He was straight-backed and moving slowly. When he got to the top step, he looked at the window and his eyes met Lew’s. Both men knew that the other had made no progress in finding Lilla and the Manteen brothers.

Ames opened the door and stepped into the office closing the door behind him. Lew turned away from the window.

“Borg wants you to make the payoff and get the girl back,” Lew said.

“Suits me,” said Ames.

“There won’t be any money in the payoff bag.”

“Didn’t think there would be.”

“I don’t want them killed,” Lew said, moving to his desk and sitting. “I think Borg does.”

“How about some serious wounding?” asked Ames.

“If you have to,” said Lew.

The phone rang a few minutes later.

Ames picked it up, said “McKinney,” listened and hung up. “Ten this morning,” said Ames. “I drop the bag in the trash can near the playground in Wilkerson Park. Then I’m supposed to walk over to the fence around the softball fields and watch for them to let the girl go. I’m guessing it’ll be a long walk for her and a quick run to the trash for the money. When they see the bag’s empty, they’ll have the girl in easy gunshot distance.”