Stuart Kaminsky - Always Say Goodbye

“Still got it,” said Lew who put the cap on his head.

Ann Horowitz had said that Lew wore the cap for many reasons. She said that one obvious reason was to cover Lew’s balding head. “That,” she had said, “is good. It shows that you still care about how you look to the world and how you look to yourself. It’s a sign of ego. It’s a very small tear in your precious depression. If it is, I want to find the tear and sew it up. Don’t worry. We’ll apply a very local anesthetic.”

Lew felt that his depression was too important to him to lose. Ann knew this and knew about what he might have to deal with if it were gone.

Ann also believed that the cap was an attempt to hold onto something positive from the past, memories of Banks, Williams, Santo, Dawson, Sosa, Cey, Sandberg. Lew liked that interpretation. Whatever the cap might mean, he always felt a little better, a little more protected, when he wore it.

Franco’s cell phone, now back in the dashboard charger, buzzed. Franco asked Lew to get it as he worked his way toward the outer lane.

“Hello,” Lew said.

“Hey, where’s Franco?”

The caller, who had a raspy voice like Lew’s Uncle Tonio, was chewing on something.

“Driving. Traffic on the Dan Ryan’s backed up. I’m Franco’s brother-in-law.”

“Hey, Lewie? Is that Lewie?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Rick. Heard you went nuts.”

“Yes.”

“You better now?”

“No,” Lew said.

“Hey, it happens. Think you’re nuts, you should see my sister-in-law. She’s like fruitcakes all the time, you know?”

The outer lane was moving and they were on their way. Lew could no longer see the one-eyed man’s car.

“Got a pencil, something?” asked the voice.

“Yes,” Lew said, taking out his notebook.

“Car belongs to a John Pappas.”

Rick gave him the owner’s address and said he was faxing a copy of Pappas’s driver’s license to Franco’s house.

“I’m looking at it now,” said Rick.

“What’s he look like?” Lew asked.

“Fifty, maybe a little more, maybe closer to sixty,” said Rick. “Hair white. Looks a little like that guy on Law and Order, Dennis whatever. Guy that used to be a Chicago cop.”

Pappas was definitely not the driver Franco had pulled out of the window.

Franco reached for the phone. Lew handed it to him.

“Hey way, Rick,” he said. “That lunch’s gonna be on me.”

He paused, listening, nodding his head, smiling and then said, “Ditkaland forever. See ya.”

He handed the phone back to Lew. Lew hung it up.

“Rick’s not a cop,” Lew said.

“No, but his daughter Maria, thirteen, smart, knows how to use the Internet like you wouldn’t believe,” said Franco.

“It’s not legal,” Lew said.

“So’s jaywalking. You care?”

“No.”

“We’ll find him,” Franco said. “The son of a bitch who killed Catherine. We make a good team, huh?”

“Yes,” Lew said.

“In the compartment between us, in the armrest, I’ve got packages of that spicy beef jerky.”

Lew opened the compartment and found about twenty wrapped thin ropes of dark red jerky. He took one and handed one to Franco.

“Love those things,” he said, opening the wrapping of his jerky with his teeth. “Hey, give Angie a call. Tell her where we are.”

Talking to his sister would be another step into the past. He had only been in Chicago for about an hour and had had already taken dizzying steps.

“Just hit forty-seven,” Franco said, pointing at the phone.

Lew picked up the phone and hit the numbers. One ring and Lew’s sister was on the phone.

“Franco, you got him?”

“Angela, I’m back.”

John Pappas stood at the window on the second floor of his house in suburban River Grove, “the Village of Friendly Neighbors.” In one hand he held a white porcelain cup and saucer. Next to the cup was a still warm, honey-covered slice of baklava. His mother had finished baking the treat less than an hour ago. Her phyllo was almost see-through thin, the nuts and raisins it held touched the right edge of sweetness and memory.

Pappas, hair white and full, his face a sun-etched almost-almond, slightly pocked, reminded most people of someone they had met, although they couldn’t recall who.

Pappas looked across the lawn to the tree-lined street with fall leaves falling and little traffic. He sipped the thick coffee and took a comforting bite of pastry, careful to avoid any honey that might drip off and stain his white shirt. He wore a fresh white long- or short-sleeved dress shirt every day.

He stood thinking of Andrej Posnitki, known as Posno. Posno was never far from his mind. Posno was the reason Pappas was nearly imprisoned in this house. Posno was the reason his son Stavros had lost an eye. John Pappas took the last morsel of his delicacy, licked his honey-dappled fingers and imagined what Posno might be doing at this moment.

Andrej Posnitki, in his own apartment on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, looked out his window at a sailboat on Lake Michigan, driven by a gust of wind.

Short, broad, head shaved, skin almost white, he could be described as either a barrel or a crate. He weighed almost three hundred pounds and every ounce could and had been delivered many times though his fists. He preferred his hands to a blade or a gun, but he had been known to use whatever was available to threaten, maim or slay his enemies.

He had no family. He had no friends.

“The devil always provides,” he said.

Posno worked alone. His fees were fixed and no one who hired him questioned or failed to promptly pay.

His appearance was calculatingly menacing, but his voice was calm and he had a passion for poetry. He read it, listened to it on CDs, even gave occasional open microphone readings of his own work at a small bookstore and coffeehouse within walking distance on Broadway.

One of Posno’s enemies, his primary enemy, was John Pappas. Not long ago the two had been inseparable, partners.

Pappas had been in the kitchen at the back of the Korean restaurant on Clark Street when Posno had picked up a butcher knife, its blade still carrying globules of animal fat. He had brought the blade down at the weeping man kneeling in front of him. The man had tried to cover his head. Two severed fingers spun past Posno’s face. Blood gushed from the Korean’s split head, turning the man’s apron from dirty white to a moist splotch of red.

Pappas stayed in the corner, watching. No blood touched him.

Pappas had been in the hallway behind Posno who rang the bell. The tones inside played the first nine notes of “Anything Goes.” This was followed by footsteps and a woman’s voice behind the door saying, “Who is it?” Pappas had answered, “Your neighbor upstairs.”

“Mr. Sweeney?” she had asked.

“Yes, I need some wine, any kind, for a dish my wife has just started cooking.”

She opened the door. The man who stood in front of her was definitely not Mr. Sweeney. It was Posno, who stepped forward quickly, and put his thick hands around her neck before she could scream. Pappas had stayed outside.

And there was Jacobi, right on Maxwell Street, among the crowd in front of a shop that sold shoes, seconds. Shoes, paired and tied together by their shoestrings, were piled high on a cart in front of the store. Posno had a thin, sharply pointed steel rod up his sleeve. Jacobi was rearranging shoes to keep the stack from falling. When Posno struck, deep under the man’s ribs, the shoes came tumbling as Jacobi grabbed the side of the cart. Posno had jumped out of the way. The heel of a shoe hit him above his right eye. He knew the thin rod was leaving a wet trail inside his sleeve that he would have to clean himself. Pappas had watched. He had no jacket to clean, no blood on his hands.