Stuart Kaminsky - Always Say Goodbye

“You got that from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

“Doesn’t make it wrong. There’s a lot of truth in movies if you really listen.”

He held out the bag.

“Instant energy,” he said.

Lew nodded.

“Angie’s making dinner. It’ll be ready whenever you want. Want some?”

Franco held out the bag. Lew took two. Franco stood there chewing and Lew sat there chewing.

“Okay, so we’re goin’ to find this guy Pappas?”

“Yes,” Lew said.

“Say, listen, Angie’s worried about you. We run into trouble looking, I’ve got guys who’ll be there whenever you give the word. Billy Bavitti, Marty Glickman, Tony Danitori. Guys you know.”

“Thanks, Franco. If we need them…”

“You’ll tell me. Want me to leave you what’s left in the bag?”

Lew took the bag from him and he left. He sat eating potato chip crumbs and looking at the envelope. When the bag held nothing more to search for, he picked up the envelope and opened it, pulling out a stack of reports, leaving salty grease smudges. The unmarked envelope had been dropped off by Milt Holiger who, like Lew, had been an investigator for the Cook County State Attorney’s Office. Catherine had been Milt’s favorite prosecutor. Unlike Lew, Milt was still there. He had done a lot of work for Catherine. Milt and Lew were working friends.

Lew had called only two people when he decided to come back to Chicago, his sister and Milt, whose help he needed. By giving him what was in the envelope and violating the confidentiality of the State Attorney’s Office, Milt had taken a big chance. He and his wife Ruthie had a son in his second year at Northwestern and a daughter who had been accepted by Vanderbilt.

The only question Milt had asked Lew was, “Will this help you find who killed Catherine?”

Lew’s right hand had a slight tremor, real or imagined. He did not want to be here. He would find the person who had killed Catherine. That would close one door behind him but the slow circling ball of depression would stay safely inside him. And if he somehow managed to lose it, he was afraid he would lose what he had left of Catherine.

The copy of a brief, neatly typed Illinois traffic accident report was on top of the pile. The investigating officer, a detective named Elliot Cooledge, had gotten the call at 3 P.M. and arrived at the scene, Lake Shore Drive and Monroe, at 3:22 P.M. Traffic was backed up. Catherine’s body was on the side of the drive. Cooledge talked to two people standing over her. Both the man and the woman who had been witnesses stated that it had been a hit-and-run driver. Cooledge called the office of Emergency Communications and requested a Major Accident Investigation Unit be dispatched immediately.

The next report was by a Major Accident Investigation Unit detective named Victoria Dragonitsa. It was nine-pages long. Distilled, the report said that the hit-and-run driver was in a small red sports car, probably foreign. Both the witnesses agreed that the car appeared to be deliberately targeting the victim who, they thought, saw it coming a second or two before it struck her. The red sports car speeded up after hitting Catherine. Her body bounced and thudded to the side of the drive. Neither witness had clearly seen the driver, but both, in spite of the sun on the windshield and the fact that they were watching a woman dead or dying, said there was only one person in the car. The driver was thin, not very tall and wearing a baseball cap. The woman witness, Eileen Burke, said the driver was wearing glasses. The man, Alvin Fulmer, said he saw no glasses. Both witnesses said Catherine had not been carrying anything other than the black purse flung over her shoulder.

Lew put the report down on the bed on top of the traffic accident report. The grease-stained envelope lay next to the slowly growing pile.

Why was Catherine heading toward their apartment building at three in the afternoon on a weekday? Lew and his wife both usually worked till about six, got something to eat in the Loop, walked home together talking about the real and false anger, real and false tears of people who had compiled a trail of evidence that proved they had stolen, robbed, beaten, maimed or murdered. They tended to agree on movies and television shows. The night before she died they had argued over the film Sea of Love. For Lew, Al Pacino could do no wrong. Catherine had punctuated that conversation with the word ham. Their voices had not been raised as she set the table and he boiled the water for the spaghetti. The contents of a jar of Prego sauce was heating in a metal pot. It started as smiling banter, went flat, serious and determined as they dug into the pasta and the argument. Then, when it looked as if it would burst and hurt, Catherine has smiled and said, “How about an armistice and some more Italian bread?”

What could he give and who could he give it to to relive that night, any night? He could find her killer and pray to his imagination, but that wouldn’t be enough, not nearly enough.

His own parents had never fought, at least not in front of Lew and Angie. At dinner, both of them had an unwritten list of things to say at dinner. Most of the things were about aunts, uncles, cousins on both sides of the family. Almost all of the conversation came from Lew’s mother while his father ate and nodded, grunted with understanding and smiled at the right times. Lew’s father had eaten, torn pieces of bread from the loaf, and looked tired. Was that long ago?

If Catherine had been going home for the day, why didn’t she tell Lew and why wasn’t she carrying her briefcase?

Two more documents to go. He skipped the next one and went to the twelve-page printout he had requested. It included all the automobile violations on Lake Shore Drive that day between 2 P.M. and 5 P.M. The printout covered everything from Wilson Avenue North to 61st Street.

The listing of Catherine’s killing was on the fifth page. It was no longer than any of the others: hit-and-run vehicular death. 3 P.M. Victim: woman, white, Catherine Fonesca, thirty-five. Vehicle: red sports car. Last seen heading south.

Lew flipped through the report, looking for a red sports car or even a red car in one of the notations other than the one about Catherine. There was one listing that might be a match and the timing was right. At 3:18 P.M. near the 55th Street exit in Hyde Park, a speeding red sports car brushed its passenger side against a green Toyota driven by a woman named Rebecca Strum, eighty, who almost lost control.

Rebecca Strum’s name was familiar, not just to Lew but, he knew, to probably millions of people around the world. He had seen two of Rebecca Strum’s books on the bookshelf near the kitchen in Franco and Angie’s house. She was a visiting faculty member at the University of Chicago. She had won a Nobel prize for her writing and lecturing on the Holocaust. She was a death camp survivor. The driver of a red sports car had killed Lew’s wife and may have come close to killing the person frequently recognized as the most important woman in the world.

Before picking up the last report, Lew closed his eyes and clasped his hands together. The tremor was still there. He opened his eyes and saw his hands. Had he been praying? He picked up the report. If there is a god or gods, He, She, It, or They had nothing to do with what Lew had decided to do.

The last report was the coroner’s. Lew had seen hundreds of these reports. He had always tried to be as clinically dispassionate as the people who had dictated the reports appeared to be. This one would be different.

Catherine had almost certainly died almost instantly. Her hip and left foot had been broken and her skull had been cracked in six places as her body tumbled. Internal bleeding was massive. Her brain had ruptured and filled with blood. That’s what it came down to. That was it.