Always Say Goodbye: A Lew Fonesca Mystery by Stuart M. Kaminsky Read Free Book Online

Toro’s?”
    “Truck’s fine.”
    “Good,” he said.
    The sun was still up. No clouds. Cool October Chicago weather. The next day the temperature could rise or fall twenty degrees. It might even snow.
    When they got in the truck, Franco asked, “Where to?”
    “Pappas.”
    Franco grinned, drove past Cabrini Hospital, made a left on Racine.
    “Angie’s office,” he said, leaning over Lew to point out the sign, ANGELA MASSACCIO, REALTOR, in black letters on the window above Gonzalez’s Hardware Store.
    “She’s doing great,” Franco said. “Want the radio?”
    “No.”
    When Lew had to drive, he liked to drive alone or with Ames McKinney who was silent unless Lew asked him a question. Lew liked to listen to a voice, any voice turned low. No music. Talk. Evangelists, Pacifica Radio, NPR, Limbaugh, Springer, any talk show. Company he could ignore or turn off.
    “Think I need a haircut? Angie thinks I need one.”
    Lew looked. Franco could use a haircut. Lew told him. Lew cut his own hair, what remained of it, with a comb, scissors and disposable razor. His father had taught him how, saying only “Like so. Like so. Like so,” as he cut, clipped and combed. For the past four years he had given himself haircuts looking into the pitted mirror of the men’s room of the building he lived in behind the Dairy Queen on 301 in Sarasota.
    Ten minutes later they were heading west on the Eisenhower Expressway.
    Franco knew Pappas’s address, remembered it from the fax Rich had sent him, but he wanted to be asked.
    “You remember the address? I do.” Franco beamed.
    “My job. Hey, I know the streets. You know how to find people. We’re gonna be a great team.”
    Lew didn’t remember becoming part of a team.
    “Yes,” Lew said.
    Lew thought about Rebecca Strum, wondered if when she was a young girl in a concentration camp they had given her a tattooed purple number.
    “What do we do when we get there?” Franco asked.
    “We talk. We listen.”
    “That’s the plan?” asked Franco.
    “There is no plan.”
    “Sounds good to me,” said Franco, adding, “Yellow light on?”
    “Why not,” Lew said.
    “Indeed,” Franco said, flicking a switch on the dashboard.
    The spinning light on top of the roof of the truck flicked yellow on the truck’s hood. Franco began to weave through early rush-hour traffic. Lew tightened his fists and looked at the dashboard clock. Three in the afternoon. The time when Catherine was killed. Lew fought to hold onto that memory of Catherine’s face, smiling as if she had a secret. He fought to hold onto it, knowing that another image of her was forming, an image of her crushed and bleeding face.
    He tried. He lost.
     
     
    The house was surrounded by a ten-foot-high wall of stone painted a conservative burnt ash. The metal gate was simple, wrought-iron painted black, each spike sharply pointed and
level with the wall. There was a white button in the wall to their left. Lew pushed it and a man’s voice from nowhere said, “Yes?”
    “We’re looking for John Pappas,” Lew said.
    “State your business and leave,” the man said.
    Franco leaned over and whispered in Lew’s ear, “That’s from The Twelve Chairs .”
    “Two men driving your car were following me this morning,” Lew said.
    “So?”
    “I’d like to know why.”
    “Idle curiosity,” came the voice, “or are you going someplace with this?”
    “My name’s Lew Fonesca. I want to know who killed my wife.”
    “I don’t know who killed your wife,” came the voice. Something in the voice, even filtered through the speaker, made Lew say, “But you know who did.”
    “Come in,” the voice said wearily. “I’m clicking. Just push the gate and be sure it clicks locked behind you.”
    Franco and Lew pushed the gate open, stepped inside and Franco pushed the gate closed behind them.
    “I’m supposed to be impressed,” said Franco as they walked down a wide brick-lined path toward the big two-story