Always Say Goodbye

12

The man across the desk was James Edward Simms. Lew didn’t have to ask him. The name was embossed on his office door and the brass plate on the desk. Simms, slim and smiling, looked like a white-haired doctor in a magazine ad for overcoming erectile dysfunction. He put the printout sheets in an envelope, and handed the envelope to Lew.

“Thank you,” said Lew.

“Please call me directly if you have any questions or need anything,” said Simms.

It wasn’t the right time or place to ask for a joke. Simms probably had some good ones, ones Ann would appreciate. Simms probably had a safety deposit box filled with jokes. Lew didn’t ask. He stood up and Simms came around the desk, guided him out of the office and escorted Lew to the front door.

“I’m glad you came by, Mr. Fonesca. Have a good trip back to Florida. Goodbye.”

Franco was parked to his left in a bus stop. When Lew got in the truck, Franco handed him the phone.

“Holiger,” he said.

“Lew? I just got off the phone with a guy in the P.D. The body in the car may have had Andrej Posnitki’s wallet in his pocket, but he isn’t Posno. Traced the fingerprints. Dead guy’s name is Terrance Chapel, fifty-five, picked up twice for panhandling using some very aggressive persuasion, two more times for petty theft, meaning grabbing fruit and potato chips from street-vendor carts. No known address. Chapel was homeless. Conclusion: Posno is still out there.”

“Maybe,” said Lew.

“The dead man isn’t Posno, Lew,” said Holiger.

“Three o’clock good for you?” asked Lew.

“Three? Fine. Where?”

“Dunkin’ Donuts on Jackson,” said Lew.

“See you then. Maybe I can come up with something more? Lew?”

“Yes.”

“How are you holding up?”

“Just fine,” Lew lied. “See you at three.”

When he put the phone back on the charger pad, Franco reached past Lew, pushed open the glove compartment and took out two Snickers bars. Lew managed to catch a Milky Way that tried to escape. He put it back in the compartment, and accepted the Snickers bar from Franco.

“Where to now?” asked Franco tearing the wrapper.

“The Dark Tower,” answered Lew.

Franco understood.

“Suits me,” he said, pulling into traffic.

There were no cars on the street in front of the Pappas house. The sun was bright, air cool. Lew remembered reading about the note left by a Mexican poet who jumped off his apartment balcony twenty years earlier: “The sun is bright. The clouds are beautiful. The air is warm and I am in a good mood. It is the perfect time to die.”

The door opened about fifteen seconds after Lew had pushed the button. The smell that met them was a temptation. Bernice Pappas stood in the doorway. She looked at them, wiped her hands on her dress and said, “We’re celebrating. Come in.”

Lew and Franco followed her inside.

“The door,” she said.

Franco closed it. It locked automatically.

The woman started walking to the left.

“I’m still cooking,” she said. “John and the boys are upstairs. Tell them lunch is in half an hour.”

She took two more strides, put her hand on the kitchen door, turned her head toward them and said, “You’re Christians, right?”

“Yeah,” said Franco.

“Then you’re invited to lunch.”

She went through the door. Lew and Franco went up the stairs toward the music. The door to Pappas’s sanctuary was closed. Lew knocked.

“Come in. Come in,” Pappas called.

Pappas was standing with Stavros and Dimitri in the center of the room. Each held a wineglass. The wine was white. The music was a man singing in Greek.

“We’re celebrating,” Pappas said, looking at Lew.

“We know,” said Franco. “Your mother told us.”

The three Pappas men looked somber.

“We’re invited for lunch,” Franco added. “Because we’re Christians. But to tell you the truth…”

“Posno,” Lew said.

“I heard he’s dead,” said Pappas, holding up his glass in a toast. “I know. We’re celebrating his demise and we’re respecting his memory. We were partners, even friends for a long, long time. Well, maybe not friends, but close.”

“I know,” Lew said.

“I can go outside now,” said Pappas, taking a full sip of wine. “Maybe. Maybe I’ll try tomorrow. Oh, manners. Stavros, get our guests some wine. Karipidis winery. They still make it like it was made six thousand years ago.”

Stavros blinked his good eye at Lew and moved to the bottle and glasses on the desk.

“Can we talk in private?” Lew asked.

“Private? I’ve got no secrets,” said Pappas.

Lew met his eyes.

“All right. My sons, Mr. Fonesca and I will talk in here. Give Mr

…”

“Massaccio,” said Franco.

“Stavros, give Mr. Massaccio a glass of wine and you two take him to see the garden.”

“The garden?” asked Dimitri. “What’s there to see in the garden?”

Pappas shrugged and said, “That’s what you’re supposed to say in situations like this. Go, play pool in the den or something.”

“I think I’ll stay with Lewis,” said Franco, accepting the glass of wine from Stavros whose good eye met both of Franco’s.

“It’s okay,” Lew said. “Go with them.”

Franco reluctantly followed the brothers Pappas out of the room, looking back over his shoulder at Lew.

When they were alone and the door was closed, Pappas took another sip of wine and said, “Sure you won’t have a little? It’s good.”

“No, thank you.”

“Want to sit?”

“No.”

“You don’t look happy,” said Pappas. “But then, you never look happy. What makes you happy?”

“Safe children laughing,” said Lew.

“We should both be happy today, Fonesca. Posno is dead. He killed your wife. He wanted to kill me. He-”

“He didn’t kill Catherine,” said Lew. “I found the man who killed her.”

Pappas looked surprised.

“Good for you,” he said, refilling his glass and holding it up in a toast. “So it wasn’t Posno? Well, did you kill him, this man who ran down your wife?”

“No.”

“Will you?”

“No.”

“Well, then, have him arrested,” said Pappas. “Or better, tell me who it is and he will be dead in forty-eight hours, as God is my witness.”

“The man the police found dead with Posno’s identification wasn’t Posno,” said Lew.

Pappas paused, glass almost to his mouth. Then he took a long drink.

“Posno is dead,” Pappas said, pointing a finger at Lew. “I know it. I feel it. He did not get away. Somewhere he is dead.”

“The way most people would look at it, he can’t be dead.”

Pappas reached for a remote control on the desk, pushed a button, and stopped the music.

“Why not?” asked Pappas.

“Posno never existed except in your imagination,” said Lew. “You made him up to take the fall for everything you did, everyone you killed. It wasn’t Posno who was afraid of what Catherine had in her files. It was you.”

“You’re a crazy person, Fonesca. Maybe that’s why I like you. Crazy people are interesting as long as they’re harmless.”

Pappas poured himself more wine and sat down, legs crossed, trousers straightened smooth.

“Posno exists,” he said. “Believe me.”

“There are no authenticated photographs of him,” said Lew. “No fingerprints on record. He was never arrested. No one but you has ever seen him.”

“My son Stavros-”

Lew shook his head no.

“Posno tried to kill him, took his eye.”

“You told your son that Posno was after you. You were the one doing the shooting. My guess is you were keeping Posno alive. You wanted to come close, but you accidentally almost killed your son.”

Pappas finished the wine in his glass, put it on the table in front of him, tapped Lew’s knee and said, “Door’s closed. Just you and me. You’ve got an imagination. Okay, I’ve got one too. It’s the poet in me. I think the police are going to find that the man with Posno’s identification was dead before he was shot. Heart attack, stroke, who knows. Died in a doorway on Roosevelt Road. Who knows? Then someone shot him and drove him to your sister’s house. Just a guess, but…”

“Who knows,” Lew repeated.

“Stavros set up that Posno Web site?” asked Lew. “Never mind. I’ll ask him.”

“Hey,” said Pappas, standing suddenly. “I killed nobody this time around. Not your wife. Not the homeless guy who, by the way, was the work of an idiot. You get what you pay for. And for the record, whatever that means, I did not kill or have killed those two others.”

“Santoro and Aponte-Cruz,” Lew supplied.

“Yeah, them. I didn’t kill them, didn’t have them killed.”

“You’re clean?”

“Clean?” Pappas said with a smile and a shake of his head. “Hell no. I just didn’t kill those two guys, but between you, me and the floor, I’ve killed people, all but one of them men. No regrets. I’ve got it worked out with God. I only killed people who deserved it. On that I’m clean. But, between you and me and Bobby McGee, I’ve got an inoperable brain aneurism. That’s not clean. I know it’s there. Can pop anytime. Could kill me just like that.”

He slapped his hand down on the table.

“Worse,” he went on, “it could leave me living the life of a pickled artichoke. So, clean is not the word I’d think of for me.”

“Pain?”

“Not really,” said Pappas.

“I’m sorry.”

“You know what? I believe you.”

“I believe you’re in pain,” said Lew. “I don’t know about the aneurism.”

“My doctor-”

“I’d get a second opinion,” said Lew. “Unless you’re just making up the aneurism and the doctor telling you about it and the myth of Posno.”

Pappas was shaking his head no and smiling tolerantly.

“Why would I lie about an aneurism?”

“To get your family to do anything you wanted them to do,” said Lew. “Mind if I talk to your doctor?”

“Yes,” said Pappas, looking passively at the drink in his hand. “Doctor and patient… you know.”

“I know you have no palsy,” said Lew. “Your pupils aren’t dilated. You don’t show any signs of double vision or pain above your eye or localized headache. No signs of nausea or vomiting, or stiff neck or-”

“You’re a doctor and a process server,” said Pappas. “Interesting combination.”

“I know a bail bondsman in Sarasota who also sells pizzas,” said Lew. “My father died of brain aneurism. I watched it happen. I can find out about you. It’s what I do.”

“I wish you would not tell any of this to my family,” said Pappas.

“Or you’ll kill me?”

Pappas looked at Lew and shook his head.

“No, it would be too awkward in my own house and it was clear when I first met you that you had no fear. Fonesca, why do you think my mother keeps baking rooms full of pastries? Why do you think my sons do whatever I tell them to even though they don’t agree with any of it? Because they’re scared shitless they’ll be on their own. And maybe, just maybe, they love me. What do you think?”

“I think you need a second opinion,” Lew said.

“Now, what are you doing here, Fonesca?”

“I don’t think Catherine’s file on you is in that locker at my uncle’s warehouse, or in the State Attorney’s office. Too many people have looked. If there is a file, it’ll turn up and there you’ll be.”

“If there is a file,” said Pappas. “And if it turns up. I’m not worried.”

Lew looked directly at Pappas’s face and said, “No. I guess you’re not.”

“Simonides was Posno’s favorite poet. Sixth-century. Doesn’t translate well into English. You’ll stay for lunch?”

Lew looked at the clock on the wall. There was plenty of time before his next appointment.

“Yes.”

“Good,” said Pappas, moving next to Lew and putting an arm around his shoulder. “Perhaps we’ll set an empty place for Posno. What do you say?”

Pappas escorted Lew to the dining room where Dimitri, Stavros and Franco were already seated. On top of a sun-orange tablecloth were six place settings, each with a blue-rimmed plate, a knife, fork, spoon, napkin and wineglass. Pappas took his place at the head of the table and Lew sat at his right. In front of Pappas was a large dark bottle of wine. Pappas picked up his napkin, revealing a black metal handgun. The only sounds in the room were Franco chewing on a macadamia nut and a bustling of metal-on-metal, dish-on-dish from the kitchen.

No one mentioned the gun.

Pappas reached for the wine, noticed that the cork had been pulled and rested in the mouth of the bottle. He removed and examined the cork, looked around the table and nodded his approval.

No one mentioned the gun but everyone at the table looked at it.

“Dimi opened this bottle,” Pappas said, leaning toward Lew with a smile. “Impatient. Look at the cork. Bruised. Small bruises, yes, but in wine you need to strive for perfection.”

Bernice Pappas bustled into the dining room carrying a large tray with platters piled with food and hot bread.

She did not see the gun next to her son’s plate.

“Smells like nearly forgotten memories,” said Pappas.

“ Lazaridi Amentystos, ” said Pappas, pouring a full glass of wine for Lew, doing the same for himself and then handing the bottle around as his mother hovered between her grandsons.

When the food was laid out, Bernice Pappas sat across from her son and saw the gun. Her eyes went from the weapon to her son’s reassuring face.

Pappas smiled and said, “ Lam Paldakai, thin slices of lamb with my mother’s own sauce. Begin, please.”

And the family began, silently taking small servings of lamb, peas, black olives, salad saturated in olive oil. Bernice Pappas put nothing on her plate.

Franco broke the silence.

“And that?” he asked, nodding at the gun on the table near Pappas’s hand.

Pappas stopped chewing and looked at the gun as if he had just noticed it.

“Ah, that. It’s just desert. An acquired taste. Most people I’ve known taste it but once.”

Pappas looked past Lew at Franco and kept smiling, raising his glass in a toast to his mother.

“Johnny.”

It was Bernice Pappas. John Pappas seemed to be frozen in his smile at Franco, who met his eyes but didn’t smile.

“Johnny,” she repeated.

“Pop,” said Stavros. “Please.”

“I always try to please,” said Pappas, holding out his arms. “Let’s talk about the Bears, bird flu, the oil crisis, global warming, if Shakespeare was Shakespeare and if Homer was really four different writers. Pick a subject, Mr. Fonesca. Not what we talked about a little while ago. There’s time for you to talk about that with Stavros and Dimi and my mother after we finish, if you must.”

Franco dug into his food, eyes up and darting from face to face in this family he couldn’t quite figure out.

“The Bears are going to have a great season,” said Franco.

“I don’t think there are any Greeks on the team,” said Pappas.

A game was being played between Pappas and Lew with Pappas conducting it, Franco in the middle, and Lew quietly eating his peas.

Dish after dish, subject after subject was consumed and disappeared from the table and from memory.

Gone were the salad bowls; Dimitri helping his grandmother clear the table.

“The Bears are doomed forever to be up and down. Cycles,” said Franco. “Professional football is about cycles.”

All about cycles. Pappas nodded his approval.

“There isn’t going to be any bird flu,” said Stavros nervously, his good eye fixed on his father, his glass eye staring at something interesting on the wall. “It’s all Chicken Little. The sky isn’t falling.”

The sky is falling, thought Lew.

“Global warming?” asked Dimitri of no one. “People didn’t cause it. It’s natural. Turn off your engines and walk eighteen miles to work. Besides, a warmer earth means longer summers, more music. You still want to blame someone, blame God. It’s all his idea.”

“God is oil,” said Bernice Pappas, head down, thin darkly veined hands slowly, shakily spearing a piece of lamb and guiding it to her mouth. “Oil is a miracle. How many goddamn dinosaurs you think died and left their oil. King Kong would have been up to his ass in dinosaurs and that still wouldn’t have come close to accounting for the oil we’ve sucked out of the ground. Now they’re finding it in the dirt in Canada, billions of gallons,” she rambled.

“Oil, that’s the real X-File. Did my husband Alex see that? Hell no. Did he say anything, hear anything I ever said to him?”

She stood across the table, steak knife in hand.

“Did he? Shit, look at all of you. You’re not listening either.”

“Momma, please sit down,” said Pappas gently.

“Then put that goddamn thing away,” she said, pointing at the gun, knife still in hand.

“Momma, please sit,” Pappas said firmly.

She sat, defeated.

“I’m sorry,” Pappas went on. “My mother…”

“She gets very intense,” Stavros explained.

Bernice went back to silently eating.

Franco was working on his second glass of wine, Pappas his third, Bernice her third, Stavros and Dimi their first. Lew had only sipped the wine. Now he looked up at his host.

“Well, I think it’s time for desert,” said Pappas with a grin. “It’s a beautiful fall day. The grass is green, the leaves a cascade of color, the clouds a fine cotton white, the sun bright and I am together with my family and some new friends. It won’t get better than this.”

“Don’t,” said Lew, looking up at Pappas, who met his eyes.

The others at the table, except for Bernice, looked puzzled. She kept up her eating pace.

“Will there ever be a better day to die?” asked Pappas, picking up the gun.

Franco was on his feet, chair kicked back, dish in his hand. Olive oil was dripping from the plate. Stavros and Dimi rose together and said, “Pop.”

Pappas nodded at Stavros, smiled at Dimitri, looked at his mother who continued to look down, a glass in her hand. He winked at Lew who quietly repeated, “Don’t. I know you didn’t-”

“But,” interupted Pappas. “There is trial, prison. Secrets exposed. Shame.”

“Pop,” said Stavros. “Please.”

“I choose Greek tragedy, not courtroom farce,” answered Pappas, turning the gun and firing into his own left eye.

No one screamed. No one jumped up. The only voice was Franco’s saying, “Holy shit.” For an instant, the only movement was Franco’s, who crossed himself.

Then Lew got up, leaned over the blood-covered face. The two sons knocked over their chairs and went to kneel and weep in their father’s blood. Franco stood behind them. At the far end of the table, Bernice Pappas said, “I didn’t make any desert.”

“She knew,” said Dimitri. “She knew he was going to do this. Why the hell did he do this?”

He looked at his dead father, then at his brother and finally at Lew.

“What did you say to him? What did he say to you?” asked Stavros.

“The sky is falling,” said Lew.

Stavros stood up and said, “Dimitri, get Grandma to her room, give her one of her sleeping pills. No, give her two.” Dimitri rose, looked back at his father’s torn face and hurried to his grandmother.

“You two,” Stavros said. “You don’t have to be part of this. Go.”

Franco placed a hand on Pappas’s neck to be sure he was dead and then stood.

“He shot himself in the same eye as me,” said Stavros quietly while his brother coaxed his grandmother from her chair at the other end of the table. “Why don’t I feel anything?”

Lew knew, but he didn’t say. Stavros would have to make his own deal with his father’s ghost.

Stuart M. Kaminsky

Always Say Goodbye: A Lew Fonesca Mystery