Always Say Goodbye

14

To Lew’s right on the Southwest Airlines flight to Tampa, a woman in her thirties, large, heavy, was trying to untie a knot around a package wrapped in blue paper. She kept pushing her slipping glasses back on her nose and mumbling to herself as she struggled.

Lew was on the aisle, eyes closed, seeing dead people.

On the other side of the mumbling woman was a young man in an orange T-shirt. The young man’s arms were folded, his green baseball cap pulled down over his closed eyes.

“I don’t want to tear it. I don’t want to tear it. I’m not going to tear it,” the woman mumbled.

Lew opened his eyes. Through the window past the three people across the aisle, he could see a forever of darkness pricked with tiny white pulsing stars.

“Oh, God,” said the woman, leaning back and placing the package on her lap while she reenergized to continue her battle with the string. “What’s inside? What’s inside? What’s inside?”

“A book,” said Lew.

He regretted his two words before he had even finished getting them out. The woman had turned her head and was tight-lipped.

“It’s supposed to be a surprise,” she said. “He said it was a surprise. Now you’ve goddamn spoiled it.”

“I do that sometimes,” Lew said.

“Trying to be funny? That it? Stand-up comedian wannabe?”

“No,” said Lew.

“Okay, do something useful, George Carlin. Untie the knot.”

She handed him the package.

A flight attendant, the sleeves of her white blouse rolled up, came quickly down the aisle, smiling as she passed. Lew thought she looked tired. Wary? Terrorists? Crazy people? Drunks? Turbulence? Rockets from the ground? Every flight brought down the odds for her. But then, Lew thought, every day brings down the odds for all of us.

“Can you untie it or not?” the woman said.

Then she suddenly brightened, a smile on her face.

“Hey, can you untie it or knot? Get it? Not like with a k in front not n-o-t. ”

“Yes,” said Lew, working on the string.

The young man in the orange T-shirt and green cap shifted and turned his back on the woman and Lew.

Lew untied the string and handed the package back.

“My fingers,” she said. “Too short, too stubby, for which I blame my mother who has them too.”

“It could be something worse,” said Lew.

“Could be?” said the woman, carefully pulling back the paper. “It is worse.”

She folded the paper carefully, placed it in the pouch on the back of the seat in front of her and looked down at a paperback copy of Heart of Darkness. She put her right hand on the book and sobbed.

“That sun-diddly son of a bitch.” She looked at Lew. “He remembered. We had to read this back when we were in second year of high school. I hated the damn thing. But he liked it. You know what?”

“No.”

“I’m gonna keep this book, and the paper in my handbag,” she said. “Carry around something from someone you love and you hope-to-hell loves you even if he’s not there for you and never will be. You know what I mean?”

Lew’s hand was in his pocket, touching Catherine’s wedding band on his key chain.

“Yes,” he said.

The woman leaned forward and looked out the window past the sleeping or pretending-to-sleep young man.

“Almost there,” she said. “That’s Tampa.”

“Almost there,” Lew agreed. He closed his eyes and thought about a conversation only hours old.

Angie had wanted to have the family over. Lew could leave the next day. Franco had agreed. Angie had looked at her brother’s face and understood.

“Okay,” she had said, taking his right hand in both of hers.

“What’s okay?” asked Franco. “Uncle Tonio’s gonna be here, Maria and the kids, Jamie…”

“Next time,” Angie had said.

“Next time,” Lew had agreed.

It was close to midnight when Lew pulled the rental car into a space at the rear of the DQ on 301. He would ask Dave if he could leave it there for a while. If Lew didn’t think of someone to give it to in the next few days, he would call a charity that takes vehicles and have it hauled away. There were advantages to having the Saturn, but he could think of only one, ready transportation. There were lots of negatives, including responsibility for keeping it running, feeding it gas, getting a vehicle tag. There would be the resistible temptation to drive when he should walk or use his bike. There would also be the resistible temptation to keep the vehicle clean.

Tonight was sleep. Tonight was doors locked and darkness.

When he opened the door and flicked on the light, he was aware, probably for the first time, of how bare the space was. Three folding chairs, small desk with ping dents and one empty lone wire box on it for letters, and on the wall, the painting. Tonight was sleep.

He went to the painting, stood in front of it. Not long, a few seconds, enough to refresh his memory. Darkness shrouded mountains and the lone spot of color. Stopping to look at the painting had become not a compulsion but a ritual. For the first time, he realized that. Don’t think about it. Tonight was sleep.

He turned off the light, made his way to the small room off of the office, clicked on the floor lamp and looked at the cell in which he lived. Cot. Television. VHS player. His few clothes on hangers in the closet and in the low unpainted three-drawer dresser against the wall. Everything was neat. Order. Keep one small space clean. Order. He put down his bag, put his dirty clothes in the small wicker basket in the closet, placed the book Angie and Franco had given him on the wooden chair next to his bed alongside the black traveling clock with the relentless red numbers. He took off his clothes, folded them neatly on the waist-high closet shelf Ames had built and pulled on his oversize Shell T-shirt. Then he turned out the light and got into bed, but not under the thin khaki blanket. Tonight was sleep.

But he did not sleep. They weren’t ghosts. They weren’t vivid memories. They were part of him. Everything that happens, every moment spent became, he felt certain, part of him. Dreams, movies, imagination, distorted and real memories. All took up bits of the real time of his life, were as much a part of him as a chocolate cherry Blizzard. He let the dreams and thoughts come, beginning and ending with Catherine.

And then he slept.

There was light and the faint rustle of someone in the next room. Lew blinked at the window. He had forgotten to close the blinds. The morning sun, rising above the shops on the other side of 301, cut through the spaces between the plastic slats.

Lew sat, bare feet on the floor. Then as he rose, he reached for his faded leather pouch with his soap, razor, toothbrush and toothpaste. He took a fresh blue towel from his closet, draped it over his shoulder and went through the door into his office.

Ames McKinney leaned back against the wall across from the door a few feet from the Stig Dalstrom painting. Ames wore his usual naturally faded jeans, a long-sleeved blue flannel shirt under a blue denim jacket. His gray-white hair was cut trim and his face cleanly shaved. He was reading a paperback book, but looked up when Lew entered the room.

“You look sartorial,” said Lew.

“I’m a trendsetter,” Ames said, putting the book in his jacket pocket. “How did it go?”

“Found the man who killed Catherine. Watched a man shoot himself. Talked to a man who had killed a lawyer and a bodyguard and stolen Catherine’s and my savings.”

Ames didn’t ask for further explanation.

“Busy few days,” said Ames, pushing away from the wall. “Got a busy one for you today.”

“What are you reading?”

Ames touched the pocket of his jacket into which he had slipped the book and said, “ Ivanhoe, Scott. Wanna put your pants on, chief?”

“I’ll be right back.”

Lew opened the door, stepped into the cool morning facing the fully risen sun. Twenty steps to his right was the washroom. It was the only washroom for the six offices in the two-story building.

No one was inside when he entered. Sometimes a vagabond from Genesis, a tattered soul cast out of Eden by a vengeful God, would make the cracked tile floor his home for the night. The two toilet stalls had doors that wouldn’t stay closed and a sink with a perpetual slow drip that had left a dark stain leading to the drain. The room had two pinging overhead fluorescent lights. At the moment, they both worked.

Lew looked in the mirror and saw his mother’s face. It was impossible to avoid the resemblance, the pouting lower lip, the dark, sad face, brown eyes. He took off his shirt, hung it over the top of a toilet stall, washed, shaved, brushed, combed back his hair. It was the best he could do. It was all he wanted to do. While he liked to keep himself, his living space, his clothes clean and neat, he wasn’t obsessive. The world was chaotic. He wanted his part of it to be reasonably free of that chaos.

When he got back in the office, Ames said, “Borg.”

Lew moved into the other room and raised his voice. “You saw him?”

“Talked to him on the phone. Don’t know what his problem is but he won’t go to the police with it.”

When Lew dressed in jeans, a white dress shirt and his Cubs baseball cap, he said, “I’ve got a hundred and nine thousand dollars.”

Ames looked at him.

“Catherine’s insurance,” Lew said. “About a quarter of it. The other three-quarters was stolen.”

“Way you live that could stretch you for four or five years,” said Ames.

“It could,” Lew agreed. “I’ll think about it.”

They drove to Long Boat Key and straight up Gulf of Mexico Drive to the entrance of Conquistador Del Palmas. The uniformed guard at the gate was old, with perfect false teeth and a smile. Lew’s name had been left at the gate and he and Ames were waved in.

Earl Borg’s condo was in an eight-story building. Borg was on the sixth floor. He buzzed them in and they crossed the highly polished azure tile lobby to the elevator, which took them silently to the sixth floor. The door to 604 was closed. Lew knocked.

“Come in. It’s open.”

The apartment wasn’t large. A dining-room table and four chairs sat to the left in front of an open kitchen. Another door was open to Lew’s left. Beyond the door was a fully made double bed, ebony end tables and a matching dresser. To the right of the living room in which they were standing was an office-den. The leather smell of the den furniture dominated the apartment. On the small balcony across from Lew and Ames sat a man facing the Gulf of Mexico.

Something didn’t look right, feel right about the place or the man. Lew looked at Ames and knew that he sensed it too.

“Drink?” Borg asked. “I’ve got sangria out here. Ice. Glasses.”

Ames and Lew went out on the small balcony. There were two white canvas-backed director’s chairs.

“No, thanks,” said Lew.

“I’ll take one.”

“Mr. McKinney,” said Borg, without looking up. “I recognize your voice. Distinctive.”

“Montana mostly.”

And then Lew realized what was wrong with the apartment and the man. There was no television set, no computer, no paintings on the walls. There was no reason to put them there. Earl Borg was blind.

Lew and Ames sat, their backs to the Gulf.

“You figured it out,” said Borg, reaching slowly for the pitcher. “I’ve learned to read pauses, silences, inflections, hesitations over the past two years. I do have a television in the den and a computer that likes to talk.”

He found the pitcher and a glass and carefully and accurately poured till the glass was more than half full.

“Mr. McKinney?” he said, holding up the glass.

“Thanks,” said Ames, taking it.

“You wanted to see me?” asked Lew.

“Very much, but since I’m blind, that won’t be possible. I’ll settle for straight talking. I’m diabetic, knew it would take my sight someday. Took my father’s too and I’m pretty sure my grandfather’s. Happen to remember the little girl back at the hog-dog?”

“I remember.”

“That little girl is my daughter. She’s thirteen now. She has also been kidnapped. I want you to find her and take her back to her mother.”

“The police,” Lew said.

“Officially, I’m not the child’s father and I’m certainly not nor ever was Denise’s husband. Denise wants me to pay the money. She won’t tell the police. She’s afraid of what might happen to Lilla. They’ve had her three days. Denise is now convinced they might kill her.”

“Are you convinced?” Lew asked.

“Oh, yes,” Borg said, taking a long sip of his drink. “I know them, know what they’re capable of.”

“You know who they are?” Lew asked.

“Yes, you met them at the hog-dog. They’re my sons, Chet and Matt. Different mother than Lilla. Mr. Fonesca, Mr. McKinney, I have many regrets, those two boys being high on the list, but that girl is the lone glow in my life of darkness. I live simple, but there’s not much meaning to it without that one pinpoint of light whose name is Lilla.” He paused and then said, “I laid it on a little too heavy-handed, didn’t I?”

“A little,” Lew said.

“Are they in Kane?” Lew asked.

“I don’t know, but I’m confident you can find them. You found me four years ago. I’ve asked some people who know people who owe people and I know you’re good at situations like this. They know about you.”

“They?” Lew asked.

Borg kept staring toward the horizon. Lew resisted looking at whatever it was Borg seemed to see out there.

“In my often wicked business, I meet and use and am used by people who have connections below the line of legality,” said Borg.

Lew looked at Ames, whose nod of yes was almost imperceptible.

“I need some information,” Lew said to Borg.

“Whatever you want,” said Borg. “Want to talk money first?”

“How much is she worth to you?” Lew asked.

“My fortunes have diminished a bit since you last saw me, but I’m far from impoverished. So, I’ll pay, at the far end of reasonable, whatever you ask if you bring her to me or her mother safely and get those two whelps the hell out of Florida forever.”

Lew looked at Ames, who met his eyes. Across the table Earl Borg stared between them.

“Gas, car rental, expenses, reimbursement for any information I have to buy.”

“That’s it?” asked Borg.

“There’s a children and family services fund in the county,” Lew said. “Give them a donation.”

“Four thousand?”

“Four thousand,” Lew agreed.

“Best deal I’ve ever made if you don’t count the time I got four acres of downtown Sarasota from a half-wit named Tarton Sparks,” said Borg. “Ask your questions. Take your time.”

Three hours up I-75 through heavy snowbird and normal traffic they passed a jackknifed truck that lay dead on its side. The truck’s hood was open like a King Kong dinosaur. After the gapers’ block, traffic moved faster, but not much. Early in the afternoon, Lew pulled into the same gas station and general store he had gone to the last time he had come to Kane. The boiled peanuts sign was still there, now peeled away so that it read: B ST OILED PEA TS IN THE SOUT.

Another change from the last time Lew had come to Kane was that Ames McKinney was with him and armed with an impressive long-bareled revolver in the pocket of his yellow slicker. The revolver was there courtesy of Big Ed and the Texas Bar amp; Grille. Big Ed told people that the gun, which usually rested in a glass-covered display case on the wall behind the bar, had belonged to John Wesley Hardin. Ames doubted the legend, but admired the weapon. Ames’s job, among his others at the Texas, was to keep the display guns clean and in working order.

Lew filled the tank with gas.

The overweight woman behind the counter was the same one who had been there the last time. It even seemed to Lew as if she were wearing the same dress. She looked at Ames and then at Lew and back at Ames. Her hands were facedown on the glass countertop.

Lew handed her a twenty-dollar bill.

“Sixteen-twelve out of twenty,” she said as if making the transaction were a burden.

She opened the cash register with a soft grunt, deposited the twenty, counted out change, closed the register and faced Lew and Ames with a gun in her right hand.

“Why the gun?” asked Lew.

“Everyone in this town has a gun,” she said. “When a couple of new folks come to town and one is carrying a gun under his slicker, you consider if you might be on the wrong end of a holdup.”

“Makes sense,” said Ames. “But it’s not so.”

“I’ve been in here before,” said Lew.

“Don’t remember you,” she said, gun steady.

“Guess not. You know a girl named Lilla Fair, a woman named Denise Fair?” asked Lew.

The gun was steady in her hand. Her expression didn’t change.

“I know everybody in and around Kane,” she said. “All four hundred and eighty-two of them.”

“How many are named Lilla Fair?” Lew asked.

The woman’s eyes moved back and forth from Lew to Ames.

“Why?”

“She’s missing,” Lew said.

“No,” said the woman, shaking her head. “She’s with the Manteen boys. Left two days ago, stopped for gas. Ask me, I’d say Denise is some kind of fool to let Lilla go anywhere with Chester and Matthew. Lilla’s not a baby girl anymore, if you know what I mean.”

“I know,” said Lew. “Would you mind putting the gun down?”

“You related to Denise?”

“No,” said Lew. “Lilla’s father wants to be sure she’s safe.”

“Well, he will not soon have his wish,” she said. “Long as that girl is with those nutcrackers, he will not have reason to be sure she’s safe.”

She put the gun back under the counter and handed Lew his change.

Denise Fair stood on the wooden stoop of her two-bedroom, one-story box of a house. The house was about a two-minute drive from the gas station. From the look on her face, both Lew and Ames concluded that the overweight woman had called to announce that they were coming.

She wore tan slacks and an extra-large orange University of Florida sweatshirt. Her arms were folded against her chest. She looked like a college student, hair tied back in a ponytail, skin clear, pretty.

“My name is Lewis Fonesca. This is my friend Ames McKinney. Earl Borg has asked us to find your daughter.”

She looked at the two of them and was clearly not impressed.

“Tell Earl,” she said evenly, “that I am still begging him to pay what they want. They wouldn’t hurt Lilla. They’ve known her all her life. They may be stupid, but they’re not going to molest or hurt their own half sister, especially if Earl gives them the goddamn few hundred dollars. Problem is that Lilla is diabetic. Her medication is gone. She took it when they… I think she has enough for…”-she shook her head and went on-“I don’t know. I know Matt and Chet. Lilla likes them, but they’re not… no, they wouldn’t hurt her.”

Both Ames and Lew knew she was trying to convince herself and was failing.

“Any idea where they might take her?” Lew asked.

“Earl’s still in Sarasota?”

“Yes,” said Lew.

“They don’t have much in the way of imagination,” she said. “They’d go where they could be close to the money they hoped to get from Earl.”

“Sarasota,” said Ames.

“Sarasota,” Denise Fair confirmed.

“Chet and Matt’s mother,” said Lew. “Is she in town?”

“Alma Manteen died last week,” she said. “May account for why they’re doing what they’re doing.”

“You have a photograph of Lilla we could borrow?” Lew asked. “A recent one.”

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll get it for you. You don’t have to return it. Give it to Earl. Yes, I know, he can’t see it, but he can hold it. Give it to him and tell him to pay them. He’s stubborn, but the Lord knows Earl loves Lilla. If he won’t pay, then I pray the Lord guide you to her.”

“We’ll find her,” said Ames.

“Lilla’s all I’ve got,” she said. “I lost my son in Iraq.”

“Fred,” said Lew.

She looked at him.

“I was there when Lilla named the hog,” Lew said.

Denise Fair, arms still folded, went back into her house to find a photograph of her daughter.