Always Say Goodbye

2

Franco got off the Dan Ryan at Jackson Boulevard, went east to Racine and then south on Racine to Cabrini Street in the heart of Little Italy. A block away was Taylor Street, both sides of which were crowded with Italian restaurants brought back to life when Lew was a kid by the University of Illinois Chicago campus. The university had embraced the neighborhood, threatened to engulf it, and eventually came to a mutually advantageous understanding.

Lew had grown up in this neighborhood of stubborn, proud, often brilliant and sometimes crazy, first, second and a third generation of primarily Sicilian immigrants. He knew the streets, the parks and many of the families that had not been pressured out from the west by the constant expansion of the University of Illinois Medical Center, and from the east by the university’s ever-growing Chicago campus.

Some thought the university had saved the neighborhood with dollars. Some thought the university had ended the neighborhood. Some lost their homes and had to move out, mostly to Bridgeport near the White Sox’s Cellular Field and an enclave of Italian-speaking residents within the mayor’s Irish home turf.

Franco and Angela had stayed in Little Italy in a three-bedroom, eighty-year-old frame house on Cabrini Street across from Arrigo Park. There was a newer model Ford Pinto in the driveway, but not enough room for the tow truck.

“So, remember Toro’s Garage?” Franco asked, pulling into a parking space on the street. “Still there. I throw business his way. He lets me park my cars. Got five now. Toro, he fixes ’em up, sells ’em. We split the profits. You need a car, you got your pick. I usually park at Toro’s and walk home, but today…”

He parked between a Lexus and a dingy gray Saturn.

They got out. Lew’s sister was in the doorway, hands at her sides, examining her brother as he crossed the street. Angela and Lew were born a year apart. He was the older. The family resemblance was clear, but there was something strong, almost pretty about her. She was wearing jeans and an orange long-sleeved pullover. Her dark hair was pulled back and tied with an old-fashioned orange ribbon Lew had given her for her twelfth birthday.

She came forward to meet them.

“Lewis,” she said. “All right if I-”

“Yes,” he said, putting down his bag.

She took five quick steps and hugged him. He felt her breasts, large like his mother’s, press warmly against him. He tried to hug her back, wanted to hug her, couldn’t. He didn’t want too many doors open, not now, not yet.

Franco stood quietly a dozen feet away.

“Welcome home,” she said, finally stepping back. “Hey, I’m crying. I was always the crier, right? Me and Pop. Let’s eat.”

“Wait,” said Franco. “I picked up fifty bucks on the way home from a guy who was having car trouble. Let’s celebrate. Il Vicinato. Pollo Vesuvio. ”

Angela looked at Lew and knew what to do.

“Tomorrow, maybe,” she said.

As they moved into the house, Angela said, “I’ve got that envelope. Thick. Guy brought it here a few days ago. Well-dressed, little pudgy, you know?”

Lew knew who he was.

“It’s on your bed, Teresa’s bed,” she said, taking his duffel and handing it to Franco who walked off with it.

Nothing had changed except for the large screen television in the living room. Sicilian memories pre-1950s. Nothing modern. Everything comfortable, musky dark woods. Chairs and a sofa with muted dark-colored pillows that showed the indentation of three generations of Fonescas who had lived here.

“Drink?” she asked, touching his shoulder as Lew sat in the chair Catherine always sat in when they came here. “Sangria? Just made a batch from Uncle Tonio’s wine.”

“Sure,” Lew said.

“Coming up,” she said with a smile.

When she left, Franco came back in the room and moved to the window.

“I figure they know how to find us,” he said. “They got my license plate number. They’re doing the same thing to us we’re doing to them.”

“I know.”

“What do we do now?” Franco asked, moving from the window with a smile and a clap of thick hands.

“Drink sangria, close our eyes, hope the wheels slow down, have something to eat,” Lew said as his sister came back with a tall green and blue ceramic pitcher on a tray surrounded by three tumblers. The pitcher, which Lew had forgotten, had been made by his great-grandfather when he was a boy in Palermo. Seeing it, Lew remembered.

He wanted to go back to Sarasota. Now.

“So, after dinner?” Franco asked, holding his beaded glass of sangria.

“I’ve got some reading to do. And then I need a nap.”

“Okay,” Franco said.

“A toast,” Angie said.

The glass felt moist and cold in Lew’s hand and the almost transparent slice of lemon floating on the wine looked like the reflection of the moon.

“Great to have you back, Lew,” said Franco, holding up his glass.

“Find peace,” said Angie.

They waited for Lew.

“ Cu a fissa sta a so casa, ” he said.

It was one of no more than a dozen things Lew could say in Italian. They drank.

Franco looked puzzled.

“‘The fool should just stay home,’” Angie translated. “When do you want to eat?”

“If I sleep more than three hours, wake me up,” Lew said, putting his empty glass on the tray, picking up and chewing on the lemon moon.

They nodded and Lew went to Teresa’s room, closing the door behind him. He hadn’t remembered his niece’s room, hadn’t remembered how small and neat it was, bed against the wall now covered by a sky-blue blanket covered with soap-bubble circles, her grandmother’s rocking chair in the corner near the only window, an old walnut teacher’s desk complete with inkwell. A computer keyboard and mouse sat in front of a darkened monitor. Next to the desk stood a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, its shelves shared by books, CDs, DVDs and colorful three-ring notebooks.

If it weren’t for his search for Catherine’s killer, he would have darkened the room, taken off his shoes, gotten into bed, curled into a ball and slept for a day, a week, forever.

On the bed was the thick envelope. He was reaching for it when there was a knock at the door.

“You sleepin’?” asked Franco.

“Not yet.”

Franco opened the door. In his left hand was a bag of potato chips. He popped a handful into his mouth. A single orange-red crumb floated to the floor.

“Lewie, we’re worried about you. Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it. You missing it, Lewie?”

“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.

Angie, Franco, Uncle Tonio would try to get him to go to the cemetery, but Lew wouldn’t go. Catherine was not there, only broken bones and decaying body.

If there was a soul, it wasn’t hanging around her grave. He hoped it wasn’t. If there was a soul, as he had been taught and rejected by the time he was ten, it would come to him. He would welcome it, but he didn’t expect it.

Lew slowly put the report on the pile, returned the documents to the envelope, put the envelope in his carry-on and went through the door. The smell from the kitchen was a kickback memory to better times, his grandmother’s garlic pasta with shrimp. He followed the smell and the sound of a young woman’s voice into the kitchen.

Angie and Franco were at the table watching CNN where someone who looked like Catherine was saying that thirty-one people had been killed by terrorists in New Delhi. Angie and Franco looked up at Lew, whose eyes were fixed on the woman reading the news. She was a young, pretty, long-haired blonde with perfect skin and a very red mouth. She really didn’t look like Catherine. She only blurred his memory of his wife.

“You okay?” asked Angie, getting up.

He nodded yes and said, “Garlic pasta and shrimp?”

“When do you want to eat?” she said.

“When Franco and I get back I think I need to do something first.”

“When you get back?”

“When I get back,” Lew said.

Franco pushed back his chair and got up.

She wanted to ask Lew where they were going, but held back. Franco would tell her everything when they returned.

When they left the house, Franco asked, “Okay if we take the truck or you want me to get one of the cars from 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 wood-frame house set back on a broad green lawn with a spotting of orange and yellow leaves from a nearby tree. A breeze rustled. More leaves floated down.

“I’ve seen bigger houses with cars in garages that looked great and had to be towed because there was crapola under the hood and the owners were always afraid of what it would cost to fix ’em.”

“You don’t like rich people,” Lew said.

“Not until and unless I become one,” said Franco. “Then I’ll join ’em.”

Franco reached down and touched the gun tucked in under his jacket.

While Lew was knocking the second time, the door opened.

Standing in front of them was the driver who Franco had pulled from the car on the Dan Ryan. He didn’t look surprised to see them. He motioned for Franco and Lew to come inside. The house smelled of something baking, something sweet and familiar.

They followed the driver up a flight of highly polished light wood stairs. On the landing, he went to a closed door and knocked.

“Come in,” came a deep voice with the touch of an accent. “Come in.”

Sitting in an armchair, hands on his lap was the one-eyed young man. At the window, his back turned, was a man with white hair, wearing dark slacks and a yellow sweater over a white shirt with a button-down collar.

The room was a combination den and office-antique wood desk and chair, two matching armchairs, a sofa that challenged the rest of the room but seemed right. There were three painted portraits on the wall to the right, all of one woman.

“John Pappas,” Lew said.

The man at the window slowly turned. He was lean, dapper, had a weathered face and too-perfect false teeth as white as his equally full head of white hair. According to his driver’s license, Pappas was fifty-seven years old.

“Have a seat,” he said with a smile, pointing a hand at the sofa.

Behind them the driver, arms folded, leaned back against the wall near the door. The one-eyed man in the armchair looked at him and then back at Pappas.

Lew and Franco sat. So did Pappas after hitching up his pants, a low glass coffee table between them.

“We begin by being polite,” he said. “Though you have met, I don’t believe you know the names of my sons. This is Dimitri.”

He turned his head toward the driver.

“He prefers to be called Dimi. Why? I don’t know. That’s what they called the young priest in The Exorcist, right?”

“Right,” said Franco.

“And that,” Pappas said, looking over his shoulder at the one-eyed young man, “is Stavros. He has no diminutive.”

Pappas raised his right eyebrow, looking for a sign of recognition at his vocabulary. He got none from Lew and Franco.

“You’re Greeks,” said Franco.

“Your powers of observation are quite remarkable,” Pappas said. “So, you have questions, ask.”

“Who killed my wife?”

“Perhaps the person who would like to kill me and would not hesitate to… please make an effort to sit still.”

The last, delivered with a smile, had been aimed at the fidgeting Franco. Franco folded his arms, looked at Pappas and decided to make the effort.

“Thank you. Conversation is a medium,” said Pappas, sitting back. “Like film, video, a blank canvas or an empty screen, when used with respect, it deserves our full attention. Am I right?”

It was Stavros’s turn to say, “You’re right.”

“See,” said Pappas. “Stavros went to college. He’s the artist who keeps our home and business running and repaired. Dimi is our heart, our emotion. I am the creator. In many ways, I have been most magnificently blessed. In others…”

He shrugged and continued.

“So, the artist can engage the medium and create art. Let us strive for conversational art.”

“Let us,” Franco said.

Pappas raised his right hand and his sons left the room.

“They are going to get us coffee and something special. They will also check the video monitors to see if anyone is watching the house. One does not know when an enemy might approach and mark it well, for in truth there is an enemy out there and the enemy has a name. I am under siege in my own home. This is my Troy. And I must be sure I don’t let a gift horse enter. You understand?”

“Yes, you’re paranoid,” said Lew.

“And you are not,” he said with a sigh. “You should be.”

“I’m depressed,” Lew said. “That’s all I can handle.”

Pappas nodded and folded his hands against his chest.

“The one who has made me a prisoner in my own home and may have killed your wife is called Posno. His full name is Andrej Posnitki. I think he is Hungarian, but that doesn’t matter. When she was so foully murdered, your dear wife was gathering evidence against Posno, evidence that he committed murder, evidence of his life of crime which, I am sorry to admit, I participated in, though only at the edges.”

Pappas raised his right hand and let it float toward an unmarked periphery.

“The important documents supporting her evidence could not be found in her office desk or your apartment. Posno’s plan when your wife died was to find you and torture you, something he is very, very good at, and get you to tell him where those documents were, if you even knew. But you were not to be found. You fled, vanished, flew.”

Pappas let his right hand, fingers fluttering, move up. Then he brought his hand back to his lap.

“Posno is not a genius, but he is clever and determined. He has almost certainly found you the same way I found you. Stavros found your name on the Internet. Something about your being involved in the shooting of some professor. That was a week ago. I sent Stavros to Sarasota to keep an eye on you.”

“Funny,” said Franco.

“Oh, I see,” said Pappas with a smile. “Because my son has only one eye to keep on you. You want to know how he lost that eye? He was shot by the man who is looking for you. Now, I’ll tell you how to find him.”

“Why do you want to help me?” Lew asked.

Pappas rose from the chair and went to the window.

“Nine years ago your wife was the prosecutor in a murder case. I was arrested, charged. My record, I must tell you, is not without blemish but this crime I did not do.”

He put his right hand on his chest.

“She talked to the witnesses, got experts to look at the signature on a hotel register… That’s not important. She believed me, dropped the charges against me in exchange for my testifying against Andrej Posnitki, who had set me up. It was a sweet deal if you ignore that Posno is a maniac who, between the three of us, is responsible for the demise of more than forty-one people. Still I owe your wife and when my family has a debt, we pay it no matter how long it takes.”

“I appreciate that,” Lew said. “Posno wasn’t convicted.”

“Good lawyers, lots of money. He got off. Since then he has found my presence on this earth intolerable. Putting him in prison or, better yet, death row, would greatly ease my paranoia. Your wife would not give up, as you well know. She continued to build a new case against Posno. So finding your wife’s records might well keep us both alive. She didn’t tell you about all this?”

“We didn’t talk about cases except the ones I was working on for her,” Lew said.

“Smart,” said Pappas, pointing to his head and looking at Franco. “You don’t know. You can’t testify.”

There was a gentle double knock at the door and Pappas, with a smile, said, “You’re gonna like this.”

One-eyed Stavros backed in balancing a large, round golden tray. He walked over and placed the tray on the glass table. The other son, Dimitri, came in with a smaller tray, balancing three small cups of almost-black Greek coffee. There were also three small plates with a fork on each. Pappas, Franco and Lew each took a cup and a plate.

Stavros leaned next to his father and whispered in his ear. Pappas nodded and whispered something back to him. It was Stavros’s turn to nod.

The brothers left the room, closing the door softly behind them.

“ Glykismata, ” Pappas said after a sip of coffee. “Greek deserts. This one is amygdalopita, nut cake covered in clove syrup. These are loukoumathes.”

He pointed to six round balls, which he said were Greek donuts covered with honey and cinnamon.

“Good with coffee,” Pappas said with a knowing nod. “And these cookie twists are koulourakia, glaktobouriko, egg custard baked in phyllo, and baklava. Everything baked today by my mother. Did you know Aristophanes mentions baklava in one of his plays?”

“No,” said Lew.

“Ah,” said Pappas with a shrug. “Why should you? Take.”

They put down their coffees. Lew took one of the cookies. Franco piled his plate. Pappas smiled.

“These are great,” said Franco, his mouth full.

“You’ll meet my mother on the way out,” Pappas said, his eyes meeting Lew’s. “As long as you have the blessing of your mother, it does not matter even if you live in the the valley of the dead. That’s a Greek saying. I have her blessing and, pardon me for saying it, you are treading in the valley of the dead. It is not a good place to be.”

He looked around the room and added, “Though I am under siege, I still have resources, which is why Posno has not gotten to me. I live in this comfortable prison. I would like to walk beyond the glass-covered walls that define my exile. To the extent that I can, I will extend my protection to you, but you must be quite careful. Find that evidence.”

He held up a finger and added, “Put Posno away. You like those, huh?”

Lew was eating one of the phyllo deserts filled with custard.

“Yes,” Lew said.

“Good,” he said. “You have anything else you wish to ask me?”

“You know any jokes?” Lew asked.

“Jokes? Sure.”

Pappas was smiling, puzzled by the question. Franco’s cheek was full of baklava, his fingers honey-sticky, his eyes moving from Lew to Pappas as if they were suddenly talking Greek.

“You want me to tell you a joke?”

“Yes.”

Pappas told Lew a joke and smiled, his teeth a huge wall of white. Lew took out his notebook and pen and wrote down the joke.

“Okay joke?” Pappas asked.

“Yes,” Lew said, putting the notebook back in his pocket.

“You didn’t smile,” he said.

“I don’t smile,” Lew said.

Franco finished his baklava and wiped his fingers with a napkin.

Pappas shook his head, put down his plate and empty coffee cup and walked to the window, looked out, sighed and turned around.

“When you arrived, my sons covered your license plate with clay in case he came by this afternoon, the circling vulture Posno, appearing whenever he wishes, reminding me that I am his prisoner and that the day of execution is coming.”

Franco put down his plate and cup and moved to the window.

“I do not think he knows yet about your tow truck, but he’ll wonder, and with good cause, why your license plate number is covered. He almost certainly has a photograph of you, Mr. Fonesca, but not…”

“Franco,” said Lew’s brother-in-law.

“Franco,” Pappas repeated. “I suggest you go out the front gate as you came, get in your truck and drive around the first corner. Mr. Fonesca will join you there.”

“No,” said Franco. “I’m going down there and if anyone gives me trouble I’ll ram the holy shit out of this Posno’s car.”

“Not advisable,” said Pappas with a shake of his head. “He is not likely to use a weapon unless you provoke him. You are not his prey.”

“Lew?” Franco asked, fist clenched, turning to Lew as he stood. “The son of a bitch mighta killed Catherine.”

Lew looked at Pappas, who pursed his lips.

“It may not be Posno,” said Lew.

“It may not be,” Pappas agreed with a shrug, “but I can think of no one else who would park in front of my house.”

“We do it your way,” Lew said to Franco. “Front door. Both of us, but no ramming. Let’s go.”

“As you wish,” said Pappas, leading the way out the door.

“That’s from The Princess Bride, the ‘as you wish,’” Franco whispered as they followed Pappas down the stairs. “Lew, let’s just get the bastard.”

At the bottom of the stairs stood a short, thin, overly made-up woman with electric badly dyed red hair. She was holding a shoebox-size white box tied with a string. Pappas introduced her as his mother. She smiled and handed Lew the box. The smell of baked phyllo and honey made it clear what was inside.

Pappas handed Lew a Greek fisherman’s cap and moved to his mother’s side, arm around her shoulder. Lew handed it back, took his Cubs cap from his pocket and put it on his head.

“Stylish,” said Pappas.

“Thank you,” Lew said to the woman, looking into her eyes.

Her smile faded.

“Sure,” she said.

“We’ll be watching over you,” said Pappas as Lew and Franco went through the door. It closed behind them. The night had come. The air had gone cool and the wind whistled by. The box in Lew’s hand was warm.

There was a car about twenty yards behind the tow truck, a black Lexus, and there were two people inside.

“I don’t like this, Lewis,” Franco said when they were in the truck with the doors closed. He took the gun out of his pocket and placed it in a panel slot in front of him.

“I know,” Lew said, who sat with the box on his lap as Franco made a leisurely U-turn and looked down at the car with the two men as he drove toward the Eisenhower.

“Nice people,” said Franco. “I mean the Pappases. That John’s a little… you know?”

“Very nice people,” Lew said. “Pappas lied. Catherine didn’t have any case going against anyone named Andrej Posnitki. She would have told me.”

“They’re following,” said Franco. “Well, the old lady was nice.”

“ Her I remember,” said Lew. “Not Catherine’s case, Peter Michaels’s case. Milt Holiger did the legwork. Bernice Alexander Pappas. Five or six years ago. She got off. Lack of evidence. Witnesses disappeared.”

“What’d she do?” asked Franco, pulling onto the Eisenhower and heading toward downtown.

“Killed her husband and her husband’s cousin with a very sharp baking knife.”

“Maybe she…”

“Stabbed them about a dozen times each in the neck and face,” said Lew, removing the string from the box.

The fresh-baked scent penetrated the smell of grease.

“Shit,” Franco said, reaching for the box and putting his hand inside. He came up with a cookie. “You never know.”

“You never know,” Lew agreed.

“But she can bake. And you gotta admit, Pappas may be a phony, but he’s a good son.”

“He was an assassin for hire, probably still is,” said Lew. “Suspect in at least fourteen murders.”

“With this Posno guy?”

“Maybe.”

Franco bit, chewed and went silent for a beat and then, “So Catherine never helped them?”

“No. Why would she?”

“I don’t get it,” he said. “What do we do now?”

“Go home.”

“Don’t think so,” said Franco. “That Lexus is right behind us. Want me to lose them?”

Lew reached for the car phone, punched in Angela’s home number, and when she came on he asked her a question and when she answered, he asked her for a favor. Lew hung up and told Franco what to do.

Less than half an hour later they were back in Little Italy, driving slowly. They pulled into a one-car driveway and got out of the truck. The outside houselights were on and the lights beyond the windows sent out orange-white beams.

“They parked across the street,” Franco whispered.

The front door was open. They went in. Franco locked the door behind him.

“Now?” he asked.

Lew turned out the living-room lights so they couldn’t be seen from the street. Timing could have been better but it wasn’t bad. No one got out of the Lexus, whose lights and engine were turned off.

When Lew had called Angie from the truck he had asked her if she had an unoccupied house for sale in the neighborhood. She did. He asked her to go there, take the FOR SALE sign down, turn on the lights and leave the door open. She had. If they didn’t already know, Lew didn’t want to lead whomever was in the Lexus to his sister’s house.

Franco had called one of his cop friends from the truck.

“I’ve got a joke, Lewis,” he said.

“Yes?”

Five minutes later a Chicago P.D. patrol car glided down the street and pulled next to the Lexus. Two uniformed street cops got out, one on each side of the car, hands on their weapons. They had left their headlights on. White light surrounded the Lexus. Lew opened the front door a few inches.

“Please get out of the car,” said the beefy officer who had been driving.

Two men, one man in his forties, wearing a suit and tie, and the other, a man about thirty, wearing a sports jacket, white shirt, no tie, his hair tied back, slowly got out of the car, careful to keep their hands in sight.

The man in the suit, who had been the passenger in the Lexus, looked at the partly open door beyond which Lew stood.

“Hands on the roof, spread your legs,” said the cop.

They knew the drill. The younger cop moved forward and patted them down. He didn’t miss a space. Found nothing.

“Identification,” said the beefy cop. “Slow, so slow I can almost swear you’re not moving.”

The two men exchanged looks and reached into their jacket pockets, pulling out their wallets. The younger cop took the wallets and brought them to the beefy cop.

“Santoro,” the beefy cop said, looking up from the open wallet.

Santoro, the passenger, didn’t respond. He kept looking at the door as if he could see Lew in the darkness.

“And Cruz.”

“Aponte-Cruz,” said the man with the tied-back hair.

The beefy cop handed the wallets to his partner who knew what to do, call in their identification. He moved back to the police car.

Franco and Lew left the house, moved to the tow truck and climbed in.

“What are you doing here?” the beefy cop asked Santoro.

“Here?” asked Santoro, watching Lew. “We just parked for a few minutes, talk a little before we get something to eat. Here’s as good as any place.”

“You’re loitering,” said the beefy cop.

Santoro looked down at the hood of the Lexus and shook his head with a smile.

Franco backed the tow truck into the street. Franco and Lew looked down at the men named Santoro and Aponte-Cruz. Santoro met Lew’s eyes and smiled. Lew couldn’t read the smile.