Always Say Goodbye

5

May be you should call her, be sure she’s home,” said Franco as they headed south down Lake Shore Drive.

“We’ll try,” Lew said.

The phone beeped as they passed Soldier Field. Franco picked it up and handed it to Lew.

“Milt,” Holiger said. “Lewis, I’ll give you the ruthlessly edited version of what I’ve got. Can’t do more now.”

Lew could hear street sounds behind him.

“Santoro, the dead lawyer. Can’t find a connection. Never represented Pappas or Posnitki. Never faced them as witnesses in court as far as I can tell. I’ll keep digging.”

“No Posno?”

“Name came up on a couple reports, a few newspaper articles, on Web sites. Just the name. No arrests. No convictions. Same photograph of him appears on three Web sites.”

Milt described Posno. The description matched the one Stavros had given. He gave Lew a Web site address. Lew wrote it in his notebook.

“Thanks, Milt.”

“Lew, the police want to talk to you and Franco. They have you on video at Santoro’s building and one of Santoro’s partners says he saw the two of you outside their office. You’re not suspects. Santoro was shot long before you got there. But you left the scene.”

“We called 911.”

“Right,” said Milt. “Might want to call the detective handling the case, Alan Dupree.”

“Little Duke,” Lew said.

“Yeah. Know him?”

“Yes,” Lew said.

“I’ve got to go,” said Milt. “Call me later.”

He hung up. Lew held the phone in his hand and told Franco what Milt had said. Then he pulled out his notebook, found a number and punched it in. He asked for Detective Dupree. A woman came on.

“Your name?” she asked.

He told her.

“Please hold,” she said.

Lew held, heard a double click and Little Duke’s raspy voice. Dupree was black, about six-two and one hundred and eighty-five pounds. His body was lean and hard, his hair short and curly, and he would have been handsome if it hadn’t been for the pink raised scar that jutted from the right corner of his mouth to below his chin line.

Little Duke was a workaholic, a cop who doled out street-corner and bar room justice. Crime in his area was a personal affront. Dupree had been the principal detective in four of Catherine’s cases. Lew had done the legwork and research on the cases for the State Attorney’s Office.

“Lewis Fonesca?”

“Alan Dupree.”

“We need to talk,” he said. “Where are you?”

“Where do you want me to be anytime after four?”

He told Lew and added, “You’ve got another guy with you. Bring him too.”

“I’ll bring him,” Lew said.

Lew looked at Franco who shrugged. Little Duke had hung up.

They found Rebecca Strum’s apartment building in Hyde Park about four blocks from the University of Chicago campus. Franco parked illegally, turned on the flashing red light.

“Nobody tows a tow truck,” he said. His mantra.

No doorman. Neat, clean, no-nonsense empty lobby with lots of glass and no framed prints on the walls. There were three black benches with no backs.

Next to the elevator was a telephone and a list of tenants with a number to punch in. The elevator slid open and two people came out. The man was lean, short, a pink-faced man wearing denim pants and a red-and-brown flannel shirt. The woman was tall, young and very pretty with smooth black hair. She wore denim pants and a blue sweater. She towered over him.

As the pair passed, the man, excitedly and with much hand movement, said, “If Samuels really meant what he said, if he followed through to the logical, the only conclusion, he would realize that his entire premise had been toppled.”

“Victor,” the young woman said patiently, “that would not be the only conclusion.”

They had paused at the entry door. Franco motioned Lew to join him in the elevator.

“All right,” said the man with resignation. “You’re the professor. Explain.”

Lew got into the elevator just as the woman said,

“It’s the Posno fallacy.”

Franco reached over to hold the closing elevator doors. Lew stepped out. The couple had already gone outside. Franco and and Lew hurried after them.

They were standing on the sidewalk, facing each other. He was talking again, arguing over whether Mahler was superior to Bruckner.

“You said something about Posno,” Lew said.

“Yes,” the woman said. “You think Posno was right?”

The man looked at Franco and plunged his right hand into his pocket.

“Who is Posno?” Lew asked.

“You don’t know?”

“No, enlighten me.”

“Posno,” she said, “is a maniacally ambitious, talented economics professor at Sanahee University, a self-proclaimed expert on not only micro-and macroeconomics, but politics, philosophy and astrophysics.”

“Andrej Posnitki,” the young man said, eyes on Franco. “Grad students and faculty call him Posno to evoke a name that suggests a mythical monster.”

“Grendel, Cronos, Scylla,” she said.

“Where can we find him?” Lew asked.

“Library,” said the man.

“Which library?” Lew asked.

“Almost any library,” said the woman. “Andrej Posnitki, Posno, is a character in Campbell Restin’s novel More Fool That.”

“Won the Ledge Award, the Millman Award and was a strong contender for the National Book Award in 1978,” the woman said.

The man and woman moved down the sidewalk. His voice rose with animation with the name Bruckner.

“What the hell’s going on, Lewis?” asked Franco.

“We’re looking for someone who borrowed a name,” Lew said. “Or a mythical monster.”

The corridor on the eighth floor smelled of Lysol and gardenias. The carpeting was gray, the walls muted white. They moved to Rebecca Strum’s door.

“I don’t believe this, Lewie. Anyone can just go up an elevator and knock at Rebecca Strum’s door. She’s…”

“Famous,” Lew said, using the brass door knocker and stepping back. The door opened almost instantly.

Rebecca Strum, no more than five feet tall, hair thin and white, skin clear, a thin book in her left hand, stood looking at them with a smile that made Lew think she knew why they had come to her door.

“Yes?”

“My name is Lewis Fonesca. This is Franco Massaccio. You had a car accident four years ago, a car bumped into you on Lake Shore Drive.”

“I remember,” she said, pulling up the drooping sleeve of her olive-colored sweater.

“About ten minutes before that my wife was killed on Lake Shore by a hit-and-run driver in a red sports car.”

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” she said. “Red sports car?”

“Yes.”

“Come in.”

They followed her into the living room. The windows looked out toward downtown Chicago. The room was neat, uncluttered, only one picture on the wall, a large blown-up photograph of a harbor surrounded by tree-covered hills. The rest of the wall space was lined with shelves filled with books evenly lined up, most of them hardcovered. Facing the window was a desk nestled between two bookcases. On the desk was a pad of yellow lined paper, about half the pages tucked under it, and an open laptop computer. Nothing else.

They sat on three identical chairs padded with green pillows and matching arms. Rebecca Strum kept the thin book in her lap and said, “Coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

“No,” echoed Franco, looking at the shelves of books.

“Can you tell me again what happened?” Lew asked.

“It was more than four years ago,” she said. “Why now?”

“I’ve been asleep,” Lew said.

She nodded in understanding and said, “The driver was a man, Asian, probably Chinese, about forty-five. His eyes were moist. I think he had been crying. He may have been drinking, taking drugs or suffering from a mental disorder or possibly a trauma. His driving was erratic, weaving back and forth. He… never mind.”

“What?” Lew asked.

“The look on his face was very much like yours right now, the same look of grief and mourning of people who have had their pretenses, illusions, masks, torn from their faces. Gaunt, haunted in despair, a legion of brothers marching to hell.”

“You wrote that,” Franco said.

“Yes.”

“ The Dirt Floor, right,” said Franco. “That’s the only thing I memorized and I wasn’t trying. My wife is the real fan. No fan isn’t the right word. Respecter, admirer?”

Rebecca Strum nodded and smiled.

“In the window of his car the red sports car,” she said, “there was a yellow-and-red parking permit about the size of a sheet of typing paper cut in half.”

“Did you tell the police this?” Lew asked.

“I didn’t remember till several months ago when I saw a permit on a car exactly like it parked on 51st Street. I didn’t think the police would be interested in a minor traffic accident after four years. Had I known your wife had been killed by this car, I would have called the police. Not a sin but a misdemeanor of omission. ‘Had I but known’ is the historical cry of people who do not accept their responsibility, their guilt. How can you heal if you don’t accept that you are ill? The Germans in the town next to the concentration camp where my family died and I… I’m sorry.”

She placed her book next to her on the arm of her chair and tugged at her sleeve. She had pulled it back just enough for Lew to see the first three numbers tattooed on her right wrist.

“Now, may I anticipate your next question?” she asked. “First, yes, I would recognize the man in the red sports car. I told this to the detective who talked to me after the accident. Second, the parking pass in the window of the car on Fifty-first was for Mentic Pharmaceuticals in Aurora. Now, I’m sorry but I must finish rereading this today,” she said, putting a hand on the book. “Dante’s Inferno. I’m having a discussion of it on campus tomorrow with some graduate students who will understand it but won’t feel it. It’s not their fault. Have you read it?”

“No,” Lew said.

Franco nodded no.

“You might want to,” she said, looking at Lew. “It’s about the poet Dante’s descent into Hell and Purgatory and then to Heaven.”

She looked at the book and then at her shelves.

“At lectures, discussions,” she said, “I ask people if they have read Dante, Moby Dick or War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, The Iliad, Sister Carrie. The answers are always the same. They say they have read them all. When asked to tell me something about the book, it becomes clear that the reading was far in the past and forgotten and perhaps they have deluded themselves into believing that they have read the classics. They feel guilty. They vow to themselves to immediately read something by Thomas Mann. You understand?” she said.

Lew nodded. Franco said, “Yes.”

“It is human nature,” she said, “to believe you have learned from the past, that you remember it when, in fact, you must make the effort to keep the past alive. I did it again, didn’t I?”

“What?” asked Franco.

“I lectured to you.”

“No,” said Franco.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve been doing it long enough to recognize my somber certitude when I hear it.”

She touched the number tattooed on her wrist. Lew’s need to find out what had happened to Catherine should have seemed small compared to that number on Rebecca Strum’s wrist, but it didn’t.

“Is there anything else?” she asked.

“Posno,” Lew said.

She looked puzzled.

“Posno? That’s a character in some book I think,” she said.

“Yes, Andrej Posnitki, Posno.”

“I’ve never read it,” she said.

Franco shrugged.

“Would you check the name on the Internet for us please?” asked Lew.

“Lewie,” Franco whispered loud enough for her to hear. “You know who you’re asking to-”

“No,” she said, getting up with the help of both hands placed just above her knees. “It’s fine. Now I’m curious about why a man with a face worthy of Munch should want to know about a character in a novel.”

She moved to the desk by the window and sat slowly, hands on the arms of the wooden desk chair. Lew stood over her left shoulder, Franco over her right.

“Years ago,” she said, “Well, really not that many years ago, I used to do this for Simon Weisenthal.”

Her dappled fingers danced over the keys of the laptop and images, lists popped up and then stopped.

“Thirty-seven-thousand six-hundred and seven hits,” she said. “Not an unusually high number even for as obscure a fictional character as Andrej Posnitki. Colley Cibber, a very minor actor, poet and playwright, has more than ninety-nine-thousand hits. Cibber was an actor known most for the fact that Alexander Pope ridiculed him in The Dunciad.”

“Posno,” Lew said. “Are there any hits for Posno?”

Her fingers danced again.

“More than eighty-eight thousand,” she said. “It seems to be a Dutch name. Let us see. Posno Flowers, Posno Sporting Goods. Is it possible to narrow the search?”

“We don’t want to keep you from Dante,” Lew said.

“Dante has waited more than six hundred years,” she said. “He can wait and the students can wait a few minutes longer. Narrow the search.”

Lew knew what that meant.

“Posno, crime, murder, trial,” Lew said.

She tapped in the words, clicked on search, narrowed and said, “One Web site devoted specifically to what appears to be your Posno. Look.”

On the screen in the upper left-hand corner in boldface was Posnitki, Andrej (Posno).

It was followed by three paragraphs. Lew and Franco leaned forward to read, but Rebecca Strum said, “I’ll print it for you.”

She pushed a button, and then another and a rumbling sound came from under her desk. A few seconds later she reached down and came up with a printed sheet. She handed it to Lew and got up, a little more slowly than she had from the green chair.

“Thank you,” said Lew.

“One more thing,” she said, and with her book moved across the room and through a slightly open door.

It took her no more than ten seconds. When she came out, she held a different, thicker book in one hand, a pen in the other.

“Your wife’s name?” she asked Franco.

“Angie.”

“Angela,” Lew said.

Rebecca Strum nodded, opened the book, wrote something in it and handed it to Franco.

“I just had a box of them delivered yesterday,” she said. “I don’t have room and I’d rather it go to someone who will read it than have it lay in a box in the darkness of a storage room.”

“Thank you,” said Franco. “You’re… she thinks you’re great.”

Rebecca Strum shook her head and let out a two-note laugh.

“My two children think I’m a petty tyrant posing as a martyr. My husband, long dead, resented my notoriety and I never noticed. I’ve been frequently duped by emotional and financial criminals and used by frauds I didn’t even recognize who played on my ego. A full list of my indiscretions, omissions and petty vices would compare with anyone who has lived as long as I have. I’m not great. It’s enough that I’ve lived this long and can still speak out and write and have visitors, especially those who don’t expect wisdom and don’t expect me to remember when I do not wish to remember.”

She touched Lew’s arm and Lew and Franco left, the door closing gently behind them.

“Can you fucking believe that?” asked Franco, looking at the book.

He opened it as they moved to the elevator.

“Listen to this,” he said. “‘To Angela, Imagine that we are holding each other’s hand and walking together through the forest of the night.’ And she signed it.”

“Nice.”

No one was inside the elevator when the door opened and they stepped in.

“What do you know about Rebecca Strum?” asked Franco.

“Not much.”

“Come on, Lewis. Work with me here. I’ve got a point.”

The elevator dropped slowly, a slight metallic clatter beneath their feet.

“Husband’s dead,” Lew said.

“And?”

Lew looked away, felt the sheet of paper in his hand.

“She’s hiding her grief with a smile. She’s resigned herself to the unfairness of life and she’s dedicated herself to trying to understand and comfort others,” said Lew as the elevator stopped.

“You’re saying it like you’re reading it off a Wheatie’s box.”

“Jewish woman who lived through the Holocaust,” said Lew as they stepped into the lobby. “What she’s been through is a lot worse than what I’ve been through and she’s taking it better.”

“Pretty good,” said Franco. “But you’re wrong about one thing.”

“What?”

They were on the sidewalk again. Across the street a pretty girl with a blue backpack was hurrying somewhere, talking on a cell phone. Her long dark hair bobbed with each step. Lew had the feeling he had seen her before, a thousand times before.

“Rebecca Strum isn’t Jewish,” said Franco as they moved back to the truck. “Her husband was a Jew. I think she’s a Lutheran or something like that. Her father was a Communist, landed the family in a camp. You should read one of her books, Lewie.”

When they got back into the Franco’s truck, the phone hummed. Franco picked it up, said, “Massaccio Towing.” He handed the phone to Lew.

“Fonesca, my name’s Bernard Aponte-Cruz,” said the man. “I was the one with Claude Santoro last night. We should talk.”

“When?”

“Now,” he said. “Right now. Claude had something to tell you. That’s why we followed you last night. We got your number from the side of the truck. He said he was looking for the right time to get you alone. He never got the time. Now the police think I killed him.”

“What did he want to tell me?”

“I don’t know, but it had something to do with the bank.”

“Bank?”

“Claude was a consultant for First Center Bank. He specialized in banking and insurance law.”

“He wasn’t a criminal attorney?”

“No, never,” said Aponte-Cruz. “And he was a good guy. I’m telling you. He was a good guy.”

“You worked for him?”

“He was my brother-in-law.”

“Why did your brother-in-law need you with him last night? Why didn’t he just talk to me?” Lew asked.

“Someone called him. He didn’t know who. A man, said he should stay away from you or he’d be killed. That’s when Claude called me. I’m not such a good guy. Shit, my aunt and uncle, Claude’s mother and father, they live in Yuma. I’m going to have to call them, tell them. Shit. Claude was their only kid.”

“Why didn’t he just talk to me?”

“He wanted to check you out. He was looking for a safe place to talk and Claude was sure he was being followed. We were about to go into the house you were in last night when the cops showed up. Then you and Tow Truck came out and… come on, you know this.”

“What did he-” Lew began.

The phone went dead. Lew hung up and the phone rang instantly. Franco picked it up and said, “Franco… right, right, I got it. Hold on. He covered the mouthpiece with his palm and turned to me. “Job. Parking lot downtown on Washington. You want me to get someone else to take it?”

“No,” Lew said.

Franco nodded and pulled onto the street.

Lew read the sheet Rebecca Strum had printed out.

Posnitki, Andrej (Posno)

Murderer. Assassin. Thief. Born in Kaunus, Lithuania, 1949. Accused of murdering a Russian Orthodox priest in 1969. Fled to Budapest. Fled Hungary in 1976 to avoid arrest and almost certain imprisonment following the murder of five anti-Communist dissidents at a cafe.

Posno came to the United States illegally, moved from city to city, changed his name frequently. He made his services available to a Russian criminal organization.

Andrej Posnitki has never been arrested.

Andrej Posnitki has murdered more than thirty-five people.

One of those people he murdered in the Budapest slaughter was my father.

If you have any information or recognize the man below, please contact: Relentless, Box 7374, Boise, Idaho.

At the bottom of the page was a head and shoulders drawing in black of a heavyset man, head shaved, a nose that veered to one side from being broken, and a neat, short beard.

Lew held up the drawing for Franco, who looked at it and said, “Looks like the guy who always plays bikers on TV shows or that wrestler, what the hell’s his name, the Blast. No wait, looks a little like that Packer’s linebacker from a few years ago. Even looks a little like my brother Dom if Dom took off a few pounds, shaved his head and face. Dom even has a broken nose, but it goes the other way.”

Franco demonstrated by pushing his nose to one side.

“I don’t think Posno’s your brother.”

“I don’t either,” said Franco. “I’m just saying…”

Lew was spread too thin, too many people to see, too many strings to follow into the cave. He needed help.

As they drove, he picked up Franco’s phone, took out his notebook and found Milt Holiger’s phone number. In Lew’s life, he had been able to remember only three telephone numbers. Not his own, not his parents. He remembered Catherine’s phone number before they were married. He remembered his friend Lonnie Sweeney’s phone number, still did, though he hadn’t talked to Lonnie for at least fifteen years. Or was it more like twenty years? The phone number of the Texas Bar amp; Grille in Sarasota where Ames worked. That he remembered. Oh, yes, the number of his aunt Marie, the old number she hadn’t used in at least twenty years.

Numerically challenged, Lew kept a stained and frayed sheet of paper in his notebook. On the sheet were the phone numbers of people and memories he had fled in Chicago, and people who had squeezed or pushed through the door into his life in Sarasota.

Lew had tried many times over the years to memorize the multiplication tables. Never could. Still can’t. Ask him how much seven times nine is and he has no idea.

Milt answered his cell phone after three rings.

“Lew?” he said.

“How did you know it was me?”

“Caller ID. I’ve got the number you’re calling from and the name of your brother-in-law Franco.”

“How’s your time?” Lew asked.

“Moving inexorably forward,” Holiger said. “What can I do for you?”

“Roadwork.”

A blue Mini Cooper driven by a clown smoking a cigar passed by and waved. The clown was in whiteface with a bulbous purple nose. A sad look had been painted on his face. He held up his hand. So did Lew.

“If I can help, sure,” Milt said.

Lew told him about the Asian driver and the parking permit, and Santoro’s working for the bank.

“Take your pick.”

“Bank,” he said. “I can walk over there. I’ll give you a call. Not much more on Posno on my end. How about yours?”

“A little.”

“I’ll keep looking.”

Lew carefully folded the sheet of paper and tucked it into his notebook, reasonably sure neither he nor Pappas or his sons would find Posno. Lew remembered the sweet, proud smile on the face of Pappas’s mother, who had divided her time between the kitchen and murdering her husband. He imagined Posno, broad, bald, hulking, being thrown into the Pappas kitchen. John or one of the boys would lock the door and Posno would be alone with Pappas’s mother wearing an apron, smiling, holding an oven tin with a red pot holder in her left hand. The oven tin is filled with sweet honey treats. In her right hand, she holds a long, very sharp knife, which is ideal for both slicing phyllo dough and Posno’s throat. He is twice her size, but he doesn’t stand a chance in her kitchen.

“Lew? You there?” asked Milt.

“I… yes,” Lew said.

“I’ll call you when I have something.”

“Thanks, Milt.”

The call ended.

“You see that clown back there?” Franco asked.

“Whiteface, tufts of red hair, down-turned painted mouth, cigar.”

“Huh? I meant the clown in the SUV who cut us off. You okay, Lewis?”

“Sure.”

But Lew knew he was decidedly not okay.