Always Say Goodbye: A Lew Fonesca Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page A

Lewie?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’m Rick. Heard you went nuts.”
    “Yes.”
    “You better now?”
    “No,” Lew said.
    “Hey, it happens. Think you’re nuts, you should see my sister-in-law. She’s like fruitcakes all the time, you know?”
    The outer lane was moving and they were on their way. Lew could no longer see the one-eyed man’s car.
    “Got a pencil, something?” asked the voice.
    “Yes,” Lew said, taking out his notebook.
    “Car belongs to a John Pappas.”
    Rick gave him the owner’s address and said he was faxing a copy of Pappas’s driver’s license to Franco’s house.
    “I’m looking at it now,” said Rick.
    “What’s he look like?” Lew asked.
    “Fifty, maybe a little more, maybe closer to sixty,” said Rick. “Hair white. Looks a little like that guy on Law and Order , Dennis whatever. Guy that used to be a Chicago cop.”
    Pappas was definitely not the driver Franco had pulled out of the window.
    Franco reached for the phone. Lew handed it to him.
    “Hey way, Rick,” he said. “That lunch’s gonna be on me.”
    He paused, listening, nodding his head, smiling and then said, “Ditkaland forever. See ya.”
    He handed the phone back to Lew. Lew hung it up.
    “Rick’s not a cop,” Lew said.
    “No, but his daughter Maria, thirteen, smart, knows how to use the Internet like you wouldn’t believe,” said Franco.
    “It’s not legal,” Lew said.
    “So’s jaywalking. You care?”
    “No.”
    “We’ll find him,” Franco said. “The son of a bitch who killed Catherine. We make a good team, huh?”
    “Yes,” Lew said.
    “In the compartment between us, in the armrest, I’ve got packages of that spicy beef jerky.”
    Lew opened the compartment and found about twenty wrapped thin ropes of dark red jerky. He took one and handed one to Franco.
    “Love those things,” he said, opening the wrapping of his jerky with his teeth. “Hey, give Angie a call. Tell her where we are.”
    Talking to his sister would be another step into the past. He had only been in Chicago for about an hour and had had already taken dizzying steps.
    “Just hit forty-seven,” Franco said, pointing at the phone.
    Lew picked up the phone and hit the numbers. One ring and Lew’s sister was on the phone.
    “Franco, you got him?”
    “Angela, I’m back.”
     
     
    John Pappas stood at the window on the second floor of his house in suburban River Grove, “the Village of Friendly Neighbors.” In one hand he held a white porcelain cup and saucer. Next to the cup was a still warm, honey-covered slice
of baklava. His mother had finished baking the treat less than an hour ago. Her phyllo was almost see-through thin, the nuts and raisins it held touched the right edge of sweetness and memory.
    Pappas, hair white and full, his face a sun-etched almost-almond, slightly pocked, reminded most people of someone they had met, although they couldn’t recall who.
    Pappas looked across the lawn to the tree-lined street with fall leaves falling and little traffic. He sipped the thick coffee and took a comforting bite of pastry, careful to avoid any honey that might drip off and stain his white shirt. He wore a fresh white long- or short-sleeved dress shirt every day.
    He stood thinking of Andrej Posnitki, known as Posno. Posno was never far from his mind. Posno was the reason Pappas was nearly imprisoned in this house. Posno was the reason his son Stavros had lost an eye. John Pappas took the last morsel of his delicacy, licked his honey-dappled fingers and imagined what Posno might be doing at this moment.
     
     
    Andrej Posnitki, in his own apartment on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, looked out his window at a sailboat on Lake Michigan, driven by a gust of wind.
    Short, broad, head shaved, skin almost white, he could be described as either a barrel or a crate. He weighed almost three hundred pounds and every ounce could and had been delivered many times though his fists. He preferred his hands to a blade or a gun,