“A stitch in time, Alex?” the chunky mother of four or five said.
Lights flashed. Bells rang. The audience applauded. The desk clerk turned off the television and said, “Wrong fucking answer. What can I do you for?”
The man’s lean face was weathered. He could be almost any age. He wore a thin green tie loosely under his collar and the word etched on on the shirt pocket was SALUKIS.
“A room,” said Lew.
“A room?” the man said.
“This is a motel. You have a room?”
“You headin’ to or from a place?”
“Does it matter?” asked Lew.
“Sometimes.”
He took the towel off of his head, examined it, smelled it and returned it to his head.
“Heading north.”
“You got cash or a credit card?”
“Cash.”
The man smiled.
“You’re in luck. We’ve got eleven empty rooms. Price for a man of distinction like yourself is twenty-one dollars and I’ll put you right next to the Coke machine.”
“Is it loud?” asked Lew.
The man wiped his nose with the towel and said, “Silent as the few seconds before a church hymn.”
The man reached under the counter and came up with a key. He held the key till Lew handed him a twenty and a single.
Lew filled out the guest information card.
“Don’t have all the amenities,” said the man. “But the place is quaint. We still use real keys ’stead of those plastic things with black strips and blue arrows and such. Room Six should do it. Clean towels, washed ’em myself, soap still wrapped, sheets clean.”
“Can you hear the road from six?”
“Well. Can’t tell you a lie, mister. Truth is I can. I know all the rooms down to the names of the roaches and the scratches in the wall behind the night tables. I’ve got a cultivated memory.”
He looked around the small office and added, “But not all that good so’s I could make a career out of it. Tried though. Three years of college at Southern Illinois.”
He looked up at the bottom of the dangling towel drooping down from his head. “History major, but my job, which I owe to my uncle Willy Hart, is my comfort and my tomb and my
real passion now is old license plates. Got ’em from all states and lots of different years. Trade some time with a guy owns a barbecue place outside of Towson Falls, North Carolina.”
Lew tried to smile.
“You think that’s stupid, don’t you?”
“No,” said Lew. “Politicians tend to be stupid. License plate collectors tend to be honest.”
“You know a lot of politicians?”
“A few.”
“License plate collectors?”
“One, you.”
“Don’t talk much do you, mister?”
“No,” said Lew. “Room six is fine.”
“Great,” said the man. “Hey, take some M&M’s out of the bowl. It’s okay. They’re wrapped six in every bag.”
Lew reached into the bowl on the desk and took four packets of M&M’s.
“Phone in the room?”
“I can turn it on,” said the man. “Local calls free. Outside the county, you’re on your own. Credit cards or collect calls.”
Lew nodded.
“Oh, yeah, hell, almost forgot, the TV in Six is fritzy. You know picture sort of sizzles. Channel seven is clearest. Sometimes it’s bright and clear. Other times it sizzles. If you can’t live with that …”
“I can live with that,” said Lew at the door.
The clerk looked down at the card Lew had filled out and then looked up.
“You’re a vagabond from Genesis? What the hell is that? Wait. Now I get it. You’re with that rock group Genesis, and you’re the bass guitar player, Vagabond.”
The clerk looked at Lew and dug into his memory.
“You don’t look like a rock musician-type person.”
“I need a joke.”
“A joke? A rock music joke?”
“Any joke,” said Lew.
The clerk had been behind the counter every night and all night for the past eleven years. The sad, mad, scary, touching, religious, famous—if you count Bob Denver’s accountant—biking, ugly and beautiful had stopped, usually for no more than one night. They had been too tired, high or low, or lost to go farther. Most were cordial. A few were friendly, but the rest … . Never before had he seen a vagabond from Genesis. Maybe they all were vagabonds from somewhere.
“Anything else?” the clerk asked, wishing to hell that the sad-faced bald guy at the door would say no and walk back into the night with the key to Room Six in his hand, but he didn’t.
“Just the joke.”
“Clean, dirty? Know a few about license plates. Heard a lot of good ones sitting in here. Forgot most of them.”
“Clean,” said Lew.
“Clean,” the clerk said, tilting his head to one side and running a hand down his tie. “I’ll think about that one.”
John Pappas knew exactly where Posno would be, exactly. Posno would be in a car across from the house of Lew Fonesca’s sister’s. He would wait patiently, for days if he had to, till Fonesca returned. No one would notice. John Pappas knew that no one would see him.
Posno’s plan would be to simply shoot the little Italian, drive away and disappear, maybe for years, maybe forever. That would depend on whether Catherine Fonesca’s files were ever found.
That would be his plan.
Posno, Pappas was certain, would be composing poetry as he sat. Many nights and days Pappas had sat with Posno in a car, heard the torpedo-shaped killer compose or recite not only Greek poets, modern Greek poets, but his own poems. Posno was most prolific and creative just before he killed. He existed to hurt and kill and when the job was done he disappeared.
One of Posno’s poems, unbidden, returned to Pappas. It was not surprising that he remembered it. He had heard Posno reciting it, revising it dozens of times. Besides, it was short:
If we link our arms,
none but a demon can
with all his charms
break the chain of man.
John Pappas took a
frigadelia,
fried and rolled slices of lamb stomach filled with seasoned strips of calves’ liver, from the blue bowl on the window ledge. There were three left. His mother’s favorites were pastries. She was an artist in the kitchen with a butcher’s block table and a warm oven. But there were some specialties her son loved and
frigadelia
was one of them.
Her son had many things to worry about, but food would never be one of them.
John Pappas ate the first
frigadelia
so quickly that when he plucked up the second one, it was still quite warm to the touch.
After eating the packets of M&M’s, Lew turned up the heat in the room, stripped to his shorts, placed his shirt on a wire hanger and his pants on a wooden one, turned on the hot water in the shower and hung his clothes over the curtain rod where the water wouldn’t hit them. Then he laid back in the
bed, lights out, listening to the running water beyond the bathroom door, hearing the whirr of cars and bumping trucks on the highway a little over a hundred yards away. He was too tired to watch television. It was too late to make any more phone calls but one.
He had called Angie and Franco, told them he was all right, that he was no longer looking for the man who had killed Catherine, and that he would be back late the next morning.
“Lewis, remember Ames McKinney wants you to call him,” said Angie. “Says it’s important. You have his number?”
“Yes. I’ll call tomorrow,” he had said, carrying the phone, walking a small, slow circle.
“Lewis,” said Angie. “You sound like shit.”
“What does shit sound like?”
He could hear the rain thudding harder against the roof of a car pulling into the parking lot of the motel outside his window. Lew pushed back a slat in the faded yellow plastic window blinds and looked out.
“Lewis, where are you?”
“Not sure, but I’m on my way. Tomorrow, Angela. When there’s sun. I have to make some stops first.”
“Lewis, maybe it’s enough. You know? Let it go. If you can’t let it go, live with it. Every day spent thinking about the last day is a wasted day.”
“Rebecca Strum,” he said.
“Paraphrase,” said his sister.
By the single light atop the twelve-foot post to his left, he could see the lean, slump-shouldered figure, eyes slightly open, hair pounded forward and dripping.
Victor Lee was speaking to someone who wasn’t there. Lee looked up at Lew’s window and their eyes met. Lee’s lips
moved. Whatever he was saying, he had to know that Lew couldn’t hear it. Lewis let the slat drop.
“Lewis?” said Angie. “You hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Wherever you are, you should be somewhere else.”
“I know.”
THE NEXT MORNING
about an hour before Herman came to work, Uncle Tonio got to fire his carbine for the first time since Korea. He had always thought, and often said, the compact, light rifle was the best weapon ever invented. As a sergeant in the Signal Corps responsible for storing electronic equipment, primarily phones, Tonio had carried a carbine. It didn’t shoot as far or quite as straight as an M1, but it wasn’t a weight on his back, a constant reminder of where he was and what he was doing.
Tonio had started checking the doors and the windows, as he always did, when he heard the sound in the darkness. He could tell where it was coming from. He knew the echoes and scurries of mice, cats and rats, the creaking of boxes and furniture, the groaning of the floor and walls when weather changed.
Tonio went back to his office, opened his closet, reached
behind his clothes, pulled the carbine out of its leather carrier, loaded it and walked back out into the warehouse.
The sound was definitely coming from one of three mesh-enclosed storage rooms. One of the three was the one in which Lewis and Catherine’s furniture, papers, all the remnants of their lives, were stored and protected.
They were back, he decided, as he walked in the shadows outside the reach of the dim overhead nightlights.
Tonio had shot two soldiers in Korea, one Chinese, the other North Korean. They, in turn, had shot him in the thigh. Still hurt. Once, years ago, he wondered if the two men he had shot had lived, were still alive, what it would be like to get together, try to talk about memories that didn’t exist in words. Show them, give them his Purple Heart. Maybe they would give him their equivalent of the Purple Heart, if they had one.
No doubt now. He heard it. Tonio was angry. He kicked off his shoes gently, turned the corner to his left and, carbine at the ready, looked down the aisle. The overhead lamp in the storage room had not been turned on. The wavering beam of a flashlight clicked off. Silence.
Tonio moved forward, carbine raised.
“Come out,” he called. “Come out you son of a bitch or I shoot.”
But Tonio knew he wouldn’t shoot at the room, wouldn’t risk destroying his nephew’s memories of his wife.
There was a shuffling in the darkness. No sound of the door being opened. Was it already open? Had the burglar left it open? Was he, she, they, now in stockinged feet like Tonio, padding toward a door or worse, was he—
The sound was behind him now. Tonio turned, weapon up as he heard the cocking of a gun. Then the sound was gone. Tonio
had a choice: fear or anger. He chose a combination of the two, or, rather, they chose him.
It took four or five seconds and then Tonio was after the intruder. Tonio limped. The intruder ran.
Tonio turned down the aisle toward his office. The door to the dock was open. Morning sunlight silhouetted a man’s figure. The man was holding something in his right hand.
Tonio, panting heavily, put the rifle to his cheek and tried to aim, fired. Suddenly, a second figure dashed out of the warehouse darkness, pushed past the man in the doorway and turned left.
“Herman?” Tonio called, moving toward the open door.
“Who was that?” asked Herman.
Tonio moved past him and went out on the dock. There was no one in sight. Herman joined him and looked around. The question came simply, logically. The man in the dark had crept behind him. The man was armed. Tonio had a rifle.
“Why didn’t he shoot me?”
“Don’t know.”
“What did he look like?”
“Man, lot younger than you and me, lot older than a college kid,” said Herman. “White. Can’t say more. You’d best sit down.”
Tonio put his arm on Herman’s shoulder and the two went into the office and sat. Tonio propped his rifle against the wall, within reach.
“Want to give me the rifle and I’ll go after him?” asked Herman, who had been a sniper in both Korea and Vietnam.
“No,” said Tonio.
“Suit yourself,” said Herman, unzipping his jacket. “This is for you.”
He handed Tonio a blue plastic bowl.
“Cake. Celia made it last night. Plastic spoon’s inside the bowl there. We ran out of forks.”
Tonio had caught his breath.
“Thanks,” he said.
“My birthday,” said Herman. “Yesterday.”
“Happy birthday,” said Tonio.
“We get some people for guard duty tonight?” asked Herman.
“Special people,” said Tonio.
The rain had stopped, but the sky was Chicago gray, and thunder rumbled and rippled off of Lake Michigan, drowning out the sound of traffic.
It was morning. Early. Ken Sing, whose real name was Kudlup Singh Parajer, and Debest Williams, whose real name was Debest Williams, were walking their usual route from the one-bedroom apartment they shared to the University of Illinois campus where they were graduate students and assistants in the chemistry department.
The subject was Jochim Bachem, the professor for whom they worked, the professor Ken nearly worshiped and Debest thought was a sham.
“Oh, come on, Kude,” Debest said. “How many times I have to tell you to watch him. Nods his head, chews on that damn stained yellow stem pipe, acts like he’s thinking. Then what does he say when someone, anyone, you, me, asks him a question?”
“Sometimes he says, ‘What do you think?’”
They were walking past a few half asleep children shuffling in the opposite direction toward the Catholic grade school.
“He always says that,” said Debest. “Maybe he had answers once, but not now.”
Debest slammed his palm down on the car they were passing. Something inside the car moved. The horn went off. Ken and Debest stopped and looked back.
The head propped over the steering was deep red with blood. Debest and Ken tried to open the car doors. The horn kept wailing. Doors opened in the homes across the street. People stepped out.
Ken looked around and called, “Call 911.”
A bulky man in jeans and a black sweatshirt moved across the street to the car. He touched Debest’s shoulder to move him out of the way, took a knife from his pocket, pushed the window in far enough to insert the knife against it and down the glass, pushed down on the door handle. The door popped open. The dead man slumped off the steering wheel and the noise stopped.
A small group of kids and residents, all wide-awake now, stood on the sidewalk.
“We’re going to have to stay,” said Ken.
“Yeah, but that asshole Bachem won’t believe our reason.”
Franco closed the knife, put it back in his pocket and waited for the police to arrive.
“I have three jokes.”
It was the first thing Ann Horowitz heard when she picked up the phone in the morning after two rings. She had her first client in fifteen minutes. Lew knew it. He was sitting in the phone booth of a Shoney’s, twenty miles outside of Chicago. He had eaten the breakfast buffet, drunk two cups of fully leaded coffee, and watched the parking lot for signs of Victor Lee’s car. There had been none.
Ann had accepted the collect call.
“Three,” she said, taking a bite of biscotti as she sat in her office chair. “I am to be thrice-blessed.”
“I saw a man on the street when I driving. He was holding up a sign that read WILL WORK FOR MONEY.”
“Did you really see this?”
“No, it’s a joke.”
“Some jokes are taken from life,” she said. “The second joke?”
“You go on a picnic and you’re having a good time. Then you open your basket of food and the flies start coming. You close the basket. Flies go away. You open it. They come back. Conclusion: Flies time when you’re having fun.”
“That’s a good one,” she said. “You make that one up?”
“Yes.”
He could hear her crunching the biscotti.
“You said three jokes,” Ann went on.
“I’ll save it. I only owed you one.”
“So, what happened?” she asked.
“I found him,” Lew said. “The man who killed her.”
“Catherine.”
“Catherine,” he echoed.
“And what did you say to him, he to you?”
“He’s Chinese.”
“And that is relevant?”
“No.”
“What else?”
“He has a wife, a daughter, a painting of a dark city street. He wasn’t trying to kill Catherine. He was drunk.”
“And what did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Not possible to do nothing, not for you,” she said, finishing
the biscotti and licking her fingers. “You’ve tried it.”
“I know. I walked away from him.”
“Why?”
“He was sorry.”
“And?”
“He was suffering, has been since he killed her. He’s lost his job, his family, his future,” Lew said.
“Remind you of anyone?”
“Yes.”
“When are you coming back?”
She was now drinking coffee she had poured into a cup from her yellow Thermos.
“Tomorrow, I think.”
“Good. People are looking for you.”
“Tell them I’m coming back tomorrow.”
“Lewis, how do you feel?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s consider that progress,” she said. “I’ll let you know how much this call cost when I see you.”
“Wait. Rebecca Strum,” he said.
“I’ve read her books, met her twice at conferences,” said Ann.
The outer door to her office opened. The next client had arrived.
“I met her,” said Lew. “There’s something—”
“A good human being, a troubled human being who is brilliant enough to turn her denial into successful philosophy of coping with the vagaries of life,” said Ann. “I didn’t just make that up. I’m quoting myself from a paper I wrote on her in 1983. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Read one of her books,” said Ann, taking another sip of
coffee. “They are filled with vivid memories of horror and inhumanity and the determination to endure.”
“Just what I need.”
“Yes, it is,” said Ann, finishing her coffee. “Goodbye.”
She hung up. So did Lew.
Franco’s friend Manny Lowen was the first officer on the scene. The beefy cop was on the overnight shift, which gave him the opportunity to keep an eye on Franco and Angie’s house. He had been on Maxwell Street about to drive back to the station when the call came through.
Normally, he would have let it go to Abel Rodriguez, but not this time. Manny Lowen knew the address. Besides, he was one hundred percent sure that when he got home, his wife would be on him again about taking in her mother. Heather never raised her voice, never got angry. She just stayed with the case, backed away for a while, a short while, and then came back again till she wore him down, nerve by nerve, guilt by guilt.
Franco was standing on the sidewalk in front of four neighbors and two college kids, one black, the other a kind of Indian or something. They were all looking into the window of the car that, Manny noted, was in almost the same parking spot from where he had rousted Santoro and Aponte-Cruz, who were now dead.
“Manny, hey,” said Franco. “Curse of Cabrini Street. You park here. Look what happens.”
Two old ladies behind them argued while they stared at the dead man half sprawled out of the car, arms out, eyes closed, mouth open.
The old ladies were speaking Italian.
“Anyone here see what happened?” said Manny, turning to face the group.
All the head shakes were negative. Manny knew the routine. If there were a chance the man slumped out of the car was alive, Manny would be working on him, but the deep purple hole in his neck surrounded by slowly drying blood and the open mouth decided it for him. He looked dead. He smelled dead. He was dead. He would wait for the detectives to make it official. Manny would not risk touching something or doing something that might contaminate the scene. Last time he had done that had been eight years ago when he picked up what looked like a silver dollar at a rape scene. The silver dollar was an aluminum foil condom packet. The condom wasn’t in it and the person who owned the packet had left fingerprints that were then under those of Patrolman Emanuel Joshua Lowen.
“You okay, Franco?” Manny asked.
“No,” Franco answered. “These crazy sons of bitches are turning my street into a graveyard. I’m a simple guy, Manny, a simple guy with a simple new mission in life: to kick the crap out of whoever is killing people in front of my house.”