“No,” Lew said.
Franco jerked his hand back.
“Hey, Lewie, come on. We’ve got to call the cops.”
“Don’t touch anything.”
“Okay.”
Lew sat across the desk from Santoro.
“We call the police right?” Franco said.
Santoro’s eyes were open, fixed on Lew’s face. They were staring each other down. Santoro would win. He was dead.
“Lewie, you all right?”
“Yes.”
“We call the police, right?” he said.
Lew didn’t move.
“Or we get the hell out of here fast. Lewis, come on. Lewie, what’s going on here?”
What was going on was that there was no way of getting around the truth. If Santoro’s death was not connected to Catherine’s, Lew faced a very large coincidence.
He got up and moved around the desk behind Santoro.
“You can wait outside,” he said, looking at the top of the desk.
“You think I want out because of the dead guy?” Franco asked, shaking his head. “I’ve seen dead guys, kids on the roads like roadkill. I’m a tow-truck driver, remember?”
“I remember,” Lew said.
“You want help?” he asked, looking at the closed door to Santoro’s office.
“No,” Lew said.
There was a fresh, lined, yellow legal pad with a pen next to it. The top page was blank. There was an empty in box, an aluminum football with a clock imbedded in it, facing Santoro. Next to it was a fresh box of Kleenex with a red wood cover. At the right was a flat, black cell phone holder-charger. There was no phone. Franco mumbled something to himself. Lew took a small stack of tissues.
“You know what your sister’ll do to me if we get arrested ?”
“No.”
“I don’t either,” said Franco, clearly frustrated. “But I won’t like it. I know that.”
Franco’s near panic had been transformed into quiet resignation. He would not be surprised if the killer burst through the door, guns in both hands, firing away. He wouldn’t have been happy either, but he wouldn’t be surprised.
There were four desk drawers. Lew opened and went through them, flipping papers with the tissues. Then he went through Santoro’s pockets the same way. A little more than four hundred dollars in his wallet. Lew put the wallet back.
He wanted to touch Santoro’s shoulder. Then he paused and looked down at the dead man.
“Lewis, you okay?”
“Yes, let’s go.”
“I can live with that,” Franco said, moving ahead of Lew to the door. “You find anything?”
Lew reached past him, opened the door with the tissues and wiped down the knob. Then he realized that while he was erasing their fingerprints, he might well be removing those of the person who had killed Santoro.
They walked past the reception area, into the hallway outside and then to their right, back toward the elevator.
“Find anything on him?”
It wasn’t what Lew had found, but what he hadn’t found. Santoro’s phone was gone. He had no appointment or notebook in his pockets. Whoever had killed him had taken any phone and notebook he might have had.
“No,” Lew said.
“Stairs?”
“No.”
There were surveillance cameras in the building’s lobby, at the entrance and even one in the wooden mesh grid of the elevator’s ceiling. They were on tape. That would be fine. If Lew were right, the tape and medical examiner would prove Lew and Franco had entered the building at least eight hours or more after Santoro was dead. That wouldn’t stop the police from having questions.
The elevator pinged and the doors slid open almost silently.
In front of them stood a large black man in his forties. He was wearing a blue suit and matching tie and carrying a briefcase. He looked exactly like his photograph on the wall of the reception room of Santoro’s law firm.
The man was Turnbull of Glicken, Santoro and Turnbull, or, to be more current, Glicken and Turnbull.
He took Lew and Franco in and moved toward the offices Lew and Franco had left seconds earlier. Franco and Lew stepped in and Lew hit the Lobby button.
They were only a few blocks from the County Office Building. Lew headed toward it with Franco at his side, looking back over his left shoulder.
“I’m not gonna ask,” said Franco.
People hurried to their offices or jobs serving the people going to their offices. Lew could tell by how they were dressed, by the color of their skin, which were the served and which the servers. Lew was definitely a server.
They stopped on the broad stone courtyard in front of the building where Lew had worked, where Catherine had worked. Too many demons were being faced too quickly and he had been in the city for less than twenty-four hours.
Franco looked at the three pay phones in front of the building and then at Lew who nodded.
“Just say, ‘Attorney Claude Santoro murdered in his office’ and hang up.”
Franco moved toward the phones to call 911.
I HAD A DREAM
last night,” Franco said as they watched the doors, waiting for Milt Holiger to come out.
Lew had used Franco’s cell phone to call Milt and ask him to come down. Holiger had said he would be down in a minute. About five minutes had passed.
Lew’s body had changed. Four years in Florida had made a cool Chicago October morning feel like the inside of an ice-cream truck. The dead man they had found a few blocks away contributed more than a little frost.
“You want to hear it?”
“Sure,” Lew said without looking at Franco.
“Craziest damn … anyways, you and me and Ange were watching the Bears playing the Eagles. Bears have the ball. Got it?”
“Got it,” Lew said, eyes fixed on the glass doors.
“Bears quarterback gets the snap, steps back, throws. Ball sails right into the hands of the referee. Ref cradles it like a pro and starts chugging it toward the goal like Thomas Jones. The other refs block for him. Touchdown. Refs celebrate. Crowd goes nuts. Now what the hell does that mean?”
“It’s not just the good guys and the bad guys you have to watch out for, you’ve got to keep your eyes on the peacekeepers because they might steal the ball.”
Franco looked at Lew who didn’t look back.
“You think?” he asked.
“No,” said Lew.
“I’m talking a little nuts like this because of the dead guy, right?” asked Franco.
“Probably.”
“You feel … ?”
“Yes,” said Lew, eyes still focused on the door.
“You don’t show it,” Franco said.
“No.”
“It doesn’t mean you don’t feel it, right?” said Franco. “Yeah, I know. I sound like Angie.”
Milt Holiger came through the door. He plunged his hands into his pants pockets. Lew remembered that Milt’s hands and feet were always cold.
“Heredity,” Milt had once explained. “Father, brothers, uncle. We all wear socks in bed.”
Milt was stocky at forty and working to maintain and nurture his still controllable belly. Lots of brown hair with perfect sideburns, Milt looked like the generic weary television series police captain or lieutenant whose shoulders were stooped from hunkering down to ward off the blows of word and fist.
Milt dodged a pair of arm-gesturing lawyer types and walked to his right.
“That him?” asked Franco.
“Yes.”
“Where’s he goin’? Doesn’t he see us?”
“He sees us. He’s dropping bread crumbs,” Lew said, following Holiger through the morning crowd.
Three blocks later they joined Holiger at a table in the rear of a dark narrow inauthentic deli that served neither good Jewish or Italian food. Holiger looked at Franco.
“My sister’s husband,” Lew said. “Franco.”
They shook hands. The morning crowd had dwindled down to six customers besides the three of them. The place smelled as if it had been fried in something sweet and fatty.
“Better off not having people in the office see us together,” Milt said. “I give you information, someone connects the wires and I’ve got trouble.”
“You mean you can’t help anymore?” Lew asked.
“Who said that?”
He put his right hand to his chest. A heavy-legged waitress in a uniform that had once been yellow but now was a forlorn amber placed cups of coffee in front of them. They all ordered toasted onion bagels with cream cheese.
“Okay,” said Milt, picking up his cup. “What do you need?”
“You’re sure there was nothing in the things Catherine left at the office that might make someone want to kill her?”
“Nothing,” said Milt. “Of course you never know, but nothing, no secret deposition, overlooked piece of evidence, name of a bombshell witness, nothing.”
“Active cases?” Lew asked.
Franco was working on his second cup of coffee, his eyes moving from Lew to Milt to the front door of the deli behind the gray shadow where they sat.
Lew, I—”
“I know,” Lew said. “But things changed about an hour ago; a lawyer named Claude Santoro was found murdered in his office on LaSalle Street.”
“Excuse me,” said Franco, getting up. “I’m going to the men’s.”
When Franco was gone, Lew asked, “You’ve heard of Santoro ?”
“Not a criminal defense lawyer far as I know,” said Milt. “Want me to check him out?”
“Yes.”
He took out his notebook and wrote.
“Andrej Posnitki, Posno,” Lew said.
Milt wrote and said, “Rings no bells. What else?”
“John Pappas,” Lew said.
“Maybe.”
“He’s the son of Bernice Pappas, father of Dimitri Pappas and Stavros Pappas.”
“Yep,” said Milt writing quickly, “I remember now. A noble family. The old woman, kids. Yeah, I remember John.”
“See what you can find on all of them.”
Holiger looked at his list and read: “Santoro, Posnitki, the Pappas clan. Anything else?”
“Not for now,” Lew said.
Holiger closed and pocketed his notebook as Franco came back and sat next to Lew.
“I’d ask you to come to the house for dinner with me and Ruthie, or we could take you out someplace,” Milt said. “But I know better. If you decide down the line while you’re in town to take up the offer, you’ve got my number.”
“Thanks, Milt,” Lew said.
“No, Lewis, I mean it. Ruthie would like to see you.”
“I’ll—” Lew began.
Holiger held up a hand and said, “Whenever you’re ready.”
He got up. So did Franco and Lew. Milt said, “Good to meet you, Franco. Take care of yourself, Lewis, and call me tonight about this.”
He patted the pocket of his jacket where he had placed his notebook.
“Now?” asked Franco when Milt was gone.
“Uncle Tonio’s,” Lew said.
“Right.”
“You ever hear of Rebecca Strum?” Lew asked as they walked to the garage where Franco’s tow truck was parked.
“Sure, yeah,” he said. “You kiddin’? Angie’s a reader, read all of her books. They’re lined up in the case in our bedroom, a couple in the built-in case in the dining room. Everybody knows Rebecca Strum.”
John Pappas stood against the wall in the kitchen watching his mother lay out the ingredients for her famous
Kibbeh Bissanieh
, baked lamb and wheat. It was one of his favorites. He enjoyed the smells of the kitchen, the clanking of mixing bowels and wooden spoons, the sound of cracked wheat being crushed.
His mother, wiping her hands on her apron, looked over her shoulder at Pappas for an instant smile and then went back to work. She sang a medley of random lines she remembered from almost forgotten songs.
“‘Born free,’” she sang, “‘Free as a rainbow round my shoulder, free as that old devil moon in your eyes, free as the wind and the rain in your hair.’”
Pappas plucked a pine nut from a small pile in his left palm and dropped it on his tongue.
Stavros and Dimitri were born into the world of their father and their grandmother. Their mother had disappeared when Stavros was learning to talk and Dimitri learning to walk. Stavros remembered her as tall, thin, pale with red hair. Dimitri remembered her not at all. Her name was Irene and she was not to be spoken of. The few times the name Irene had come up—a television character, a waitress in a restaurant—John Pappas had looked at his sons, seeking a reaction. He got none.
It was not a world they would have chosen, but they had accepted it without childhood whimper or teenage rebellion. This was a family in which nothing but complete loyalty would be tolerated.
The brothers didn’t want to walk in their father’s shoes. They didn’t know what might be lurking in those shoes and they did not want to know.
They did what they were told, what they had to do, to protect father, grandmother and each other. But in the end, Stavros and Dimitri, though they might well be willing to die to preserve the family, most certainly did not want to be a part of the family business. John Pappas accepted this. The line of assassins went back forever. It would probably stop with him. It was time.
Bernice Pappas added the mixture of water-soaked bulgur wheat, onions, ground lamb, pine nuts, salt and pepper. She tasted the mixture, found it acceptable and kneaded and laid it out on a baking pan. She looked down at what she had done and smiled as she turned her head toward her son and placed the pan in the oven.
“Will they have the balls to kill him?” she asked, closing the oven door, wiping her hands on her apron and looking at her son.
“Yes,” said Pappas, lifting the palm of his hand to his mouth to get the last four pine nuts.
“Posno has to die,” she said, moving bowls, wooden spoons, cutting boards to the sink.
“I know,” said Pappas.
They had agreed to this a long time ago and many times since. He always listened dutifully when his mother brought it up again. It did have to be done. Posno was too great a threat to him and the family.
“Get rid of him before he gets you killed,” she said, searching for something in the refrigerator. She retrieved a small bottle of spring water and moved to the kitchen table where she sat in a wooden chair.
“Yes,” Pappas agreed.
He could already smell the
Kibbeh Bissanieh
baking.
What, he wondered, was Posno doing now?
Andrej Posnitki followed the Pappas brothers. He was careful. He would not and could not be seen. It was the reason he had survived his entire life. He was careful. He was ruthless. He thought neither of the future nor the past.
Posno drove a new Prius, which didn’t deliver nearly the hybrid mileage he had been promised. He accepted this fact. He knew he was capable of convincing the automobile dealer on Harlem Avenue to take the car back. Posno could be very convincing, but he also had a simple philosophy: Almost everyone can’t be trusted. If you were to right each wrong done to you, you would never get through the day and there would be a trail of the broken and the dead. Save your wrath for the big threats to your existence and your work.
Somewhere in the files of Catherine Fonesca, wherever
they might be, was information that would end the existence of Andrej Posnitki. He would not let that happen.
Uncle Tonio was a dealer in merchandise.
Toys, DVDs, wallets, purses, chairs, you name it, from sources in China. Knockoff computers, watches from Japan. Rugs that looked like handmade Turkish from Poland. Lamps that looked like Art Deco 1935, but were made in 2006 in India. Leather sofas, both real and synthetic, from Indonesia. Ancient Peruvian jewelry made last year in Lima. In his fifty-one years in business, there was little that one imagined or made to fit in a crate that had not passed through Uncle Tonio’s warehouse on Fullerton.
Lew didn’t think anyone in the family, even his father, knew what most of the merchandise was or had been.
Every few weeks when Uncle Tonio came to dinner he brought a gift. Once, Lew remembered, it was two cartons of Cheerios. They ate it for a year. Another time the gift had been a small wooden tomato crate packed with forty dolls that looked like Barbies, but weren’t. They were all dressed in yellow tennis outfits complete with yellow visors and a plastic tennis racquet. For years Angie had given them away to her friends for birthdays and Christmas.
Lew’s cousin Mario and most of the family assumed there was something not quite legal about Tonio’s business. When they said it aloud, they did it with a knowing smile of pride. Maybe the family actually had a Mafia connection? Maybe Uncle Tonio had known Capone, Nitti, Giancanna?
Tonio did nothing to dispel the belief. He encouraged it.
“So,” someone might ask over dinner, “what’s new, how’s business?”
Tonio would keep eating, looking at his food, raising his fork as a prelude to answering and say, “You know, pretty good, not complaining. Pass the pepper.”
If Uncle Tonio was a family legend, his warehouse on Fullerton held the awe of a haunted castle. The two-story concrete building was about the size of a football stadium. It didn’t stand out in the neighborhood. Most of the buildings in the area were big, constructed for storage and shipping. The brick ones dated back to the late 1800s. One had been an icehouse till the 1940s.
Uncle Tonio’s warehouse had been built at the beginning of World War II to hold military vehicles—half-tracks, jeeps, trucks, staff cars. No one lived within six blocks of Uncle Tonio’s. During the day, the warehouse and the neighborhood were benign, a set for a television cop show chase, complete with fissures and buckles in the pavement and a very nice quartet of train tracks long gone to rust.