“Fonesca,” Stavros said.
She nodded.
“We wait till we’re sure he has that file or that he won’t find it,” said Pappas.
“No,” she said, shaking her head and moving to the oven.
“We wait,” said Pappas.
Neither Dimitri nor Stavros had ever killed anyone, but their father, sitting benignly lost in thought as he drank thick, black coffee, had told them that he had never felt hesitation or guilt when he had “assassinated.”
“Tonight,” said Beverly, getting up slowly, hand on the table to steady herself. “I’m making my lamb, couscous and peas. Soup will be a surprise.”
Pappas wondered what Posno would be having for dinner and where he would be having it.
Andrej Posnitki had a bowl of Vietnamese soup with noodles, vegetables and pieces of fish. He sat at the counter of the little storefront restaurant-grocery on Argyle off of Broadway. His was the only non-Asian face among the twenty-seven customers. He had a Kiran beer, no glass, and ate. The other customers talked quietly and occasionally looked his way.
Posno had tucked a napkin under his collar. He ate seriously. He was more interested in quantity than quality, but he had limits and favorites. Pasta of any kind satisfied him, if there were enough of it. He ate the noodles slowly, carefully, noiselessly, wielding his chopsticks expertly to pluck out noodles, bits of fish and even tiny peas.
Music was playing, generic Asian music, the same rippling strings, the same beat, that he heard in every Thai, Japanese or Chinese restaurant.
He would kill Fonesca. The little wop would find that incriminating file of Catherine Fonesca’s and then he would kill him and then deal with Pappas. He and Pappas, the phony Greek, had never been friends, but they had been tenuous partners. And now Pappas wanted to protect himself, to let Posno take the blame for all that they had done. Pappas wanted to destroy him.
It would not happen. It would not happen unless Pappas was willing to go down with him. It would not happen if Fonesca were dead and that file found and destroyed. And that is just what Andrej Posnitki fully intended to do.
7
Inside Toro’s garage, Lew sat behind the wheel of a white 1993 Cutlas. The car had belonged to Ernest Palpabua, a Samoan former left tackle for the Green Bay Packers and later a wrestler. Ernest had plowed the Cutlas into a horse. It turned out to be a stroke of luck for the Samoan, but not for the dead horse or the Cutlas.
The horse belonged to a park policeman. The Cutlas belonged to Ernest Palpabua and Ernest belonged to the media. His encounter with the horse landed him on the front page of the Sun-Times, photograph and story. That night the Marigold Stadium, where he was wrestling, was jammed. Ernest, now suddenly known as the Samoan Horse Killer, was popular. He had enough money for a new car. Toro bought the old one and Lew Fonesca now sat in it.
Lew hadn’t driven in Chicago for a little more than four years. He didn’t want to do it now.
The car was idling in the shadows in front of the wide entrance to the garage, hiding from the October sun. On the other side of Taylor Street beyond the entrance, he could see the walls of a soot-stained three-story yellow brick apartment building. In front of the entrance to the apartment was a small circle of dirt in the cracked concrete sidewalk. Inside the circle was a lone stunted tree, its few yellow leaves fluttering in the wind.
The leaves were beckoning him to come out of the shadows. Lew didn’t trust the leaves.
When he and Franco had gotten back to the house, Angie had been there. Franco, the book tucked under his arm, had eagerly told her what had happened, ending with the confrontation with the four young men and the bullet that hit the truck.
Angie didn’t look happy. She didn’t even look tolerant.
“Let me get this straight. You were in a black neighborhood,” she said. “Four guys confronted you. Someone shot a gun. There’s a hole in the truck.”
“Well, that’s the short tale,” Franco said.
“It’s the one I prefer,” said Angie. “Who was the shooter trying to kill or was he just having his usual afternoon of street target practice?”
“Ange, you don’t know what it was like.”
“I had to be there,” she said.
“Yeah, you… no. I’m glad you weren’t there. Listen.”
Franco, book still under his arm, retold the story, adding a dance of hand and body movements.
Lew had sat at the dining-room table, hands folded in front of him. Though he had said nothing, his sister’s eyes returned to him as Franco savored his tale. Angie spoke to her brother without saying a word and Lew answered silently.
“You should have seen, Ange,” said Franco with a shake of his head. “You should have seen. We’re gonna grab something to eat and go after the guy in the car that-”
He was going to say, “killed Catherine,” but he caught himself. Franco held the book out to Angie. She looked at it.
“I just finished this one,” she said.
“I know,” said Franco. “Open it.”
She did and read the inscription: “‘To Angela, Imagine that we are holding each other’s hand and walking together through the forest of the night. Rebecca Strum.’”
She looked at her brother.
“Is this real?”
“Yes,” said Lew.
“What’s she like?”
“Probably what you’d expect her to be from her books,” said Lew.
“You haven’t read any of her books, Lewis,” Angie said.
“I’m going to.”
“Think I could meet her?” asked Angie.
Franco put his arm around her and said, “Sure. We just knock at the door. Right, Lewie?”
“I’m going alone,” Lew said in answer.
“What do you mean?” Franco said. “Go where?”
“He means,” Angie said gently, “he’s going alone to find the man who killed Catherine. Call Toro. Tell him to get a car ready.”
“That right, Lewie?”
Lew nodded. It was right.
“Hey,” Franco said, “What if…?”
“Lew can deal with ‘what if,’” Angie said.
Now, behind the wheel of the Cutlas, window slightly open, Lew could smell the grease of the garage, hear the shush of the wind bending the beckoning tree.
He remembered Rebecca Strum’s inscription for Angie. There’s a forest of the day too, he thought, and only one hand he wanted to hold. He turned on the radio and pushed the buttons seeking a voice, any voice. What he did not want was music.
He stepped on the pedal and drove into the day.
“The ulcer,” said Dr. Royale after he finished his examination of John Pappas.
Donald Royale was John Pappas’s physician for one reason: he made house calls and asked no questions about why John didn’t come to his office the way the rest of the dysfunctional family did. Dr. Royale did not believe in agoraphobia. Oh, yes, there were half-crazy people like Pappas who didn’t or wouldn’t leave their houses, apartments, mental hospitals or sewers, but the reasons were all different. Lumping them together and giving them a name was of no help in treatment. Each case had to be dealt with individually. It needed a psychiatrist. Dr. Royale wasn’t a psychiatrist. He didn’t even want to talk to his patients about their fears of flying, shellfish, small spaces, death, water, tomatoes, Africans and going outside their homes. Such cases he immediately referred to Jacob Crasker, who was a psychiatrist. For Jake Crasker’s prescriptions, the borderline crazies would pay mightily. For Jake Crasker’s willing ear and tough-love advice, they would pay even more.
There were times when Dr. Royale believed the cost of Jake Crasker’s treatment was the price these people deserved to pay for not taking care of the problem that they created. Royale had his own problem, a painful, twisted and inoperable vertebrae. He had lived with it for more than fifty years. He took pain pills, new ones when they came out, and prided himself on not letting the pain ever show. He stood straight, smiled benevolently and catered to the well-to-do. Dr. Royale was corpulent and double-chinned, hair brushed back and flat, the collar of his shirt always a bit sweat-stained under the same blue suit he always wore. Donald Royale was a mess, but John Pappas also knew he was smart and a damned good doctor.