He turned his back and swooped through the crowd.
“Do I have any blood on me, Lew?” came a question from Lew’s left.
Lew turned to face the well-dressed man. There was no visible blood on Milt Holiger.
The bloody man, the crowd and the preacher had drifted away. A new line of hurrying pedestrians and grinding cars took over.
“His newspaper,” said Holiger, looking at Lew. “I once had a guy, little guy, mean face, lips pushed out like this.”
Holiger jutted his chin out and opened his eyes wide.
“Little guy says I’m wearing his pants. Won’t give up. Stays in my face. He was too pathetic to hit. I told him where the Goodwill store was on Madison and gave him a buck. He, can you believe it, struts away mumbling about my stealing his pants. Guy had maybe a twenty-four waist, tops. The pants were thirty-eights.”
There weren’t many people inside the Dunkin’ Donuts and there was no line. Milt Holiger ordered a black coffee and a sourdough donut. Lew ordered a coffee with cream and double sugar and a corn muffin. Franco came in. He nodded at Holiger, looked over the counter at the trays of donuts, muffins and pastries.
“Hard to decide,” Franco said. “Okay, a chocolate chip muffin, a chocolate-frosted donut, not the fluffy one, the cake kind, and a coffee straight.”
Lew paid for all three orders and headed for a small table for two in the back near the restrooms.
“It’s okay. I’ll sit over there,” said Franco, nodding at an empty table across the room.
“Gracie got accepted at Vanderbilt,” Holiger said, pulling his chair up to the table.
“And your son?”
“Alan’s still straight A at Northwestern,” Holiger said, tearing his donut in half and dipping one of the halves into his coffee with his right hand. The left he used to keep his tie from dipping into the coffee. “So you want to tell me more about the person or persons who killed Catherine?”
Lew looked at his muffin and coffee but didn’t reach for them.
“His name is Victor Lee.”
“And you haven’t turned him in? You want me to do it?”
“No.”
“He’s alive, right? Wait. Maybe I don’t want to know,” Holiger said, working on his coffee and muffin.
“He’s alive. I talked to him.”
“What did he say?”
“He’s suffering.”
“He said he was suffering?”
“I could see he was suffering,” said Lew, touching his coffee cup but still not lifting it.
“Where is he now?” asked Holiger, starting on the second half of his donut.
“Lost,” said Lew, looking over at Franco who had finished both his muffin and donut. “Pappas is dead.”
Holiger paused, soggy wedge of donut halfway from the table to his mouth. Then he leaned forward, but it was too late to stop the end of the donut from dropping into the coffee.
“Killed himself right after lunch,” Lew continued.
“Today? How do you know?”
Holiger checked himself to be sure no drops of coffee had splashed on him.
“I was there,” said Lew. “Catherine, Pappas, Posno, Santoro, Aponte-Cruz, all dead.”
“Posno, dead?” said Holiger.
A very fat young man with a well-trimmed beard had replaced the two who had left the next table. The fat man was wearing a Chicago Bears jacket and cap. He glanced at Lew and went to work on some large iced drink covered with whipped cream.
“And another hundred people just got off of the train,” Lew said. He thought he had said it to himself but Milt Holiger said, “Train?”
“Nothing,” said Lew, breaking off a corner of the muffin.
“Lew, you all right?”
Their eyes met. Holiger’s concern was sincere.
“Making a dollar a minute,” said Lew.
“You’re losing me here, Lewis.”
“Catherine’s missing files don’t have anything to do with Pappas, Posno or Victor Lee,” said Lew.
“They don’t?”
“No,” said Lew.
Franco had finished eating. He stood and looked at Lew, who motioned him back down. Franco sat.
“Okay, but what about Santoro and Aponte-Cruz?” said Holiger. “Did Pappas own up to killing them before he died? Did-what’s his name-Lee kill them?”
“Pappas didn’t kill them. Neither did Lee.”
“You know who did?”
Lew took the folded bank statement and the bullet he had taken from the door of Franco’s truck out of his pocket and placed them on the table in front of Holiger.
“You did, Milt,” Lew said.
A woman, trying to keep her bulky flower-patterned bone-handled purse from falling from under her arm, held her white paper bag in front of her, scanning for an open table. There was none. She sighed and headed for the door.
“I think Catherine’s missing file is the one with bank statements in it,” said Lew.
“Lew,” Holiger said with a sigh.
“You’re holding the one I picked up from the bank this morning,” Lew said. “You told me you went to the bank, talked to someone. You didn’t. They log in every visitor. They’ve also got video surveillance. You’re not going to be on that tape are you, Milt?”
Milt Holiger looked down at the statement and the bullet that rested on top of it. He touched neither.
“No.”
“I saw the computer file,” said Lew. “The file shows individual checks, front and back.”
“You know I can…”
“That bullet’s going to match your gun, isn’t it?”
Holiger looked away and played with a crumb on his plate.
“It’s also going to match the bullets in Santoro and Aponte-Cruz,” Lew went on.
“I could have changed guns,” Holiger said.
“Why? No one suspected you.”
“You’re right,” said Holiger, readjusting himself in the chair.
“You’ve been taking our mail, our bank statements, forging checks,” said Lew. “You’ve got real identification. You really are a State’s Attorney investigator. You had the mail rerouted. I can find out where.”
Holiger looked around the room. Smiling faces. Sad faces. A fat young man with a well-trimmed beard holding a donut in one hand, coffee in the other. Franco in a stare down with a thin woman holding a coffee cup who wanted his table. The two young women, one black, one clearly Latina, behind the counter in trim uniforms serving, scurrying.
“A post office box,” said Holiger. “The mail goes to a post office box in White Plains. In your name. Lew, I didn’t start writing the checks till almost a year after you were gone. You left no address. You could have been dead.”
“When I left there was less than a hundred dollars in the account,” Lew went on. “Then, all of a sudden, four hundred thousand dollars. Now there’s a hundred thousand.”
Holiger shook his head, reached up to tighten his tie, changed his mind.
“You want to be exact? Four hundred and twenty-two thousand, Catherine’s life insurance. I had it deposited in your account. There’s one hundred and nine thousand dollars and forty-seven cents in there now.”
“And no one at the bank or the insurance company asked any questions?”
“Why should they? I had it directly deposited into your joint account. Lew, I was in the hole. One kid in college, another about to go. Ruthie’s diabetes is, well, it’s bad.”
“You killed two men, Milt.”
“No, I…”
“Santoro was working for the bank,” said Lew. “He came to you to see if he could find a lead to me. So, you killed him, him and Aponte-Cruz.”
“I could say I’ll find a way to pay you back the the rest of the money,” Holiger said, leaning over the table, whispering.
“How are you going to get three hundred thousand dollars, Milt?”
“I don’t know. Overtime?”
Holiger smiled. Lew did not.
“You murdered two people, Milt.”
“You’re going to turn me in. That guy Lee, he murdered Catherine and you didn’t turn him in.”
“He killed Catherine. He didn’t murder her.”
Franco had lost the stare down contest with the waiting woman. He was up now and heading toward the table where Lew and Milt Holiger sat.