next to the slowly growing pile.
Why was Catherine heading toward their apartment building at three in the afternoon on a weekday? Lew and his wife both usually worked till about six, got something to eat in the Loop, walked home together talking about the real and false anger, real and false tears of people who had compiled a trail of evidence that proved they had stolen, robbed, beaten, maimed or murdered. They tended to agree on movies and television shows. The night before she died they had argued over the film Sea of Love. For Lew, Al Pacino could do no wrong. Catherine had punctuated that conversation with the word ham. Their voices had not been raised as she set the table and he boiled the water for the spaghetti. The contents of a jar of Prego sauce was heating in a metal pot. It started as smiling banter, went flat, serious and determined as they dug into the pasta and the argument. Then, when it looked as if it would burst and hurt, Catherine has smiled and said, “How about an armistice and some more Italian bread?”
What could he give and who could he give it to to relive that night, any night? He could find her killer and pray to his imagination, but that wouldn’t be enough, not nearly enough.
His own parents had never fought, at least not in front of Lew and Angie. At dinner, both of them had an unwritten list of things to say at dinner. Most of the things were about aunts, uncles, cousins on both sides of the family. Almost all of the conversation came from Lew’s mother while his father ate and nodded, grunted with understanding and smiled at the right times. Lew’s father had eaten, torn pieces of bread from the loaf, and looked tired. Was that long ago?
If Catherine had been going home for the day, why didn’t she tell Lew and why wasn’t she carrying her briefcase?
Two more documents to go. He skipped the next one and went to the twelve-page printout he had requested. It included all the automobile violations on Lake Shore Drive that day between 2 P.M. and 5 P.M. The printout covered everything from Wilson Avenue North to 61st Street.
The listing of Catherine’s killing was on the fifth page. It was no longer than any of the others: hit-and-run vehicular death. 3 P.M. Victim: woman, white, Catherine Fonesca, thirty-five. Vehicle: red sports car. Last seen heading south.
Lew flipped through the report, looking for a red sports car or even a red car in one of the notations other than the one about Catherine. There was one listing that might be a match and the timing was right. At 3:18 P.M. near the 55th Street exit in Hyde Park, a speeding red sports car brushed its passenger side against a green Toyota driven by a woman named Rebecca Strum, eighty, who almost lost control.
Rebecca Strum’s name was familiar, not just to Lew but, he knew, to probably millions of people around the world. He had seen two of Rebecca Strum’s books on the bookshelf near the kitchen in Franco and Angie’s house. She was a visiting faculty member at the University of Chicago. She had won a Nobel prize for her writing and lecturing on the Holocaust. She was a death camp survivor. The driver of a red sports car had killed Lew’s wife and may have come close to killing the person frequently recognized as the most important woman in the world.
Before picking up the last report, Lew closed his eyes and clasped his hands together. The tremor was still there. He opened his eyes and saw his hands. Had he been praying? He picked up the report. If there is a god or gods, He, She, It, or They had nothing to do with what Lew had decided to do.
The last report was the coroner’s. Lew had seen hundreds of these reports. He had always tried to be as clinically dispassionate as the people who had dictated the reports appeared to be. This one would be different.
Catherine had almost certainly died almost instantly. Her hip and left foot had been broken and her skull had been cracked in six places as her body tumbled. Internal bleeding was massive. Her brain had ruptured and filled with blood. That’s what it came down to. That was it.
Angie, Franco, Uncle Tonio would try to get him to go to the cemetery, but Lew wouldn’t go. Catherine was not there, only broken bones and decaying body.
If there was a soul, it wasn’t hanging around her grave. He hoped it wasn’t. If there was a soul, as he had been taught and rejected by the time he was ten, it would come to him. He would welcome it, but he didn’t expect it.
Lew slowly put the report on the pile, returned the documents to the envelope, put the envelope in his carry-on and went through the door. The smell from the kitchen was a kickback memory to better times, his grandmother’s garlic pasta with shrimp. He followed the smell and the sound of a young woman’s voice into the kitchen.
Angie and Franco were at the table watching CNN where someone who looked like Catherine was saying that thirty-one people had been killed by terrorists in New Delhi. Angie and Franco looked up at Lew, whose eyes were fixed on the woman reading the news. She was a young, pretty, long-haired blonde with perfect skin and a very red mouth. She really didn’t look like Catherine. She only blurred his memory of his wife.
“You okay?” asked Angie, getting up.
He nodded yes and said, “Garlic pasta and shrimp?”
“When do you want to eat?” she said.
“When Franco and I get back I think I need to do something first.”
“When you get back?”
“When I get back,” Lew said.
Franco pushed back his chair and got up.
She wanted to ask Lew where they were going, but held back. Franco would tell her everything when they returned.
When they left the house, Franco asked, “Okay if we take the truck or you want me to get one of the cars from Toro’s?”
“Truck’s fine.”
“Good,” he said.
The sun was still up. No clouds. Cool October Chicago weather. The next day the temperature could rise or fall twenty degrees. It might even snow.
When they got in the truck, Franco asked, “Where to?”
“Pappas.”
Franco grinned, drove past Cabrini Hospital, made a left on Racine.
“Angie’s office,” he said, leaning over Lew to point out the sign, ANGELA MASSACCIO, REALTOR, in black letters on the window above Gonzalez’s Hardware Store.
“She’s doing great,” Franco said. “Want the radio?”
“No.”
When Lew had to drive, he liked to drive alone or with Ames McKinney who was silent unless Lew asked him a question. Lew liked to listen to a voice, any voice turned low. No music. Talk. Evangelists, Pacifica Radio, NPR, Limbaugh, Springer, any talk show. Company he could ignore or turn off.
“Think I need a haircut? Angie thinks I need one.”
Lew looked. Franco could use a haircut. Lew told him. Lew cut his own hair, what remained of it, with a comb, scissors and disposable razor. His father had taught him how, saying only “Like so. Like so. Like so,” as he cut, clipped and combed. For the past four years he had given himself haircuts looking into the pitted mirror of the men’s room of the building he lived in behind the Dairy Queen on 301 in Sarasota.
Ten minutes later they were heading west on the Eisenhower Expressway.
Franco knew Pappas’s address, remembered it from the fax Rich had sent him, but he wanted to be asked.
“You remember the address? I do.” Franco beamed.
“My job. Hey, I know the streets. You know how to find people. We’re gonna be a great team.”
Lew didn’t remember becoming part of a team.
“Yes,” Lew said.
Lew thought about Rebecca Strum, wondered if when she was a young girl in a concentration camp they had given her a tattooed purple number.
“What do we do when we get there?” Franco asked.
“We talk. We listen.”
“That’s the plan?” asked Franco.
