The Lacey Confession by Richard Greener Page A

against her nostrils.
    My God, he said to himself, temporarily oblivious to the seriousness of the moment. This is one beautiful woman.
    She never found her mother, she said. Perhaps she died. Perhaps not. But Linda Morales did discover who her mother was and along with that revelation came the knowledge she had an older brother and two older sisters—all of whom had been abandoned as well. Chita spent years tracking them down. She found her brother first and then one sister. Both have been well taken care of and she remained close with each of them, she told Walter. The last one Conchita Crystal finally located was her oldest sister, Elana Morales.
    â€œShe died,” said Chita. “Actually, that’s what made it possible for me to find her. That’s how we found her. When she died one of the people helping me came to me with the information. I never got to see her, to meet her. And she was my sister.” Once more there were tears. This time Walter reached into his pocket and handed her one of Billy’s bar napkins he had there.
    â€œThank you,” she said. “Elana never married, but she had a son. She took the father’s name, for her son too, of course. Levine. Not easy for me to find. Levine. Lots of them and they’re not supposed to be Puerto Rican, if you know what I mean.”
    â€œI do,” Walter said.
    â€œHe’s a nice young man, a wonderful person. He’s my sister’s boy and I love him as I would have loved her. Now, he needs my help. That’s why I’ve come to you.”
    Walter did not ask how she found him. They all found him the same way. Who she reached out to was of no interest to him. They knew he was here for them. Until he retired, that is. Conchita Crystal was not the richest, certainly not the most powerful person to ever seek him out. And, as well known as she was—worldwide—even she might have been surprised to learn, not the most famous either. But Walter was sure she was the most beautiful.
    â€œHow can I help you?” he asked.
    With that most simple of invitations, Conchita Crystal proceeded to tell Walter a story so absurd and incomplete, so filled with holes he had to remind himself several times not to completely dismiss its credibility before she finished. Her nephew, Harry Levine, had the written confession, she said, of the man who killed John F. Kennedy.

Sadie Fagan had a moustache. Not a thick one, dark and heavy, but noticeable nonetheless. It didn’t bother Harry Levine, until he was a teenager. Then he found it kind of creepy. Later, as a grown man, keenly aware and eagerly appreciative of the intrigues a woman’s body offered, Harry no longer concerned himself with Aunt Sadie’s mildly hairy upper lip. She was his father’s older sister, a squat woman, a fireplug not much more than five feet in her shoes. She was fat, but not like a lot of middle-aged women Harry saw around town. Not like the ones who always seemed to smoke menthol cigarettes. Not like the obese ones with huge asses and truck-tire thighs. And not like the ones who drove ten-year-old Pontiacs, wore oversize t-shirts emblazoned with NASCAR logos, and inevitably blocked the aisles at Wal-Mart. Aunt Sadie was solid and carried her weight well distributed. She had a big head, big ankles and a big everything else in between.
    From what Harry could see, his father and Sadie shared only the same dark complexion. All resemblance ended there. In the photographs, the ones his mother and Sadie loved to show him, she always smiled. His father never did, not in any of them. And all the while Aunt Sadie never had any expression on her face except a happy smile.
    As a kid, Harry thought his aunt’s grin was permanently pasted on her face. She awoke smiling and went to sleep the same way. And it was there all the while in between, even when she was angry. When Harry was eleven he happened across a picture of the old Brooklyn Dodgers catcher