Applaud the Hollow Ghost

by David J. Walker

  In a moment he said, “You are fine. No problem.”

  “Thank you, sensei.” No problem that he could feel.

  “So,” he said, “prepare yourself. Ten minutes for the mind. Ten minutes for the body. Then we will begin, and I and the others will take it easy with you.”

  The hour and a half session was the usual whirlwind of throws, rolling falls, kicks, and punches, with Dr. Sato demonstrating good technique on me when one of us didn’t get things right. If anyone took it easy on anyone, it went undetected by me. When the time was up, he went back to his office and lit another cigarette, while we students swept the mat and then placed the old-fashioned straw brooms carefully in their stand.

  Dr. Sato approached. If he was as tired as I was—and he sure should have been, since he had more than twenty years on me—he didn’t look it. “And the pain, Malachy?” he asked.

  “Still there,” I said. “Worse than before.”

  “Good.”

  “Pain is good?”

  “Everything is good.”

  Since this was turning into one of the longer verbal exchanges of our relationship, I decided to go ahead and ask him. “Sensei, why do you keep smoking those cigarettes?”

  “You do not approve?”

  “Well, it’s just that…”

  “My wife does not approve, either.” His eyes turned sad. “Ah, well, I enjoy them, don’t I.” It wasn’t a question, and he sounded sad, too. But then he smiled, and held out a small white paper bag. “Here. Japanese tea. Try this.”

  “Will it help ease the pain?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. But it is good, anyway.”

  I trotted down the stairs from the dojo, stunned. Not at his gift of the tea, which was loose in the bag and smelled awful. But amazed that Dr. Sato might feel sad. And he had a wife, too. Imagine that. Just like some ordinary human being. He probably slept, ate food. Maybe he even had children. Wouldn’t that be something? Little Sato kids, throwing each other around the living room.

  When I got to the Cavalier, there were no blue Fords in sight, and no black Cadillacs. I drove home and called Barney Green and asked him to get me a quick reading on a few license plates. Barney can do things like that.

  Meanwhile, I fried up some lean bacon I’d brought home with me and ate it with two English muffins spread with the Lady’s homemade strawberry jam, along with some of the Japanese tea. The tea actually tasted better than it smelled.

  Barney called back. The Ford van at Melba’s was registered to Steve Connolly; the Cadillac to someone in River Forest who sounded very much like he might be related to Gus Apprezziano. But there was no information available on the Ford sedan that was following me.

  “No information?” I said. “What does that mean?”

  “Maybe it’s a computer screwup,” he said.

  “And maybe it’s not.”

  “Right. Anyway, gotta go.” Barney’s always on the run. He makes a lot of money.

  As soon as I hung up, the phone rang. I let the machine answer.

  “Hey,” the voice said, “it’s Casey. Pick up the damn phone if you’re there, will you?”

  Casey’s real name is Father Casimir Casielewiecz, or Caseliewicz or something. The only time I asked him he claimed even he’d given up trying to spell it right. He was still the pastor of Saint Ludella’s, the church where I’d watched Kevin Cunningham say those two Masses awhile ago. Casey’s claim that he couldn’t spell his own name wasn’t true, of course, but it was the sort of thing he liked to say.

  I picked up. “Casey, how are ya?”

  “Goin’ nuts, as usual. But the parish is great. Had confirmation last week. Seventeen eighth-graders and five adults. Great day. Had a guy playing trumpet in the choir loft. And the Cardinal himself was here. Surprised the hell outta me.” Casey couldn’t help himself. He loved to talk about Saint Ludella’s, whether anyone was interested or not. “Then we got the church’s seventy-fifth anniversary coming up in March. My idea was a pot-luck supper, but the people wanna make a big deal about it. Between you and me, it’s not gonna be worth it. No point in a big anniversary party unless you can rake in some big bucks. Shoot, if we invite three thousand former parishioners we’ll be lucky if fifty show up. The rest are either dead or afraid to come back into this neighbor—”

  “Casey?”

  “What? Oh, talking too much. But what the hell, that’s ’cause I’m havin’ a great time.” He paused. “So, we still on for the game Saturday?”

  “I’ll do my best. I’m working on something, but Jason’s playing, so I don’t want to miss this one.”

  “Working on something? You mean you actually got a paying client?”

  “Well … a client, anyway.”

  “Damn, you’re as bad as I am. Anyway, if you can’t make it, could you leave my ticket at the gate? I’m supposed to be on vacation and—” He stopped, and somehow I knew an idea had just flown into his mind. “Say, maybe I could give you a hand,” he said, “with whatever you’re doing.”

  “Uh-uh. I don’t think so. Last time I dragged you along you were lucky to survive.”

  “You didn’t drag me, and what happened wasn’t your fault. If I hadn’t been so overweight I coulda run faster. Hell, I lost fifty pounds in the hospital, anyway, which I’d have never done on a diet. Besides,” his voice took on a more serious tone, “I, uh, got a kind of a problem of my own.”

  “Problem?”

  “Yeah. Like I said, instead of the other bishop that was scheduled, the damn Cardinal himself showed up for our confirmation last week. ‘A pastoral visit,’ he called it. Nice guy, y’know, but he’s kinda mad that I haven’t taken any time off. Claims that was the deal when they let me come back here after I got hurt and all. Says I oughta go to Florida or some damn place. Jesus, Florida. Anyway, he said if I don’t get out of here for two weeks he’s gonna move me to another parish. Some place ‘less stressful,’ he said. I told him forget that stress crap and just let me be happy, right here on the job, for chrissake.”

  That’s the way Casey would have said it, too, to a cardinal or anybody. He never sounded like my idea of how a priest should talk—however that was.

  “Just go stay with one of your sisters for a couple weeks, Casey.”

  “Are you kidding? They’ll drive me nuts. I mean, they’re nice, but they always make a big fuss over me. Besides, they’re too … pious, or something.”

  We argued a while. He wasn’t kidding. He really needed something to do. And, in fact, I thought of something that would get him away from Saint Ludella’s for awhile. And there wouldn’t be any danger. Not that he cared. His parish included some of the scariest public housing projects in the Western Hemisphere, and he wandered around them night or day. The only time he ever got shot at was sixty miles out in the country, when he was safely with me.

  We arranged to meet at two o’clock, at a restaurant a few blocks from Lammy’s apartment. Casey said he had to take the el because his car wasn’t running right. The car was a brown Dodge Aries, about four years old, and it would have worked just fine if he’d ever remember to change the oil or get an occasional tune-up.

  Meanwhile, I showered and shaved and washed the dishes, then took the garbage down the back steps and left the bag by the door, but inside, because pickup wasn’t until Friday. There was still plenty of time, so I went back upstairs and took apart both my phones. I backtracked the wiring all the way down to the box in the garage, even looked at the lines outside.

  The fact that I found nothing wasn’t entirely satisfying. Someone could have been bugging the place by satellite, for all I knew. But the hell with them. I took a mug of Dr. Sato’s tea to the battered old Steinway upright in the room beyond my bedroom and banged away for almost an hour. If there were any listeners, they got a real good dose of the turnaround from “Angel Eyes,” the same eight bars about a hundred times.

  Finally, I took my mail with me and sorted it while I drove to meet Casey. There wasn’t much to sort. Th
e few throwaways I threw away, into a box in the backseat. What was left was a fat envelope from Renata Carroway. Copies of the police reports from Lammy’s arrest. There were maybe ten pages, some handwritten, some typed, plus another packet of typed transcripts of statements taken from Trish. I couldn’t read it all and drive, too, so they’d have to wait.

  Lammy’s street had been plowed, and the alley, too. It was, after all, the precinct captain’s block. But I knew there’d be no place to park, which there wasn’t, and which was why I was meeting Casey at a restaurant with a parking lot.

  We left the Cavalier there and walked. I had Lammy’s keys and we went down the alley and into the backyard. Casey’s only luggage was a duffle bag the size of Rhode Island, but it looked small with him carrying it. He’s taller, broader, and a whole lot meaner-looking than I am, even though his disposition is five times more pleasant. He may have the vocabulary of a sailor’s parrot, but he’s seldom sarcastic and never insulting.

  At the bottom of the enclosed back stairs, he set the lumpy bag down, obviously meaning to switch hands before climbing the stairs.

  “It shouldn’t be more than a week,” I said. “What have you got in there?”

  “See if you can guess. Pick it up.”

  So I did.

  But not for long. “Bricks,” I said, dropping the bag back onto the concrete. “I told you we’ve been guaranteed no trouble, at least till after the trial. You won’t have to wall yourselves in.”

  He laughed. “Not bricks.” He lifted the duffle bag again and followed me up the stairs. “Books. I’m way behind in my reading. Plus some clothes, a one-ounce bottle of wine and my chalice in case I wanna say Mass, a few boxes of fig bars, and a couple of six-packs of Pepsi.”

  “All the basics.”

  We let ourselves in the back door. The apartment had a kitchen, a living room, one bathroom, and three small bedrooms. One bedroom was obviously Lammy’s, one his mother’s, and the third was made into a TV room. Even in a second-floor walkup, no one ever lives in the living room.

  Casey tossed his duffle bag onto the sofa in the TV room. Maybe it was a test, because when the sofa didn’t collapse he announced, “This is my campsite,” and moved the bag to the floor.

  Out in the kitchen, we popped open two Pepsis and sat at a white wooden table.

  “So,” I said, “they’re discharging Lammy tomorrow. I’ll pick him up and bring him here. Like I said, I got a guarantee I’m sure is genuine. No trouble. You guys can go to the store, whatever. But don’t let him out of your sight. One hint of anything, one nasty phone call, you call me and you’re both outta here.”

  “Fine. But didn’t you say Lammy has a job?”

  “I’m on my way there. See if I can get them to give him sick days or a vacation or something. No way he could work, even if he wasn’t all beat up.” I drained my Pepsi and stood up. “You don’t mind? Helping out an accused child molester? I mean, I don’t think he did it, but—”

  He held up his hand and I stopped talking. “Look at me, Mal.” I did. His voice had a serious, almost angry tone. “You’re looking at a bona fide, goddamn drunk. Sober as the Pope, these days. Trying to be a good priest, too. But a goddamn alcoholic all the same. And I could turn back into the same disgusting, stinking lout I was any day of the week. All I gotta do is fall one time.” He crushed the can in his hand. It wasn’t empty and Pepsi spurted all over the table. “Sure. I hope this guy didn’t do it. On the other hand, whether he did it or not I’m gonna do what I can to see he gets a fair shake. Not ’cause I think he’s innocent or not. I mean, who is innocent, for chrissake? But ’cause he’s a goddamn human being.” All of a sudden he stopped, looked embarrassed, then grinned. “And that, dear congregation, is the end of today’s sermon.”

  The refrigerator was pretty bare and Casey said he’d make a list and then go to the grocery store. “Maybe I’ll fix my famous meat loaf for supper tonight,” he said.

  I went downstairs and walked back to the restaurant. It was snowing by the time I drove out of the parking lot and headed for the City-North Canine Shelter. I drove carefully, partly because the streets were slick and partly because I had no interest in shaking off the blue Ford for the second time in one day.

  It had been there since I left the coach house for my meeting with Casey. Of course I had Gus Apprezziano’s word. But that guaranteed Lammy’s safety, not mine. Besides, who said the two men in the Ford were friends of Gus?

  CHAPTER

  9

  THE MANAGER WASN’T THERE, but three employees of the City-North Canine Shelter all claimed they used to like Lammy. He’d been a maintenance worker there for years and none of them knew anything about his family, whether he had friends, or what else he did with his life. He was “real quiet” and “kinda backward,” but “not stupid.” He was especially smart about dogs, “like he has a gift for it.” In fact, it seemed as though he liked dogs more than people, and—even if it wasn’t part of his job—he could always calm them down when they barked or even growled at visiting children when they screeched and squealed too much and made the dogs nervous and aggressive.

  Lammy was polite, did his work, and hardly ever talked to anyone. Yes, they used to like Lammy, sort of. But not any longer.

  They’d hardly believed it when they saw it in the papers and on TV. But then the investigators from the state’s attorney’s office arrived, and they were shocked to find out it was all true. This guy who flushed the crap out of the dogs’ cages and mopped the floors was in fact a pervert, a sexual deviate who preyed on little girls. They’d been urged to search their memories for times when he’d acted strange, “you know, like connected with sex.” They hadn’t come up with anything, except that time when this little runt of a terrier that had supposedly been neutered kept trying to hump all the female dogs, no matter how big they were, and Lammy had thought that was funny. Of course, everyone else thought so, too. But …

  At first no one recalled ever seeing Lammy touch any child. But when the investigators kept pressing, someone thought of the time this little black girl had come to pick up her dog that had run away and it turned out not to be her dog at all. She cried and cried and Lammy was there and she grabbed at him and he hugged her, and he seemed to have “a kind of a weird look on his face.”

  They figured they should have suspected something, but their surprise soon turned to anger. In fact, they were infuriated. How could someone they knew do such a terrible thing?

  “Maybe,” I suggested, “he didn’t do it after all.”

  “Yeah, sure,” one of them said, and all three suddenly stared at me as though I were from an alien galaxy. “And maybe the police just arrested him ’cause it was a slow day, huh?”

  “And why’d the prosecutor charge him if there wasn’t evidence?” another said. “Where there’s smoke there’s fire.”

  “You gotta be a little sick yourself, you think a little girl’s gonna lie about something like that.”

  Three decent people. Not mean, or evil. Their working days were spent sheltering strays. And they all agreed. They sure didn’t want creeps like Lammy working around them, by God.

  And they didn’t care much for me, either, if I thought vicious animals didn’t belong in cages. Besides, the state’s attorney’s people said they didn’t have to talk to Lammy’s lawyer, or anyone working for his lawyer, if they didn’t want to.

  “I understand that,” I said. “And thanks for your time.” I’d overstayed my welcome. A habit of mine.

  “It’s those darn lawyers, you know. They’re the problem. And people like you, who work for lawyers. You’ll all do anything for money.”

  “And don’t forget the judges, too, who just keep letting these sickos back out on the streets, no matter what they do. Victims got rights, too, you know?”

  I decided not to wait around and ask the manager to give Lammy a paid leave of absence.

  * * *

  NO STATE’S ATTORNEY’S INVESTIGATORS had shown up at
the branch library in Lammy’s neighborhood, according to the kindly, silver-haired woman I spoke to. But if they had, they’d have learned that Lammy was a painfully shy patron who came in once every few weeks. Sometimes he’d browse for a while among the shelves at the small facility.

  “But he never loitered,” she said, frowning at the mere mention of the word, as though loitering were an especially vexing problem. “Most often, he just comes straight to the desk and asks us to order books from downtown for him.”

  “What sort of books does he read?” I asked, and immediately, nearly as visible as if it were made of concrete blocks and not of librarians’ ethics, a wall rose up between us.

  “I’m afraid, sir, we don’t keep records of what our patrons read.”

  “Yes, but if he so frequently asks you to order books, you must remember—”

  “If I did remember, I surely wouldn’t tell you. The library is here to serve its patrons. We respect people’s rights to read whatever they choose. It’s not our business to care what patrons read, nor to keep track of it, nor to inform others about it.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” I said. “It’s right there in Article Three of the American Library Association Code of Ethics.” That seemed to make a favorable impression, and I was glad I’d looked it up. “So, anything else? Was he ever any problem at all? Like, I don’t know, staring at people, bothering kids, anything like that?”

  “Nothing. Not one hint of anything.” Her manner eased a bit. “I wish I could be of more help, but…”

  “Thanks for your time.” I turned to go, then turned back. “As a matter of principle, you know, I’m happy you won’t tell me what library patrons read. On the other hand, though, I don’t think Lambert Fleming did this awful thing he’s charged with.” Her face softened even more. “But he told me what he likes to read, and I really need to verify things he’s told me, so I can know that he’s being truthful, that I’m not kidding myself.”

  “I understand,” she said, “but—” Just then the door burst open and a gaggle of chattering eight-year-olds burst in. “Oh, the Cub Scouts are here. I really have to go…” She closed her eyes momentarily, as though thinking, then reached down and, from somewhere below the counter, brought out two large books. She set them on the counter, then abruptly turned and marched off toward the noisy newcomers.