Applaud the Hollow Ghost

by David J. Walker

  When he’d been released a few months ago, Dominic moved back home, which was a little surprising because his wife had filed for divorce while he was gone. On my way, I stopped and called The Captain’s Choice. Tina was on the job, and I hung up before she made it to the phone. So, with the daughter almost certainly at school, Dominic might be home alone. Of course, even if he was, why he’d open the door and let me in, and exactly what I’d say if he did, I couldn’t imagine.

  The house was a brick bungalow similar to Steve’s. It had a room with leaded glass windows that jutted out in the front and, to the right of that, the concrete stoop had wrought iron railings painted white with brown rust stains bleeding through. One railing was loose and leaning to the side. The snow was a foot deep on the steps.

  The plastic doorbell button on the door frame was missing one of its screws. I pushed it, though, and heard the far-off sound of a two-tone door chime. Otherwise, nothing. A cheap aluminum screen door hung slightly ajar and behind that was a very solid-looking front door, closed and windowless. I pushed the button a second time. Again, no response but the distant door chime—unless you counted a slight disturbance of curtains behind one of the leaded glass windows to my left. I waited, then pushed the button again.

  Third time’s a charm, they say, and they may be right.

  It was a man who opened the door, and I recognized him as one of Steve Connolly’s companions at Melba’s. If he was disabled, it sure didn’t look like a physical problem. He was about my height and had on a pair of those bikini-type briefs that apparently appeal to some people, but must be inconvenient when you’re taking a leak in a public washroom. Besides the underwear, he wore a deep bronze tan on his muscular body, and—unless that long wavy hair was a toupee—nothing else removable. He could have been a black-haired Conan the Barbarian.

  “What are you doing here?” He had a tenor voice that was tight and strained, like a man haunted by a host of evil spirits.

  Past his shoulder I could see part of the living room and, beyond that, a dining area with table and chairs. Heat poured out through the screen door toward me. “You know,” I said, “you oughta have a storm door put on here. Save a lot on heat.”

  An ordinary person would have shut the door in my face. He just stood there. Which certainly meant something or other.

  “My name is Foley, and—”

  “Who is it, Dominic?” It was a woman’s voice, calling from somewhere behind him.

  He turned his head a little to the side and called back, “Shut up, will ya? It’s nobody.” Then, to me, “I already know who you are. What I said was what do you want?”

  In fact, that hadn’t been his original question. But this was an easier one, so I answered it. “I want to come inside and talk.”

  He didn’t move. “Why would I wanna talk to you?”

  “Maybe because I’m a great conversationalist,” I said, trying to appear focused on him, and not on the long-legged woman in dark tights and a man’s shirt who had moved into view back by the dining-room table, looked out at me, and then disappeared again. “Or maybe because I know your secret.”

  “My secret?”

  “Afraid so,” I said. “The one you can’t afford to have anyone else know.”

  Dominic stood there, his dark eyes void of expression. Maybe he was thinking. Finally he pushed open the screen door. “C’mon in, then, and tell me the secret,” he said, and something about his voice told me that wouldn’t be a wise thing to do.

  But wisdom’s never been my strongest suit. I stepped inside and let the screen door fall closed against my back. It must have been ninety degrees in the house.

  “Maybe you should come in farther and close the front door, huh?” Dominic said. “Cold air’s coming in.” As he spoke, his right hand was moving toward a little table that sat just to the side of the front door.

  I grabbed the edge of the open door to my right. “And maybe you should put some clothes on.” I paused, then added, “And get rid of the weaponry.”

  “This?” he asked. He raised the barrel of the nickel-plated revolver he’d pulled from the drawer in the table, until it was pointed at my belly. “If I get rid of this, what’ll I use if I wanna blow you away after I hear your big fucking secret?”

  I really couldn’t think of an answer to that.

  “I mean, you pushed your way in here,” he went on, “and you might even be armed.” He had that part right, anyway.

  I moved my hand from the edge of the door to the doorknob, and pulled it toward me a little.

  “Forget closing the goddamn door, stupid,” he said. “Get in here and tell me your fucking secret.” He jerked the gun up toward my face and, whether the flame in his eyes was chemically fanned or came from a more permanent madness, I could see he was wacko enough to shoot me.

  “I suppose I better go,” I finally managed to say.

  “Sorry, asshole.” He stepped toward me, the gun almost brushing my face. “You shouldn’t have started this if—”

  Glass shattered somewhere behind him. “Help! Oh my God! Help!” A woman was screaming hysterically. “Help me!” She burst into the room. “My milk glass. A goddamn roach in my—”

  Dominic twisted his head and leaned back just slightly, and when he did I stepped backward into the screen door and yanked the heavy front door toward me—hard and fast. The sharp edge of the door slammed into Dominic’s right arm. He tried to jerk it back out of the way, but didn’t quite make it and his thick muscular wrist was pinned between the door and the door frame. I thought for sure he’d drop the revolver then, but he didn’t. His hand was twisted in such a way that the barrel of the gun pointed up and to my right. He was struggling to swivel it around toward me, but so far he couldn’t do it.

  With both hands on the knob, I held the door closed against his wrist. Blood started oozing from where the edge of the door was breaking through the brown flesh of his wrist. Still, he wouldn’t let go of the revolver. I pulled even harder.

  “Jesus, Dominic,” I yelled, “just drop the goddamn gun and I’ll let go.”

  He didn’t say anything, but the woman inside was hollering again. “Kill him, Dominic!” she screamed. “Blow his fucking brains out!”

  Dominic, though, wasn’t wasting any energy on speech. He’d grabbed the edge of the door with his left hand and was trying to pull it open, while I strained to hold it closed against his right wrist. It was a standoff. He couldn’t open the door. I couldn’t close it. And if I eased up even a little—and his hand still worked—he’d shoot me.

  Meanwhile, the woman kept screaming. “Shoot the sonovabitch! Kill him!”

  The instinct to survive was driving me, but he was too powerful a man, with pain and rage adding to his strength. On top of that, maybe he felt I’d shamed him in front of the woman. Anyway, it soon became clear that Dominic was about to prevail in this tug of war. I couldn’t hold on much longer.

  So I took a breath, then slammed my body forward into the door. It flew inward a few inches and collided with something solid, like bone, but whether it was his forehead or his chin, or what, I didn’t wait to find out.

  I didn’t wait to listen to his curses, either, or to hear whether the woman would complain about the cockroach in her milk or berate him for not shooting me. I was half a block away before I turned my head to verify my hope that even an enraged Dominic Fontana wouldn’t go chasing after me through the snow in his bare feet and red silk bikini briefs, waving a revolver.

  I made it to the car, with the shouts of the woman still echoing in my brain: Shoot the sonovabitch! Kill him!

  Dominic’s wife was at work, so who was his screaming lady friend?

  The question might not have seemed so important, except that I’d seen that woman before, wearing high-heeled leather boots and working a crossword puzzle at Melba’s. Her voice was familiar, too, with those frenetic, inflammatory shouts not quite hiding that same southern drawl I’d heard when she called to set up my meeting with Rosa.
Whoever she was, one day the woman’s helping Rosa tell me Dominic’s the bad guy, and the next—after Dominic’s reaction pretty much confirms Rosa’s charge—the same woman is screaming at Dominic to blow my brains out.

  So much for charging up the middle. Now seemed like a good time to go back and study the playbook.

  CHAPTER

  12

  I DROVE TO THE hospital, wondering how soon I’d be hearing from Dominic again. He had to be worried about how much I knew and how I knew it. Actually, if you looked at things from Dominic’s insane point of view, killing me—or anyone likely to finger him as Trish’s attacker—was a pretty sensible thing to do.

  Even so, there were more immediate problems than Dominic. He’d hesitate to go after me on his own out in the open field, and he certainly couldn’t tell Gus Apprezziano, or anyone else, why he wanted me out of the way.

  Meanwhile, there was Lammy. The clothes he’d been wearing when they took him to the emergency room were torn and bloody, so I stopped at Sears and bought him new things—socks, underwear, extra-wide-cut jeans, a plaid flannel shirt, a bulky, dark blue ski jacket, and even a warm cap with earflaps. It was fun, actually, and I got everything but shoes, figuring shoe size I wouldn’t be able to guess.

  When I got to the hospital, he was sitting in his chair, still wearing just a hospital gown. “Sorry I’m not dressed,” he said.

  “I thought you were going to stop telling me you’re sorry all the time.”

  “Oh, I forgot.” He was looking everywhere but at me. “Uh, the nurse said you were bringing some different clothes.”

  “And I did. Here, see if they fit.” I dumped all the packages on the bed and started opening them. It was the first time I’d ever bought an entire outfit for anyone, and I thought I’d done a pretty good job.

  Lammy didn’t even stand up, just sat there staring at the bed. “Those aren’t my clothes.”

  “They are now,” I said. “Come on. They already let you stay way beyond discharge time. They’ll be charging for another day if we don’t get moving.”

  “I … I don’t have money for expensive stuff like that.”

  “Hey, these are from Sears, not Nordstrom or something. But they’re nice. See?” I held up the plaid flannel shirt, a great mixture of brown and blue. I was especially proud of that.

  He just sat there. “You gotta take ’em back. I can’t pay—”

  “Be quiet.” I was suddenly angry. Selfishly, stupidly angry. “Look,” I said, “I spent time as well as money getting those goddamn clothes. I thought you’d be happy about it. Jesus, you think I care if you pay me back or not?” I walked over to the open door. “I’ll be back in five minutes, damn it. Put those clothes on and let’s get the hell outta here.”

  I went out in the hall and there was a nurse standing there. “He’s such a dear, isn’t he?” she said, nodding toward Lammy’s room.

  “Uh, yeah, I guess so.”

  “He hasn’t had one single visitor except you.” That’s what her words were, but the look in her eyes seemed to be saying much more than that.

  “You, uh, overheard our conversation, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “Yes. But don’t worry, people don’t always act appropriately when they’re treated in ways they don’t expect. I try never to be too hard on them.”

  “You’re right. Lammy doesn’t know any better.”

  “Oh,” she said, smiling kindly, “I wasn’t talking about Mr. Fleming. I was talking about you.” She started to walk away, then turned back. “He’s going to have some trouble getting those clothes on. That dressing on his hand and wrist, remember?”

  I’d never thought of that.

  Back in his room, Lammy had his new jeans on and was struggling with the shirt. It was plenty big, and we were able to get it on over the fat bandage that left only the tips of his left fingers exposed. I had to button it for him, and then I went to the closet to find his shoes. When I turned back he was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, admiring his new shirt. He caught me watching him and his face glowed red between the purple and yellow bruises. He turned around and mumbled something.

  “What did you say?” I asked, trying to sound nonthreatening.

  “I said … thank you.”

  “Oh,” I said. “You’re welcome.” There were tears in the corners of his eyes and I looked the other way. “Sorry I yelled at you.”

  Neither of us said another word as we fumbled with his socks and shoes. I tied the laces. Finally, riding down on the elevator, I had to say something to break the silence. “So … did your sister call?”

  “No, nobody called.” He paused. “Oh, except for Miss Carroway. She called.”

  “Oh?”

  “Or at least her secretary. Asked where I’d be going when I left here, because Miss Carroway might need to reach me. I told her you were taking me to my place. But that was it. I didn’t expect my sister to call.”

  “No,” I said. “Of course not.”

  * * *

  THERE WAS AN OPEN spot on the street near Lammy’s place, so we parked and used the front door. Lammy went ahead of me up the steps and it wasn’t until he was unlocking the door on the second-floor landing that I remembered I hadn’t told him he’d be having company. He pushed open the door and then stopped, because both of us heard the same strange noises, like metal scraping across metal, over and over.

  I pushed Lammy aside and yelled through the open door. “Casey, is that you?”

  “Course it is,” the call came back. “I’m in the kitchen.”

  He was down on his hands and knees, with his head stuck inside the oven. The oven door was off and was sitting on the other side of the room, leaning against the cabinet under the sink. Casey extracted his head from the oven and hauled himself clumsily to a standing position.

  Lammy stared up at the huge man.

  I didn’t know what to say anymore than Lammy did. Casey was wearing black pants, a white collarless shirt, and bright yellow rubber gloves that were covered with swirls of greasy slime. He held what looked like a putty knife in his massive hand, and a red, white, and blue stocking cap on his head. There was more greasy gunk smeared on his shirt, and even some on the cap.

  “You must be Lambert Fleming,” he said, then looked down at his yellow gloves. “I’d shake hands except this chemical crap would burn holes in your skin.” He waved at the stove. “Damn thing looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in about twenty years. Had a helluva time getting the door off.”

  “Lammy,” I said, “this is Casey, a friend of mine. He’s been ordered out of his own home for a while, and I asked him to stay with you.” I stopped, then added, “I have to run, so I’ll leave you two to get acquainted.”

  “C’mon back for supper if you can,” Casey said. “I decided to wait and make the meat loaf tonight. At least, I will if I can get that damn oven door back on.”

  Lammy shrugged off his new coat and hung it on one of the kitchen chairs. Then he just stood there looking embarrassed, like a kid who might be ordered out of the room any minute, so the grownups could go on with their work.

  “I could use some help here, Lammy,” Casey said. “But you better change your clothes.” He leaned forward. “Hey, that’s a really nice shirt you got there. It’s new, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Lammy said, staring down at the floor. “It’s new. I better go change.” He fled from the kitchen.

  “He’s all yours,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Casey said. “Doesn’t look like much of a sex maniac to me. Course, don’t know that I ever met one before.”

  I left by the back door because it was the quickest way out. It was Casey’s turn to help Lammy struggle with his clothes.

  * * *

  WALKING DOWN THE ALLEY toward Steve Connolly’s garage, I wondered if he was home. I don’t know why I wondered, and I don’t know why I thought I’d be able to tell, since I’d have had to go into his backyard to look through his garage window, and that would on
ly tell me whether his van was there, not whether he was home.

  Thinking about garages, though, reminded me of something. According to the police reports, Trish had said at first that she didn’t know where she was attacked. Later she said the man pushed her down on the floor, then changed “floor” to “ground,” then said her clothes were dry because the man had dragged her inside somewhere. It seemed clear to me she was making things up—maybe not the attack, but how it happened.

  It was Trish’s insistent repetition of the statement that “nothing happened in the garage”—before she corrected herself and said she wasn’t in any garage—that most intrigued me. I turned around and walked the other way down the alley, past Lammy’s backyard and into the next block, where Dominic lived. And yes, Dominic had a garage.

  It nearly filled the width of his lot, a brick, two-car garage. Its wide overhead door opened onto the alley, and could have used a couple of coats of paint. I’d had enough of Dominic for one day, so I kept on walking, even though I really wanted to see what the floor looked like in there, and whether that might help prove that Dominic’s garage was the garage nothing had happened in.

  * * *

  I KEPT TO THE alley for a half mile farther. I knew it was a half mile, because in Chicago eight blocks make a mile—most of the time. It was already dark, and my lower right ribs were beginning to ache again. Whoever had called Lammy, claiming to be Renata Carroway’s secretary, had learned I was driving him home, and must have identified my rental car by now. So it would stay right there on Lammy’s block until somebody could pick it up and return it.

  A cab took me east, all the way to the el station at Wilson Avenue, and I called Barney Green’s secretary from a pay phone to make arrangements for a new rental car, a process more complicated than it sounds, since I have no credit cards. Maintaining this absence of plastic gets harder by the hour. But Barney, my ex-partner, helps out. We both see it as part of an experiment in liquidity. In other words, if one has no credit, no bank account, no real estate, minimal personal property, virtually nothing but cash—in unpredictably fluctuating amounts, unfortunately—can one function as we enter the third millenium? One thing for sure, one seldom has to check one’s mailbox.