Applaud the Hollow Ghost

by David J. Walker

  At Green Bay Road and Central Street I noticed I was hungry and turned east. A few minutes later I parked in the shadow of Northwestern’s Ryan Field and walked back to pick up some lunch at Mustard’s Last Stand. By the time I left, with a couple of root beers and two jumbo hot dogs to go—no fries today—I was wondering whether I should be mad at Maguire, or feel sorry for him.

  Back in the car I continued east, then north. Just past one o’clock, I twisted the old-fashioned bell at the Lady’s mansion and she opened the door herself. She already had her coat on.

  Walking her to the Intrepid, I asked, “You want to drive?” It wasn’t an offer lightly made. The Lady’s one of the few people I feel truly comfortable riding with. She handles a car like a good cop on the beat—smooth and steady, eyes everywhere, never missing a thing.

  “Not today,” she said. “I’ll simply sit and enjoy everything.”

  Everything? That had to include the sky—a dismal, dark blanket that drooped about three stories above ground level—and a temperature that had risen a few degrees above freezing, so that sprays of salty slush thrown up by passing cars merged with the gray mist that already hung in the air and kept everyone’s lights on and windshield wipers working hard.

  I headed south. The Lady accepted one of the root beers, but left her hot dog for me. The idea was I’d take her to pick up my Cavalier from the body shop. She’d use it the rest of the day to visit her shelters and then leave it in the garage under the coach house for me.

  “You always do, don’t you,” I said.

  “Um … I’m afraid I missed something, Malachy.”

  “Enjoy everything, I mean.”

  “Oh. Yes, usually. Occasionally I lapse, drift off into old habits.”

  “Even you?”

  “Even I.” Her British accent and proper grammar were inseparable. “At any rate,” she continued, “how is your ghost?”

  “My ghost? You mean Lammy? Well, they beat the … beat him up pretty badly, but he’s home now. Casey’s staying with him.” I glanced across at her, but she was looking out the window, enjoying the damnable weather. “I … uh … I kinda thought he’d stay out of my dreams now, y’know? But he was back last night, up to his knees in the river again.” I thought for a minute. “Maybe it was all those French fried potatoes I had with the cheeseburgers that brought him back.”

  “You said nearly the identical thing once before, Malachy. Only it was mashed potatoes that time.” When I looked over and caught her smiling at me, she turned her head as though to look out the rear window. “In fact, it was the potatoes that made me think of—”

  “Ah, so that’s why you sent me that book,” I said. “Scrooge. When Marley’s ghost appeared, Scrooge figured his senses were deceiving him, that undigested potatoes were giving him bad dreams and the ghost wasn’t real. Right?”

  “As I recall, he mentioned a fragment of an underdone potato.”

  “Right,” I said. “That was it, or a bit of undigested beef. And Marley’s ghost was transparent, or hollow, just like—”

  “Yes. Anyway, rereading A Christmas Carol made me think of you and your ghost.” She paused and leaned forward, apparently trying to look into the outside mirror on her side of the car. “I’m not really surprised, though, that the boy in the river is still making his appearances.”

  “I am. I thought once I started helping the real Lammy, the one in my dreams would go away. But apparently that’ll happen only after I get him out of this mess he’s gotten himself into.”

  A moment passed and then she said, “That’s really quite extraordinary.”

  “What?”

  “The way you phrased that. From what I’ve heard, your friend hardly seems to have been personally responsible for his predicament.”

  “Well, I just—”

  “And you apparently take for granted that you’ll succeed in extricating him.”

  “That’s what—”

  “Then there’s your belief—or hope, anyway—that the boy reaching out for help will disappear from your dreams.”

  “Damn it, Helene.” The traffic signal just ahead turned yellow. I accelerated, then slowed, then accelerated again through the intersection, and just missed being broadsided by a UPS truck. “Sometimes you can be so—”

  “Malachy?”

  “What now?”

  “Didn’t you want to turn west there, on Howard Street?”

  “Ha! Gotcha! You think because I was mad at you I wasn’t paying attention to my driving.” I threw a hard right and hit the accelerator. “That’s a very long light there, at Howard. And I may just have gotten rid of that car that’s been following us.”

  “Oh,” she said, “you mean that dark-colored Ford. I wasn’t certain you’d noticed it.”

  “I hardly have to notice. They’re almost always there. When they lose me, they just go back to the coach house and wait for me again.”

  We drove around haphazardly for awhile, while I told the Lady everything that had been happening. Sometimes she has helpful ideas; sometimes she doesn’t. But she always listens, remembers everything, questions each detail, tries to keep things straight.

  Sometimes that helps me keep things straight.

  Eventually we arrived at Caesar Scallopino’s and I drove around to the rear entrance. When the overhead door lifted, I pulled inside and cut the ignition. My Cavalier was sitting in one of the bays, looking better than it had in years. We sat and talked for a few minutes more. No one bothered us, and by now I’d left Lammy behind and was complaining about Cass and how much I missed her and just wasn’t able to chase those depressing nostalgic thoughts from my mind, no matter how hard I tried.

  Her response—something to do with not trying so hard—sounded simple but wasn’t, I was certain. She ended up with, “Why not just feel sad when you feel sad, and let it be?”

  “But I don’t like feeling that way. You don’t understand, because you never have those sad feelings.” When she didn’t answer, I looked across and caught her smiling, more to herself than to me, and something suddenly clicked. “At least, I never thought you did. But you do, don’t you? I mean get down sometimes. Sad, depressed, whatever.”

  “Certainly I do. And it doesn’t surprise me, and it doesn’t bowl me over.”

  “What is it that—”

  “That woman sounds interesting.”

  “What?”

  “That woman,” the Lady said. “She’s the one I find most intriguing.”

  “Oh?” I said, still not sure which woman she meant.

  “Yes. First, she’s there at the coffee shop. Then, she’s the one trusted by Rosa to call you. Finally, she urges Dominic to kill you.”

  “He didn’t need much encouragement. But I swear her screaming pumped him up even more.”

  “But only after she interceded and saved your life.”

  “Right.” So the Lady didn’t believe the woman’s hysteria over a cockroach in her milk was coincidental any more than I did.

  “There’s an ambivalence about her that makes her interesting, and—oh my.” She was looking at her watch. “I really must be going now.” She opened her door, then turned back and laid her hand on my arm. “Be careful, Malachy.”

  The keys were in the Cavalier, and she backed it smoothly out the door into the alley and was gone. I paid Caesar in cash and he gave me a receipt that detailed every bit of the body work, and the tow. Caesar’s extremely careful to keep proper records—as am I.

  When I pulled into the alley I really didn’t know which way to turn. I agreed with the Lady, though. That crossword puzzle woman was intriguing.

  CHAPTER

  15

  I DROVE TO THE animal hospital, where Doctor Lynette Daniels told me Lammy was right about one thing—the dog by his back door had been dead before it was mutilated. “The minimal bleeding shows it couldn’t have been alive at that point,” she said, “although it wasn’t hit by a car.” Stripped of the chemical jargon, she told me the cause o
f death was the “ingestion of a toxic substance.”

  “You mean the dog ate poison.”

  “Well, sort of,” she said. “An overdose of chocolate.”

  “Chocolate? Like a Hershey bar?”

  “Probably baking chocolate. It wouldn’t take many ounces of that to be fatal to a dog that size. Especially as malnourished as this one was.”

  “So the dog could have eaten some chocolate accidentally, and become a handy prop for somebody’s sick joke?”

  “Possible,” she said, “but not likely. He was cut so soon after death that it was probably a deliberate poisoning. It’s common knowledge that chocolate is dangerous to small animals. There was an article in the Tribune just a couple of weeks ago about it. Not a very pleasant way to die, either. There’d be convulsions and … well…”

  “So Lammy was right,” I said. “You know, Lynette, you mentioned he was good with dogs, and his co-workers at the shelter told me the same thing. Like, he can calm them down when they’re frightened and aggressive. He has a gift, one of them said.”

  “I haven’t seen him do that, but I know he’s comfortable around dogs, and they around him. There’s talk in the literature about how some people relate better with animals than others. Many of the studies are with dogs. Some people … well, we know dogs don’t think, that they’re instinctual. But some people seem to have a sort of intuition into how dogs react. It’s all a little beyond me, Mal, I admit.”

  I’d have liked to spend more time talking with Lynette Daniels, about instinct and intuition—or anything else. She was easy to look at, and we’d slipped comfortably into a first-name basis.

  But I paid for the autopsy and the disposal of the remains, then went back out into a rain that fell in thick drops that were just this side of real snow. A huge blue city truck rumbled by, spraying ever more salt into the slush. Which reminded me …

  I went back inside and Lynette let me use her phone.

  “D’par’men’AviationO’HareSnowR’moval.”

  “Y’all got a Steve Connolly there?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Who’s callin’?”

  “Tell him it be LeRoy.”

  “Hol’ on.” A minute passed before he came back on the line. “Gonna be awhile. Wanna leave a nummer?”

  “I’ll call back. How long he be there?”

  “Startin’ to freeze up out here. Could be all night.”

  “I best try a different day.”

  “Good idea.” He hung up.

  It was past three o’clock by the time I got to Melba’s and again the sign said “CLOSED.” I circled the block and drove by once more, slowly, peering through the gray rain. The lights were on inside and the big-breasted woman with the hair on her upper lip was sitting beside the cash register, probably counting the day’s take. I couldn’t see Gus Apprezziano. But I knew he must be there, because Goldilocks was sitting with another man at the first table by the front door.

  I drove around and into the alley, and locked the Beretta in the trunk. An exhaust fan was rattling away just above Melba’s back entrance. The door was unlocked and I stepped inside and closed it again quickly. There was nobody in the kitchen. From where I stood I couldn’t see through the service window into the dining room, but over the sound of the fan I could make out the sound of a man’s voice.

  I stood with my back against the the alley door, feet spread wide, and flipped the switch that shut off the exhaust fan. It was suddenly very quiet.

  “Hey, Gus!” I yelled, and clasped my hands on top of my head. “Whaddaya want on that burger?”

  There was no answer, although I heard quick, padding footsteps and a chair scraping softly on the floor. Then the door across the room from me burst open.

  It was Goldilocks, holding a large black semiautomatic pistol pointed at my face. When he saw who it was he grinned, but not very cheerfully. I just hoped he wouldn’t come over and punch me in the side again.

  “For chrissake, tell me who’s out there, asshole.” That was Gus Apprezziano, sounding awfully tough from behind his bodyguard.

  “It’s that dumbnuts Foley,” the man answered.

  Gus pushed his way into the kitchen.

  “You said you wanted to talk,” I said, leaving my hands on my head, “and the door was open, so—”

  “Shut up.”

  So I did, and—once I was patted down and seated, and the cashier was sent home, and Gus’s two goons were sent to wait outside the front and back doors, and Gus had gotten rid of whomever it was he’d been talking to on the telephone, and we both had full coffee mugs—we talked.

  “You oughta stop trying to prove how brave you are, Foley. You coulda been killed.”

  “You wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man, would you?” We both knew the answer to that one, so I added, “At least, not a man you called and said you wanted to see, and who probably told people he was coming here.”

  “For sure no one could trace any telephone call from me to you, and almost for sure no one knows where the hell you are. I doubt you know yourself where you’re gonna be, one minute to the next.”

  “Anyway—”

  “Anyway, I’m not talking about you coulda been killed by me. I’m talking about Dominic. I was you, I’d stay away from Dominic.”

  “Right. And if I were you, I’d retire to New Guinea or someplace even farther away from Chicago. But then, neither of us is very good at taking advice.” I tried the coffee. It was dark and bitter from sitting too long on the hot plate. “So, is that what you wanted to talk about? To warn me to stay away from Dominic like you warned me to stay away from Steve?”

  “The way I remember it, I didn’t warn you anything. You’re the one warned me Steve should stay away from that pervert friend of yours.”

  “Hold on. I never said he was a friend. Not all my clients are friends.”

  “And I promised nothing would happen to the fucking creep, at least till they lock him up with the rest of the animals and he gets what’s coming to him.” He drank some of his coffee and smacked his lips with apparent satisfaction. Tastes vary. “I don’t need to warn you to stay away from Steve or Dominic. They’re both big boys. They can take care of themselves.” He took another gulp of coffee. “Course, they are family, you know. Even the mick, at least by marriage.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I stood up. “See you around.”

  “Sit down,” he said. And when I did, he added, “I wanna talk to you. Besides, you haven’t finished your coffee yet.”

  “They serve better coffee in County Jail, for chrissake.” I paused. “By the way, who’s this guy Paul Anders?”

  “Huh?” Gus’s face showed nothing. “Paul Andrews?”

  “Anders. I … uh … got a call from someone named Paul Anders. No message, except he’d be in touch about something. Thought maybe he was one of your people.”

  “I got no fucking people. And I never heard of any Paul Anders.”

  “Well, I suppose he’ll call back.”

  “Yeah. I suppose.” He drank the rest of his coffee and stared down into the thick white mug.

  “Say, Gus, I’m parked in the alley, you know? I might get a ticket. So, unless there’s something else you wanted—”

  He raised his head. “I got a job for you.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “A background check. Simple.”

  “I know you said you got no people. But if you did, why couldn’t one of them handle it?”

  “Because this is confidential, asshole. I wouldn’t want my people, if I had any, to know about it. Fact is, I—” He stopped. “Anyway, I want you to do it. And you know what?” He stared across at me. Nothing changed except the look in his eyes, but I felt a sudden chill, and got an idea of why people were afraid of Gus Apprezziano. “You know what?” he repeated, pointing a thin finger in my face. “You’re gonna do it.”

  “Gus,” I said, once he’d dropped his hand back on the table, “the answer is no.”

  “Like I said, it�
�s a background check.”

  “Like I said … no.”

  “It’s a broad. I wanna know who she is.”

  “I told you—”

  “It’s Dominic’s new lady friend.”

  “Maybe you didn’t—” I caught my breath. “Dominic’s lady friend?”

  “You probably seen her,” he was saying. “I wanna know who she is, where she came from, everything. And…” He poked his bony finger at me again. “You, my friend, are the one that’s—”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Good.” Gus smiled, thinking he’d frightened me into agreeing.

  “But why don’t you just ask Dominic?” I asked. “You don’t trust him?”

  “Dominic I trust like a son. He’s proved himself. But he’s not the brightest kid on the block, you know? He picked the broad up in a bar in Louisville during Kentucky Derby weekend. So you’re gonna find out who this tough-ass little Kentucky filly is for me. It’s confidential, and the pay is good.”

  “How much?” I couldn’t believe I was negotiating with this creep.

  “First off, I’m keeping Steve, and anybody else, away from that fucking pervert client of yours. That oughta be enough. But you gotta live, too. I know how it is. So I’m adding ten thousand bucks, cash.”

  “No. It’s gotta be—”

  “Fifteen, then. Don’t push me.”

  “Ten is fine. But payment’s gotta be by check.”

  “Cash.”

  “I have to report who it’s from, anyway, Gus. That’s the law for a cash transaction that big.”

  “Jesus Christ.” He closed his eyes for a few seconds. “It’s cash. Call it from Osceola Nursery and Landscape Company. For an employment background check.” He drew an envelope from his jacket pocket and slid it across the table. “Here’s the first five. I’m in a hurry.”

  I put the cash in my pocket and slid the envelope back at him. “Two installments,” I said. “Maybe I don’t have to report it, after all. I’ll ask my—”