Applaud the Hollow Ghost

by David J. Walker

  “That’s horse shit. We’re not talking disagreeable here. Anders has something going, and it involves Dominic and his relationship with a woman. To keep it going Anders is willing to let an innocent man’s life be ruined. And you’re helping him. You know Lambert Fleming didn’t go after that girl, and you know Dominic did.”

  “I don’t know what happened that night. I wasn’t there. I have no reason to believe Dom—” He stopped. “Let me put it this way. I know of no evidence suggesting Dominic attacked Trish that night. Whether Lambert Fleming did, or not, will be decided by someone other than me.”

  “And meanwhile, you push me around and try to make sure I don’t get at the truth.”

  “Wrong. I don’t expect to have any further involvement.” He must have seen the surprise on my face. “Frankly, it’s my opinion that suing you on Dominic’s behalf would be unlikely to have any effect on how you proceed.”

  “And what else?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Besides the chance to tell me I’m not being sued, why else did you agree to meet with me?”

  “Oh. Nothing.” He poked at his coffee with a red plastic stirrer. “I might add, though, a word of caution.”

  “You mean somebody’s told you to scare me off.”

  “Not at all. I mean a word of caution from me, personally. And one you would be wise to remember.”

  Damn. Wisdom again. But I kept quiet.

  “There are certain concerns about your interfering,” Maguire continued. “You are being watched.”

  “Tell me about it. I can hardly get into a washroom stall without a chaperone.”

  “There are others you may be putting in jeopardy, people who—”

  “People like Dominic?”

  “Possibly. But also those who have … relationships with him and who don’t need attention drawn to them.”

  “Are you saying—”

  “Also, there are people who may appear to be helping you interfere.”

  “People like you, maybe?”

  “Me? I’m not helping you interfere. If I were, would I meet with you so openly?” He stood up. “I have another appointment. I understand your concern about Lambert Fleming. But I urge you to be concerned about others, too.”

  “You’re saying the FBI would retaliate against someone for talking to me?”

  “Any organization can act only through its agents and employees, who in turn act only according to their best judgment—however flawed you might think that judgment is. There are ways of skinning a cat, you know, without taking the knife in your own hands.”

  I stared at him, trying unsuccessfully to get a grasp on the shifting implications of what he was saying. “What are you talking about? Who—”

  “As I said, I have another appointment.” He walked me back to the elevators and shook my hand. His expression was difficult to read, but he seemed more sad than anything else. “Good luck,” he said. “I think you’re going to need it.”

  Those two ideas, at least, were clear, and I’d have sworn he meant both of them.

  CHAPTER

  18

  DAN MAGUIRE WAS JUST the sort of very important person I’d been ready—even anxious—to dislike, and our first meeting hadn’t done a lot to change my attitude. But this time he’d told me, at least by implication, that Paul Anders—if that was his name—was FBI and was using Karen Colter, through her relationship with Dominic, to gather information about Gus Apprezziano. Anders didn’t want a gap in his pipeline to Gus, and he was willing to let Lammy take a fall to keep Dominic in place.

  Walking back to the parking garage, I saw how clear it was that Maguire had wanted to be sure I knew something, whether I asked or not. He wanted me to know it wasn’t just Lammy who was expendable, and that my “interfering” might have a ripple effect.

  How far would Anders go?

  I could avoid finding out. I could walk away from the delicate hand he was dealing and just let Renata Carroway do her job for Lammy. She’d almost certainly get him a “not guilty.” Even if she did, though, they weren’t likely to take him back at the dog shelter. Of course, maybe I could get him a better job somewhere else. Maybe even send him back to school and …

  Right. And I could relocate him to Bangladesh, too, and maybe Steve Connolly wouldn’t find him and tear off his arms and legs—and whatever else he could grab hold of—before he sent Lammy screaming into the next world. “Interfering” might mean putting more people in jeopardy. But “not interfering” certainly meant walking away from Lammy, and that wasn’t a viable alternative. Not if I wanted to get that ghost of a boy out of the river in my dreams.

  Of course, who’s to say somebody else’s ghost might not wade in to replace him? How the hell was I going to throw a protective shield over Rosa and Trish and Tina—and others I might not even know about? Besides, now that I unwillingly had Gus Apprezziano for a client, too, I couldn’t depart the scene entirely. If I told Gus my news about Karen Colter, she was dead. If I didn’t, and he ever discovered I’d held out on him, my own longevity was suspect.

  I had time to make the end of the basketball game, and far too much to think about, as I wove through Saturday afternoon traffic up the Outer Drive to Sheridan Road, and on to Northwestern’s McGaw Hall. The roaring crowd told me the game was still close. Using a pay phone in the lobby, I retrieved two messages from my answering machine. One was Renata Carroway, who said to call her Monday at her office. The other was an Investigator Sanchez, from the Chicago Police Department. He didn’t actually ask me to call him back, just left a number and said he wanted to talk to me. I didn’t like his tough-guy tone of voice, or the way he used only my first name—and then didn’t even pronounce it right. Besides, he’s the one who wanted to talk to me. Not vice versa.

  So I didn’t call him.

  * * *

  UNABLE TO TALK MY way into the game without a ticket even in the closing minutes, I’d missed Wisconsin beating the Wildcats in overtime. Supper was on me, at a place by the el tracks in Evanston called the Noyes Street Café. The food’s always great and I usually take home leftovers enough for the next day, too. This time, though, three out of the four of us ate their entrees all the way to the end, and then finished mine as well. Jason had had a great game, so he was on a cloud, and Casey and Lammy and I didn’t have to worry about keeping up our ends of the conversation.

  Jason had plenty of admirable—if not yet fully developed—qualities, but at that time he was busy becoming a future NBA superstar, and that pretty much exhausted his zone of interest. I knew how that was. I’d never come close to the promise he showed, but I’d had my days. So I could easily cut him some slack. Casey could, too—partly because he’d had a great time at the game, and partly because he’s an expert at putting up with difficult people. Me, for instance.

  The interesting thing about the evening, though, was Lammy. He wasn’t exactly a chatterbox, but he did put some sentences together, and he looked like one of those wide-eyed kids in the TV commercials touting breakfast with Mickey Mouse. He was clearly awestruck, just being in the presence of Jason, who’d been such a dominant factor in the game. He hung on Jason’s every word, and Jason loved it and gave Lammy lots of attention.

  There was more to it, though. The whole event took place in a world the likes of which Lammy had never participated in. He actually looked alive and interested. “There was a real lot of people there at the game,” he said once, when Jason took a break from his personal play-by-play to bite into a hard roll.

  “Yeah, well, shoot, man, this was an important game,” Jason said, swallowing fast. “Did you see that big dude with the shaved head when I—”

  “Hell, Lammy,” Casey said, “you want crowds, you an’ me’ll go to Grant Park next Fourth of July. They jam about a million suburbanites in short pants into—”

  “Not really a million,” I said. “Not on that one—”

  “… in his face, man,” Jason was saying. “Dude won’t forget that one
, ’specially not after I…”

  Lammy took it all in. A night out with the boys.

  Jason had been excused from taking the team bus back to Wisconsin, but Casey and Lammy had to drive him up to Madison that night, a five- or six-hour round-trip that Casey insisted was a snap. They were to take me home first.

  “Drop me off here,” I said, still several blocks from the coach house. “A walk in the fresh air will do me good.”

  Casey gave me a strange look, but he let me off, made a U-turn, and headed for the expressway.

  That there was a car parked down the street from the Lady’s drive with two people in it was no surprise. But it wasn’t the usual dark blue Ford. This one was two-tone, white and blue, with a bar of emergency lights running across the roof, and red lettering on the side that said “Chicago Police.”

  For a brief moment I considered heading in the opposite direction, but that seemed hopelessly impractical. So I sauntered past and, when I started up the drive, the squad car pulled slowly in behind me. I turned around, and by that time the cop in the passenger seat was out of the car. She smoothed back her hair and tugged her uniform cap down over her head. “Mister Foley,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am … I mean officer.”

  “Get into the patrol car, sir.” She was tall and slim, maybe mid-thirties, and looked great, even in her bulky police jacket. But she still talked just like a cop.

  “This is Evanston, not Chicago,” I said. “I don’t know you and I don’t get into cars with strange women, not since the early eighties anyway.”

  Funny thing, my father was a cop. But my instinctive—some say irrational—reaction to police directives certainly wasn’t his fault, because he never talked to me like a cop. In fact, he hardly ever talked to me at all, either before or after they kicked him off the force, so—

  “I’m Officer Rice.” She even gave me her star number. “And my partner is Officer Palka.” Palka was out of the car now, too, standing with his blue-shirted beer belly bulging out from his unbuttoned jacket, resting one hand casually on the butt of his service revolver. “Investigator Sanchez wants to talk to you,” Rice added.

  “Does he? That the same Sanchez as on the Lambert Fleming case?”

  “Get in the car sir. Now.”

  “Your partner gonna shoot me if I refuse?”

  Palka spoke for the first time. “God,” he said, more to himself than to Rice or me, “just like all the other assholes of the world.”

  He was right, of course.

  “I’m going up to my apartment now,” I said, “and you can come back when—”

  “You can’t go up to your apartment before Investigator Sanchez gets here, with a search warrant. Let’s go.”

  “You two ever hear of the constitu—”

  By that time Palka had his revolver in one hand and his radio in the other, but that didn’t matter much because an Evanston patrol car pulled into the drive, and an unmarked squad nosed up behind that.

  “I guess not,” I said, and put my hands on my head.

  They didn’t cuff me after they patted me down, but they also didn’t tell me what was going on, and they didn’t let me go into my place when I unlocked the door for them. Sanchez did humor me a little, though, and let me check both front and back doors when I made a fuss about seeing whether someone had been through either of them since I’d been gone.

  “Well?” Sanchez asked, when I’d finished inspecting both doors. “Anyone been inside, Mr. Detective?”

  “Jeez, I don’t know,” I lied. “Can’t tell.”

  “Christ. C’mon, amigo.”

  When we got to Area Three Headquarters they took me to an interrogation room with the usual scarred-up table and chairs. There was the usual one-way picture window, too, to reflect back the table and chairs and the usual suspects.

  “If I’m under arrest, what’s the charge?” I scowled back at my reflection. “What’s going on, for chrissake?”

  “No arrest, no charge,” Sanchez said. “You’re here voluntarily in your capacity as a good citizen, to answer questions. Just relax, and I’ll be right back.” He locked the door behind him.

  He’d probably wait for word from the people tossing my apartment. Whatever they found, it wouldn’t have been placed there since I’d left that morning. I was confident no one had been through the doors, even if Sanchez didn’t have to know that.

  I waited, telling myself over and over that I wasn’t there because my “interfering” had put someone “in jeopardy.” I suppose some part of my brain thought repetition could make the truth go away.

  A half hour later Sanchez came back. He sat down and placed a large manila envelope on the table between us.

  “Find anything at my place?” I asked.

  “Where were you last night?”

  “Where’s the phone? I want to call my lawyer.”

  “Where were you last night from, say, ten o’clock to five this morning?”

  “From midnight to five I was home, alone, asleep. Where’s the phone?”

  “You don’t need a lawyer. You’re not accused of anything yet. I’m trying to trace the activities of the victim of a crime last night.”

  “Why don’t you just ask him?”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible.” Which is exactly what I was afraid of, too.

  He picked up the envelope and withdrew what looked like a cardboard frame for a photograph, the kind people set on their pianos. But Sanchez held it so I could see only the back. He stared at it for a while, then said, “Know this woman?” and turned the photograph to me.

  Tina Fontana smiled out at me from a five-by-seven color print. She was wearing a white dress and a wide straw hat with flowers around it. The dress had a high neckline and ended just above her knees, and it showed off her figure very well. There was a brightly dressed little girl clinging to her right hand. They were standing on a sidewalk somewhere and if I’d had to guess, I’d have said it was Easter, and they were on their way to church.

  She looked maybe five years younger than when I saw her at The Captain’s Choice. She might have been happier back then, too. Who could say? She was very pretty in the picture, but no prettier than she’d been when she sat across the table from me and grinned and admitted she was flirting.

  “I guess you do, huh?” Sanchez said.

  “What?” I found myself breathing fast and trying hard to swallow. My mouth was dry and sour.

  “I guess you know her,” he said.

  “Tina Fontana.” I forced another swallow. “I met her once. Is she—”

  “You met her?”

  “Last night.”

  He took some more photographs from the envelope. “Take a look at these,” he said. “And then, amigo, we better talk about calling your lawyer.”

  CHAPTER

  19

  THE PHOTOS WERE EIGHT-BY-TEN color glossies, six of them.

  One was all it took. A thick, rancid rush filled my mouth and I swallowed, over and over, until the vomit finally slid back to where it had come from and stayed there. Then I paged through the remaining pictures.

  Tina’s coat was open and the top part of her blouse was ripped away from her neck. It was the same white blouse—with the same plaid vest—she’d been wearing at The Captain’s Choice. There were two head close-ups and four full-body shots. She was sprawled on her back on a cement floor, beside a messy table equipped like a workbench. I thought at first it was a basement, but another photo showed it was a garage. There was a car that looked like the car she’d driven when she left the restaurant.

  Her mouth was wide open, and so was her right eye. The left eye was half closed, swollen and ringed with bruising. Her nose, upper lip, and chin were all smeared with blood. There were more dark bruises on both of her cheeks, and some on her neck. A thin line of dried blood ran from her left ear.

  “I have just read you your rights, amigo,” Sanchez said, and he might have, for all I knew. “You wanna talk about it?” he aske
d.

  “You answer a couple questions?”

  “That depends.”

  “I mean, she’s been beaten up. But … but people don’t usually die from that.”

  “Maybe that’s what you wanna talk about, amigo. Maybe it was an accident. You were just slapping her around a little. Trying to get some information or something, I don’t know. Or maybe there was an argument. She’s a pretty woman and maybe you wanted … Anyway, maybe she slipped and hit her head on something, and then fell down and didn’t get up, you know? And you were scared and you just took off and—”

  “Let me look a minute,” I said, and I paged through the photos again. There was a vise attached to the edge of the cluttered workbench above where she lay, and this time I saw the blood smeared on it—and maybe a clump of hair. “Are there more pictures?” I knew there had to be, including close-ups of the vise.

  Sanchez grinned—a treacherous, feline grin. “Just tell me what happened.”

  I looked again at the photos. The garage seemed quite large, and was a mess. The floor was grimy and oil-stained, and there were half-open cardboard cartons, lawn tools, and miscellaneous junk piled everywhere.

  “Is this Dominic’s garage? Is that where it happened?”

  “You tell me, amigo. That’s what I’m here for. You explain what happened, maybe how you didn’t really mean to hurt her at all, but she fell. And maybe the doc will agree with you. Maybe it isn’t first degree. Of course, you don’t cooperate, maybe it is. I dunno. So … whaddaya say, amigo?”

  I put the pictures facedown on the table and aligned them into a very careful pile, then laid my palms flat, one on each side of the pile, and looked across at Sanchez. He grinned again, looking like a sly cat. It was as though this was about Sanchez and me, not about a sad, pretty woman whose teenage daughter had no mother any more—and still had Dominic Fontana for a father. I knew Sanchez was doing the best job he could, the best way he knew. And I wanted to kick his sly grin straight up his ass.