Applaud the Hollow Ghost (13 page)

Gus stood up, too. “Nobody knows about this but us. Understand?”

“Got it. You're not … uh … wearing a wire or anything, are you?”

He led me through the kitchen and opened the alley door. “Get your ass outta here.”

Goldilocks was standing beside the Intrepid in his shirtsleeves, sopping wet and shielding his cigarette from the half-rain half-snow mess the wind sent slanting down between the buildings. He waded in our direction, and as he and I passed on my way to the car he didn't even look at me. But he did throw an elbow—hard—into my right ribs.

My response was a savage backhand, a chop that caught him from behind, just above his belt. No way I missed his kidney, but he never broke stride and I didn't, either. I guess we'd reached a mutual understanding.

Once the back door to Melba's was closed, I went to the trunk of the Intrepid and retrieved the Beretta before I drove out of the alley. It was clear that when he'd told Gus about our encounter, Dominic hadn't mentioned there was anyone else he was telling. So Gus was in the dark about Dan Maguire and Paul Anders. I'd have bet my life on it.

In fact, I was going to.

CHAPTER
16

“N
EVER BEEN TO A
basketball game before,” Lammy said, and for once it wasn't a mumble. Casey had taken him to a psychologist's office for some testing Renata arranged for him. Now, at supper, there was even a hint of enthusiasm in his voice, and he looked straight at me for almost an entire second. Casey was good for him.

“Sure you have,” I said. “Remember? Back in high school when you—” The despair that fell over his face stopped me cold.

“Anyway,” Casey broke in, “it'll be great. Wisconsin at North-western. Badgers and Wildcats. Jeez, I wonder if either one of 'em's any good.” He pushed a large, nearly empty platter to my side of Lammy's mother's kitchen table. “Hey, Mal, you take this last chunk o' catfish. You get two. Lammy and me're only having one each, 'cause we're both too fat already. Right, Lammy?”

“Yes, Father,” Lammy said.

Casey lifted his eyebrows and tilted his head, and I knew he'd have loved to tell Lammy to “knock off the ‘father' crap,” But instead, he pointed his fork at me. “I thought you only had two tickets, though.”

“Thanks,” I said, sliding the broiled fillet onto my plate. “This stuff's great. I don't eat a lot of fish.” I reached for the tartar sauce and the ketchup. “Two tickets are enough. One for you and one for Lammy. I'll be working.”

“Hell, no,” Casey said. “You and Lammy go. I got reading to do. Truth is, I didn't really wanna go in the first place.” I'd seldom heard a more genuine—and less successful—effort at sounding sincere.

“Uh-uh,” Lammy said, “I don't wanna go with Mr.—” He swallowed. “I mean, I don't wanna go to any basketball game.”

At least Lammy's statement was only half a lie.

“So it's settled, then,” I said. “You guys go to the game. Afterward, go to the dressing room and find Jason. He'll be expecting us. I'll get there by then and we'll all go out for burgers or something.”

“Is that a friend of—” Lammy started. He didn't finish his question, but just stared down at his plate.

“You mean Jason?” I asked.

“Uh-huh,” he mumbled.

“Yeah,” I said, “he's a friend who started out as a client. Like you, I guess. I mean you're a client, not a fr—” I stopped. “I mean you're not like him. That is—”

“Hey, Mal,” Casey said, and I knew he was dying to laugh out loud. “Why don't you just explain who Jason is and stop stepping on your tongue?”

So I skipped comparisons with Lammy and explained how Jason Cooper was a basketball player whom I'd come to know when his sister hired me to find him before he got grabbed by some very nasty people with their own reasons for wanting him.

“I've met him,” Casey chipped in. “He's a great guy. Of course, he's an
athlete,
you know? So it helps if you talk about sports. Especially about basketball. Especially about his own exploits and—”

“I don't know very much about sports,” Lammy said. Funny how he could talk to Casey in complete sentences.

“Yeah, well, I s'pose Jason doesn't know very much about the First World War, either,” Casey said. “So we'll widen his horizons a little, huh? Anyway, I bought a chocolate pie for dessert. Nothing goes with catfish like chocolate pie.”

I gave Casey the extra key for the Intrepid so he and Lammy could use it. After the dishes were washed and dried they drove me to the el.

*   *   *

A F
RIDAY NIGHT RIDE
on the CTA from, say, Fullerton on the near north side to Howard Street, the city limits, could launch a sociologist's doctoral dissertation. The statistically infrequent, though certainly possible, mugging is only one of a rider's worries. Raucous shouting and hilarious laughter and whatever passes for music—not always recorded—all batter your eardrums. Panhandlers and preachers demand your attention. You pick your way cautiously, lest you slip on the remnants of somebody's chicken-wing dinner. And through it all you wonder what sort of death-dealing microbes are lacing that stale air you're breathing.

Although the car that night was half empty, I ignored the vacant seats and stood with my back against the door to the next car. Everyone probably thought I was a cop—which can have its own disadvantages, of course, but does offer the best view. I decided long ago that when I no longer enjoy riding the el, I'll know it's time to look for a new line of work.

It was nine-thirty when I got off at Loyola University, several stops before Howard Street. A storm front that had held on to its snow was passing through to the east, leaving starry skies and falling temperatures in its wake. With time to kill, I walked across the campus toward the lake. Loyola keeps adding more buildings, of course, so the open space on the lakefront keeps shrinking. But I could still get right up to the edge of the water, alongside the chapel of the Madonna della Strada.

The night was far too cold for anyone with any sense to stand there and stare at the lake, so I had the scene to myself. To the east, far out over the dark water, the rear flank of the cloud cover moved away, its uneven edges catching white light from the half moon hanging low in the south. I was counting on the cold air and the clear view to help me plot out a strategy.

Fat chance.

All I did was stand there and remember it was Friday night, and that Cass was probably somewhere within a five-mile radius, maybe talking, maybe laughing, maybe sharing a meal. Maybe sharing somebody else's life.

They moved in over me again, those heavy, sad longings for days gone by, and I instinctively tried to push them out of my mind, as though I could send them out over the water to catch up with the clouds and fall with the wet snow on somebody else, across the lake in Michigan. But my feelings could fall wherever they wanted and no one would ever feel them but me, anyway. So I finally stopped pushing and let them hang out with me, beside the empty chapel in the dark, recalling some of what the Lady had said: how the feelings don't win when you let them be, when you just look right back at them. They're as real as the clouds and the wind and the water lapping at the rocks. Just as real, but no more real. You were already there before they swept in, and you watch them swirl and mass. Then, when they roll on out again you're still there to see them go and to wonder how soon they'll be back. And you don't die from them, the Lady says.

And I didn't die, either, but I got awfully cold while all that was going on, and I still had no strategy plotted out.

I turned away from the lake and walked several blocks to The Captain's Choice. Inside, only a few tables were still occupied. The hostess was olive-skinned, petite, and—unconsciously, it seemed—seductive. She smiled up at me and said the kitchen was closed for the evening. I frowned, as though I didn't know that already.

“But it's Friday, so the bar's open till midnight,” she added, nodding toward my left.

“That's great,” I said. “Maybe you'll join me, Mrs. Fontana?”

She shrank back then, like a frightened cat crouching into an attack stance. “Outta my face, creep,” she said, her eyes narrow slits, her voice a snarl, barely audible. This Tina Fontana was a tough lady all right. A battle-scarred combat veteran. “… your ass hauled outta here,” she was saying, and her hand hovered over the phone beside her.

“Hey, hold on, will ya?” I held out my business card. “I'm the one put the hurt on good old Dominic yesterday. Do I get any points for that?” Even just how Tina felt about that was worth finding out.

She stared down at the card, holding it with two hands, the phone apparently forgotten. She shoved the card in the pocket of a red-and-black plaid vest she was wearing over a white blouse. “Wait here,” she said.

She walked across to a waiter who'd been filling salt shakers at the empty tables and spoke with him briefly, nodding my way once. When she came back, she put a sign on the hostess's table that said “Dining Room Closed.”

“You'd have got more points,” she said, “if you'd have squeezed his
neck
in the door instead of his arm.”

“That means you'll talk to me?”

“Just a few minutes. I got stuff to do to close up here, and then I gotta get home.”

We sat in a booth with a glass of Diet Coke on her side and a glass of Berghoff draft on mine. The bar was busy, not raucous. Mostly couples.

“So,” she said, “you're the guy helping that Fleming kid.” She had a nice face. A little heavy on the mascara, but a very pretty smile.

“Kid? He's my age, you know. That make me a kid, too?”

“However old he is, he's still a kid.” She wrapped both hands around her glass and tilted her head forward so she had to raise her eyebrows to look at me. “But you? No way. Definitely not a kid.” She smiled, then lowered her gaze again.

“Jesus,” I said. “Are you flirting with me?”

“Yeah.” She smiled again, this time looking embarrassed. “I guess I am. But that's all I do. Just flirt. And not much of that either, these days.” She paused, as though suddenly remembering where she was. “It's stupid for me to even talk to you. You don't know how stupid it is.”

“Maybe not. But—”

“But I got three reasons,” she said, and I realized she didn't need any encouragement from me just then. “One thing, I'd help out a spider if it bit Dominic. Two, you seem kinda decent and I don't get to talk to anyone these days. No one I feel like talking to, anyway. I got a whole new start coming, you know? But I just wish they'd hurry up and—” She stopped and drank some of her Diet Coke. “And the third reason is I still got a conscience, I guess, and I think the Fleming kid is gonna go down. And I … I just don't think he did anything, damn it.”

“Why not?”

“Because … because it was probably…” She was looking down at the table. I stared across at the top of her head, at the soft waves of her smooth black hair, and I wanted to reach out and touch it. That surprised me, but it's how I felt.

“Probably who?” I said.

She didn't answer, but she lifted her face and there were tears rolling down her cheeks.

“It was Dominic,” I said. “And it's not the first time. He did it before, didn't he?”

“No, he— I mean…” She looked surprised, and afraid.

“I looked for your divorce file,” I said, “at the courthouse. It isn't there. It's been impounded. The judges don't do that very often anymore, order files kept secret like that. What was the reason, Tina?”

“I … I can't say.”

“I think the reason is that Dominic's done this before. Maybe not to Trish. But maybe to your daughter. That's in the papers you filed in your divorce case, isn't it?”

“You don't understand.” She reached down beside her for her purse. “I have to go now. Really, I—”

“Wait. You've still got a conscience, remember? Just a little longer.”

She nodded, saying nothing.

“You were going to divorce him while he was away, in jail. Because of what he'd done. But then something, or someone, stopped you. You didn't go through with it. And when he got out you took him back into your home, back in with your daughter. Why would any mother do that?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it.

“You don't have to tell me. I'll tell you. You took him back because someone wanted you to. Maybe threatened you, maybe forced you. Who was it, Tina?”

She looked at me and shook her head, not crying any more. Nothing in her eyes at all but hopelessness. “I shouldn't even be talking to you. I promised.”

“There's a man,” I said. “A mean-looking man, with slick black hair that comes to a point over his forehead and—” I stopped then, because I could see that I was right.

“I had to do it,” she said. “Let him back in, I mean. But … but my daughter is safe.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just know. Now I gotta go.” When she started to stand, I reached across the table and grabbed her wrist. She sat down again and I released my grip and let my fingers rest on the back of her hand. Her skin felt smooth and soft and warm.

“One more thing,” I said. “The woman. The one I saw with Dominic at your house. Who is she?”

“Karen Colter? She's … she's how I know. Karen's watching…” She slid her hand out from under mine. “You don't understand … about Trish, you know?” She stood up, keeping her hands close to her, as though afraid I'd reach for her again. “Honest, I gotta go now. If anyone finds out I was talking to you—” She spun around and left.

I watched her walk away. She was very afraid, but that wasn't all. She seemed ashamed of herself, probably for letting Dominic back in the house, close to her daughter. Maybe guilty, too, about Lammy taking the blame for what happened to Trish. She had a conscience, all right. Maybe I should have told her to let the shame and the guilt come and just feel them. But I really wasn't sure yet whether that worked very well.