Applaud the Hollow Ghost

by David J. Walker

  “Jesus.”

  “I told him it didn’t matter how he acted. I said I didn’t know why, but I didn’t think you’d leave him alone even if he wanted you to—or even if I asked you to back off.” She paused. “Anyway, he’s probably on the el right now, headed home. You’ll find him there.”

  “Maybe. Meanwhile, you’ll just have to stall Heffernan, tell him Lammy’s thinking about the plea agreement. Even if he takes that as a ‘no deal,’ it’ll be a few days before he can get an indictment, if he’s not bluffing about that. And, if Lammy really has run, I’ll have to find him.”

  “But there’s a status hearing on the case tomorrow, at two o’clock,” Renata said. “Lammy has to be in court with me.”

  “I’ll have him there, I hope. Otherwise, you’ll have to make an excuse for him, get a new court date.”

  “Not a chance. You heard the judge when he set the bond. Lammy’s to be there every time the case is up. Otherwise, the bond is revoked and he’ll be arrested.”

  Renata took me to a phone in an empty office next to hers. I called the only place I could think of, other than the two-flat, where he might go.

  “Hullo?” A female voice, sounding like a teenager, a bored teenager.

  “Mrs. Baranowski?”

  “Just a minute.” There was a bang as she set the phone down. “Hey, ma!” she called. “It’s for you.”

  “Hullo?”

  I’d have sworn it was the same bored person, if I hadn’t heard the other voice in the background saying, “How do I know who it is, ma?”

  “Hullo?” she repeated.

  “Elaine Baranowski?” I said.

  “Yes?”

  I gave her my name and said I was an investigator, helping Lammy’s lawyer.

  “Lammy?” She sounded confused. “Oh. You mean my brother, Lambert?”

  “Yes. He … uh … he’s not at home and I’m looking for him. I thought if he shows up at your house and asks to stay there, would you please—”

  “Here? You mean Lambert, come by here? Why would he come by my house?”

  “Well, he’s your brother, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah, sure, I guess so. But he can’t stay here. No room here for him. And besides, what’ll the neighbors…” She paused. “Anyway there’s no room here. I told Lambert that already. He won’t come by here.”

  She finally agreed to call me if she saw him, and took down my phone number. But she was convinced—and managed to convince me, too—that Lammy wouldn’t even consider asking her for a place to stay.

  He couldn’t have had much more than carfare on him, so undoubtedly he’d show up back home in time for supper.

  * * *

  EXCEPT HE DIDN’T.

  I’d gotten to the two-flat at two-fifteen and there was a note on the kitchen table from Casey, saying he’d gone for groceries. It was an hour later when he came in the front door, lugging several large bags.

  Five minutes into stowing the food in various cabinets and refrigerator compartments, Casey suddenly said, “Hey! Where’s Lammy?”

  “I think he’s run away,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  “You don’t sound surprised.”

  “Actually, I wondered if he might try something like that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I was gonna tell you not to let him outta your sight if he got bad news from the lawyer, but I figured you’d know enough to…” He caught me glaring at him. “I mean … not that I’m criticizing you or—”

  “I just wish you’d said something. The thought of him running off never entered my mind.”

  “He’s scared to death, you know?”

  “Yeah, but like Renata said, he doesn’t seem to have enough ambition or something to actually run off. He’s never been anywhere in his life but here.”

  “And a few days in jail, don’t forget.” He went back to storing food. “Jesus, that’d sure as hell scare the crap outta me, I tell ya.”

  “Casey,” I said, finally not able to resist, “did anyone ever tell you you don’t talk like a priest is supposed to talk.”

  He laughed. “Lots of people probably think that. Most of ’em don’t say it. They just figure I’m a little loony or something. Which is fine with me. I don’t care.” He bit into one of a half dozen apples he’d dumped out of a small paper sack. “Nobody ever made it explicit, but I’m sure that’s what got me transferred out of the first parish I was assigned to, after just a few months. Jeez, I don’t know who had the goofy idea to send me into the belly of the posh North Shore. I mean, I liked the people, but I know a lot of ’em thought I’d be a bad influence on their kids. Ha! That’s a good one. Those kids didn’t need to look as far as me to find a bad—” He stopped. “Well, I could go on and on about my illustrious priestly career, but what about Lammy?”

  “I called his sister. She’ll call if he shows up there, but she doesn’t think he will.”

  “She hopes he doesn’t anyway, I bet.”

  Casey made baked chicken for supper and I spent the time on the telephone. There was a place set at the table for Lammy, but he didn’t show. Casey said a blessing before we ate. He always did, and it was never something memorized, but whatever came to him on the spot. This one included prayers for Lammy—“wherever the hell he is, Lord”—and for the people at Saint Ludella’s, for Trish Connolly and her family, for Lammy’s sister and mother, and for all kinds of other people, including me. He ended with something like, “… but anyway, God, we know it’s all working out perfectly. So thank you very much for all that … and for the food, too. Amen.”

  I felt a little sorry for everyone in that first parish who’d missed Casey’s bad influence. But that didn’t mean I had to stick around and help him with the dishes. I had work to do. I’d left the car down the street for my tailing friends to watch, and I was going to leave it there and use the alley.

  Grabbing my parka from a hook by the back door, I turned to Casey and asked, “You have bingo at Saint Ludella’s?”

  He was hunched down over the sink, massive hands and forearms plunged deep into the sudsy water, humming to himself tunelessly. He turned around and wiped his hands on a dish towel. “Nah. I don’t like bingo much.”

  “I’m surprised,” I said. His parish was in the heart of the west side, about as poverty-stricken as anywhere in the city. “I hear bingo’s a moneymaker.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So? You don’t approve of gambling?”

  “It’s not that. No one loses too much at church bingo, unless they’re addicted to gambling and … well, don’t get me started on addictions. And bingo does give a lot of people something fun to do.” He leaned over the table and swept some crumbs off into one of his palms. “What I never liked about bingo in a parish is it’s too big a temptation for some people.”

  “Except you already said no one loses too much.”

  “I don’t mean a temptation for the players. I mean for the workers. You got bingo, you have to go out and recruit people to work at it. You get mostly men. Good guys, too. Guys that are active and involved. But, you know, week after week they’re handling all this money. Looks like a fortune to most of ’em. Sooner or later, unless you got a system that’s foolproof—and I never found one—somebody starts dipping in a little. Hell, people just can’t resist, what with their bills and all. The other workers kinda catch on, and even if they don’t join in they keep quiet, ’cause they’re all friends, y’know? Sometimes the priest even suspects what’s goin’ on. But the money’s coming in, and the parish has bills to pay, too. So the priest just kind of—”

  “Jesus, is that ever depressing.”

  “So I never had bingo in my parish. Shoot, when I was drinking and short on cash, I mighta found myself dipping in, too. Jeez,” he added, grinning, “I hope you never hear about some of the stuff I pulled in those days.”

  “Oh, I doubt—” I put a hand in my parka pocket and felt the car key. “Oh, by the way, you s
till have the extra key to the Intrepid?” He nodded. “Good. Use it whenever you want. I usually park a couple blocks south of here, near where they’re tearing down an apartment building.”

  “I’ll find it if I need it,” he said. “Anyway, why you asking about bingo?”

  “Just because that’s where I’m headed right now. To bingo, at Our Lady of Ravenna.”

  “Oh, yeah. Ravenna’s. They’re famous around the archdiocese for their bingo. They run it two nights a week.”

  “I know. Monday and Wednesday. I’m told Trish’s grandmother goes both nights. I’m gonna try to talk to her.”

  “Hope you can find her. They say they get huge crowds there for bingo. Make a ton of money.”

  “Think their workers are ripping them off?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so, not at Ravenna’s. It might be just a rumor, but they say that’s one place that does have a foolproof system to keep everybody straight.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. That’s still pretty much an Italian parish, you know. Story is, nobody’d dare take anything. ’Bout a year ago one of their most faithful bingo card sellers got attacked on his way home from the games. ‘Muggers,’ is what he told the cops. Thing is, they didn’t really beat him up.”

  “Oh?”

  “Nope. They just lopped off both his little fingers. Whammo—one from each hand. ‘Puerto Rican punks,’ he said. But nobody believed him. People think it was because of the head of the parish bingo committee, the one who runs the whole show.”

  “You mean this guy was stealing from church bingo so the chairman of the committee had somebody chop off his fingers? Come on.”

  “Well, it made a great story at the annual priest’s retreat, anyway. And who knows? Maybe it’s true. Besides, it’s not a chairman. It’s a chairwoman. This older Italian lady. No one thinks she had anything to do with it personally, of course. They say she’s personally like a saint, y’know? Mass every day and all that. But it’s her brother. They say her brother’s this big-time Mafia guy and, well, you know…”

  CHAPTER

  24

  ROSA WAS MY BEST lead on Karen Colter, Dominic’s girlfriend, so I trotted down the steps and out to the alley, thinking I was lucky I’d mentioned bingo to Casey. The pastor at “Ravenna’s,” as Casey called the parish, was someone he’d known in the seminary, a Monsignor Borelli. Casey had gotten him on the phone, and he verified that it was Rosa Parillo who ran the parish bingo. He also agreed to ask her if she’d meet with me. Since it was Rosa who’d reached out to me in the first place, I was certain she’d talk to me again.

  “He claims Rosa’s tough as nails,” Casey had said, after he hung up. “He’s sure she won’t wanna talk to a friend of the creep who went after her granddaughter.”

  “I think she will. I just hope he actually asks her—and keeps quiet about it, too.”

  “He said he would. And if Bobo says—”

  “Bobo?”

  “Yeah. Bobo Borelli. Funny little guy. He’s had two bypass surgeries, so he’s not as active as he used to be. But Bobo’s tough, too. He does what he says he’ll do.”

  It was a six-block walk to Ravenna’s, where a short east-west street, Ravenna Court, cut one rectangular city block into two roughly square halves, with the parish buildings filling the southern square. Seen from a block away, the cluster of buildings loomed up like a massive fortress in the cold, dark gloom, overshadowing the neighboring buildings, making them appear smaller than the substantial brick bungalows they actually were.

  Walking the snow-cleared sidewalks around the perimeter of Ravenna’s, I passed first the church itself, where I’d spoken to Rosa. Facing north, it fronted on Ravenna Court and was directly across the street from a well-lighted, well-filled parking lot. Beyond the church, I turned left and walked past the convent and the parish school, side-by-side and facing west. On the southern boundary was the rectory, and then a large yard behind a high wrought iron fence.

  Continuing around the corner and heading back north, I walked along the east side of the fenced-in yard, crossed a paved driveway leading into the interior of the property behind the buildings, and came to a rectangular stone building, easily thirty feet tall, with three sets of double doors that opened directly onto the sidewalk. Etched into the stones across the front, above the doors, were the words: “Our Lady of Ravenna Gymnasium and Community Center.”

  Pulling open one of the center two doors, I stepped into a tile-floored vestibule. To my right and my left, matching sets of wide stairways led up several steps to landings, one on each end of the vestibule, and on each landing a set of doors. Straight ahead, another set of wide stairs led down to a lower level of the building. The doors on the landing to my left were open, and a voice poured out over a loudspeaker system. “B … three. That’s beeee … thuh-reee.”

  I went up those stairs and stood in the open doorway. The bingo hall was a large, high-ceilinged gymnasium, with basketball backboards at each end, and more sets of backboards and baskets on each side wall, making three shorter courts across the main court. All four walls were lined with retractable bleacher seats that were folded up against the walls and out of the way.

  The room was jammed with people seated on folding chairs at long lunchroom tables, set end to end in rows running the length of the gym. Rubber mats were spread out everywhere, in a fruitless effort to protect the hardwood floor from maybe five hundred pairs of wet, dirty boots and shoes. The air was warm and humid, heavy with the odors of hot dogs, coffee, and popcorn, not to mention plenty of good old human sweat.

  The huge area was strangely hushed, although filled with the whisperings and rustlings of hundreds of players concentrating on rows of bingo cards laid out on the tables in front of them. Bingo workers, the pockets of the carpenters’ aprons around their waists stuffed with bingo cards, stood silently in groups of two or three, stationed around the room.

  “Nnnnnext number … oh … seventy-two,” the invisible caller announced. “That’s oh … sevennnnty-tooooo.”

  “Bingo!”

  “Bingo!”

  Both shrieks came almost simultaneously, from opposite ends of the gym, and were followed at once by hundreds of soft sighs and murmurs of disappointment.

  “I hear bingo,” the caller said, managing to sound as though this were an entirely unexpected phenomenon. “But remember, folks, do not—I repeat, do not—clear your cards, until the winning cards have been verified. This could be a false alarm.”

  The groans and grumbling that greeted him indicated that no one but he believed in false alarms.

  I had a sudden sense that someone was watching me. I swung around, fast, and when I did I smacked right into a solid stone pillar. It felt as if it were wrapped in padding, though, and on the rebound I saw that it wasn’t a pillar at all, but a heavy-set, brown-skinned man in navy blue pants and a red nylon warm-up jacket over a light blue dress shirt. The words embroidered on the jacket said “Our Lady of Ravenna Parish,” but they might as well have said “Off-duty cop, and not taking any shit from mopes like you.”

  He reached around me and pushed the door to the gym closed, shutting out the shouted calling of numbers to verify the winning bingo cards. A young man in a white chef’s apron, who’d bounded up from the basement with an open carton of steaming hot dogs, started our way. When he saw us, though, he turned and went across to the stairs at the other end of the vestibule, leaving us alone.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.” He folded his arms and looked at me as though he were calculating my body-fat ratio.

  “I don’t suppose you work here, do you?” I asked. “Security, maybe?”

  “You looking for someone?”

  “It’s that red jacket. A dead giveaway.” I paused. When he didn’t hit me or pull out a gun, I finally said, “Monsignor Borelli.”

  “You got a driver’s license?”

  I dug it out and showed it to him.

  “Okay.” He seeme
d slightly disappointed. “The Monsignor said to expect you.”

  I nodded toward the gym. “He in there somewhere?”

  “Nope. The Monsignor never comes to bingo. He’s at the priests’ house.”

  He led me down to the basement and through a series of hallways, then back up a few steps to an exit on the opposite side of the gym. Passing through a small, dimly lighted parking area in the center of the parish complex, we came to the back door of the rectory. He pushed the doorbell.

  While we waited, he caught me staring at the .357 Magnum he held down beside his right leg. He shrugged. “Just in case some damn fool thinks this is one of the cash runs we make over here during bingo.” There was a click from the rectory door, and he said, “Here’s the Monsignor now.”

  A round, smiling face peered out, perfectly framed in a small square window set in the wooden door at about the height of my chest. The door swung inward and the round man standing there fit the round face perfectly. “Hey, hey, hey,” he said, each word rising in tone, the voice melodious. He spread his arms as though to embrace us, then brought them down quickly, slapping his hands against his thighs.

  “Evening, Monsignor,” my escort said, with surprising formality. “This is the Mr. Foley you called over about.”

  “Thank you so much, Charlie. Thank you.” He eyed me up and down with open curiosity. “Malachy. Malachy? Am I pronouncing it right?” When I nodded, he beamed with self-satisfaction. “Well, c’mon in. C’mon in.” He moved back to let me in, then looked past my shoulder. “See you later, hey, Charlie?”

  “Oh yes, Monsignor,” the man said. He was already turning to go. “I’ll be back.”

  The smiling priest led me up four stairs, through two doors, and into a comfortable parlor that was obviously the reception area near the front door of the rectory. The man was round, but not really fat, and somewhere in his sixties. He wore the same outfit Casey so often wore—black shoes, black pants, white dress shirt with no collar. There was something smooth, almost feline, about the way he moved.