Applaud the Hollow Ghost

by David J. Walker

  “Something to drink?” he said. “Coffee? Soft drink?”

  “No thanks, Mon—” I paused, then finished the word. “Monsignor.”

  “Strange word, huh? Just call me ‘Father’ if it’s easier.”

  “Actually, I was just noticing how it’s easier for me to say ‘Monsignor’ than it is to call you guys—you priests, I mean—to call you ‘Father.’ Strange, isn’t it?”

  “Interesting. Maybe it’s got something to do with you and your own…” He didn’t finish. “But I know you didn’t drop by for amateur psychoanalysis. You want to talk to Rosa, right?”

  “Yes. Is she—”

  “I suppose I should exercise a little caution,” he said. “How do I know you’re the one Father Caseliewicz said was coming?”

  “Casey called you Bobo,” I said. “Bobo Borelli. The guy who got caught organizing the students to flush all the toilets in the seminary simultaneously, at midnight on New Year’s Eve.”

  His smile widened. “I didn’t get caught, exactly,” he said. “The authorities got wind of it and and warned us off. Good thing, too. With that ancient plumbing, who knows…” He spread his arms. “Ah, well. Those were simpler days.”

  “So,” I said, “is she here?”

  “Yes.” His face turned suddenly serious. “Rosa’s a good person. I hope nothing … that is, her family … well anyway, she said she’d talk to you, which surprised me.” He led me into a hallway off the parlor. “Since Rosa took over, I don’t have to worry about bingo, thank God.” Light spilled out from an open door halfway down the hall. “The guys carry money over here three or four times throughout the evening and she counts it in an office down this way. Here’s—” He stopped at the open door and turned back to me. “That’s strange. She was here a little while ago. And her granddaughter, too. Rosa’s been bringing Trish along, ever since … you know.”

  I squeezed past him into a small office—crowded, but tidy. Against the wall to the right of the door was a gray metal desk, with nothing on it but a telephone. A desk chair on castors was pulled over to a table set against the opposite wall. There was a coin counting machine on the far end of the same table, back in the corner of the room. Ledgers were spread open on the table, and beside them a couple of yellow pencils, and a delicate-looking little blue-and-white teapot with two matching cups and saucers.

  “Well,” I said, “they’ve been drinking tea. Probably went to the washroom.”

  “I don’t think so,” the priest said. “Both their coats are gone. And besides … look at the top of that desk.”

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “That’s the point. It oughta be covered with stacks of money.”

  CHAPTER

  25

  A QUICK SEARCH OF the first floor verified it. Rosa and Trish were gone.

  “I just talked to her … what … a half hour ago?” the priest said. “On the intercom line, when she said she’d meet you. Like I said, that really surprised me. And she swore me to secrecy about you, too. But—”

  “Was anyone else around?”

  “No. The doorbell didn’t ring until you got here, and she wouldn’t have answered it, anyway. I do that.” He paused. “But while I was talking to her, the phone rang. I answered it and it was a man asking for Rosa. I figured it was Trish’s dad, although he didn’t actually say so. Anyway, I patched it through to Rosa. That was it, until Charlie brought you over.”

  “Well, I’m sure there’s a simple explanation.” I struggled to sound matter-of-fact. “Maybe—”

  A rasping buzz came from the back door.

  “That’ll be Charlie and the guys with the last batch of bingo money,” the priest said, and looked at his watch. “They’re a little early tonight.”

  “I better be going. Is the front door out through that way?”

  “Uh … yeah.” He was a totally different man than when he’d met me at the door. He looked bewildered and unhappy. Deflated, very pale and very tired. “Rosa couldn’t have … the money? I guess I should call the police, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Just to be on the safe—”

  The buzzer sounded again. Four short, impatient bursts.

  His round shoulders sagging, he turned to go to the back door. I hoped his heart was up to the stress, but I couldn’t do much about that. I went out the front way, in a hurry.

  The first place the cops would look for Rosa was the Connolly home. I ran, slipping and sliding on dark, icy sidewalks. I hoped I looked like a fitness nut, out jogging despite the cold. When I got there, the house looked deserted, but I rang the bell.

  No one answered.

  There was no reason for me to hang around there, especially since the cops would be pulling up any minute. I told myself what I’d told Monsignor Borelli, that there had to be a simple explanation. But it was far beyond me and, simple or complex, I didn’t think I was going to like it.

  I walked down the street a couple of blocks to Dominic’s house. There were no lights on there, either. And if there had been, it wasn’t likely Rosa would have gone there with Trish.

  I walked the streets aimlessly, thinking all I want to do is help Lammy out in his criminal case, but that turns out to be the easy part. The prosecution offers a deal and I’m proud of him for not taking it, convinced Renata can’t lose. But then Lammy runs off somewhere, while I end up suspected of murdering the wife of the ex-con who was Trish’s real attacker. Meanwhile, another guy—a graying Outfit bum who should have been locked up for the rest of his life the day he was born—has me trying to find out who the ex-con’s girlfriend is. So I try, and Rosa, my lead on who the girlfriend is, grabs Trish and the bingo money and runs off somewhere, too.

  At least, I was hoping with all my heart that Rosa had run off.

  I walked back to Lammy’s, surprised to see no cops down the street at Steve’s. I had no front door key, so I rang the bell and Casey let me in.

  “Lammy here?” I asked.

  “Nope. And he didn’t call, either.”

  “Damn.” I dropped down onto the couch in front of the TV and picked up the remote.

  Casey waved a book at me. “I’ll be in the living room,” he said.

  I surfed until I found the Bulls, playing out in Seattle, but I dozed off before I even heard the score. I needed some rest. Hell, you never know when things might take a turn for the bad.

  “Mal! Mal!” The calls came from a ghost of a boy, caught in the river again, his features indiscernible and the water rising. But the voice wasn’t a boy’s voice. “Hey!” The voice was Casey’s. “Come look at this.”

  “Yeah?” I opened my eyes and they were interviewing Phil Jackson on TV. “What is it?” I called.

  “There’s two cop cars just pulled up.” He paused. “Oops, now it’s three. That Sanchez guy just got here. Come and look.”

  “They’re going to Steve Connolly’s house,” I called back. “They’re looking for—”

  “Uh-uh. Looks to me like—” The doorbell rang. “That’s what I thought.” The bell rang again, and this time didn’t stop ringing. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Casey yelled. “You better call that lady lawyer. I mean, they’re waving pistols around down there like they’re ready to take back the Alamo.”

  I grabbed my coat and raced for the kitchen. “Take your time answering the door,” I called. “And don’t come back here.”

  “Why not?”

  “How long ago did I come in?”

  “Jeez, I don’t know. Half hour maybe.”

  The doorbell kept ringing, as we called softly back and forth down the long hallway, out of each other’s sight. “Well, then, you haven’t seen me for at least a half hour. Right?”

  “Uh, right.” He sounded bewildered, but then added, “Yeah, that is the truth. I haven’t seen you.” He understood.

  Casey would have a hard time with a flat-out lie to the cops, or to anyone, even to help out a friend.

  I suppose I knew it was stupid, an
d I didn’t even know what I was running from. But Casey was going to have to answer the door, so I went out the back way and ran down the steps, thinking I’d figure it out later.

  CHAPTER

  26

  IT WAS SNOWING AGAIN, thick heavy flakes swirling down in spiral waves that, higher up, glowed and reflected the amber light that spread from tall poles in the alley. On the ground, visibility was maybe twenty or thirty feet. I was halfway through the backyard when I heard snow-hushed voices moving my way between the buildings. Suddenly, the thin, bright beam of a flashlight stabbed out from the gangway, darting up and down and side to side like a laser cutting through the falling white. If the cop with the light swept the beam across the yard when he stepped out from the gangway, it wasn’t likely they’d miss a dark figure moving through the snowfall.

  The gate in the fence was open and I was just through it, still far from the safe cover of the neighbor’s garage, when the cops did emerge from the gangway. By then, though, I was huddled low to the ground, elbows and arms tucked close, head down. Motionless, I had at least a chance of being missed.

  The light swept back and forth across the yard and may have picked out a dark, low blob beyond the fence, or maybe not. But a harsh voice said, “Upstairs, damn it. C’mon.” The stabbing light turned then, and bounced its way into the covered back porch stairway. There were two of them, but maybe more to come. Running in a crouch, I made it to the garage to the south and stood inside the narrow shelter of its shadow. Farther down, where the alley opened onto the side street just south of the Connolly home, a squad car blocked the way, its strobe lights sending blue-and-white blurred flashes through the clouds of snow.

  I started the opposite way, which meant I’d have to pass behind Lammy’s place again, where the sound of a nightstick pounding on the second-floor back door was muffled, but unmistakable. I’d taken just one step, though, when far at the north end of the block a pair of headlights swung into the alley. I shrank back against the garage, sidled along the overhead door and around the corner of the building, away from the car that slid and slithered my way over a quickly building carpet of snow.

  Crouching near the ground, I poked my head around the corner of the garage, then pulled back quickly. The approaching vehicle was larger than a car, maybe a police patrol wagon. No more pounding came from Lammy’s back door, so I knew those cops would be inside now, soon to discover I wasn’t there.

  Maybe I had it all wrong, though. Maybe it was Lammy they were looking for. But why? They couldn’t know yet that he’d run off. In fact, legally he hadn’t fled or violated bail, not until he missed some court date he was required to attend. So they must have come for me. But why in the middle of the night? Was there some new evidence they thought tied me tighter to Tina Fontana’s killing?

  The headlights grew brighter and then swept past. It wasn’t a paddy wagon, but Steve Connolly’s Ford van. The falling snow seemed determined to absorb all the sound it could, and the van’s motor gave only a low, urgent throb. I creeped forward and watched it slow to a stop near the end of the alley. Light from inside the Connolly garage spread out into the snowfall as the electrically driven garage door rose.

  I turned the other way again and my hopes sank as yet another pair of headlights bounced into the alley. But this pair stopped, backed out again, and then the faint, blurred blue-and-white flashing started at that end, too. They had the alley blocked at both ends.

  Steve’s backup lights went on as he prepared to maneuver the van into his garage within the confines of the narrow alley. Just then, muffled shouts came from the direction of the squad car at his end of the alley, and the bright beam of a spotlight slashed through the swirling snow, swinging from side to side. The backup lights went out again, and Steve swung open the driver’s door. The spotlight stopped on him as he half-stood, raising his head above the open van door and waving his left arm.

  “I’m Steve Connolly, damn it.” The snow muffled his shouted words. “I live here.”

  A response came, but not loud enough for me to hear the words.

  “For chrissake!” That was Steve again. He stepped down and headed toward the police car, pushing backward at the van door to close it. The door didn’t catch, but fell open again and Steve ignored it, trudging ahead toward the cops, caught in the steady beam of their spotlight. And as he did, the distant sounds of sirens announced the approach of more police, from two different directions.

  I made a choice, then, one of those choices you make when you have to choose, even though you lack the information needed to make your choice intelligently. You’re left with a few preliminary decisions that are less than informed, and then you choose a path. Sometimes it works out.

  I decided first that the cops were after me, not Lammy. I decided something new must have turned up or taken place and that, whatever it was, it was bad news for me. I decided that with Lammy missing, and with Rosa and Trish missing, and with Dominic Fontana, the maniac that attacked Trish—and certainly must have killed Tina, too—still roaming around, I didn’t want to spend even the next twenty-four hours trying to convince anyone I wasn’t responsible for any of the bad things that kept happening around me. Ultimately, though, the choice I made was that I wouldn’t give myself up, not to that son of a bitch Sanchez, not until I knew what the hell was going on.

  They seemed to be flooding the area with cops, and there was scant chance of getting away through snow-filled backyards and over fences, even in the darkness and poor visibility. So, with no good direction to turn, I didn’t turn at all. I ran in a crouch straight ahead, to the rear of Steve’s van. The motor was still running and the open driver’s door was keeping the interior lights on. I tried the handle on the van’s rear door. Not locked. I crawled inside, pulled the door closed, set the lock button, and squeezed down into the space behind the rear seat.

  In a few moments Steve was back, talking to a cop who had come with him. Steve got into the van and drove it back and forth until he had it parked in his garage. When he cut the engine and got out, he didn’t close the overhead garage door, but went back out to the alley, where the cop was waiting for him.

  The two of them stood talking, not six feet from where I lay huddled in the van. The cop was trying to convince Steve to come with him and talk to the investigators, without saying what they’d be talking about. I knew, though. They wanted to tell him that Rosa and Trish were missing.

  For his part, Steve was plenty loud, almost bombastic, and it was obvious he’d been drinking. “I just got off work, goddamn it. Gotta say g’night to my daughter, for chrissake.”

  “Well, sir, it’s your daughter that … anyway, sir, would you come with—”

  “The fuck you talkin’ about? What about Trish?”

  “Can you close the garage door from here, sir? And come with me?”

  “Okay, okay. I got a key here somewhere.” There was a pause. “But what about Trish? What’s happened to her?” The garage door started to close down.

  “Probably nothing, sir. But this Foley individual showed up at the church. We aren’t sure why. The pastor was there and, well … Foley went after him.” The overhead door was closing. “… our guys got there, he was already dead. Jesus, kill a priest. Who—” The lowering door hit the pavement with a thud.

  It was very dark.

  CHAPTER

  27

  AT FIRST AN OCCASIONAL car drove past in the alley, and distant sounds of sirens drifted in through the closed garage door. Strangely, I kept wanting to give up, just get it over with. I had to remind myself that running and hiding wasn’t much of a crime if you hadn’t done anything to be arrested for in the first place, and if they ever actually charged me with the murder of the priest, whether evading arrest was an aggravating factor or not would be the least of my worries.

  Eventually there was an end to the sounds of activity and, after one full hour had passed with nothing happening, I sat up and inspected my hiding place, using the tiny flashlight on m
y key chain. It was a typical conversion van, with four so-called captain’s chairs for the driver and three passengers, and a bench seat in the rear that probably folded out into what the conversion people like to call a “bed”—though you’d have to be less than five feet tall to sleep in one comfortably. The floor was carpeted, and much of the walls and the ceiling as well. There was artificial-looking wood trim everywhere, and fixed to the ceiling above the driver’s head, facing the rear seats, a little television set. All in all, like most conversion vans, it must have cost a small fortune, and still managed to look a little tacky.

  The interior was neat as a pin, though, and there was a plaid wool blanket draped over the back of the bench seat. That was lucky, because it was getting colder by the minute. I had no idea when Steve would come back, and it wouldn’t do to be caught rummaging around the garage for something to wrap up in. Dragging the blanket down with me, I sank again into the cramped space behind the backseat, to ponder how much longer to wait before leaving the seductive safety of the van and venturing out into the neighborhood.

  I picked five o’clock as the magic hour, because a few people might be out on the street by then, headed for work, and I wouldn’t be so obvious. With my internal alarm clock set, I searched for the least uncomfortable position and tried to fall asleep. Half an hour later, though, the garage door rose again, and someone was climbing back into the driver’s seat. I recognized Steve’s voice, muttering soft curses to himself, as the van jolted and bucked out of the garage. Then, much too fast to suit my aching joints and muscles, we careened north down the alley.

  He slowed just a little at the end of the block, and I braced myself against what was certain to be a too-fast turn onto the street. But, surprisingly, he kept going straight. The van bottomed out, twice, as we left the alley, crossed the street, then bounced into the alley again on the other side. We’d gone maybe another half block when we skidded and fishtailed to a stop.

  For a moment there was nothing but the sounds of the idling engine and the wind whistling through the alley. Then muffled voices outside. The passenger door, then the side door, were opened and the vehicle dipped and rose again as two people got in and both doors were pulled shut. At least one of the new passengers had a decidedly feminine taste in cologne.