Applaud the Hollow Ghost (21 page)

I believed her, mostly because my options were pretty limited, and angled the Beretta away from her face.

“What're you talking about?” That was Steve.

“I mean not to
worry
'cause I'm not hurt, and I found the blanket.” She reached over the seat as though having to stretch way down to the floor.

“Who the fuck's worried?” That was Dominic. A real sweetheart.

“Well, anyway,” she said, “I got it.” She dragged the blanket with her, and disappeared from my view.

Ford vans have double doors opening out the back. I'd have to get them both open quickly to spill myself onto the street if she gave me away. Fortunately, traffic would be light at that time of night and if I didn't break a leg when I hit the pavement I had some chance, at least, of escaping.

But, unless it was in sign language, Karen said nothing about me.

Besides, it was too late to bail out anyway. We were gathering speed, and I knew we were headed down a long sloping entrance ramp onto what had to be the Kennedy Expressway.

Steve and Dominic were talking more softly up front and I strained to hear, but I caught only occasional words. I twisted around in my cramped space, raising my head a little higher, to hear better.

“Hey,” Karen said, “how you turn that li'l TV on?”

“There's a remote,” Steve answered. “Here it is.” And then television voices were added to the mix.

Karen skipped around the channels a while. “Damn, no cable,” she complained, and finally settled on an ancient Western movie. She'd killed any chance I had to hear what the two men were saying—and some instinct told me she'd done it deliberately.

I didn't dare lift my head to look out the window, but knew we headed south, and then west, staying on the expressway system. Gus Apprezziano lived somewhere in the far western suburbs, and I figured that's where we must be headed. It wouldn't take long, with no traffic to fight.

It was a bad dream I couldn't wake up from, squeezed into too small a space and hurtling through the cold night with two goons who'd kill me without a second thought—each for a different reason—and a woman who alternated between helping and harming. Talk about living with your choices. Not only was I stuck with the one I'd made a couple of hours ago when I climbed into the van, but another choice—made some twenty-odd years earlier. If I'd helped Lammy then, instead of running home, maybe it wouldn't have changed his life much. But at least he wouldn't have haunted my nights, and then I'd never have learned of his present problems, and I wouldn't be lying here …

My mind wandered far with those thoughts, until I suddenly realized we had left the expressway and were back bouncing and sliding along icy streets. I'd lost track of direction as well as time, but we were certainly west of the city somewhere. A little later we were riding more easily on smooth, gently curving roads that might have been rural, except for the frequent streetlights, so it had to be a residential area. I sensed, somehow, that the houses were widely spaced, and very expensive. It soon turned out I was right. Maybe money really does have an odor.

Steve pulled the van into a sudden sharp right turn, went about twenty more yards, and stopped. “Turn off the TV,” he said, and Karen obeyed.

We waited a moment and then there was a metallic scraping sound I couldn't place until Dominic said, “It's opening,” and I knew it was some sort of electrically driven gate.

We moved forward again, and I pictured the gate sliding closed behind us. A dog barked. Just twice, but loud, deep barks, and not that far away. I was locked inside a compound, not just with a bunch of Outfit people, but their guard dogs as well. At one point we passed over a slight hump in the road, the tires bumping over wooden boards. A few moments later we stopped, and the engine was switched off.

“The broad stays in the car,” Steve said.

“We already said that, for chrissake.” Dominic didn't seem to like Steve giving orders. “Right, baby?” he said. “You warm enough?”

“Yeah,” Karen said, “for now. But how long you gonna be? It'll get cold in here with the motor off.”

“How do I know? Half hour, hour. We'll leave the key so you can start it up if it gets cold again.”

“Bullshit,” Steve said, “I ain't gonna—”

“Just leave the fuckin' key. What, you think she's gonna steal your goddamn van? Jesus, Steve, you—”

“Okay, okay.”

They opened their doors and the TV went back on.

“Keep yourself warm, baby,” Dominic said, and both doors slammed shut.

“Stay down,” she said. “The blinds on the side windows are closed, and I'll turn off the TV once they're inside and I don't see anyone else. I was you, though,” she added, “I still wouldn't poke my head up.”

When the television went off, I sat up. “Thanks,” I said. “But I gotta stretch my arms and legs.” I climbed over the backseat.

Karen had swiveled her captain's chair to face the rear. She was wrapped up in the blanket, but it was clear she was wearing the same outfit—boots, red pants, leather coat—she'd had on when I first saw her, at Melba's.

She stared at me, but I couldn't read anything in her face at all. “You gotta be as loony as they come,” she finally said.

“I suppose, coming from the constant companion of Dominic Fontana, that's the opinion of an expert.”

She gave a short laugh. “If there's one thing I know about, it's crazy people. That's for sure.”

I separated the thin slats of the miniblinds on one of the windows and peered through. The snow had stopped and the entire area was bathed in floodlights. We were parked at the side of the house, but far enough away to see that it was a mansion in a sort of deco style, part stucco, part white-painted brick, set off nicely with clustered stripes of black. It was all rectangles and squares, with casement windows and no sharp angles or curves. Even without seeing it, I guessed the roof would be flat, and there would be several levels, with upper-floor rooms opening onto rooftop decks enclosed with concrete railings. In addition to the floods, softly colored lights glowed upward from behind low shrubbery along the outer walls. The whole thing looked very Hollywood to me.

“This Gus Apprezziano's place?”

Her chin dipped slightly, in what I took to be a nod. “I don't suppose,” she said, “that you really killed that priest.”

“Nope. My vote would be Dominic. Or are you gonna give him an alibi for that one, too? Just like for Tina?”

“I feel bad about Tina. But she really shoulda gone away while Dominic was still in the shithouse.”

“I was asking whether you'll give him an alibi for the priest's murder.”

She pulled the blanket closer around her. “If I was you, I wouldn't hang around here waiting to get myself killed.”

“You seemed pretty anxious to have Dominic blow me away, that day at his house.”

“I didn't want him blaming me for you getting away.”

“So why did you help me?”

“Saved your ass tonight, too. Turned on the TV to cover up the noise of you squirming around back there behind the seat.”

“Who are you?” Might as well take a stab at earning my fee from Gus.

“They'll be back any minute.” She was an expert at ignoring questions. “How long you think your luck's gonna last?”

“Till it runs out, and I don't guess I'll be around after that to regret it. Anyway, why do you hang out with a demented ape like Dominic?” That got no reaction at all. If she really felt something for him, she sure had great control. “I need to find Rosa,” I said, trying a new direction. “You know where she is?”

“I—” She stopped. “You wanna keep that Fleming guy outta jail,” she said. “But for what? Steve'll go after him, anyway. Peel off his skin like an orange. Dominic's mean and stupid. Steve? He's mean and smart. That's worse. Plus he's a gun freak, always at the range. What I hear, he could stand Fleming up and shoot his eyes out at twenty yards. Or he might burn the guy alive, maybe. Whatever. Your friend'll be wishing he
did
go to jail.”

“Except he didn't attack the girl. I'm gonna prove who really did. Prove it to the cops and Steve and everyone else.”

“Fleming's the neighborhood creep. Everyone thinks he did it. Besides, you're making a big mistake messing with these people.” She swiveled her chair around and looked out the front window, then spun back again. “Dominic, Steve, Gus. I know the kinda things they do. And they don't care. These are all bad people, deep-down bad.”

“Uh-huh. So what does that make you?”

She
did
react to that one. She lowered her head, maybe even shivered a little. “No one's ever accused me,” she said, her voice very low, “of bein' a good person.”

“And Rosa,” I said, trying again, “why did you call me for her that night?”

“Rosa and I talk. She's the only sane person I've met since … Anyway, I like her. And she likes me, trusts me. She wanted to meet whoever it was who was helping Fleming. So I helped her. Now she says she trusts you, too.”

“She told you why, too, didn't she. Told you what really happened with Trish.”

She turned her head to look out the window, but not fast enough. I saw it in her eyes. Rosa had told her.

“And you didn't do anything about it. You were just gonna let Lammy go down.”

Karen kept looking out the window. “I called you, didn't I? Maybe she's right. Maybe Dominic … But what can I do about it?” She turned back to me. “And now, if I was you, I'd hustle my ass outta here.”

I opened the side door of the van. “You'll keep quiet about seeing me, right?” She shrugged, and I stepped down to the ground and closed the door behind me.

Immediately, as though on signal, the menacing sounds began. They came from several directions, but all from the darkness beyond the floodlit area. Deep, throaty rumblings.

They say you're not supposed to let on you're afraid. Dogs sense your fear, they say. But it's hard even to maintain a steady pace when your blood runs so cold you think your limbs will freeze up. Even so, I kept walking, slowly, beside the mounded snow along the edge of the plowed parking area. There was room for half a dozen cars, but the van was the only thing parked there. The low, snarling growls continued, but no dogs appeared.

Turning abruptly, I headed down the roadway we'd driven in on, toward where it plunged suddenly into darkness, maybe thirty yards away. I hadn't taken three steps when the growling changed—not louder, it seemed, but higher in pitch, more anxious. In the shadows off to the left, I thought I saw something moving, low to the ground, heading toward the road to cut me off.

I turned back, to stay in the light, and the growling dropped down again at once. In the parking area, I walked away from the rear of the van, then followed an earlier pair of footprints that had stepped into the snow and circled around to the front of the house. There was more landscaping here, bushes of various sizes, weighed down with new snow, on either side of broad steps that led up to the front door. A flat white lawn sloped away from the front of the house and disappeared into the dark. I followed the footprints up the snow-covered steps. Before I could find any doorbell, though, the door swung open.

I stepped back and looked up at the man. “Well,” I said, “it's a small, small world, after all.”

CHAPTER
28

G
OLDILOCKS SEEMED AT A
loss for words, so I jumped right in. “Mr. Apprezziano wants to see me when his meeting is over. Plus … he wants to be sure nobody knows I'm here. Got it?” The man seemed to be thinking—a real struggle, from all appearances. “You know who I mean by
nobody?
”

“Nobody means nobody, I know that. But how do I know you're telling me the truth?”

“You don't. So … you put me in a room somewhere out of sight. Then, when the two nobodies in question are gone, you take me to Mr. Apprezziano.” I stopped, to let his brain catch up. “And then, if I've been lying, he lets you kick the shit out of me. How's that?”

It made sense to Goldilocks, although a dark, overheated three-by-three-foot closet off the kitchen wasn't the sort of room somewhere out of sight I'd had in mind. And I'd handed him the Beretta, so the handcuffs seemed a little excessive.

It wasn't all that long, though, before the door opened again and I was blinking into the bright lights of the kitchen.

“How the hell did you get in here?” It was Gus, looking like an ordinary human being in tan wool pants and a dark green sweater.

“Your stooge locked me—”

“I don't mean in the closet. I mean onto my property, for chrissake. There's a wall, and dogs, and—”

“Ah,” I said. “That's why you hired me, isn't it? I have my ways.” I twisted around to show him the cuffs. “You have a key?”

He didn't, but he called out and Goldilocks came in, unlocked the cuffs, laid my gun on the kitchen table, and left again.

Gus poured coffee. I hadn't noticed before, in his Cadillac or at Melba's, how tanned he was, as though he'd just returned from two weeks in the sun. I hung my parka over the back of a chair and we sat across from each other, the Beretta between us. Gus picked it up, checked the magazine, and saw there were seven live rounds. Then he handed it back to me and I stuck the pistol back into the sweat-soaked holster below my left armpit.

“Nobody brings a piece onto my property,” he said. “Nobody. It's my rule.”

“Sorry. Coming here was sort of a last-minute decision.” I poured milk from a cardboard container into the dark coffee. “But, speaking of your hiring me, maybe I should give you your money back.”

Gus's eyes narrowed, and darkened somehow, and it was suddenly clear again that he wasn't just an ordinary person in a green sweater at all. “Fuck the money.” He was almost whispering. “Who is she?”