Applaud the Hollow Ghost (14 page)

What I did know was that Tina Fontana had a surprisingly deep effect on me. I couldn't help noticing the way she walked. I threw some money on the table and hurried after her, amazed at the thoughts and feelings that surged and flooded through me. All the way out the door I fought to chase it all out of my mind—about wanting to stroke the back of her hand and touch her hair, and liking the way she walked. I didn't want those feelings. They weren't going to help Lammy, or me—and certainly not her. Tina's “whole new start” sure didn't include me.

So out on the sidewalk I stopped in my tracks and watched her drive off and ordered my rising feelings to fall away again. Then I walked back to the Loyola el station and went home to dream about the boy in the river—the one who still kept reaching out to me.

CHAPTER
17

I
DIDN'T KNOW
D
AN
Maguire well, but I was guessing that, first, if he were in town he'd be in his office by nine-thirty on a Saturday morning in February, and second, if he agreed to see me at all, it would have to be somewhere out-of-the-way. I was only half right. He was there when I called, and he invited me right down to his office.

At noon, he met me in the empty reception area and walked me back to the same conference room we'd used the day before. There were lots of lawyers in khakis and expensive-looking sweaters in the offices along the way. What was missing from my previous visit was the support staff. Secretaries and clerks probably wore cheaper clothes on the weekends, and got to stay home with their families.

“I don't suppose,” Maguire said, once we'd poured our own cups of coffee from a plastic carafe and were seated on opposite sides of the table, “you're here to tell me you've changed your mind.”

“You're right. But how about you? You're not afraid to be seen talking to me?”

“Not at all. You see, with the obvious exception for privileged meetings with clients, I never engage in business conversations that couldn't be taped and shown on the evening news.”

“Even our little chat about Dominic Fontana?”

“Some calls are closer than others, I admit.” He smiled, not unpleasantly. “I've had disagreeable clients before, though. I could represent Dominic if I chose to.”

“And do you?”

“You called me,” he said. “What's on your mind?”

“Paul Anders,” I said. “Who is he? Justice Department?”

“Why do you assume I'd answer that, or any other question you might have?”

“I don't assume anything. I just ask questions. It's what I do.” I tried the coffee and discovered it was very good. “Sometimes people give answers. Occasionally, true answers. So, FBI, maybe?”

“Why not tell me what
you
think?”

“I think he's with the government. Let's say FBI. I think he doesn't want any boats rocked. And I think he'd let Lambert Fleming go down for a terrible crime, just to protect whatever scheme he's got going.”

“They tell me Mr. Fleming has an excellent attorney.”

“Good lawyers lose cases. Innocent people sit on death row. Guilty people walk. The point is, for the sake of whatever he's up to, Anders is willing to sacrifice Fleming.” I sipped some more coffee. “And, apparently, so are you. Would hearing that on the evening news bother you?”

“Sometimes,” Maguire said, “one must make difficult choices.” He glanced down at the table for a moment, then looked straight across at me again. “Sometimes there is a significant goal to be attained, and one must walk a disagreeable path to—”

“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

D
AN
M
AGUIRE 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.

*   *   *

U
NABLE 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.