Applaud the Hollow Ghost (15 page)

“Does he? That the same Sanchez as on the Lambert Fleming case?”

“Get in the car sir. Now.”

“Your partner gonna shoot me if I refuse?”

Palka spoke for the first time. “God,” he said, more to himself than to Rice or me, “just like all the other assholes of the world.”

He was right, of course.

“I'm going up to my apartment now,” I said, “and you can come back when—”

“You can't go up to your apartment before Investigator Sanchez gets here, with a search warrant. Let's go.”

“You two ever hear of the constitu—”

By that time Palka had his revolver in one hand and his radio in the other, but that didn't matter much because an Evanston patrol car pulled into the drive, and an unmarked squad nosed up behind that.

“I guess not,” I said, and put my hands on my head.

They didn't cuff me after they patted me down, but they also didn't tell me what was going on, and they didn't let me go into my place when I unlocked the door for them. Sanchez did humor me a little, though, and let me check both front and back doors when I made a fuss about seeing whether someone had been through either of them since I'd been gone.

“Well?” Sanchez asked, when I'd finished inspecting both doors. “Anyone been inside, Mr. Detective?”

“Jeez, I don't know,” I lied. “Can't tell.”

“Christ. C'mon, amigo.”

When we got to Area Three Headquarters they took me to an interrogation room with the usual scarred-up table and chairs. There was the usual one-way picture window, too, to reflect back the table and chairs and the usual suspects.

“If I'm under arrest, what's the charge?” I scowled back at my reflection. “What's going on, for chrissake?”

“No arrest, no charge,” Sanchez said. “You're here voluntarily in your capacity as a good citizen, to answer questions. Just relax, and I'll be right back.” He locked the door behind him.

He'd probably wait for word from the people tossing my apartment. Whatever they found, it wouldn't have been placed there since I'd left that morning. I was confident no one had been through the doors, even if Sanchez didn't have to know that.

I waited, telling myself over and over that I wasn't there because my “interfering” had put someone “in jeopardy.” I suppose some part of my brain thought repetition could make the truth go away.

A half hour later Sanchez came back. He sat down and placed a large manila envelope on the table between us.

“Find anything at my place?” I asked.

“Where were you last night?”

“Where's the phone? I want to call my lawyer.”

“Where were you last night from, say, ten o'clock to five this morning?”

“From midnight to five I was home, alone, asleep. Where's the phone?”

“You don't need a lawyer. You're not accused of anything yet. I'm trying to trace the activities of the victim of a crime last night.”

“Why don't you just ask him?”

“I'm afraid that's not possible.” Which is exactly what I was afraid of, too.

He picked up the envelope and withdrew what looked like a cardboard frame for a photograph, the kind people set on their pianos. But Sanchez held it so I could see only the back. He stared at it for a while, then said, “Know this woman?” and turned the photograph to me.

Tina Fontana smiled out at me from a five-by-seven color print. She was wearing a white dress and a wide straw hat with flowers around it. The dress had a high neckline and ended just above her knees, and it showed off her figure very well. There was a brightly dressed little girl clinging to her right hand. They were standing on a sidewalk somewhere and if I'd had to guess, I'd have said it was Easter, and they were on their way to church.

She looked maybe five years younger than when I saw her at The Captain's Choice. She might have been happier back then, too. Who could say? She was very pretty in the picture, but no prettier than she'd been when she sat across the table from me and grinned and admitted she was flirting.

“I guess you do, huh?” Sanchez said.

“What?” I found myself breathing fast and trying hard to swallow. My mouth was dry and sour.

“I guess you know her,” he said.

“Tina Fontana.” I forced another swallow. “I met her once. Is she—”

“You met her?”

“Last night.”

He took some more photographs from the envelope. “Take a look at these,” he said. “And then, amigo, we better talk about calling your lawyer.”

CHAPTER
19

T
HE PHOTOS WERE EIGHT-BY-TEN
color glossies, six of them.

One was all it took. A thick, rancid rush filled my mouth and I swallowed, over and over, until the vomit finally slid back to where it had come from and stayed there. Then I paged through the remaining pictures.

Tina's coat was open and the top part of her blouse was ripped away from her neck. It was the same white blouse—with the same plaid vest—she'd been wearing at The Captain's Choice. There were two head close-ups and four full-body shots. She was sprawled on her back on a cement floor, beside a messy table equipped like a workbench. I thought at first it was a basement, but another photo showed it was a garage. There was a car that looked like the car she'd driven when she left the restaurant.

Her mouth was wide open, and so was her right eye. The left eye was half closed, swollen and ringed with bruising. Her nose, upper lip, and chin were all smeared with blood. There were more dark bruises on both of her cheeks, and some on her neck. A thin line of dried blood ran from her left ear.

“I have just read you your rights, amigo,” Sanchez said, and he might have, for all I knew. “You wanna talk about it?” he asked.

“You answer a couple questions?”

“That depends.”

“I mean, she's been beaten up. But … but people don't usually die from that.”

“Maybe that's what you wanna talk about, amigo. Maybe it was an accident. You were just slapping her around a little. Trying to get some information or something, I don't know. Or maybe there was an argument. She's a pretty woman and maybe you wanted … Anyway, maybe she slipped and hit her head on something, and then fell down and didn't get up, you know? And you were scared and you just took off and—”

“Let me look a minute,” I said, and I paged through the photos again. There was a vise attached to the edge of the cluttered workbench above where she lay, and this time I saw the blood smeared on it—and maybe a clump of hair. “Are there more pictures?” I knew there had to be, including close-ups of the vise.

Sanchez grinned—a treacherous, feline grin. “Just tell me what happened.”

I looked again at the photos. The garage seemed quite large, and was a mess. The floor was grimy and oil-stained, and there were half-open cardboard cartons, lawn tools, and miscellaneous junk piled everywhere.

“Is this Dominic's garage? Is that where it happened?”

“You tell me, amigo. That's what I'm here for. You explain what happened, maybe how you didn't really mean to hurt her at all, but she fell. And maybe the doc will agree with you. Maybe it isn't first degree. Of course, you don't cooperate, maybe it is. I dunno. So … whaddaya say, amigo?”

I put the pictures facedown on the table and aligned them into a very careful pile, then laid my palms flat, one on each side of the pile, and looked across at Sanchez. He grinned again, looking like a sly cat. It was as though this was about Sanchez and me, not about a sad, pretty woman whose teenage daughter had no mother any more—and still had Dominic Fontana for a father. I knew Sanchez was doing the best job he could, the best way he knew. And I wanted to kick his sly grin straight up his ass.

But I didn't do that. I said, “
Chingase,
amigo. But first, show me the telephone.”

CHAPTER
20

R
ENATA WAS THERE IN
less than an hour. I wanted to give a statement, but finally followed her advice and refused to answer any questions. They left me alone in the interrogation room while she met with Sanchez and his partner, and a Lieutenant Lewis she insisted on talking to. When she came back, the lieutenant was with her. He looked very unhappy, and told me I was free to go.

We passed Sanchez on the way out. He looked even more unhappy, and he and I exchanged a few quiet words. “Just enough words,” Renata said, once we got outside, “to make absolutely sure there's no possible benefit of the doubt he'll ever give you in this lifetime.”

“That's fine with me. I don't want any goddamn favors from that sonovabitch.”

“Amazing,” she said. “Like two macho twelve-year-olds in a schoolyard. No wonder I never married one of you guys.”

That made me smile, which may have been her intention. “You never married one of us guys, Renata,” I said, “because then you'd have to get rid of Virginia.” Renata and Virginia had been together something like seven years and had recently returned from Korea with an infant girl they'd adopted.

When we reached her BMW, she said, “You don't look so good. I'll take you home.”

“No. Take me to Lammy's.”

Renata knew Casey was staying with Lammy. “Why wake them up at this time of night?”

“They went to Wisconsin. They're probably not even home yet. I wanna be there when they get back.” What I didn't say was I couldn't stand the idea of going home alone and kicking myself around the coach house.

While she drove, Renata told me about her conversation with the cops. “Tina Fontana was killed late last night in her own garage. They've got a witness, a waiter at the restaurant where she worked, who says a man matching your general description came in there last night just before closing. Says Tina was talking to the man and she seemed nervous, like she wanted to get away from him. He grabbed at her. Finally she got up and ran out of the restaurant. The man ran out after her.” She paused. “Sanchez says you admit meeting her at the restaurant last night.”

“Sanchez is lying. I told him I met her. I didn't say at the restaurant.”

“Where was it then?”

“At the restaurant,” I said. “Last night.”

“What—”

“The waiter's lying, too. Tina left in a hurry, but not running. I walked out after she did. What do the other people at the restaurant say?”

“I haven't gotten that far. I'll have the initial police reports by Monday. How soon after her did you leave?”

“I got out some money and left it on the table. Then I walked out. Tina was driving out of the parking lot when I got to the sidewalk. I took the el home and went to bed.”

“So maybe nobody actually saw what you did when you left.”

“Right. That's right, counselor. And maybe I jumped into her car and forced her to drive home, to where she lives with this loony-tunes, body-building gorilla of a husband of hers, who's mob connected. And when we got to her garage I thought, Oh, this is a handy location. I'll beat her to death right here where Dominic the maniac can hear what's … shit.” I stared out the car window, but all I could see was Tina's face, with the bruises and all the blood. “The whole thing's crazy.”

Renata pulled up in front of Lammy's. “We'll talk once I've seen the reports.”

“They want a suspect,” I said, “they ought talk to her psycho of a husband.”

“They've talked to Dominic. Says he's got an alibi. A woman, he says, who was with him the whole time, right there at the house. Windows all closed. Garage out back by the alley. Says they didn't hear anything.”

“Oh?” I got out of the car and leaned back in. “And it never occurred to them to wonder why Tina didn't come home from work?”

“There are plenty of holes in their theory. That's why you're not a guest of the state already. But they're in an awful hurry to close this with an arrest. Meanwhile, back off, will you? You're not helping Lammy. You're just in the way. You're not helping any—”

I slammed the door—as hard as I could—and set the BMW rocking side to side.

She started slowly away, but I ran beside the car, slapping on the trunk. She stopped and let down the window. “Renata,” I said, “I'm sorry. Sometimes I don't—”

“I accept your apology,” she said. “And I understand your frustration. I really do.”

I watched her drive away and felt exhausted, empty, and entirely alone. It was three in the morning, with high clouds skidding across a starlit sky and a bone-chilling wind whistling down the street out of the north. Every house on the block was dark.

I had two keys, one to the door to the enclosed back porches and one to Lammy's kitchen door. I waded through knee-deep snow that the wind had sent drifting into the gangway between the two buildings and came out behind the two-flat. Key in hand, I turned right … and found the door into the porch enclosure just slightly open. Lammy told me they never used to lock that door, and maybe he'd forgotten again. On the other hand, you didn't have to be much of a pro to slip open a lock like that one.

I stood absolutely still, but heard nothing above the roar and whistle of the wind. I pulled the door open slowly and stepped inside. To my left were the steps leading down to the basement and I leaned and peered that way, but saw nothing.

There was just the whisper of a sound, then, to my right and I turned that way. But too late. Someone sprang at me from the darkness, and sent me stumbling off-balance, arms flailing, down the short concrete stairway. I hit the bottom hard, landing on my hands and knees, but was on my feet in a hurry and scrambling back up the stairs.

Whoever it was, he was through the back gate by the time I was out the door and in the backyard. A car door slammed, an engine roared, and by the time I reached the alley there were taillights fishtailing down the hard-packed snow to the north and then turning out onto the street.