Applaud the Hollow Ghost Read Online Free Page A

the body as a linebacker, but he was tall and well-built, with maybe a hint of flab starting around the middle. I’d noticed all that the day I’d seen him in court. He hadn’t come out into the corridor to join the group yelling at Lammy, and there was no reason he’d know my face.
    The men returned to their conversation, leaving no one looking my way now except the money counter. I stared back at her. She must finally have decided I wasn’t going to turn around and go away. “Sorry, mister,” she said, “we’re closed.”
    I could have said I was looking for Steve Connolly. I could have said the apple pie looked good and could I have a piece. I could have said any number of sensible things. What I did say was, “Sign says coffee shop, doesn’t it? Maybe I’ll have a cup of coffee then.” I said it so loud that even someone in the kitchen could have heard.
    The three men raised their heads and craned their necks to stare at me. The woman in the red pants gazed down at her crossword puzzle, then flipped her pencil around and erased one of her answers.
    â€œSign also says breakfast and lunch only,” the money counter said. “Closed at two-thirty.”
    I dropped one of my business cards on the counter. “I don’t want coffee anyway. I have a message to deliver.” I kept my voice up, and my hands out and away from my pockets.
    â€œHey, buddy!” It was Steve Connolly who called out. “She said she’s closed.”
    Ignoring Connolly, I said, “It’s a message for Mr. Apprezziano.” I didn’t know what he looked like, but Apprezziano had to be close to seventy years old, so he wasn’t there. “A message to Mr. Apprezziano about one of his flunkies who cut the balls off a dog and left the body at my friend’s house.” I picked up a heavy soup spoon lying on the nearest table and waved it for emphasis. “My friend loves dogs, so that was a mean, chickenshit thing to do. Stupid, too.”
    â€œHey!” It was Connolly, getting to his feet now, and his friends with him.
    I backed up and pulled open the door, very happy that it opened inward. “You tell Mr. Apprezziano if something like that happens again he’s gonna read about his chickenshit boy in the newspaper—and about himself, too.”
    Connolly and company were halfway up the row of tables, but by then I was outside the door. I pulled it shut, flipped the hasp closed over its U-shaped staple, and dropped the handle of the soup spoon down through where the padlock would go.
    I don’t know just how long it took them to get out of there, but it wasn’t before I was around the corner.

CHAPTER
4
    F OUR HOURS LATER I was standing in my kitchen, rinsing the remnants of a bowl of chili into the sink, and talking on the phone with Lammy’s lawyer, a very irate Renata Carroway.
    â€œHey, slow down,” I said, as soon as Renata paused for breath. “That’s a prosecutor’s typical bullshit threat, and you know it.”
    â€œCall it whatever you want, damn it. But the state’s attorney calls it ‘witness intimidation.’ Claims he’s got four witnesses who’ll testify that you, acting on behalf of Lambert Fleming, barged into property that was clearly marked ‘closed,’ refused to leave when asked, then shouted obscenties and threats against Steve and Patricia Connolly if they don’t, quote, ‘leave Fleming alone.’ He says if anything like that happens again, he’ll charge both you and my client with intimidation of—”
    â€œI heard you the first time. But who is this state’s attorney, anyway?” I stuck the bowl in the cupboard over the sink. “Somebody you can halfway trust?”
    â€œAre you kidding? His name’s Cletus Heffernan, and he’s a full-blown, first-class, certifiable—”
    â€œAsshole?” I tried.
    â€œI was