The Hidden Man

by David Ellis

  “Saving the world. That’s my brother.” Pete drained his beer and fetched some fresh ones for us. He handed me one and dropped back on the couch. “You know, Jason, they couldn’t have done this to me without some help. Some help from me. Nobody made me go score some blow that night. Maybe you should be pissed at me for making your life more difficult. Maybe Sammy should be pissed at me, too.”

  I shook my head.

  “Give me some credit, Jason. That’s all I’m saying. For Christ’s sake.”

  “Okay, okay. Just shut up already,” I said. I worked on the beer, feeling the gentle buzz of intoxication. “You’re giving me a fucking headache.”

  My brother stared at me, then said, “Not the first one I gave you.”

  “No, definitely not.”

  “Let me ask you something,” he said.

  “Shoot.”

  “You still going to the cemetery every day?”

  “What, does everyone know about that?” I looked at my brother, who broke into laughter. I did, too. It felt nice, the release of tension.

  “Let’s go out,” he said. “I’m sick of being cooped up.”

  He didn’t have to twist my arm. We headed out to Lacy’s, another of the trendy places with dim lighting and minimalist décor, ear-thumping music, and a healthy bevy of available women. Pete was in his element, and though I realized that this was the setting that typically enabled his drug use, I appreciated the skip in Pete’s stride, the first time he’d seemed up since his arrest. And I was relatively confident that he was clean. I had found some opportunity, each day that Pete had been staying with me, to take an unauthorized inventory of his room, finding no evidence of drug use.

  By midnight, the place was crawling with people, a vast majority of whom were in their twenties, making me a senior citizen and Pete, five years my junior, the coveted “older man” but not quite so aged that he looked out of place. Over these last months since Talia’s death, when I’ve joined Pete and/or Shauna for a night out, I’ve played the bystander. These kinds of places, you start together with the person you came with, but if you’re on the make like Pete, pretty soon it becomes a free-for-all. We started at the bar, where I took a double vodka, Pete a Tanqueray and tonic, and scoped out the place. It took all of five minutes before Pete had identified a group of women. He tried to get me to ride along, but he seemed to recognize that I wasn’t going to bite, so he went off on his own while I hung back at the bar and people-watched.

  The energy level at these places always brought back football to me, game days, the crowd stirring with excitement, stretching out electrified limbs before the coin toss, teammates slamming shoulder pads and pumping each other up. I’d always chosen solitude; I turned inward, searched for calm and focus, before a game.

  The stereo speakers overhead were blaring a woman’s voice, keeping pace with a staccato electronic drumbeat. Wanting you, needing you, longing for you, she sang. Appropriate for the setting, but the lyrics and the alcohol returned me to Talia. Pete had touched on something earlier—I hadn’t visited the cemetery in the last few days. I supposed that this represented some sign of progress. But I didn’t like to think of such things. Progress suggested the future, a step along a longer path, and it was still difficult for me to think beyond the current day. It was hard to imagine a lifetime of these feelings, harder still to imagine that they would dissipate with time. Dissipate, I decided, was the wrong word. Recede made more sense. They’d go into hiding, ready to return on a moment’s prodding.

  I loved Talia. I missed her so much it still caused physical pain. I could never have her again, not even a single moment of her hair tickling my face, the smell of her perfume beneath her ear, the scrunched-up face she made when I rehashed a corny joke from my collection. Wanting her, needing her, longing for her. It would recede, yes. The pain would subside. Life would go on, and sometimes it would be good—I knew that. But it would never be as good as it could have been. It would always be just part of a life, not the whole package. It would always be the qualifier that defined me. Good athlete, good lawyer, good guy—but had that tragedy with his wife and daughter, never really got it back together.

  Pete was entertaining five women sitting in a booth near a segregated area that I could best describe as a dance floor, because people were bouncing around like kangaroos on morphine. The women, I had to concede, were attractive in that trashy nightclub sense of the word. Pete seemed to be making some progress when he excused himself. He was heading to the bathroom, obviously, and I considered an objection. I wanted to pat him down for drugs, to follow him into the john, to make sure he didn’t make a drug deal while my back was turned. I did none of those things because he was enjoying himself, and he was entitled to do so without me coming down on him.

  But after about ten minutes passed and my brother still hadn’t reappeared, I suddenly felt the need to inquire. A gathering storm of concern began to rise within me, and I quickened my pace, heading to the back of the bar and taking the stairs down to the ground level.

  “Like a fight or something,” one woman said to another, taking the stairs up from the bathroom.

  “Were they bouncers?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I jogged toward the bathroom. “Pete,” I said when I walked in, looking around at two empty urinals and a stall that was vacant. “Pete!”

  I spun around, locating an exit down a hallway. Two men were loitering, talking to each other, noting me as I ran toward the door. Whatever was happening, I was reasonably sure these two were guarding that door, but I didn’t have the luxury to inquire. I blew past them, feeling them move behind me. I pushed open the door into darkness, cool air, sounds of violent struggle.

  I felt a whump across my chest, a heavy blow that took my breath. I fell against a brick wall and shrunk to the pavement. A moment later, light came from the exit door again, and I felt a sharp kick to my ribs.

  “Just a reminder, Jason,” the man said. I leaned forward, but I hadn’t caught my breath yet. As several men scurried down the alleyway, I scanned through the darkness and saw a figure slumped on the ground. I could hear him moving frantically, the sound of fabric scraping against pavement.

  “Pete,” I managed, and my eyes adjusted somewhat to the darkness. Pete was rolled over on his side, pulling up his pants. “Pete.”

  I crawled over to him.

  “They didn’t do anything,” he said. “They didn’t do anything.” He got his pants back up to his waist. “They didn’t do anything,” he insisted. He was humiliated, terrified, trying to put up a brave front to no avail.

  “What—” I caught my breath, inhaled fully twice.

  “A reminder,” he spat. “What it’ll be like—inside.”

  I put a hand on Pete, as he covered his face with his hands, lying in the fetal position, his chest heaving.

  30

  MY BROTHER AND I went straight home. I set the house alarm and left on the lights on both levels of my town house. Pete drank a little more to settle his nerves. Eventually, the terror of the alley receded, replaced with a growing sense of dread for what lay before him in the coming weeks and months. By three A.M., his eyes were crested with dark circles. I coerced him to get some sleep. I don’t know if he was able to do so. As for me, sleep came episodically, twenty-minute pops abruptly terminated by unidentifiable screams between my ears.

  It wasn’t panic. I was experiencing the same pregame sensation of utter calm, focus, a sense of purpose. I knew then, if I hadn’t already, that Smith and company had no intention of holding up their end of the bargain—their promise that if I saved Sammy, they’d save Pete. Their subtle coercive methods had devolved into crude, tortuous gestures, an unveiled threat from a prison gangbanger and then an outright attack in an alley. These were people who settled their problems with violence. Even if I won the case for Sammy, Smith and friends would evaluate their position, identify Pete and me as liabilities, and presumably kill us.

  I had a few things
going for me. First, I was Sammy’s lawyer. For the time being, at least, Smith apparently needed me. Second, for a reason I couldn’t yet pinpoint, time was on my side. Smith demanded that the case go to trial within the next three weeks, without additional continuances or delays, so it was a pressure point I could manipulate.

  Third, they needed Pete, too, to serve as the leverage against me. They had no problem roughing him up to punch my buttons, but they couldn’t kill him, not yet. Still, for the time being, secure as he might have been from a violent death, Pete was still a sitting duck for Smith’s thugs. I had to get him out of Dodge. I had to hide him.

  It was for the best, anyway, that Pete get lost for a while. I didn’t want him around for what might come next. I wondered about that for a long time, as I sat on my bed, waiting for the sun to come up, fatigue sweeping over me like a heavy coat, my eyes losing focus but the churning of my stomach preventing any attempt at sleep: What was I capable of doing?

  SAMMY SEEMED TIRED, more than usual, when I visited him the following morning. Rare was the inmate who looked well-rested, but Sammy, I assumed, had done a great deal of thinking about his sister since the discovery of the bodies behind Hardigan Elementary School. Nor did it help that he was less than three weeks from a murder trial that could put him in prison for the rest of his life.

  Despite his obvious sleep deprivation, Sammy listened attentively as I laid out the entire story about Smith, and what had followed with Pete. He was alternatively concerned and puzzled, two traits I had in great quantities myself these days. “Pete,” he mumbled. “Pete.”

  I was running short on time, and I’d hoped that Sammy knew more than he was letting on about Smith. I was disappointed.

  “Man, I don’t know that guy Smith,” he said when I finished. “He shows up, offers me ‘the best lawyer money can buy’—I figured the same as you, Koke. He was working for someone who that asshole hurt. Some victim. Y’know, sympathetic to what I was going through. Wanting to offer help. I mean, yeah, it was kinda weird that he didn’t want to give me their names, but, y’know, under the circumstances—a lot of people like to stay anonymous when it comes to, y’know—”

  He was right. Sex abuse victims don’t advertise on billboards. That might be all it was with Smith. But it sure felt like more. “These guys are hiding something,” I said. “Something they’re afraid I’ll find. Sammy, I think—” I gathered my thoughts a moment. “Sam, look—I never ask a client if he’s guilty. I dance around it, because most of my clients are guilty, and if I know that, I can’t put them on the stand to testify they didn’t do it. Right?”

  Sammy was listening intently. He nodded slowly.

  “Right,” I continued. “But I’m sitting here thinking, Smith is working for someone who killed Griffin Perlini. Maybe they feel for you, maybe they want you to beat the rap, but their main concern is that they don’t want me out there trying to find new suspects, because they’re afraid I’ll find them.”

  Sammy didn’t answer. He’d given me ample reason to think he killed Griffin Perlini, though he hadn’t come out and said it. But he’d also been the one to mention that I should consider other victims of Perlini’s crimes. Look at other people he hurt, he’d suggested, the first time we talked strategy.

  “Should I be looking for Griffin Perlini’s killer, Sammy?”

  Sammy looked away, turned his head. He hadn’t shaved for a while, and a thickening red beard was forming. “I don’t get this stuff with Smith,” he said. “Doing all that shit to Pete and all. But there’s one guy, I think—a good guy, but I could see. . . .”

  Was Sammy proclaiming his innocence?

  “The name,” I said, but I thought I already knew it. I just didn’t want to be the one to say it first.

  “Archie,” he said. “Guy named Archie Novotny. His daughter—Jody—was one of the victims.”

  I hadn’t told Sammy of my visit to Novotny. “Why him?” I asked.

  Sammy shook his head slowly. “He took the thing with Jody real hard. And he seems like the kind of guy who might have it in him.”

  “He’s close enough to matching the description,” I noted.

  “Oh, you’ve met him.”

  “I did, Sammy. And I managed a peek in his coat closet. Guess who owns a brown leather bomber jacket and a green stocking cap?”

  “No shit? Wow.” Sammy fell back in his chair, new animation. “You think Archie did it? For real?”

  I felt an uneasy heat to my face, a weight on my shoulders. “Sammy,” I confessed, “I thought you did it.”

  He showed a brief hint of a smile. I wasn’t sure what to make of this.

  “Novotny says he has an alibi,” I said. “He says he was at a guitar lesson. I’m checking it out.”

  Sammy thought about that. “Maybe it’s a cover. Yeah, shit.” He looked at me. “But that don’t explain Smith.”

  I agreed. “I suppose Novotny could be the guy using Smith. It’s just hard to imagine. The guy’s a laid-off painter for the electric utility. Where’s he get the money to hire a guy like Smith, and a bunch of goons to scare the shit out of my brother?”

  “Don’t make sense.”

  It didn’t make sense. But at least I was making progress. I had a more than plausible suspect in Archie Novotny. Now, I would need to find a way to punch some holes in the eyewitness testimony placing Sammy at the scene of the shooting. I’d left one message with each of the witnesses already. On my drive from the detention center, I called each of them again, leaving them my office, home, and cell phone numbers.

  When I got to my office, I amended my witness list in Sammy’s case to include Archie Novotny and put it on the fax machine to the prosecutor, Lester Mapp. I’d have preferred to spring the witness on Mapp, but judges take a dim view of such things, and maybe—just maybe—if I convinced Mapp that Novotny was the guy, he’d walk Sammy.

  Next, I did an Internet search for hotels in nearby suburbs and booked a room for Pete in a town just outside the city boundaries. Now I’d just have to make sure Pete got there without anyone noticing. He needed to fly under the radar for the time being.

  Joel Lightner called me on my cell phone and gave some information I’d requested. He had found J.D.—John Dixon, Pete’s supplier who escaped arrest when Pete got pinched.

  “You want me to put a tail on him?” he asked.

  “Not just yet, Joel. Thanks. I’ll let you know.”

  “I’m worried about you, kid. Play it smart.”

  I smiled. Lightner had a pretty good head on his shoulders. “Always,” I told him. “Always.”

  31

  SUNDAY PRACTICE at State is usually the easiest of the week—film of the previous day’s game, then a brief, no-contact workout in sweats and helmets, no pads. But today will not be your finest day. They are on you, the seniors, the team captains, before you make it to your locker.

  What’s this disappearing act you pulled yesterday? Tony Karmeier, a massive offensive tackle and four-year starter, is breathing heavily into the side of your face. Apparently Tony—and by the looks of it, the rest of the team—didn’t look kindly on you walking off the football field yesterday, after the referee ejected you, and driving home. You want to forget that scholarship and go back to being a loser?

  You don’t answer. You open your locker and remove your helmet. Your right hand is still sore from the number you did on Jack, your father, last night.

  Give me a fucking answer, Kolarich.

  I’m thinking, you say.

  He shoves you, and when a six-six, three-hundred-fifty-pound lineman pushes you, you fly sideways, landing on the floor.

  We’re a team. We play as a team. We don’t have any room for this superstar crap. Are you a team player or a superstar?

  You slowly get up and recover your helmet, still spinning on the floor. You feel your internal reservoir refilling with the hot venom from last night, the assault on your father. It felt good, you have to admit, better than it should have. Your hand
balls into a fist and releases. You look again at the team captain, Karmeier, a physical mountain, mean as a snake, and you realize how much you hate him, how much you hate all of them.

  Don’t ever try that again, you tell him.

  Or what? Karmeier moves forward, held back by some of the others gathering around the spectacle. No, he’s a big boy. I think he’s threatening me. Are you threatening me, Kolarich?

  Your fist closes and releases. Close and release. You want him to do it, you realize. You began to feel it last night, with Jack in the parking lot, and now the momentum builds into a free fall: You are letting yourself go backward. You’re a loser. A pretender. You don’t deserve all of this, a free ride at State, all the acclamation. You’re never going to make it. You’ll become like him.

  Since the day you got here, you think it’s all about you. I’m so tired of your tough-guy bullshit.

  You feel a smile on your face. Come here and say that, you tell him.

  Oh, you’re gonna square off on me? he says, approaching you. You wanna—

  It happens in an instant, a release so satisfying, one-two, a right and a left like lightning from your fists, the second punch producing a sickening crunch as this heap of a man crumbles to the floor. You are on fire, breathing heavily, watching him writhe on the floor in agony, his hands on his face. You part the spectators, shaking your left hand, wondering if you broke it, sure that you broke Tony Karmeier’s jaw. You use your right hand to push open the locker room door, never to return.

  I CALLED PETE before I left work and checked that he had packed his bag. When I got home, I drove my car into the garage and closed the garage door. Pete came out through the kitchen door with the clothes he’d brought from his house following the arrest—and some of my wardrobe as well—in a bag, which he threw in the trunk. Pete was wearing a leather jacket and a blue baseball cap.