The Hidden Man

by David Ellis

  Denny DePrizio slowly pushed himself from the table. His planted smile quickly deteriorated into a scowl. His eyes flashed across Smith, who remained still.

  GEORGE AND MILLIE Robeson lived two blocks north of the Liberty Apartments, where Griffin Perlini was murdered. The whole area was pretty much a dive: streets littered with garbage and broken-down automobiles, convenience stores with garish signs for cigarettes and lottery tickets and phone cards, competing gang graffiti advertising the reign of the Latin Lords and the Columbus Street Cannibals.

  The apartment building where the Robesons lived was the exception to the rule, a well-kept, if humble exterior with a clean brown awning noting that the structure was a “residence for seniors,” which in some cases might be an invitation for mayhem, but an armed doorman, who spent a lot of time in the gym, helped ensure a sense of security.

  I introduced myself to the guy, showed him my bar card, and waited while he dialed a number on his phone and mispronounced my name. He mostly listened, then hung up the phone and stared at me, like I was supposed to say something.

  “They don’t want to talk to you,” he finally said.

  “They have to talk to me. Or I come back with a court order and a police officer, and I make them talk to me. Call them again, Lou,” I said, noting his name tag. “Be a sport.”

  Lou wasn’t in the sporting mood. He made a point of dropping his hands to his lap, telling me he was done debating with me. But he wasn’t done.

  “I’ll make sure to come back when you’re on duty,” I said. “Interfering with an investigation. Witness tampering.” I removed a small notepad from my breast pocket and slipped the pen out. “What’s your last name, Lou? For the affidavit.”

  He waited a beat, to show me his resolve, before he dialed the number again. He turned away from me, but I didn’t really need to hear what he was saying, anyway.

  “Mr. Robeson’ll be down,” he told me.

  “You’re the best, Lou.” I paced around the small foyer, decorated with a few pieces of decent furniture and some sports magazines on a round table. The elevators were behind a thick plate of glass and a secure door. One of the elevators chimed and a man walked out, a tall, thin African American with ivory-white hair, wearing a sweater, trousers, and a displeased expression.

  He pushed open the secured door, enough for a conversation, but didn’t walk through.

  “Mr. Robeson.” I approached the door.

  “You’re representing the guy on trial,” he said, his voice matching his feeble frame.

  “Yes, sir. I’ve tried to call—”

  “I didn’t see nothin’, okay? Didn’t see nothin’.” The man’s eyes were ablaze with fury, with pure hatred.

  I paused. I wanted him to calm down. “Mr. Robeson, you told the police—”

  “You stay away,” he interrupted. “I said I didn’t see nothin’, now you stay away from us.”

  I drew back. “I’ve never spoken to you.”

  “You never did. You never did.” The man directed a bony finger in my direction. “I fought for this country,” he said. “I fought, y’hear? I didn’t put my life on the line so’s people could threaten good people who come forward and do the right thing.”

  Don’t worry about the witnesses, Smith had cautioned me. His goons had reached this man and his wife.

  “Someone threatened you,” I said.

  Robeson’s eyes narrowed. “You oughta be ashamed. Ashamed. Now, I told you, my wife and me, we didn’t see nothin’. Don’t remember anything of the kind. You stay away.”

  Robeson let the security door close with a click. He kept mumbling angrily as he walked back into the elevator.

  I turned back to the doorman, who looked like he wanted to draw his weapon on me.

  “These are nice people,” he said. “They don’t hurt anybody. They just wanna be left alone. So leave them alone.”

  I didn’t have a response. There was no sense trying to convince the Robesons that I wasn’t the one who threatened them. There was nothing I could do but leave.

  As I was walking to my car, my cell phone rang, the caller ID blocked. Smith, presumably.

  “Kolarich, you’ve tested our patience. What did I tell you?”

  I didn’t know what he meant, but I had an idea. I figured it wouldn’t take long before Lieutenant Jim Stewart and his boys at IAD would pick up DePrizio for questioning about the briefcase full of money I’d handed him.

  It occurred to me that I might have made a big mistake. My plan had been to pinch DePrizio, make it look like he was extorting money from me, to help spring my brother from the criminal charges he faced. But that was before I’d managed to get Pete’s charges dropped. And that was before they’d abducted Pete. The landscape had changed. Now, I was pissing off the very people who were holding my brother.

  “I said no police, Jason. That includes Internal Affairs.”

  “I didn’t sic the police on you, Smith,” I said quickly. “Maybe on DePrizio, but not on you. Internal Affairs doesn’t know about you. They’ve got DePrizio on false arrest and extortion.”

  “Go home,” Smith said. “And then we’ll talk.”

  “Why am I going home?”

  “Because you’ve got mail,” Smith said, before hanging up.

  I broke about twenty different traffic laws on my way home, my imagination running wild. He was talking about Pete, I knew. He had something to show me.

  I pulled up to my house just fifteen minutes after Smith’s call. I slowly approached the front door of my town house, then the gold mailbox next to the front door, as if there were a bomb inside. Instead there was a series of junk mail and a large, unstamped envelope. I held my breath, opened it up, and removed an object wrapped in thick bubble wrap.

  I ripped the first few layers off, until it was clear that it was holding a severed finger.

  55

  I TAPED BACK UP the bubble wrap holding the finger and put it in my freezer, not sure if there was any point to it, realizing that the odds of my ever seeing Pete again were dwindling. I was playing high-stakes poker, but it was my brother, not I, who was suffering the consequences.

  “I didn’t know they were going to kidnap you,” I said aloud. “Jesus, Pete, I didn’t know. I thought I was helping you.”

  I paced around my kitchen, trying to burn off the anxiety, slamming my fist into a cabinet, cursing and shouting, sweat breaking out on my face. They were torturing my brother because of my stupid one-upmanship.

  Accomplishing absolutely nothing at home, I went back to my car and drove to the office, hardly able to keep my hands on the wheel. When my cell phone buzzed, I turned to it with venom in my heart.

  “Kolarich,” Smith said.

  “Every finger he loses, Smith, I take two of yours.”

  “Who the hell do you think you’re dealing with?” he hissed. “You think you can threaten us? You think we won’t hit you back ten times harder? Are you finally getting the picture here, son?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, silently cursing myself for the show of weakness but overcome with desperation. “I was just trying to protect him. Just please let him go. I learned my lesson. I’ll—I’ll make it right with DePrizio.”

  I knew I was giving Smith what he wanted, capitulation. Every synapse firing in my brain told me it was the wrong move, that I needed to keep the upper hand, but I couldn’t fight back my fear. Please let him go. Please let him go.

  “Make it right with DePrizio, period,” he countered. “Every day that you don’t, they’ll cut something else off your brother. Oh, and I’m supposed to tell you—your brother screams like a goddamned girl.”

  I bit my tongue. He had me over a barrel, we both knew it, but I had something of my own. DePrizio was now a threat to Smith, a wild card. He could sing to Internal Affairs—give up Smith and his client to save his own ass. Smith couldn’t be sure. He needed DePrizio cleared.

  There was no good answer here. If I gave in, they’d probably kill Pete ev
entually, anyway. If I held out for leverage, left DePrizio hanging out to dry, they’d torture Pete in ways I couldn’t even consider—but at least I’d still have a chance at getting him back.

  That was it. No matter what it might mean for Pete in the interim, I had to get Pete away from them. I had to use whatever leverage I had remaining to get him free.

  I took a deep breath and spit it out: “Not until you let Pete go.” I hung up the phone, almost crushing it in my white-knuckled grip.

  I made it to my office, fortunate to avoid an accident in my current state. I hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in almost three weeks. My brain was foggy, my limbs like noodles, my emotions scattered. I had no gas left in the tank, and my job was only just starting.

  “I’ll find you,” I said to nobody, to the air.

  “Now you’re talking to yourself?”

  Shauna Tasker was standing at the threshold of my office doorway.

  “God, Jason, you look like hell.”

  “Leave me alone,” I said through my hands as I rubbed my face.

  “No.” Tasker walked in and surveyed my office. “No, I don’t think I’m going to do that.”

  “Leave, Shauna. For your own good.”

  I meant it. Smith’s people would come after me when Sammy’s trial was over, and they’d kill Pete even before they got to me. If I’d had any doubt on that subject—and I didn’t—their little present in my mailbox reinforced the point. They’d gone too far down the road with me and my brother. And I couldn’t let Shauna Tasker become the third target.

  “You look like you haven’t slept in a month,” she said. “You’re running around like a crazed man, I see this affidavit from some guy named Marcus Mason talking about Pete and the drug bust—and you’re playing the Lone Ranger, thinking you can solve all the world’s problems by yourself. I don’t know what’s going on, Jason, but you need to let me help.”

  “Anything you do puts you in danger,” I said. I looked up at her. “The truth is, Shauna, you might already be in danger.”

  “Then I’m already in danger. Why not go all in?”

  I shook my head.

  “Hire me,” she tried. “Attorney-client. You got a dollar on you?”

  I waved her off.

  “Okay, pro bono, then.” I didn’t react to the joke, so she went on. “At least bounce this off me, Jason. I won’t participate. But you have to talk to someone, my friend.”

  I let out an exhausted sigh.

  “How’s Pete? I take it, from that affidavit, that you got him off the charges?”

  I shook my head, no. “Attorney-client?”

  “C’mon, Kolarich. Spill it.”

  “They took him. They kidnapped him. I get Sammy off the charges, they say they’ll let him go. If not, he’s dead. Me, I figure he’s dead, either way, if I don’t find him.”

  Tasker stared at me like I’d just proposed marriage to her. After a while, she grabbed a chair and pulled it up. “Talk to me,” she said. “Tell me everything.”

  LOCALLO’S HAD LONG been Smith’s favorite Italian restaurant in the city, not owing to the owner, a longtime friend, but to the rigatoni, served with fresh mozzarella and sausage and red pepper. But Smith was beginning to associate heartburn with the place. Not a week ago, he’d dined here with DePrizio to discuss the chess move made by Jason Kolarich—the motion he’d filed in court requesting DNA testing of the dead bodies behind the elementary school.

  Now he was back, once again responding to Jason Kolarich. This time, the meeting was even more surreptitious, not taking place in a private dining room but in the basement’s wine cellar, before the place had even opened.

  It served no purpose, Smith knew, to replay what could have been. The plan had never been simple—the underlying circumstances were anything but simple—but it was not the first time they’d tried to exert pressure on a reluctant target. Jason Kolarich had proved unwilling to follow instructions, so they’d decided on a course of action that typically worked. They’d hit him where it hurt. They’d set up his brother for an arrest that, no doubt, would have held up under scrutiny. DePrizio had done it before. It was what made a cop useful to people like Smith.

  But Kolarich had fought back, and now Smith and Carlo—and DePrizio—found themselves in the unusual position of playing defense, not offense. The difference, he knew, was that this time, the people exerting the muscle were as vulnerable as the target. Carlo had as much to lose as Jason Kolarich.

  Smith approached from the alley and let himself in through the back door, which the owner had left unlocked. He took the stairs down to the basement, where he found Denny DePrizio nervously pacing. The scent of vintage wine brought memories of heady times, of celebration, but nobody was breaking out the party hats now.

  DePrizio was smoking a cigarette, something he’d quit years ago. He raised his arms at his side, as if asking a question. Smith’s immediate reaction was to promote calm.

  “Hold on, Denny—”

  “The fuck am I supposed to do? IAD has me on tape, accepting a briefcase full of money from Kolarich. They’re saying I set up the bust and held him up for ten thousand, then got the charges dropped when he paid—”

  “I understand,” said Smith. “What did you tell—”

  “Nothing, is what I told them. I said it was bullshit. This is bullshit.” DePrizio stubbed out the cigarette, angrily blowing out residual smoke. He directed a finger at Smith, started to speak but held back. He resumed his pacing, mumbling, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  “Take it easy,” Smith said.

  “You gotta pop that motherfucker,” said DePrizio. “You gotta do it or I will.”

  “We will, Denny. We will. But not until the trial is over. It’ll be just over a week now, before the trial starts. And in the meantime, we’re working on Kolarich to get him to recant his accusations against you.”

  DePrizio studied Smith. “How’re you ‘working on’ him? The brother?”

  “We’re working on it, Denny. Believe me, we want this resolved just as—”

  “Where is the brother? Where do you have him? I’ll rip his fucking head off.”

  Smith held out his hands. “It’s covered.”

  “And how’s Kolarich gonna walk this one back?” he said. “How’s he going to explain that him handing over that briefcase wasn’t what it looks like?”

  “It’s covered,” Smith repeated.

  DePrizio stopped his pacing, standing next to a rack of wine. His eyes narrowed. His hands were trembling. He’s losing it, Smith thought. He’s going to be a problem.

  “I’m not gonna be hung out to dry,” DePrizio said.

  “They haven’t even charged you yet, Denny.”

  “They have my badge and gun. And they’re going to charge me.” He waved a hand. “You’re telling me to do nothing.”

  “I’m telling you that we’ll do something.”

  “When?”

  “When we do something, that’s when. We have his brother, Denny. He’s not going to play around.”

  “I’m not either,” said DePrizio. He slowly approached Smith, who braced himself. Up close, Smith could see it even more clearly, even in the dim setting. DePrizio’s eyes were deeply set and fiery. He was coming unglued. “You tell Carlo, you tell anyone you need to tell. I’m not playing around, either.” He drove a finger into Smith’s chest before leaving the wine cellar.

  56

  SHAUNA SENT OUR ASSISTANT, Marie, for sandwiches and coffee. I felt a little better after a thick, salty roast beef sandwich and a healthy dose of Starbucks, and even better after unloading everything on Shauna.

  “I’m desperate,” I said. “I have to find Pete right now.”

  “They’re desperate,” Shauna countered. “I mean, Jason, ‘desperate’ doesn’t begin to cover it. Kidnapping someone? They’ve dug themselves a pretty big hole here. Desperate? These guys have gone off the reservation.”

  “Covering up a series of child murders will do that to you
.”

  Shauna nodded. “You think they killed Audrey and those other girls, and they’ll stop at nothing to make sure you don’t find that out.”

  “That’s why they were so worried about the DNA test.”

  Shauna made a face. “But there’s going to be a DNA test, anyway, right? I mean, that cop who investigated Audrey’s murder back then—what was his name?”

  “Carruthers.”

  “Carruthers is already doing a DNA test on those girls, isn’t he? If nothing else, to try to determine their identities?”

  Right. Shauna was right. “Okay,” I said, playing along, feeling a bit of momentum. In my panicked, sleep-deprived state, had I missed something? “Then why was he so worried about the DNA test that I was going to ask for? A DNA test is a DNA test. Doesn’t matter that I’m the one requesting it. Sooner or later, there’s going to be one, period.”

  Shauna stared at the ceiling, deep in thought. “Delay,” she said. “If that cop Carruthers does one, it doesn’t affect Sammy’s trial. It’s a different investigation. Right? But if you ask for one in the context of Sammy’s trial—”

  “Then Sammy’s trial is delayed. That’s right. It comes back to delay. To timing.” I felt like a door had opened, but I still couldn’t see inside. “My assumption is, the longer I have this case, the more time I have to figure out who killed Audrey. So they want to rush me into the trial.”

  “And they want you to win the trial,” she said.

  I thought about that. “Yeah. They gave me Tommy Butcher. They gave me Kenny Sanders. They tried to scare off the eyewitness against Sammy.” I nodded. “Yeah, I think they want Sammy to beat the rap.”

  Shauna shook her head. “Forget about what we think. Focus on what we know.”

  I shook out the cobwebs. I should have come to Shauna earlier. She was right. I was motoring around on no sleep, a fuzzy, scattered brain, with no help from anyone.

  “What we know,” I said, “is they want Sammy to win this case, and win it now.”

  “Right.”

  “We also know that Griffin Perlini didn’t kill Audrey,” I added. “He couldn’t have. Smith’s people are the killers, Shauna. I know it, sure as I’m sitting here.”