The Hidden Man (17 page)

What’s going on?
he asks, before he realizes exactly what’s going on. He immediately turns his head to the left, but you’ve already seen the shiner, the swelling and bruising beneath his left eye.

He did that
? you ask.

It’s even worse to hear the denial, the covering up for an abusive father. It means Pete’s not only been beaten physically but mentally. You leave the house, return to your car, and drive. You don’t know where Jack is—he could be working, hustling somebody, but he has a couple of familiar haunts and you find his car at one of them, a dive off the highway called, of all things, “Pete’s.”

You wait. He won’t be there forever. Not because he’ll stop drinking, but because he’ll run out of money.

At ten o’clock, he stumbles out with another guy, but they separate. Jack Kolarich staggers over the gravel rock of the parking lot, unaware of you. When he reaches his Chevy, he stops and then, as if he senses your presence, turns and looks down the way, four cars down. His eyes squint in the darkness, looking at you like you’re an apparition.

You walk slowly toward him, watching the expression on his face take a tour of emotions from confusion to anger to apprehension, but back to anger. Always back to anger.

Superstar
, he says to you.

You close the distance swiftly, and it is clear that he knows why you’re here. He takes a step back, draws in his shoulders, a proud man unaccustomed to backing down to one of his boys but realizing his physical disadvantage here. You got the height and build from your mother’s side of the family. You have a good four inches and thirty pounds on your father.

Go back to school
, he says, as you swing and hit the side of his skull, a miss, but with enough force to send him against the trunk of his car, off balance. He covers up and you start swinging, both hands raining down blows on him until he slides off the trunk and falls to the ground. You turn him over and continue the onslaught, blood spurting from his battered face, your anger cresting now, and you feel the tears on your face as you keep pummeling your father until his screams subside and he is barely conscious, his face broken, swollen and beet-red, soon to be purple.

Never again, Jack,
you say.
Or I’ll kill you
.

PETE AND I hit a drive-through for some burgers, and then we stopped at his place so he could get a few changes of clothes and some toiletries together. For the next week or so, the plan was, Pete would stay at my place with me. I felt the need to keep my brother close.

I took him to my house, ordered him to shower and get some sleep, and then we’d talk.

He was set up, he’d said. You hear all kinds of similar stories from defendants. Usually it’s portrayed as a misunderstanding, but sometimes the paranoia rises to an allegation of intentional police misconduct. Like anyone would care enough to take the time to frame some asshole small-time criminal.

Still, I’d watched Pete closely from the time I picked him up at the station until he was at my house, throwing his clothes into a dresser and preparing to shower. If he was an addict, he’d be what the prison guards would call “dope-sick,” feeling withdrawal pains. His stomach would be churning. He’d have the shakes. Pete was run-down from the ordeal and clearly terrified, but he wasn’t in withdrawal.

So my gut told me that Pete wasn’t an addict, and that, to me, was the first crack in the foundation. If he was merely a recreational user, then turning to crime would be more a conscious decision than a desperate need, and I just couldn’t see Pete taking that plunge.

I sat on the sofa in my living room, my head fallen back on the cushion, staring at the ceiling, trying to think through the situation. When it rained, it poured. I was up to my ears just keeping up with Sammy’s case and his mysterious benefactor, Smith. Now my little brother was jammed up in a big way. I didn’t know if there was enough of me to go around.

I heard Pete coming down the stairs. He walked into the living room in sweats and bare feet, his hair still wet but combed, smelling fresh and clean again.

“You need sleep,” I said.

“No, I need to tell you that I was set up.” He took a seat in a soft brown leather recliner that Talia conceded for me, even though it didn’t particularly match the green and yellow décor of this room. It was the best spot on the planet to watch a college football game.

I rested my elbows on my knees. “Start from the start,” I said.

“Look, I’m an idiot. I know that. I was buying some coke. Same guy I always buy from.” He seemed to catch himself—the
always
part suggested more prior usage than he’d wanted to concede.

“Just tell me,” I said, weary. “Start with his name.”

“John Dixon,” he said. “J.D. He’s a pretty reliable guy, real discreet.”

“How does it work with you two?”

He shrugged. “I’d call his cell phone and he’d find me.”

“How much would you buy? Typically.”

Pete grimaced. “Why does this matter—”

“You let me decide what matters. Answer me.”

“Well, ‘whatever’ is the answer. Sometimes, just a gram or two. Sometimes more, if some of us are gonna party.”

“Eight-ball? Something like that?”

He nodded. “So I called him on his cell phone last night. He tells me to meet him at this spot over on the near-west side, this warehouse out past Dell. He says it’s that or nothing.”

“And what time was this?”

“Like, I don’t know—one in the morning?”

“You had to have a score at one in the—”

“We were partying, Jason. What do you want from me? A bunch of us.”

“But you went alone.”

He shrugged again. “Yeah, I always do. J.D. doesn’t like crowds.”

“Okay, so you’re at this warehouse.”

“Right. And J.D.’s there with this guy he calls Mace. He says Mace, he’s an associate or something. I don’t really care, I’m just there to—y’know, to buy. And before I know it, this cop is running in, yelling at us, his gun’s out, nobody move, that kind of thing. He points his gun right at me and I freeze. I put my hands up and I don’t move. J.D., he took off and—I don’t know, I guess he got away.” Pete threw his hands up. “Then there’s a couple other cops, and me and that guy Mace got handcuffed. They put me in a car, drive me to the station, and they’re talking about ‘uncut rock’ and ‘weapons.’ ”

Pete went quiet. His hands were trembling, but it wasn’t withdrawal. It was horror. “Look, I didn’t say anything to them. That’s what you’d want, right? I didn’t say anything.”

“Right,” I said. “Good.” We were quiet for a while. I wanted to reach over and smack the kid, but he needed a lawyer right now. “So,” I finally said, “where do you get that you were set up?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He looked up at the ceiling. “They put me up against a wall, and this guy Mace was a little ways down, and I hear him say ‘Easy,’ or ‘Easy, now,’ something like that. But, like, in a tone that he knew the cops. He was calm, y’know? I mean, I was freaking out, and this guy was like, ‘Take it easy’ to the cops, under his breath.”

I closed my eyes. I could see it now. Pete
was
set up, in a sense, but not in any illegal way. It was a classic “spider web.” This guy Mace was working for the police, attracting buyers to his lair so they could be scooped up. Only Mace had to be picked up, too, as if he were under arrest as well, to maintain his cover. That was why Mace wasn’t in lockup, along with Pete. They pretended to go through the motions of an arrest but probably released him as soon as they drove Pete off. He keeps his cover; he works for them again the next night.

“You talked to J.D. on your cell phone?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Do you remember the conversation?”

“Yeah, I remember. I said, ‘Where are you?’ He told me where he was, and I met him there. Not much to remember.”

“And this Mace? Did you guys talk about anything?”

“Just hey, how-ya-doing.”

“That’s it?”

Pete opened his hands. “Yes, Jason, that was it.”

“Was J.D. into guns?” I asked. It wasn’t your everyday guy who came in to purchase a bag of handguns. Drugs was one thing, weapons was another, especially since the feds here had such a hard-on for gun crimes these days. A lot of gang-bangers now carry blades only, precisely because they don’t want the ten-year pinch for a federal gun charge.

Pete shook his head. “I really don’t know if he was into guns or not.”

Okay, so that was probably it. J.D. was probably into guns. J.D. was the bait. But then he got a call from Pete, and suddenly it would be two flies snared in the web, not one. The cops, and a snitch like Mace, would be smart enough to wait for Pete to join the party before closing the deal. Mace was probably earning points after having been collared himself, and two was always better than one.

“Were the guns showing?” I asked. “Did you see guns? Or uncut—”

“
Christ
, no. I was only expecting J.D., and he’s with this guy Mace, and before I know it, I’m under arrest.”

Pete ran his fingers through his wet hair and moaned. “I am fucked,” he said. “I am so totally fucked.”

Maybe, but I wasn’t ready to concede. Something about this felt wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it. But I knew that the first order of business was finding Pete’s supplier, John Dixon. I had a few questions for him.

“You’re going to take a week off that sales job,” I said. “You’re going to stay here with me, get some rest, and we’ll figure this out.” I walked over and put my hand on his shoulder. “We’ll get through this, Pete. I promise.” I was calm and resolute as I spoke, so at least one of us would believe what I was saying.

22

T
HE NEXT MORNING, I left Pete some bacon in a pan and a note, advising him not to leave the house for any reason and to call me when he awoke.

I had to see Sammy. I’d meant to do so yesterday, after the news broke all over the city about the discovery of the bodies behind Hardigan Elementary, but I’d been caught up with Pete’s arrest and bond hearing.

It was Sunday morning, October seventh. Twenty-two days until Sammy’s trial. It dawned on me, on my drive to the detention center, that the water line was reaching my nose. A reasonable person might inquire as to my fitness to handle Sammy’s murder case, under the circumstances, and now I was juggling Pete’s problem, too. It probably said something about my mental condition that I was able to make this observation with a cool detachment—an outsider looking in. I had absolutely no business being calm about things. A man I once called my best friend, my brother for all practical purposes, was facing a life sentence, and my real brother was in quite the pickle himself. I was never one to panic, to let my nerves overtake me, but that was because I refocused that adrenaline to enhance my performance. Now, I wasn’t panicking because there wasn’t any adrenaline, period.

What the hell was I doing handling Sammy’s case?

I waited in the same glass room at the detention center, drumming my fingers, alternately thinking about Sammy’s case and Pete’s. Time was, I wouldn’t have distinguished between the two people—brothers, each of them. I’d left Sammy behind, moving on to bigger and better things, and I suppose in some sense I’d left Pete behind, too.

They walked Sammy in and chained him down to the table, as always. His eyes were bloodshot, and he had a hint of a shiner. I didn’t even want to know the underlying story.

“Did they find Audrey, Koke?” he asked, measuring the words delicately. Inmates have access to newspapers, and someone must have pushed this article in front of him. I scolded myself for not coming yesterday, when the news broke, but with everything going on with Pete, I didn’t have a chance.

“Sam, they found a number of bodies buried behind that school. Bodies of young children. They think Griffin Perlini murdered those children. But they haven’t identified the victims yet.”

Sammy didn’t react, save for his lips parting. He struggled to find words. The blood drained from his face.

Neither of us spoke for a solid twenty minutes. Sammy’s a big, burly guy, and those are the ones who look particularly infantile when they lose their composure. Sammy was moving in that direction. He didn’t know how to react. He’d lost his sister decades ago. He’d hardly known her. Truth was, he probably struggled to retain a mental image of her. And he knew she was dead. Still, she’d never been found, and this news was a catalyst for emotions long suppressed.

I busied myself with my notepad, then paced around the room, anything to give the guy a modicum of space and privacy.

“Why—why now?” Sammy mumbled.

I told him how I’d visited the old neighborhood, how I’d driven past Griffin Perlini’s house on a lark, met Mrs. Perlini, and gotten the tip about the hill behind the grade school.

“We need to get DNA testing done right away to confirm it’s Audrey,” I said. “We need to hire someone on our own and get a court order. The jury needs to know what he did to your sister.”