The Hidden Man (25 page)

In the darkness of my bedroom, I pocketed the badge and my revolver. Shauna, at my request, had parked her car the block over for my use tonight. But I had a thought. I called an audible. I decided to use my own car. First, because I wanted to see what would happen, if my tail was pulling a round-the-clock shift. And second, because I didn’t want it to be Shauna’s car I was driving, should things go wrong.

I backed my car out of the garage, taking care to look both ways for not only pedestrians but surveillance. I continued to look forward and in the rearview as I slowly drove down the street. I didn’t see any lights on any cars. For good measure, once I turned south onto the adjoining street, I pulled over, turned off the car, and killed the lights. I waited for five minutes. No one was following me. That meant something. There was a limit to Smith’s resources.

I drove for forty-five minutes on mostly empty streets and the highway, as the rain pelted my windshield. Rain always made me feel lonely, despairing, but this early morning it seemed to heighten my sense of isolation, allowing me to focus.

The place was on the far west side, a neighborhood that seemed to be on the way up, based on the stores that were being built on the main arteries. It was an apartment building. That was all I knew. I parked near the building and went through the first door, open. To my left in the small threshold were six mailboxes with tiny buzzers above them. Five of the mailboxes had makeshift nameplates. One was empty. I figured the empty one was the one I wanted. But that didn’t tell me which of the rooms inside this building was his.

And that didn’t get me through the locked, automated door separating the entryway from the rest of the building.

I went back to my car and drove on, turning right and then making another quick turn down the alley. Behind the apartment building, six parking spaces had been drawn out diagonally. Five spaces were taken, one empty. I checked the license plates against the one I was looking for. The car wasn’t there.

Good. I kept the car running but got out and checked the rear entrance to the building, which was covered by a beaten-up awning. The door was locked. Nearby, next to the closest parked car, there was an overfilled garbage Dumpster that, I decided, would be the best I could do.

I moved my car back to its original parking space, not far from the front entrance of the building. Then I jogged back around to the alley in back and considered my options with the garbage Dumpster. It was closer to the door than the cars, which helped, but there was about ten, fifteen feet to cover between the Dumpster and the door. Not ideal but I could give myself some help.

I looked through the Dumpster, not particularly excited about getting my hands dirty. I fished out a McDonald’s bag and found some food. I removed an uneaten part of a cheeseburger and placed it right by the door, separating burger from bun to make it a messy scene. I sprinkled a few fries as well, to balance the meal.

Then I removed the small jar of Carmex I had brought. Rather than rub my finger over it for use on my lips, I dug into it with my hand and liberally applied it to the handle of the back door, feeling like a sculptor as I ensured that every last bit of the oily lotion covered that handle.

Then I waited. It was tempting to stand under the awning to stay dry, but that would expose me. So I hunched behind the garbage Dumpster, helpless from the rain, which found its way under my collar and completely soaked my hair. Oh, Talia, if you could see me now.

Counting on the fact that I’d hear a car coming, I listened as best I could through the rain. Every few minutes, I got up and stretched out to stay limber.

It happened a solid hour later, which is what I would have expected but couldn’t know for certain. By the time I heard the tires crunching along the uneven pavement, the unhealthy engine spitting and sputtering, I was soaking wet and probably in the appropriate mood.

I reached into my jacket pocket and removed a ski mask, which was wet but not nearly as soaked as everything else I wore. I threw it on and listened as the car painfully turned into the lot, backed up, and pulled into the diagonal spot. I opened my cell phone and dialed the numbers, but did not push “send.” The car door opened and I steeled myself, cell phone in hand. Footsteps, but he hadn’t appeared yet. I heard the trunk pop open. A moment passed, as he presumably pulled up the board over the spare tire and removed the stash, but I couldn’t hear any of it with the rain still going strong.

I hit “send” as he came into my line of vision, only a few feet from the front door, facing away from me. Then I hit “mute” on my cell phone.

“What the fuck,” he said, as he saw the food lying right before the back door, abruptly halting a jog as he fled the rain. I heard his phone ring. He reached to his belt for the phone, unaware that the person calling him was ten feet to his left.

He looked at the face of the cell phone, presumably checking for caller ID. Then he opened the cell phone and said, “Yeah?” As he did so, continuing to speak into the phone—“Hello? Hel-
lo
?”—he spread out his left leg to try to move the food from his immediate path.

I had the oiled-up door handle for additional help but I didn’t need it. This was the moment, while he was preoccupied and off-balance with his leg out and one hand holding a phone to his ear.

The white noise of the rain rattling off the pavement helped mute my sprint. I closed the distance before he became aware of me. I treated him like a defensive back on a crack-back, though I wasn’t worried about being flagged for an illegal block.

He was a lightweight, and he didn’t see me coming. He flew off his feet into the brick wall on the other side of the door, his cell phone flying, his head smacking hard against the bricks with a sickening sound. The thought flashed through my mind, I had hit him too hard, but the noise escaping his throat, a combination of shock and pain, told me he was in sufficient condition.

By the time he knew which way was up, I had pulled my revolver and introduced it to his nose, as my other hand gripped his hair.

“I’ve been looking for you, J.D.,” I said.

32

J
OHN DIXON tooka minute to respond. His head had met the brick wall hard. His right upper cheek was scraped, and his ear was bloody. The angle at which he had landed placed him beyond the awning’s protection, so that the rain was attacking his face. I thought it added a little something to the overall atmosphere, and my clothes were already stuck to my body, so what did I mind?

He blinked his eyes rapidly, fighting rain and probably a concussion. Presumably nausea, too, and the last posture you want when you’re going to vomit is lying flat on your back with someone sitting on your chest and pinning your arms down with his knees.

All things considered, the hour of three A.M. was not shaping up to be J.D.’s finest of this virgin day.

“Just take—take it already,” he managed. He couldn’t really focus on me, looking straight into a downpour as he was, and he was probably schooled enough to know not to spend too much time staring at the face of his attacker, not when that attacker was armed. In my time as a prosecutor, I found that many victims made a point of avoiding the eyes of their attackers, not wanting to be able to identify them, hoping that it would make them less of a threat to the assailant and increasing their chances of survival.

I got as close to his face as circumstances allowed, adding some body weight to the force of the revolver pressing into his nose. “I don’t want your fucking dope, J.D.”

“The fuck did you find me?”

That had been surprisingly easy. I figured that a drug dealer who’s already had to leave his day job wouldn’t stop his late-night occupation, no matter how well he was being paid to lay low. He’d want the cash and he wouldn’t want his customers to find new suppliers in his absence. So I figured he’d be using that cell phone of his, the number to which I got from Pete. Then it was a small matter of having my high-tech private investigator, Joel Lightner, “ping” the cell phone, triangulating the signals sent off by the phone while in use, to pinpoint a location.

But I didn’t feel the need to share this with Mr. Dixon. Better I remained something of a mystery to him. Instead, I emphasized the gun, jammed into his nostril. “I’m supposed to kill you,” I said. “But I’m having second thoughts.”

“Why you—why you gonna kill me?” he pleaded. “Why you gonna do
that
?” The downpour made it hard for him to talk, spurting out words as rain assaulted his mouth. Breathing was no small chore, either. This was like a cheap imitation of waterboarding. I’d have to remember to vote Republican next time.

“You think he’s gonna let you live?” I said. “You’re a witness, asshole. You’re a liability.”

“Man, I don’t know nothin’, man.” He shook his head furiously, side to side, as best he could with my tight grip on his hair. “Don’t even know the guy’s
name
.”

I didn’t know who he was talking about. I was bluffing.

“Tell me everything you
do
know,” I said evenly. “Fast, J.D.”

“Man, the guy says—guy says deliver the kid to Mace.”

“Yeah? What’s in it for you?”

J.D. seemed reluctant to answer. Gentle encouragement was in order, and J.D. already had a gash on the right cheek, so a little symmetry seemed appropriate, courtesy of the butt of my revolver. He let out a noise that was drowned out by the rain. “That’s me being nice, J.D.,” I said. “What was in it for you?”

He took some time to recover. It’s hard to take a blow when you can’t move your head or arms to absorb the impact. Finally, he said, “They let me
live
.
That’s
what was in it for me.”

“Threw you some, too?”

“Maybe. A dime, a dime,” he elaborated, when I raised my gun again. “They gave me ten thousand and told me, they won’t come back. I just had to deliver the kid, is all.”

“What kid?” Here I showed how clever I am, pretending not to know of Pete, thus hopefully concealing my identity should J.D. get around to pondering such things later.

“Pete.”

“Pete who?”

He coughed out a mouthful of rain. “Pete Kolarich,” he said. “Okay?”

I considered popping him one, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to leave this guy’s face in a pulp. J.D. seemed on board with that sentiment and, instead of trying my patience, kept going. “That’s all I know, man. They said take him to Mace. Be ready to run.”

Right. They knew Pete would get picked up by the police—that was the whole point—but they didn’t want J.D. on an arrest report.

“Tell me about the cop,” I said, again bluffing.

“The cop?” He moaned as his eyes filled with rainwater. “What cop? Man, I got out before the cops.”

My gut said he was telling the truth. That didn’t mean that Detective DePrizio was clean, only that if the detective was in on this thing, J.D. hadn’t been informed.

“So who made you do this, J.D.? Describe them.”

“Four white guys, is all. Four big, bad-ass white dudes. Same as you, man, they jumped me like that.”

Not Smith. But that made sense. Someone else would handle the wet work, not Smith. I assumed these four thugs were the same ones who jumped Pete in the alley.

“Where’s Mace?” I asked. The way J.D. was telling it, he might not have known Mace at all before this encounter. But I said it like I knew otherwise.

“Man, you want no part a that dude.”

“Oh, but I do.” I reminded him of the gun in his nostril.

“Guy’s Tenth Street. C’mon now, man.”

“His full name, J.D.”

He seemed to be thinking about it. It could be, he was weighing some options, too. But I thought he was really trying to come up with the name.

“Mason’s the last name,” he finally answered. “I think Marcus?”

Marcus Mason. Finally, I had the name of Mace.

“Man, why they wanna kill me? I did like they said.”

I shook my head. “They wanted me to test you, to see if you’d break,” I said. “If you did, I was supposed to kill you.”

“Oh, now, listen—”

“
You
listen, shithead. I’m not going to waste a bullet on your ass. I’ll tell ’em you held up under questioning. And you—you pretend this never happened.”

“Never happened,” he readily agreed.

“If I were you,” I told him, “I’d sit tight like they said. You run, J.D., they’ll wonder why. And you know I’ll find you.” I let go of his hair. The rain had subsided to a light shower, but too late for John Dixon. His clothes were plastered against his body. He had twin bruises on his cheeks and a bloody ear.

“Businessman can’t run no business no more,” he complained, sitting up, wincing, taking inventory of the damage.

“Yeah, what’s the world coming to?” I stuffed the gun in the back of my pants. “Get out of the business,” I suggested. “Stick to the mail room job.” I nodded to him, started to walk away, then turned back and kicked him hard in the ribs. That was for Pete. J.D. had gotten off light, all things considered. It remained to be seen how Marcus Mason would fare.

33

I
LEFT THE HOUSE Wednesday morning alone. A Chrysler sedan followed me from a comfortable length. After I left, Shauna Tasker, who had spent the night at my place, left out the back door and walked to her car, parked on the street over. She’d known that I might be taking a spin with her car last night, but I told her I hadn’t, after all, without elaborating. She probably knew I’d gone somewhere last night, but she didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell.

What did I have to show for last night, other than a cold? At least I had locked down that Smith hadn’t been bluffing—he’d been behind Pete’s arrest. It had gone down like I would have expected. They put a little scare into J.D. and stuffed some money in his pocket, and he made sure that when Pete came to find him to buy some powder, he’d be in the company of Mr. Marcus Mason.