The Hidden Man (5 page)

7

I
WOKE UP at eight o’clock and stared at the ceiling of my bedroom for about half an hour. This constituted tremendous progress, as there was a time when I’d required at least two hours’ examination of the plaster and that one stain on the ceiling from a champagne cork when Talia and I celebrated our third anniversary, before leaving the bed.

Things to do, I had things to do. I had a client coming and I had to get started on Sammy’s case. This would be the second day in a row that I would take a shower.

I got to my office at ten. I share space with an old friend, Shauna Tasker. We have a corner space and double up on a secretary/receptionist. We are, technically, two separate law firms, but we help each other out whenever need be.

Shauna was sitting in our conference room as I passed. We’ve been friends since back in high school. She was a prosecutor for a couple years, like me, but she left the office sooner, moving to a silk-stocking law firm until she got tired of the senior partner putting his hand on her knee.

I put my hand on her knee a time or two, myself, back in high school, but that was a long time ago. We became pals afterward, and at State—where she went on merit and graduated cum laude, while I went on an athletic scholarship—she became one of my closest friends. She’s petite and shapely, on the surface a real
feminina
, but she could always drink me under the table, and when you got her going, she could cuss like a truck driver.

After everything happened with Talia and Emily, and I quit my law firm and spent almost three months holed up in my house, Shauna cajoled me into renting space from her and hanging a shingle of my own. I thought of putting ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK on that sign but settled on LAW OFFICES OF JASON KOLARICH.

“Hey.” Shauna had her feet up on the long walnut desk, reading over some complicated transaction. Shauna still did trial work but when she’d left her law firm, she took with her a client that shoots her transactional work, too. When you’re a solo practitioner, you become a jack-of-all-trades, and Shauna was a fast learner. “Get any sleep, dear?”

I hadn’t exactly been keeping regular hours lately. Many of those nights had been spent out with Pete, who seemed to have boundless energy when it came to bars and women. Occasionally, Shauna would hang out with me, too, which was a different kind of sport because I got to watch a lot of sloppy-drunk idiots make a play for her.

“Smitty and Dom want to grab lunch today,” she told me, not even looking up from her case file. “Wanna come?”

Her request was deliberately casual. She didn’t know, specifically, how I spent my lunches but probably had a good idea. She’d been trying to pull me out of my funk for the past four months. Still, she hadn’t pushed, and she wasn’t pushing now.

“Can’t do it, m’lady,” I told her.

She looked up, training those loving but disapproving blue eyes on me for only a moment before looking back into her file. She hasn’t known how to handle this thing with me. I was a train wreck there for a while, holed up in my house, feeling sorry for myself, and the best she could figure was that it was better for her to be around than not. She probably understands me better than anyone I know, so she knows that I’m a loner at heart.

“Marie said something about a murder case?”

“Trial starts in four weeks.”

“Oh, well—four whole weeks.” That’s what I like about Shauna. She doesn’t get emotional about very many things. Even when that senior partner started sexually harassing her at her old firm, she simply responded with a counteroffer: She’d contact the EEOC, and his wife, if he didn’t give her a generous severance package and let her steal a client or two. “How’d that come about?”

I told her the name of my client.

“Sammy Cutler?” The name wasn’t registering with her, but she knew it should. “Sammy—” Her feet came off the table. “From BonBons?” she asked, meaning Bonaventure High School. “That freaky guy who wore the army jackets and got stoned all the time?”

Her reaction made me feel worse than I already did, only highlighting the divide that grew between Sammy and me after I became a jock. Shauna didn’t even know that Sammy and I had been friends. It was a painful and embarrassing reminder of how much distance I had put between us once I became a member of the high school elite, a varsity athlete in my sophomore year.

“Sammy was my guy growing up,” I said, allowing enough tone in my voice to call for a little respect on this topic. Shauna grew up about two miles away from Sammy and me, which to us was a different neighborhood altogether, a middle-class area that also fed into BonBons. “My next-door neighbor.”

“And he killed someone?”

Sammy hadn’t come out and confessed to me, but I certainly assumed so. “He killed the guy who killed his sister,” I said, which of course forced me to unload the entire story on her. Shauna, like me, would have been seven years old when it happened, and she might have heard something about it—no doubt her parents did—but it wouldn’t have registered in the way it did with me, naturally.

After listening to all of this, she exhaled dramatically. “Well, Mr. Kolarich, that’s one heck of a case ya got there. You need help?”

“I might,” I said. I tapped the door and left before she could engage me in further conversation.

“You notice,” she called after me, “I didn’t ask you if he had any money.”

I have accused Shauna, in my haughtier moments, of placing too high a premium on receiving prompt payment from customers. “You’re a true humanitarian, Tasker.”

“Come to lunch with Dom and Smitty, Jason! I’m serious! Smitty’ll buy.”

I ignored her, though I appreciated the gesture. I had my regular lunch appointment.

“When did Shauna become a humanitarian?” This from Marie, our assistant, without even looking up. Marie is a fair-haired young woman only three years out of college, who reminds us constantly that she has a degree in archaeology and will leave us, without notice, as soon as (a) she finds a job in that vocation, which seems unlikely given that we live in the Midwest and the only things to be found underground are the bodies of mafia informants, or (b) she gets tired of taking our abuse, which in truth she actually enjoys.

When I walked into my office, a shiny new, brown leather briefcase was resting on one of the chairs opposite my desk. Marie informed me that my new friend, Smith, had dropped it off first thing this morning. I opened the gold clasp and counted out ten thousand dollars in cash. A healthy retainer, indeed, but it was rare to get this kind of money in cash. Smith, apparently, was not inclined to reveal aspects of his personal information that a check would disclose.

I fell into my chair and checked my watch. A client was due to arrive shortly, for a second tour of duty. Ronnie Dice was the second client I represented in my ill-conceived reincarnation as a solo practitioner. He was, as far as I knew, a fairly small-time crook. He’d grown up as a pick-pocket, lifting wallets on buses, that sort of thing, but when he came to see me, it was on a gun charge. Ronnie had been around, but not part of, a scuffle on the south side. When two patrol cars showed to break it up, Ronnie had suddenly discovered his legs and decided to
adios
in a hurry. Headlong flight is not usually an activity in which innocent people partake, so one of the patrol officers, not surprisingly, decided he’d like to inquire of Mr. Dice and gave chase.

Here’s a good rule of thumb if a cop is somewhere nearby: Don’t run. He’ll notice.

Ronnie was caught and found with an unregistered firearm. They charged it on the state level, not federal. I tried to suppress the evidence of the gun, saying the cops lacked probable cause. I lost. At trial, I argued that the gun was planted by the white cops on the black defendant. I had two jurors in mind in making that argument. They ended up hanging 8-4, which meant I actually got four jurors toward reasonable doubt.

The state said they’d retry but the judge let the prosecutor know that she wasn’t favorably disposed to that idea, which was a polite way of saying she didn’t want to take up three more days of her docket on a bullshit case. I felt lucky to get four jurors the first time and didn’t think Ronnie would fare so well the second go-round. So I told the judge that, after the testimony of the officers at trial, I thought I had new grounds to argue for suppression of the evidence. I also proposed, in lieu of a retrial, a misdemeanor plea. The judge said she’d be willing to reconsider my suppression argument if the state retried and basically forced the misdemeanor plea down the prosecutor’s throat.

You’d think Ronnie had received the electric chair, the way he fussed and moaned, but I think he realized the thing had turned out pretty well, all things considered. Especially because he stiffed me on the bill. Ronnie Dice, to whom we now affectionately refer as No-Dice, taught me the single most important rule of a criminal defense attorney: Get your money up front.

At a quarter to eleven, Ronnie Dice walked into my office. I told him he was late and he acted like I’d just made a joke. Ronnie was dressed the same as the first time he paid me a visit, in a gray hooded sweatshirt, ratty jeans, and canvas high-tops. He had a painfully youthful look about his eyes that made me think, as I did so often with my clients, that things should have turned out differently for him.

“Jason Kolarich the man,” he said, getting comfortable in the chair across from me.

“Ronald Dice the deadbeat.”

He ignored that, launching into the story of his latest brush with the law, a story that, with minor variations, I’d heard many times. As a warm-up, he informed me that the whole thing had been a giant misunderstanding. Apparently he had no idea that there was dope in the bag he was carrying from one lowlife to another. He tried to explain the communication breakdown to the friendly neighborhood policeman, but alas, the officer was less than receptive to his plea.

Part of being a criminal defense attorney is being an editor. Clients tell you all sorts of things that have nothing to do with the case. Ronnie seemed to think that, in addition to me clearing him of all criminal charges, we would have one whale of a civil-rights case against the cops because Ronnie’s forehead got in the way of the car door when he was being helped into the backseat.

“Ronnie, if memory serves, a month ago I hung a jury and pleaded you down to a misdemeanor when you were looking at eighteen months. But when I sent you the bill, you told me to go fuck myself.”

“Nah, boss, you should’ve gotten that payment.”

Interesting how he put that. “I agree, Ronnie, I
should
have.”

“I don’t know what coulda happened.”

Another misunderstanding, apparently. “You’re lucky I’m in a good mood.”

“This is you in a good mood?” He laughed, overcompensating. He gave me the details, including the date of the prelim, the names of a couple of witnesses, and a sincere promise to have twenty-five hundred dollars in my hand by close of business tomorrow.

“Try to get the money legally,” I suggested, prompting more laughter. He was laughing because the odds of my ever receiving payment were longer than the odds of Ronnie Dice becoming a figure skater with the Ice Capades.

TODAY, lunch is a picnic in the park. Talia lays out a checked cloth blanket—part of a picnic set, a wedding present—while little Emily runs around in circles, her arms out straight, emulating an airplane.

Talia has the food—her wonderful chicken salad, new potatoes, and coleslaw—set out on a couple of plates, a lunch for two. She opens a bottle of Evian and calls out to our daughter. “C’mon, honey, let’s eat,” she says.

Emily, still playing the airplane, circles the picnic table and comes in for a safe landing. She picks up one of the small triangles of sandwich her mother has cut and crinkles her nose. “I don’t like it,” she says.

“You like chicken salad, Em. You liked it last week.”

Emily sets the food down and frowns. “I don’t want it.”

Talia puts her hand on Emily’s head of blond curls, her only physical feature owing to me. “You want peanut butter and jelly?” Talia brought an extra sandwich just in case.

Emily looks up into the sun, squinting as the rays beat down on her face. “Is Daddy coming today?”

Talia reaches down and gives our daughter a kiss. “Not today, sweetheart,” she says. “We’ll see him soon.”

You will
.
You’ll see me soon.

8

H
IS NAME WASN’T SMITH, though that was the name he had given to the lawyer, Jason Kolarich. He didn’t expect Kolarich to buy it, but he guessed—correctly—that Kolarich wouldn’t worry too much about the identity of his benefactor, not when that benefactor was offering three hundred dollars an hour, and not when the client was an old friend.

Smith fondled a cuff link as he waited in his client’s office. The office was spacious but simple, the office of a man who paid no heed to the finer details, who freely delegated and expected compliance.