Текст книги "The Hidden Man"

Автор книги: David Ellis

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

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

JOHN 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.

Smith had money, and he had, at least, a small gang of people. Four white guys, J.D. had said. Probably the same four guys who had jumped Pete. Probably the same four guys who, as a team, were keeping tabs on me.

I caught myself nodding off at a stoplight. I hadn’t slept in two days. I’d been relying on anxiety to prop me up. My vision was spotty and my hands were shaky. I asked myself for the umpteenth time whether I could handle what I was doing. But I kept coming back to two things: one, I had no choice, I had to represent Sammy; and two, I still had a generally overconfident opinion of my courtroom skills. A good trial lawyer thinks he can convince a jury that day is actually night, that up is really down. A good defense attorney adds in a general ability to confuse a situation, to smear the canvas, because he only has to get reasonable doubt.

I decided to place a call to Joel Lightner to keep me alert. I was probably the first driver in history to talk on a cell phone to improve his driving. “Our friend ‘Mace’ is Marcus Mason,” I told Joel. “He’s Tenth Street.”

“Huh.” Lightner gave off a disapproving grunt. The Tenth Street Crew was a pretty rough bunch, even by gang standards. They were particularly sensitive about loose tongues.

“Give me a location on this gentleman,” I requested.

Lightner went quiet.

“Hello?” I asked.

“How ’bout I talk to this guy?” Lightner said.

“No, I’m good. Address and record would be fine.” Marcus Mason wouldn’t be hard to find. He probably had a sheet as long as the Magna Carta. “You find anything on that apartment where J.D. is staying?” I asked, in part to change the subject.

“Nothing much,” Joel said. “He paid cash for one month.”

“He paid?”

“Yeah, sorry.”

Too bad. I guess I couldn’t expect that Smith would write this landlord a personal check. These guys seemed relatively apt at covering their tracks.

“What about Archie Novotny?” I asked.

“We’re watching him. Nothing interesting so far. He works at Home Depot and it looks like he’s doing work on his house. Doing it himself. I don’t know how to connect him to Smith, Jason. Because I don’t know who the hell Smith is.”

“Sure.”

“I don’t see anything in Novotny’s background, at least so far, that suggests mob involvement or anything like that. This guy’s an unemployed union painter who sits home at night and either watches TV or plays his guitar. He owns a small house and an old Chevy, and he doesn’t have much money in the bank.”

“Okay, well, keep at it.” I had trouble picturing it, too. It was hard to see Archie Novotny connected to Smith and company.

When I got to my office, I made my third phone call to the prosecution’s eyewitnesses on the night of Perlini’s murder—the elderly couple who ID’d Sammy running past them on the sidewalk, and Perlini’s neighbor. These people were stiff-arming me, a common problem for defense attorneys. You refuse to talk to a prosecutor, it’s obstruction of justice. You refuse to talk to a defense lawyer, nobody cares.

Don’t worry about the witnesses, Smith had instructed me. But I wasn’t going to take his word for anything. I needed to visit them. I just had to make sure Smith didn’t know I was doing it.

Marie buzzed me and told me that while I was on the phone, I’d received a call from Detective Vic Carruthers, who had investigated Audrey’s murder back in the day. Initially, I’d hoped to prove that Perlini killed Audrey and then find some way to get that evidence before the jury, for no other reason than to make the jury hate the victim. But now I had another suspect—Archie Novotny—whose motive would be based on Perlini’s molestation of Novotny’s daughter. Now, the jury would know what kind of a guy Griffin Perlini was without my having to prove anything about Audrey. Besides, once I pointed the finger at Novotny, based on Perlini’s molestation of his daughter, the prosecution would probably feel compelled to introduce evidence about Audrey to show Sammy’s motive. With any luck, the jury would hear all kinds of ugly things about Griffin Perlini and decide that nobody should go to prison for his murder.

Maybe Carruthers was calling for his file back. I hadn’t had much of a chance to look through it, and now I probably wouldn’t need it at all.

“Detective, it’s Jason Kolarich.”

“Yeah, Jason. Thought I owed you an update.”

“I appreciate that.”

“I wish I had more to tell you. There wasn’t much of anything in the graves. I’d hoped that Perlini left a memento, some souvenir or something, but he didn’t. The girls were buried naked, so I can’t even look back at clothing to match it up with something we know Audrey used to wear—if we could even do that.”

“Bottom line,” I summarized, “we have to wait for DNA testing.”

“Yeah. I’m on these guys to put a move on it, but you know how these things go. It could be months before we have an answer. So your guy Sammy, he’ll have to put off his trial for, I don’t know, maybe another year.”

That was obviously out of the question, but I didn’t care so much anymore. And Sammy had waited twenty-seven years for definitive proof that Perlini had murdered Audrey. He could wait one more.

“Only thing I can tell you,” Carruthers added, “is we have a preliminary take on the age of these girls. They’re all about the age of Audrey at the time. We can’t be precise, you understand.”

I grew up thinking that I couldn’t fathom how difficult it must have been for Sammy’s parents to lose a child in such a violent way. I had a new perspective now. The imagery produced by this conversation, which I struggled to stifle, was not of Audrey but of my daughter, Emily, strapped in her car seat, struggling for air underwater.

I stared at the motion I had drafted in Sammy’s case—the motion for expedited DNA testing of the bodies discovered behind the grade school or, in the alternative, a continuance of the trial until DNA testing could be completed. I didn’t need this anymore. I could use Archie Novotny’s motive to tell the jury that Griffin Perlini was a pedophile. But filing this motion would certainly provoke Smith. Should I do it? It made me think of my brother. I dialed him on the cell phone.

“Bored as hell,” he said.

“Bored is good. I like bored.” I missed bored.

“How’s it coming?”

“Working on it,” I said. “Getting there.”

I hung up and reviewed the motion. It was ready to go.

“Marie,” I said into the intercom, “let’s file this motion in Cutler today.”

I’d be getting Smith’s attention very soon.

34

LESTER MAPP’S OFFICE was on the sixth floor, above most of the courtrooms in the newly refurbished courthouse. He was given one of the plum, cushy spaces, by which I mean that he had walls and even a door. The place hadn’t really changed since I’d left—torn-up carpets, cheap artwork, drab paint, low-grade furniture.

He swiveled around in his chair and nodded to me. He had an earpiece that must have corresponded to a cell phone. He waved me to a chair.

“Sure thing,” he said, but his attention had turned to me. He was appraising his adversary and, I assumed, was probably feeling good about where things stood. It only took a glance in the mirror this morning to see the purple bags under my hazy eyes.

“Sure thing. We’ll follow up. I’ve got someone here.” Mapp reached to his waist, presumably killing his cell phone. “Jason Kolarich,” he said, in a tone that suggested parental disapproval. “You’ve been the busy bee.”

I didn’t answer. Condescension is not high on my list of quality attributes. I’d prefer that he just call me an asshole.

“Archie—Archie . . .” He fished around his desk, which looked like a model of cleanliness and order compared to mine. “Archie Novotny,” he said, seizing on the document I had faxed him. “Archie Novotny is the man who killed Griffin Perlini!”

He still hadn’t asked me a question. I settled into my seat and looked around his office.

“Judge won’t let that in,” he informed me. “A back door to get in Perlini’s pedophilia? C’mon, Counsel.”

I forced a smile, the kind I reserve for people whose teeth I’d like to kick in.

“No, you can forget about that,” he went on. “But listen, Counsel. With the headlines about Perlini and all—I’ve got a little room here. This was obviously a premeditated act with the equivalent of a confession, a store vid that puts him at the scene, I mean—”

“Lester,” I interrupted. “Did you bring me here to tell me how shitty my case is? Or to offer me a deal?”

He watched me for a moment, then broke into a patented smile. This guy was like silk. “Murder two, twenty years. A gift. You go tell your friends you played me like a fiddle.”

The way he presented it, you’d think balloons and streamers were about to fall from the ceiling. “Involuntary,” I countered. “Time served.” Involuntary manslaughter is the only murder charge that gives the judge the discretion to drop the sentence down to no prison time at all or, in the case of Sammy, who’d already spent almost a year inside, to time served.

“Time served. Time served.” Mapp chuckled. He let a hand play out in the air, as if conducting a silent orchestra. “I could think about voluntary. I might be able to give you fifteen. Christmas comes early for Sammy Cutler.”

I could see that the discovery of the bodies behind the elementary school—and the subsequent headlines—had had the intended effect. The county attorney’s office was not thrilled to be coming down hard on a man who avenged his sister’s murder. They couldn’t give him a pass, nor condone vigilantism, but they wanted a quiet resolution where they didn’t play the heavy.

“Let me give that some serious thought, Lester.” I looked up at the ceiling. “Involuntary, time served.”

The prosecutor’s smile went away, but not without a fight. “Jury isn’t going to know that Perlini was a pedophile,” he said. “Or what he allegedly did to Cutler’s sister.”

“You’re starting to sound like a defense attorney, Lester.” The prosecutor was referring to the judge’s pretrial ruling, excluding evidence of Perlini’s criminal sexual history. If Sammy would have agreed to plead diminished capacity, this would be a no-brainer. But with Sammy saying he didn’t do it, the victim’s criminal past was irrelevant.

Then again, I wasn’t so sure Sammy did kill Perlini. I was beginning to like Archie Novotny.

“Involuntary and three,” I said. If Sammy could play nice and get a day for a day, and with credit for time served, he’d have about six more months inside. He could do that, I thought. Another variable was Smith. This would certainly satisfy his need for an expedited resolution, and I wouldn’t be turning over any rocks he wanted to stay covered.

Mapp made a whole show of rolling his neck, moaning, warming himself up to a grandiose display of generosity on this, Sammy’s early Christmas. The only thing missing from his car-salesman act was telling me that “they’ve never done this before,” but that he “liked me.”

What’s it gonna take to put you in a plea bargain today?

“I’d have to go upstairs on this one,” he began. “Voluntary and twelve. If I could even sell that for a premeditated murder—”

“With the equivalent of a confession, right?” I poised my hands on the arms of my chair, elbows out, ready to get up and go.

“Now, you’re not going to tell me you won’t take that one back,” he said. “Twelve years?”

“You don’t have twelve years, Lester. You said you’d have to take it upstairs.”

He watched me again. He thought he was intimidating me with that direct stare. A lot of prosecutors think that. I probably did, too.

I pushed myself out of the chair. “Next time bring roses,” I said.

My adversary switched tacks, bursting into a premeditated laugh and wagging his finger at me. “Kolarich, Kolarich, Kolarich. ‘Next time bring roses.’ That’s good, that’s good. Listen, Counsel. See about that twelve years, and I will, too. Maybe—maybe even think about ten.”

Interesting. If I had ten years on the table now, I could probably knock it down to eight, maybe even six or seven if the judge would help me out, and that wasn’t such a bad deal. I still wanted to know more about my case, but I had the prosecutor moving in the right direction. It wasn’t much, but compared to the rest of the last week or so, things were looking up.