Текст книги "The Hidden Man"

Автор книги: David Ellis

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

53

CARLO BUTCHER SATpassively in the kitchen, his three children—Marisa, Jake, and Tommy—having joined him and Smith for a late dinner. Nobody was eating. Marisa, though in her mid-fifties, still reminded Smith of a child. She’d done quite well for her mental impairments; she’d kept a home of her own—even if it was next door to Carlo’s—and she’d done a fine job of raising her only daughter, Patricia. Still, Carlo had propped her up her entire life, financially, emotionally, in every way, and she was leaning heavily on him now. But there was only so much Carlo could do. This wasn’t a problem that could be solved with money or influence. Marisa’s daughter, Carlo’s granddaughter, was sick. Marisa spent every visiting hour at the hospital, as did Carlo, helpless, each of them, as Patricia slowly declined.

Carlo looked terrible. Smith had been around when Carlo’s wife had passed away, but it was nothing compared to watching Carlo suffer along with his daughter and granddaughter. Carlo had waged war his entire life, from the city’s northwest side, as a white kid in a predominantly black public school, through a brief run in the Capparelli family before he started into the construction trade at the lowest level, working as a laborer and later a foreman, finally taking a chance and building from scratch a construction company of his own, Butcher Construction, turning it into a multimillion-dollar enterprise.

He’d made compromises at every level, payoffs and side deals for preferential treatment in contracting, political contributions, and off-the-books cash payments, but Smith had always found Carlo well-grounded by his family. He was a man of substantial means at this stage, in his mid-seventies, but he never left this rather modest home, where he’d lived with his wife. He drove a simple car, wore simple clothes, rarely took vacation or time off, except to spend with his daughter and granddaughter. He’d worked hard to save for the time when he was no longer around for Marisa and Patricia, stowing away millions in long-term securities and investing heavily in life insurance.

Tommy pushed himself away from the table first, leaving the chicken and rice virtually untouched. He walked down the hall to Carlo’s office, where he and Smith would break the news of today’s events to Carlo. Carlo would not take it well. He’d always been hard on Tommy, the oldest of the three kids and not saddled with developmental disability, and Tommy had not always lived up to his father’s standards. There had been the two scrapes with the law, meeting with Carlo’s disapproval more for their stupidity than their illegality.

But today—today was a disaster. It had been Tommy’s responsibility, visiting the scene of Griffin Perlini’s murder, walking the neighborhood, settling on Downey’s Pub as the anchor of his story. In fairness, Smith thought, how could Tommy have known that Downey’s had had its liquor license pulled during the month of September 2006? But these distinctions would be lost on Carlo, in his distracted, even panicked state. Tommy would endure his father’s wrath.

“Jake, stay with your sister,” Carlo said. Jake was the outcast in many senses. He hadn’t joined the family business. He’d done quite well in real estate development and often partnered with his family’s construction company, but he’d largely kept his distance. He was different. He was his mother’s child. He hadn’t been involved in any of the seamier tactics necessary to run a construction company relying on public-works contracts, nor had he been involved in the most recent family project, other than vouching for Tommy.

Smith followed Carlo, moving gingerly, into Carlo’s office. Smith closed the door behind him. Tommy was already seated, his leg crossed, his foot wagging nervously. Smith, as was his usual practice with Carlo, got right to the matter of delivering the bad news. Carlo liked hearing bad news like he wanted to remove a bandage, as quickly as possible.

“Unbelievable,” Carlo said, shaking his head slowly. It was more unnerving to witness a calm reaction from Carlo than to watch one of his patented eruptions. “This lawyer is good?”

It was a question he’d asked before, but he was certainly entitled to the comfort of repetition. “That seems to be the case,” Smith said.

“Seems like he knows what he’s doing,” said Tommy cautiously, still reticent over his screw-up.

“He believes that his brother will die if he doesn’t deliver?”

“Yes,” Smith said.

Carlo poised his hands with a slight tremble, owing to his advancing age, perhaps, but Smith thought otherwise. “I don’t—I don’t know what to do. I don’t.”

Smith had never heard anything of the kind from Carlo. Carlo hadn’t always made the right call, but decisiveness had never been a problem.

“What about Jimmy DePrizio’s boy?” Carlo asked.

“Denny?”

“Right. Denny got any bright ideas?”

“Not recently.” Smith shrugged. “I’ll check in with him. He’s supposed to be keeping an eye on Kolarich.”

Carlo nodded, then sunk into a thought. “What if we kill the brother?” he asked. “Tell the lawyer he’s next, if he doesn’t deliver?”

Smith inclined his head. “I don’t know, Boss. Jason Kolarich is hard to predict. But I think it wouldn’t help.”

“You think.” Carlo focused on Smith. “How we doin’ so far, on what you think?”

Smith didn’t answer. There was no winning this argument. Carlo ran his hands over his bare forehead. He was showing his age, for the first time, his movements more tentative, the tremble in his hands.

“Maybe—maybe this is comeback,” Carlo said. “For past wrongs.” He dismissed the two men with a wave.

Smith and Tommy left the office. I don’t know what to do, Carlo had said. But Smith thought otherwise. He thought that Carlo was beginning to warm to a decision that would affect all of them.

54

HE WENT to the construction site, then to St. Agnes Hospital to visit someone, then to his father Carlo’s home,” said Joel Lightner.

I was driving, talking to Joel with my earpiece. I was done making phone calls to the eyewitnesses placing Sammy Cutler at the scene of the crime. I was going to make a personal visit.

“Why so suspicious of this guy, Jason? Wasn’t he your witness?”

I probably should have figured on Tommy Butcher earlier on. A guy shows up a year after a murder and remembers something? I guess I wanted his testimony to be true so badly that I let myself believe the unbelievable.

“Smith knew all kinds of detail about the hearing involving Butcher’s testimony,” I explained. “But the county Web site didn’t provide any details. And the guy Smith put up—Sanders—didn’t know about it at all. So the only way Smith could have known was from Butcher himself. That, and his obvious lie about being at that bar on the night of the murder.”

“You think he’s the killer?”

“My gut would be no, though I don’t know what a child killer looks like. But I’m going to find out.”

“And how are you going to do that?”

“Powers of persuasion, Mr. Lightner. Keep an eye on Mr. Butcher, would you?”

“I will. Hey, what’s cooking with Jimmy Stewart?”

“That’s Jim, my friend. It’s going fine, I think. Just trying to rattle the cage.”

“Jimmy’s good for that,” said Joel. “I’ll say that much.”

“ KOLARICH ISN’T TALKING to me.” Denny DePrizio ripped a piece of bread from the loaf and dipped it into a plate of olive oil.

“Then talk to him,” Smith said. “Make sure his priorities are straight.”

DePrizio smirked. “He’s got you by the balls, doesn’t he?”

“That’s funny to you,” Smith said, as he saw a number of men in suits approaching their table. The leader of the four-man group was short and wide, with tightly cropped hair.

DePrizio looked up. The color drained from his face. Smith noticed that the front man, in fact all of the men, were wearing police shields on their belts.

DePrizio froze for a moment, then recovered, grabbing the bread again and focusing on the plate of olive oil. “Well, well,” he said. “If it isn’t Jimmy Stewart, king of the rats.”

“Sorry to interrupt your lunch, Detective,” said Stewart.

“And what can I do for the men of Internal Affairs on this fine day?”

“Take a ride with us.”

DePrizio, in a flash of anger, threw down the chunk of bread. “Now, why would I do that, Lieutenant?”

Stewart looked over at Smith, debating whether to engage. “Not here,” he said.

“Here.” DePrizio wiped his hands on his napkin.

Stewart waited, then nodded. “Okay. You’ll want to help explain how a guy named Peter Kolarich got dropped from a multiple-count narcotics and weapons beef only a few days after his arrest.”

“Kolarich. Kolarich.” DePrizio was struggling to keep the brave front. “They blur together, Jimmy.”

“Let me see if I can help you out, Denny. This was the one where your CI had a sudden change of heart.”

“It happens.” DePrizio’s level of enjoyment was quickly evaporating.

“Does it usually happen after someone delivers you a briefcase with ten thousand dollars in it? That usually happen, Denny?”

DePrizio didn’t move. He didn’t speak.

“How about we have a look in the trunk of your car, Denny? You think we’ll find a briefcase like that? The one we have you on videotape receiving from Jason Kolarich at that coffee shop?”

DePrizio worked his jaw, trying to find words. “I want my delegate,” he said.

“No problem, Denny. Not a problem at all,” said Stewart. “But let’s take a ride. We don’t—we don’t need a scene in front of this lunch crowd.”

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 eventually, 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.