Текст книги "The Hidden Man"

Автор книги: David Ellis

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

18

MY OFFICE MATE, Shauna Tasker, stuck her head in around six o’clock. She mentioned dinner, and I soon found myself at one of the new trendy restaurants in town, a Spanish place called Cena. We ordered a couple of tapas—dates wrapped in bacon and an omelet of potato and onions—after which Shauna ate a pork chop stuffed with goat cheese, while I pushed a piece of black grouper around the plate and avoided the mushrooms, which I hate and didn’t realize were part of the dish.

I’d had a few vodkas and sensed danger. I didn’t use alcohol to escape so much as to change the landscape, to alter something. Maybe there was no difference. But I felt my emotions destabilize, and I also sensed something hanging between Shauna and me.

Shauna seemed to be appraising me, which I didn’t particularly enjoy, but she had her subtle ways of doing so that made it hard for me to be angry. She had a gift for that sort of thing. She could operate in any circle, the wealthy client or the poor, men or women. She had delicate features combined with silky blond hair that might be described as pretty, but not in a threatening way. Other women liked her and most men both liked her and lusted after her. She knew all of this and thrived accordingly. On the surface she was generally regarded as sincere, open, trustworthy, sometimes passionate. But those pretty blue eyes were skeptical. She had an internal barometer that cautioned against intimacy, that generally distrusted others. She was the best judge of character I’d ever known, which is what made me uneasy when she trained that judgment on me.

She asked me what I’d been doing yesterday, when I was once again AWOL from the office. The truth was there were still many days when I just couldn’t function, when I was no use to anyone, when I couldn’t stand the pity, when I couldn’t concentrate, when I just didn’t give a shit about anything. I simply told her I’d been “reading at home,” which was true if you counted paperback novels. She didn’t seem to think much of the answer.

“You talk to Pete lately?” I asked her. She hadn’t known Pete particularly well. Shauna was my age, so she didn’t go to high school with Pete, who was a freshman when we graduated. But she’d gotten to know him a bit after Talia and Emily died, when they tag-teamed on the Jason Kolarich Sympathy Tour, taking turns making sure I had company while I was nursing my wounds.

“Not recently,” she said. “Why?”

I shook my head. “I think he’s back to his old tricks. Scoring.”

“Cocaine? No, I don’t know about that. I’m not sure I would know.”

“Yeah, Pete’s pretty good at keeping it under wraps.”

“Is this serious? Or is it just when he’s out partying?”

I didn’t know. “I’m not sure I make that distinction,” I said. “Sometimes it’s hard to keep recreational from becoming addictive.” I lifted my empty glass of vodka to the waitress, signaling for another. Shauna was still working on a glass of wine and shook her head. “I’ve had my back turned, Shauna. I’ve been so caught up in myself—first that Almundo trial and then Talia and Emily—I haven’t been watching that kid. I feel like I’ve—”

“Please don’t finish that sentence.” Shauna raised a hand. “Just—please don’t say that you’ve let your brother down.”

She went quiet. I didn’t know what to make of the hostility, which she took out on the remaining piece of pork on her plate, shaking her head in disgust as she did so.

“The hell is your problem?” I asked.

“No problem here, Kolarich. Not a care in the world.” She finished the rest of the pork chop, and I tired of focusing on the fish I had no intention of eating. The waitress brought me a fresh vodka and Shauna watched me.

“Say something,” I said.

“Say something?”

“Yeah, say some goddamn thing.”

“Okay. Okay.” She wiped his mouth with her napkin. “Get off your ass, Jason.”

“Come again?”

“Snap out of it. Get off your ass.”

“Oh, wait. Is this the get-busy-living-or-get-busy-dying speech? My wife and child died, but I didn’t? They’d want me to get on with my life? That about cover it?”

Shauna looked away, that expression of distaste that she used effectively. “I haven’t said anything for—what—four months now. Four months, I’ve watched you beat yourself up. Blaming yourself for Talia and Emily. Not pitying yourself. That, I could understand. But you’ve managed to rewrite the script so that everything is your fault.”

I took a healthy drink of the Stoli that the waitress placed before me. It went down harsh, a burn in the back of my throat.

“And now you’re doing the same thing with your brother, who, last I checked, is nearly thirty years old, which I believe puts him in the category of adult.”

“I see.”

“Don’t belittle what I’m saying. Don’t do that.” As she spoke, the sleeve of her shirt dipped into some sauce on her plate. “Look, I know you feel bad about getting caught up in that trial when Emily was born. I know it was hard on Talia, and I could sense that you guys were having a few problems. The timing was terrible. Your baby’s born just as you’re second-chairing a monster trial that could make your whole career. Okay. So the trial comes first. It has to. You were doing this for your family.”

“Was I?”

She drew back. “Of course you were. What, you’re gonna tell me you enjoyed it, too? You got an ego boost? You were enjoying the thrill of a headline case? You got off on seeing your name in the paper? Is that supposed to be a crime? You liked what you were doing, Jason. That’s allowed.”

“Tell that—”

“—to Talia, and Emily. I know. I get it. I’ve heard it fifty times now. You would have made it up to them, Jason. I know you. I know you would have. But you never got to, because something really tragic happened. But that doesn’t make it your fault. See the difference there? So when you go the cemetery every single day at lunch to talk to your wife and daughter—”

I recoiled.

“Yes,” she continued, “I followed you once, and I really don’t care if you don’t like it. When you go visit them every day, you can tell them how much you love them and how much you miss them. You can tell them that you were planning to make up for lost time if you’d had the chance, but do not take responsibility for their deaths. Okay?”

At the neighboring table, a woman was having a birthday. The waitress delivered a piece of fried custard with a single candle on it as the table broke into song. Everyone seemed to enjoy making a big spectacle of it.

Talia’s birthday is next week.

I gestured to Shauna. “You dragged your sleeve through your plate.”

“I know and it sucks. I just bought this.” She dabbed her napkin into her glass of water and we both laughed.

I TOOK A CAB HOME. My head was a little foggy from the vodka. I had some of the case file at home with me, but I wasn’t in the shape or the state of mind to focus on it.

I walked into Emily’s room. My heart did a small leap as I flicked on the light, a fancy little chandelier Talia had purchased for the room. The whole nursery was pink and green, from the wallpaper and paint to the crib, even a custom rocking chair Talia had ordered. I sat in the chair and rocked, my eyes dancing when I closed them. I thought I could still smell her, the baby lotion we used, the cream we used on her tush. I had a distinct image of her face, her eyes alighting when I lifted her into the air.

I opened my eyes and shook my head fiercely. My chest filled with emotion, heavy, suffocating. Love, for me, was always suffused with pain, with vulnerability, the accompanying fear of losing what you love even as you immerse yourself in it. But now they were dead, so there was no fear of loss, only the love that remained, now unadulterated, pure, overpowering.

I got out of the chair, turned off the light, and left her room. I stripped my clothes and got into bed. Sleep did not come immediately. I stared at the ceiling and thought about what Shauna had said. To some extent, she was right. I was merging two things, my guilt for time lost with my family because of work, and remorse for their loss, but letting the former overpower the latter, making myself to blame for their deaths.

Still, I couldn’t let go of one very clear fact: I was supposed to go with Talia and Emily downstate that weekend. I’d cleared it with the boss, with the client. We were nearing the end of the trial, the defense was about to rest its case, and I’d completed the witnesses I was assigned. Go spend time with your family, Paul had told me. That’s a direct order. But I had to be the hotshot. I’d caught a lead. I’d found Ernesto Ramirez, the ex-Latin Lord, who had information that could blow up the government’s case, who could pin the murder of the neighborhood businessman on a rival street gang, not the gang whom the government had tied to Senator Hector Almundo. The government has the wrong street gang, we would have told the jury.

It had been my decision, and mine alone, to stay back and follow up on this lead instead of spending the weekend downstate with my family. If I could tie the business owner’s murder to the Lords and not the Columbus Street Cannibals, the government’s premise for the case would be undermined. Devastated. Though Senator Hector Almundo was charged under a multiple-count indictment, the charges related to that murder had been the centerpiece of the case.

I chose being a hero over taking my wife to see her parents, over taking my baby to see her grandparents. I was supposed to be driving the car that night.

Somewhere in those thoughts, I drifted off. When I opened my eyes again, eyeing the clock, which read just after three in the morning, it wasn’t the sound of Emily’s cry that had stirred me. It was the telephone ringing at the side of my bed.

It was my brother, Pete.

“Jason,” he said breathlessly, “I’m in big trouble.”

19

THIS ONE HAS ALWAYS stayed with you: a family dinner, itself an unusual occurrence. The old man is usually away in the evening, plying his trade at poker games or bars, petty hustles that might pay the groceries next week if he doesn’t blow it on booze. Not tonight. A tension in the room, typical in his presence. Mom has brought the pot roast, potatoes, and carrots to the table in silence. The old man—Jack, you call him, but not to his face—is reading the paper and mumbling under his breath.

He doesn’t intimidate you, not anymore. That one thing, your ability to catch a piece of pigskin and break away from defenders, has given you immunity in the confines of your house. But the other two, Pete and your mother, are a different story. Pete is looking at Jack while he slowly eats, and you’re trying to figure out if it’s love or fear in his eyes, and you decide it’s both.

“How was practice?” your mom asks you.

“Fine,” I say. “I pulled a hamstring. I’ll have to sit out this week to be ready for Saturday.”

“So you’ll only score two touchdowns,” says Pete.

God, Pete looks just like Jack. It’s painful to make that connection. He is docile, like Mom, but with the face and build and maturing voice of our father.

“I was thinking about next year,” Pete says cautiously. Next year Pete will be a freshman at Bonaventure, while you’ll be off to whatever university whose scholarship you accept.

“What about next year, honey?” Mom asks.

“Next year,” you say, “there will be high school girls calling this house every night.”

Mom smiles and looks at Pete. “What about next year, Pete?”

Pete shrugs. “I was thinking, maybe—maybe I’d try out for the football team.”

“You?” This from Jack, his eyes looking over the paper, one word followed by a disapproving grunt.

You? A single word that deflates Pete, returns his focus to his plate of food, his face now ashen. You look at your mother, who is frozen, too, unwilling to cross the line that Jack has laid down.

“Yeah, prob’ly—prob’ly a dumb idea,” Pete mumbles.

“I think it’s a great idea,” you say, catching the eyes of your father. “I think you should give it a shot, Pete.” But you are talking to the old man as much as to your brother. You have locked eyes now, and you realize it now more than ever, that you want to get as far away from this house as possible.

I MADE IT to the police station within an hour of receiving Pete’s call. Never a happy place, the station house was particularly grim at four in the morning. A few family members, tired and disappointed and worried, awaited the release of their loved ones. Otherwise, the place was empty, the cheap tile floors showing the dirt, the air thick with sweat and body odor. I found the desk sergeant behind a plate of bulletproof glass and showed him my credentials, which he did not receive warmly.

They buzzed me in and a cop with sandy hair and deep-set eyes was waiting behind the door. “Denny DePrizio,” he said to me, not offering his hand but turning toward his desk, assuming I would follow. He actually took me past the desks to an interview room, where I took a seat across from him.

“Drugs and weapons,” he said to me. “Over a ticket of uncut rock and unregistered firearms.”

A kilo of rock cocaine and guns? “You got the wrong guy,” I said.

“He’s definitely wrong, I’ll give you that.”

“My brother’s a lot of things,” I continued. “He’s not much for the nine-to-five job. Sometimes he’s a shithead. But he doesn’t run guns and he doesn’t sell rock. C’mon, Detective. Take a look at the guy. He was scoring some powder, because he’s an idiot, and he wasn’t careful where he bought it. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

He liked that, treated it like I was joking. “These guys come in all shapes and sizes, Counselor. Hell, we busted a grandmother a few weeks back, selling rock off her back porch. A grandmother.”

“I’m not saying walk him. I’m saying, simple possession.”

He laughed out loud. “Wasn’t how it looked to me,” he said. “Baby brother didn’t look like he was making a small purchase.”

“Bullshit.”

His smile wavered, then disappeared. “See, this is where you’d be trying my patience, Counselor. I see this kid selling a crate full of weapons, there’s a couple tickets of uncut rock as a nice throw-in, and now I got his brother telling me to skate him on a simple possession? You got some big-ass stones, my friend.”

I wasn’t getting anywhere with this guy, not that I’d expected to. I wasn’t even sure I’d convinced myself. As much I fought it, I couldn’t deny the possibility that Pete was guilty as hell, that he’d royally messed up.

I did the calculations in my mind, though I’d need to look up the sentencing statutes to be sure. With priors for simple possession, assuming here a possession with intent and gun charges, Pete could be looking at ten years inside.

“What you should be worried about,” DePrizio said, “is a federal transfer.”

That was worse. Federal prosecutors had a real hard-on for guns these days. A federal conviction would be a minimum of ten years, and federal time was hard time, not day-for-a-day like in state court; at least eighty-five percent of the sentence had to be served in a federal prison.

But this guy wasn’t raising the specter of a federal transfer just to pass the time.

“Unless,” I said.

The detective nodded at me. “Right, unless.”

Unless he cooperated, DePrizio meant. Traded up the chain. Was Pete part of a chain? Was he really selling cocaine? I couldn’t believe it, which is to say, I was literally incapable of putting together a set of facts that had my little brother selling drugs and running guns.

“Maybe we should talk about that,” I said.

“Maybe we should. But not tonight.” The detective checked his watch. “I’m on in four hours. I’m going home. You want to see your brother?”

To be continued. I didn’t know what kind of hand I had to play yet, anyway.

“Please,” I said. I followed a uniform down to the basement. I was buzzed past two sets of barred doors, and he directed me to the final cell, with cinder-block walls and metal benches bolted to the floor. There were over a dozen people inside. Most of them were black, and most of them looked like it wasn’t their first time in a cell. A guy in the corner, a white kid strung out and in the midst of obvious withdrawal, had recently thrown up, and the others were either heckling him or yelling at him to clean it up.

Pete was sitting on the floor, against the wall, his arms wrapped around his knees. He was keeping his eyes straight forward, an obvious attempt to avoid any confrontation. He was wound as tight as I’d ever seen him.

Jesus, I thought. Pete couldn’t hold up for one week in a penitentiary.

When I stopped at the cell bars, some of the attention turned my way. I caught a couple of hoots and hollers. More than one of them was hoping, I gathered, that I was here for them, that their family had hired them a private attorney to handle their case.

“I gotta take a piss!” one of them said.

“Lawyer man, you comin’ to set me free?” another called out.

At that, Pete looked up and saw me. His eyes were blood-red, his hair matted, all standing in stark contrast to the lively blue shirt and khakis and polished loafers he was sporting.

“Motherfucker white boy gets the lawyer.”

Pete approached the bars tentatively. I raised a hand, to keep his voice down, to keep it cool while he was sharing a cell with anyone.

“Jason, I swear . . .”

I took his hand and gripped it. Tears welled up in his eyes, and I struggled not to return the favor. My little brother. I was supposed to protect you.

“We’ll figure this out,” I promised. I leaned against the bars, so that we were almost nose to nose. “Pete, listen to me. Don’t you say a word to anyone in here, okay? These guys trade on that sort of thing all the time. Don’t be telling your story to anyone, right?”

He closed his eyes, swallowed hard, and nodded.

I leaned in closer. “Who were you arrested with?”

Pete shook his head and answered in a whisper. “I was with two people,” he said. “I think one of them got away. The other guy, I don’t know him.”

“Is he here?” I whispered.

He shrugged his shoulders. “No.”

I looked behind Pete at the occupants again. Most of these guys were bigger than Pete, and all of them were meaner. Three guys in particular caught my attention, looked like Tenth Street muscle, but I’d have to see their bicep to know for sure. These guys were the ones to watch. They would be calling the shots. Two of them had their hair done up high and were calling after the junkie who had vomited, but the guy in the middle, the bald guy with arms that bulged out of his sweatshirt, eyed the others in the cell without comment. He was the leader.

“Okay,” I said gently. “One step at a time, Pete. We’ll figure this out. I will figure this out.” I gripped his hand as tight as I could, trying to shake him out of what looked, to me, like the first signs of my brother completely falling apart. “You stay tough tonight, and I’ll get you out of here within twenty-four hours. We can talk about your case then.”

He took a minute with that, squeezing my hand back. He wanted to hold on to my hand for the next twenty-four hours but knew that he couldn’t. “God, Jase, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “You gotta know, what happened here isn’t—”

“Later,” I said. “Later, Pete.”

I looked past him again to the guy I made for Tenth Street, the big bald guy. Most people eventually catch on when they’re being eyeballed, and soon enough he turned in my direction. I nodded to him. “You got a law yer?” I asked him.

He looked at me like I’d asked him if he was enjoying the surroundings. I removed a business card from my pocket and held it, with two fingers, through the bars.

He took a long time with that before speaking. “Ain’t gettin’ no lawyer.”

He wasn’t planning on a private attorney, he meant. “Have I got a deal for you,” I said.

I could see that this guy wanted to dismiss me, but he was interested. He decided to make me wait, but finally he got off the bench and approached me. He got within a few feet of the bars and looked down at my business card without taking it.

“What-choo sayin’ now?”

“You want a lawyer who gets paid by the same people who pay the prosecutor and the judge?” I asked. “Or do you want me?”

“I ain’t got it.”

The money, he meant. “What’s the collar?”

“Dime bag.”

I nodded. “Not your first?”

He shook his head, no.

“I’ll take your case,” I said. “No cash. Just one favor.”

He cocked his head. I pointed to Pete. “My guy here gets through processing clean. Not a hair out of place. Okay?”

This guy took my card and read it. “Kola-rich. Kolarich.” He wagged the card in his hand. “Hey, boss, can’t nobody make that kinda guarantee.”

“You can,” I said. “If you say so, they’ll listen. Right?”

He acknowledged as much and seemed to appreciate the respect. This whole batch of prisoners would be together for the rest of today, from this cell to transport to the basement of the courthouse to bond court. It was the courthouse basement that troubled me the most—that was where the county guards were known, on occasion, to look the other way—and I could only hope that, with this guy’s say-so, Pete would be okay.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Cameron,” he said.

“We got a deal, Cameron?”

He stared at me a long time, then at Pete, who seemed to shrink in the glare. “Yeah, lawyer-man, okay,” he said. “White boy stays clean and I got me a law-yer.”

I took some information from him—family members, job, the kinds of things I’d need to know to try to secure him bond later today—and shook his hand. When he returned to the bench, muttering something to his buddies, I was alone with Pete again. I repeated my earlier admonitions—mouth closed, eyes down—and struggled to pull myself away from that cell, secure in the knowledge, at least, that he’d be okay until I could spring him later today.

If I could spring him.