David Ellis - The Hidden Man

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.”

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?”