David Ellis - The Hidden Man

I spun around, locating an exit down a hallway. Two men were loitering, talking to each other, noting me as I ran toward the door. Whatever was happening, I was reasonably sure these two were guarding that door, but I didn’t have the luxury to inquire. I blew past them, feeling them move behind me. I pushed open the door into darkness, cool air, sounds of violent struggle.

I felt a whump across my chest, a heavy blow that took my breath. I fell against a brick wall and shrunk to the pavement. A moment later, light came from the exit door again, and I felt a sharp kick to my ribs.

“Just a reminder, Jason,” the man said. I leaned forward, but I hadn’t caught my breath yet. As several men scurried down the alleyway, I scanned through the darkness and saw a figure slumped on the ground. I could hear him moving frantically, the sound of fabric scraping against pavement.

“Pete,” I managed, and my eyes adjusted somewhat to the darkness. Pete was rolled over on his side, pulling up his pants. “Pete.”

I crawled over to him.

“They didn’t do anything,” he said. “They didn’t do anything.” He got his pants back up to his waist. “They didn’t do anything,” he insisted. He was humiliated, terrified, trying to put up a brave front to no avail.

“What-” I caught my breath, inhaled fully twice.

“A reminder,” he spat. “What it’ll be like-inside.”

I put a hand on Pete, as he covered his face with his hands, lying in the fetal position, his chest heaving.

MY BROTHER AND I went straight home. I set the house alarm and left on the lights on both levels of my town house. Pete drank a little more to settle his nerves. Eventually, the terror of the alley receded, replaced with a growing sense of dread for what lay before him in the coming weeks and months. By three A.M., his eyes were crested with dark circles. I coerced him to get some sleep. I don’t know if he was able to do so. As for me, sleep came episodically, twenty-minute pops abruptly terminated by unidentifiable screams between my ears.

It wasn’t panic. I was experiencing the same pregame sensation of utter calm, focus, a sense of purpose. I knew then, if I hadn’t already, that Smith and company had no intention of holding up their end of the bargain-their promise that if I saved Sammy, they’d save Pete. Their subtle coercive methods had devolved into crude, tortuous gestures, an unveiled threat from a prison gangbanger and then an outright attack in an alley. These were people who settled their problems with violence. Even if I won the case for Sammy, Smith and friends would evaluate their position, identify Pete and me as liabilities, and presumably kill us.

I had a few things going for me. First, I was Sammy’s lawyer. For the time being, at least, Smith apparently needed me. Second, for a reason I couldn’t yet pinpoint, time was on my side. Smith demanded that the case go to trial within the next three weeks, without additional continuances or delays, so it was a pressure point I could manipulate.

Third, they needed Pete, too, to serve as the leverage against me. They had no problem roughing him up to punch my buttons, but they couldn’t kill him, not yet. Still, for the time being, secure as he might have been from a violent death, Pete was still a sitting duck for Smith’s thugs. I had to get him out of Dodge. I had to hide him.

It was for the best, anyway, that Pete get lost for a while. I didn’t want him around for what might come next. I wondered about that for a long time, as I sat on my bed, waiting for the sun to come up, fatigue sweeping over me like a heavy coat, my eyes losing focus but the churning of my stomach preventing any attempt at sleep: What was I capable of doing?

SAMMY SEEMED TIRED, more than usual, when I visited him the following morning. Rare was the inmate who looked well-rested, but Sammy, I assumed, had done a great deal of thinking about his sister since the discovery of the bodies behind Hardigan Elementary School. Nor did it help that he was less than three weeks from a murder trial that could put him in prison for the rest of his life.

Despite his obvious sleep deprivation, Sammy listened attentively as I laid out the entire story about Smith, and what had followed with Pete. He was alternatively concerned and puzzled, two traits I had in great quantities myself these days. “Pete,” he mumbled. “Pete.”

I was running short on time, and I’d hoped that Sammy knew more than he was letting on about Smith. I was disappointed.

“Man, I don’t know that guy Smith,” he said when I finished. “He shows up, offers me ‘the best lawyer money can buy’-I figured the same as you, Koke. He was working for someone who that asshole hurt. Some victim. Y’know, sympathetic to what I was going through. Wanting to offer help. I mean, yeah, it was kinda weird that he didn’t want to give me their names, but, y’know, under the circumstances-a lot of people like to stay anonymous when it comes to, y’know-”

He was right. Sex abuse victims don’t advertise on billboards. That might be all it was with Smith. But it sure felt like more. “These guys are hiding something,” I said. “Something they’re afraid I’ll find. Sammy, I think-” I gathered my thoughts a moment. “Sam, look-I never ask a client if he’s guilty. I dance around it, because most of my clients are guilty, and if I know that, I can’t put them on the stand to testify they didn’t do it. Right?”

Sammy was listening intently. He nodded slowly.

“Right,” I continued. “But I’m sitting here thinking, Smith is working for someone who killed Griffin Perlini. Maybe they feel for you, maybe they want you to beat the rap, but their main concern is that they don’t want me out there trying to find new suspects, because they’re afraid I’ll find them .”

Sammy didn’t answer. He’d given me ample reason to think he killed Griffin Perlini, though he hadn’t come out and said it. But he’d also been the one to mention that I should consider other victims of Perlini’s crimes. Look at other people he hurt , he’d suggested, the first time we talked strategy.

“Should I be looking for Griffin Perlini’s killer, Sammy?”

Sammy looked away, turned his head. He hadn’t shaved for a while, and a thickening red beard was forming. “I don’t get this stuff with Smith,” he said. “Doing all that shit to Pete and all. But there’s one guy, I think-a good guy, but I could see…”

Was Sammy proclaiming his innocence?

“The name,” I said, but I thought I already knew it. I just didn’t want to be the one to say it first.

“Archie,” he said. “Guy named Archie Novotny. His daughter-Jody-was one of the victims.”

I hadn’t told Sammy of my visit to Novotny. “Why him?” I asked.

Sammy shook his head slowly. “He took the thing with Jody real hard. And he seems like the kind of guy who might have it in him.”

“He’s close enough to matching the description,” I noted.

“Oh, you’ve met him.”

“I did, Sammy. And I managed a peek in his coat closet. Guess who owns a brown leather bomber jacket and a green stocking cap?”

“No shit? Wow.” Sammy fell back in his chair, new animation. “You think Archie did it? For real?”

I felt an uneasy heat to my face, a weight on my shoulders. “Sammy,” I confessed, “I thought you did it.”

He showed a brief hint of a smile. I wasn’t sure what to make of this.

“Novotny says he has an alibi,” I said. “He says he was at a guitar lesson. I’m checking it out.”

Sammy thought about that. “Maybe it’s a cover. Yeah, shit.” He looked at me. “But that don’t explain Smith.”