David Ellis - The Hidden Man

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.

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.”