The Hidden Man (20 page)

I’d never been comfortable in that position—the hero, the celebrity. I’d always felt like an imposter. People give you a status based on a physical accomplishment, something you do in a game. Plenty of women flocked to the athletes in high school, and even more so at State. I was no priest. I freely accepted the accoutrements. But I never mistook it for reality. The truth was, it was a lonely existence, questioning the motives of everyone around you—the coaches, the boosters, the women—not trusting anyone with your feelings. State used me and I used State, getting a college degree and heading to law school.

Talia was not one for idol worship. Nor did she know the first thing about football. We’d met in the last year of college, and she couldn’t have cared less about sports. That, I assumed, was one of the many things that drew me to her. She’d listen with interest to the accounts of my accomplishments, but it seemed more of an information-gathering process, just another piece of a puzzle that was Jason Kolarich.

I never knew, precisely, what that puzzle looked like with all the pieces in place. The only thing I knew for sure was that, whatever it used to look like, it would never be the same. I would never fully recover from the loss of Talia and Emily. The raw, gaping wounds would close but they’d always be sensitive to the touch.

I watched Pete, boyish in his messy hair and oversized sweatshirt, drink one beer too many. I watched his expression occasionally deteriorate as he pondered what lay before him. I watched him, and I knew that I would stop at nothing now.

I wasn’t a football player at heart, and I sure as hell wasn’t a team player. I was a competitor. I wanted to win and I enjoyed the thrill of the battle.

But now it was personal. Smith and his friends had invaded what was left of my family. I would make sure he’d regret that decision.

MONDAY MORNING—twenty-one days until trial—I was in the office by nine. Marie buzzed me just as I was opening some files to review.
“Arrelius Jackson from Reynard Penitentiary?”

I didn’t know the name. An inmate, obviously, doing state time.

“Take a message,” I said.

A moment later, Marie buzzed again.
“He says it’s urgent. He says Mr. Smith referred him?”

I felt my blood go cold. “I’ll take it.” I punched the lit button. “Jason Kolarich.”

“Yeah, I need to talk to you.” There was heavy background noise. An inmate using a pay phone.

“So talk.”

“Nah. Face to face, man.”

“I’m busy.”

“Not too busy for this, man. You know where Reynard is?”

“I know where it is,” I said. “I sent a lot of people there.”

I thought he laughed. “You better come, man, you know what’s smart.”

The line went dead. I stared at the phone, as if it could give me some answers. I had a pretty good idea what this was about.

Smith, it seemed, wasn’t taking no for an answer.

My cell phone buzzed. I looked at the face and it was Joel Lightner. I took a moment to decelerate from my conversation with Mr. Arrelius Jackson and answered.

“I’ve got something on John Dixon. Ready?”

“When you are,” I said.

“Black kid, age twenty-eight. Seven pops, all drug-related. Three of them dismissed, three pleaded down, some community service, one stint inside. He was affiliated for a time, a Warlord, but as you know, the War-lords don’t have much going on anymore. Anyway, he’s a Lone Ranger now, he lives down south in Marion Park and works as a courier for an investment banking firm.”

“A courier.”

“Yeah, ain’t that rich? He probably has half his clientele right in that damn firm. Anyway, 4554 West Elvira is the addy. He’s single but has a kid that lives with the mother. The firm he works at is McHenry Stern, downtown. The Hartz Building.”

“Sure.” I continued to scribble. “Awesome, Joel. You’re a peach.”

“You want a tail?”

“I don’t think it would look good on me.”

“Hey, smart guy? What’s it gonna be? Do I tail him? Interview him?”

“Let me think about it,” I said.

“Yeah? You’re making me nervous, kid.”

“Any luck on this ‘Mace’?”

Joel used silence to express his disapproval. Hell, he found people for a living. Why would he assume the worst about
my
intentions?

“No luck,” he finally said. “Nickname isn’t much to go on, right? And cops don’t usually advertise their CI’s.”

Fair enough. John Dixon was the one I wanted, anyway.

26

R
EYNARD PENITENTIARY was a maximum-security prison out in rural country, a good fifty miles northwest of the city. It took me more than an hour to get there, which put me at about half past one. Visiting hours began at two, if memory served, though as a prosecutor we could get access to inmates whenever need be. I’d been out here a few times in my stint as an assistant county attorney, usually flipping witnesses through a combination of sticks and carrots.

The place was a brick fortress with several acres surrounding it on all sides, covered with the usual barbed-wire fencing and in-ground sensors. I was stopped no less than three times on my way in, always checking my identification against the visitor sheet. Arrelius Jackson had put me down as an “A” visit—meaning an attorney-client visit, which entitled us to special rooms where, allegedly, we could speak in confidence. I say “allegedly” because the Department of Corrections, on occasion, had been known to overlook this special privilege and eavesdrop on attorney-client conversations, too. There had been a scandal about five years ago with a downstate penitentiary, resulting in a handful of resignations and typical reactionary reforms.

I didn’t really care. I didn’t have the slightest impression that Arrelius Jackson was looking for a lawyer. I’d done a search on him back at my office. Age thirty-four, African American, unmarried, a sheet starting when he was seventeen. Mr. Jackson was serving consecutive life sentences for a triple homicide in the city about a decade ago. His appeals had long dried up.

I was searched, seized, X-rayed, poked and prodded. I gave my autograph a couple of times and passed through two metal gates before I was finally ensconced in a small room of concrete walls, painted green, and a metal table at which I sat. The single door to the room popped open with a hydraulic
whoosh
and in walked the man of the hour, none other than Mr. Arrelius Jackson, in an orange body suit, accompanied by two of Reynard Penitentiary’s finest.

Inmates used the phrase
stone cold
to describe the nastiest, scariest of the prison population. The term was typically reserved for the sexual predators and the enforcers. I didn’t know if Jackson was either of those but I figured if I looked up the phrase in the dictionary, I would find a picture of the man now standing before me.

Jackson had several scars on his forehead, followed by braided hair pulled tightly over his skull. Uneven facial hair straggled along his jaw line. His eyes were small and cold, and fixed on me from the moment he walked in the room.

One guard—unarmed—bolted Jackson’s handcuffs to the metal clip on the table while another armed guard observed from a safe distance. The protocol had been established a couple of decades ago, after a manacled inmate managed to lift the handgun out of a guard’s holster during this very process. The guards left us, closing the thick metal door. They could monitor us from a camera posted in the corner of the room but they couldn’t listen—allegedly.

Throughout this entire process, Jackson never took his eyes off me, not showing a trace of emotion. He had raped and killed. He had no hope for release. His life would be spent in this Darwinian hellhole, where the only hope for survival was to be meaner and tougher than everyone else.

Arrelius Jackson hated me. He hated every man associated in any marginal way with the criminal justice system, with authority, a cop, a lawyer, a judge, the people who felt entitled to lock him in a cage. Undoubtedly he hated his own lawyer, part of the same system, in his mind probably equally corrupted, in cahoots with the prosecution all along. Given the chance, he would come over the table right now and pummel me, smash every tooth in my mouth, use my skull for a punching bag, probably piss on my dead corpse.

Usually that didn’t happen until people got to know me.

I leaned back in my uncomfortable chair and stared back at him. I wasn’t going to speak first. It was his dime. His call.

“Bitch,” he said, then he chuckled to himself, amused.

That cleared up any minute possibility that he was seeking my legal assistance. He was here to intimidate me. Smith had reached this guy. I had a pretty good idea of his sales pitch from here on out.

“Is that what your mama used to call you?” I asked.

“Say again?”

“I mean, Arrelius—that’s a girl’s name, right? Did your mama dress you up in pretty pink doll outfits and call you ‘bitch’?”

He didn’t engage. His face balled up in rage, then eased. His mouth was a tight, straight line.

“Your brother,” he said. “Nice white boy like that. Nice little bitch. Be
my
bitch, he come here. Don’t matter where, man. Be someone’s bitch. We’ll be sure a that. Time we’re done, he be
beggin’
for the blade.” He made a motion, a finger tracing across his throat. “We gonna slice that white boy wide open,” he said.

I had expected this. I’d prepared for this. Still, it was all I could do—it took every mental muscle I could flex—to look disinterested, bored, unaffected, as this lifer inmate threatened to commit every conceivable felony on my brother. Smith was telling me he had a wide reach. He could get to Pete inside. Pete would never make it out of the penitentiary, and his time inside, while still alive, would be worse than death.

I bottled the rage, ignored the hammering inside my brain, and slowly nodded at Arrelius Jackson. “Is that it? Anything else?”

He took a moment, then smiled at me. “I’ll keep a spot warm for him, man.”

I got up and picked up my briefcase. I walked past Jackson and stopped behind him, positioning myself so that, chained as his hands were to the table, he could not reach me. I leaned into him and whispered into his ear.

“Redgrave Park,” I said. “That’s where your brother lives, right? Arrelius, one thing happens to
my
brother, I’ll castrate yours. And I’ll send you a picture.”

I left him, straining against his restraints, unsure of whether I was bluffing or telling the truth.

I drove away from Reynard Penitentiary with electricity flowing through my limbs. I told myself to focus on solving the problem but couldn’t stifle unimaginable images, courtesy of Arrelius Jackson. As a prosecutor, you hear that prison rape happens but not as often as they say. Still, a scrawny, good-looking white boy like Pete? He wouldn’t stand a chance.

Solve the problem.

Smith’s people had connections, all right. He’d managed to frame Pete and to get an inmate to threaten Pete’s well-being inside. He was flexing his muscle for me, and it was working.

“McHenry Stern on South Walter,” I said to the automated voice. I was driving back to my office, calling information on my cell phone. “Connect me,” I answered when the robot asked me my preference. I was all for technological advancement, but Christ, can’t I get a human being on the phone once in a while?

A woman answered the phone and spoke so quickly, I wasn’t even sure I had the right number. “I’m looking for John Dixon,” I said. “He works in the mail room.”

“Please hold for the mail room.”

Apparently the mail room was in another country, because it took a painfully long period of time to connect me, to the point that I was about to hang up, call information again, and start over with the speed-talking receptionist, when a gruff male voice answered. “Yeah.”

“Looking for John Dixon,” I said.

“He’s—hang on.” The man moved the phone from his mouth and called out behind him, but I had no trouble hearing him.
“J.D.’s off this week, right?”

“He’s not here,” the man said, returning to me. That was a bit more succinct than the dialogue I’d just overheard.

“Do you know when you expect him back?”

“No.”

“Will he call in for messages?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can I leave a message with you?”

“Um—we don’t really do that.”

“You’ve been a tremendous help.” I closed the cell phone.

So J.D. had taken a powder from work for the time being. Maybe this had been some time off he’d been planning, but I’m not a big believer in coincidences.

The Buick came back into my focus, several car lengths behind me. I drove to my parking garage, across the street from my office building, where I have a monthly pass. I approached the entry gate, which popped up when its sensor clicked with the module attached to my dashboard, and found a place to park on the fourth floor. I took the elevator down and slowly walked across the street to my building—slow enough for anyone watching to see me. I didn’t actually see the Buick or its occupant and didn’t want to be obvious in looking. I had to assume that they didn’t know I was on to them.