The Hidden Man (10 page)

You stop on the driveway, turn and run, just as the front door bursts open, people shouting after you, just like how it goes on television,
Freeze—police
, and some instinct causes you and Sammy to separate, Sammy running south, you running north. You’ve spent a year on the football squad by now; you’ve honed your physical skills. You can run like lightning and you do, full force, never looking back, using all the advantages of a boy on foot, cutting through alleys and over backyard fences, maximizing the difficulty of anyone giving chase by car. You don’t stop until you’re far beyond your neighborhood, a good five miles at least.

Sammy
. You don’t know. He can’t run like you. You think about it and you hope, you pray. Yes, you’ve abandoned your car across the street from Ice’s house, and you know what’s in the trunk. Still, it’s possible, all of it: It’s possible Sammy got away; it’s possible the cops don’t know it’s your car; it’s possible Ice hasn’t given you and Sammy up—after all, the police weren’t after small-timers like you. They’re after the higher-ups in the chain, right?

The next hours, the late afternoon and early evening, are agonizing. You walk aimlessly, slowly circling back toward your neighborhood. You’re hesitant to make it home that night, wondering if a police car is awaiting you on the driveway. You approach your house tentatively, scanning up and down the street. When you walk through the front door, your sweat-drenched hair stuck to your forehead, your pulse rattling, your mother is sitting at the kitchen table with your brother, Pete.

Sammy’s at the police station
, she tells you.

I DROVE BACK from the police station, thinking about Sammy in his cell, thinking about Mrs. Perlini and the denial she lived with, and thinking about the blue Chevy that had kept a pretty safe distance from me since I first drove back to my old neighborhood earlier today. I could only assume that this was the same friend I’d made a couple nights back, leaving that club. I was being followed, no question.

I called Pete on my cell. He wanted to head out tonight and I said I’d think about it. He sounded okay on the phone, but I was still thinking about the other night at the club. I was pretty sure he’d been using drugs, and for all I knew, he’d been back using for quite some time. I’d been in such a funk for the last four months that it had probably escaped my attention.

“We gotta talk, little brother,” I told him.

He laughed. “‘We gotta talk?’ What does
that
mean?” He was being defensive. From what I knew, Pete had never been more than a casual user, but the slope, as they say, was a slippery one.

I didn’t respond to him because he knew what I meant. I didn’t have any right to tell him what to do, and I had no real desire to do so. Add to that, Pete had done a pretty good job watching over me these last few months, so it felt a little weird preaching to him. Still, I couldn’t just let it go.

“Just—we’ll talk tonight,” I said, after tiring of his moaning.

“Forget about tonight,” he said. “Save your sermon for someone else. And hey—it’s nice to see you’re back to form, telling me how to live my life.”

I drove home with the music down, keeping an eye on the Chevy following me, memorizing the license plate, though I assumed that a trace wouldn’t get me anything. I thought about screwing with the guy, hitting the brakes, maybe letting him pass me, waving hello to him or tailing him, but I didn’t see any advantage in any of that. Better he should think he’s a world-class expert in surveillance, until I could figure out what I needed to do with him.

14

I
SPENT THE NIGHT IN, staring at the walls of my bedroom, watching the television with the sound low. I was beyond the point of self-torture. I no longer played the CDs that Talia loved, Morrissey and Sarah McLachlan and Tracy Chapman. I no longer obsessed over our wedding album. I no longer so much as set foot in Emily’s room, the nursery, which Talia had done out in pink and green with a Beatrix Potter theme, cute little bunnies prancing among soft pastel colors.

Nor did I drink, at least not for the purpose of drowning my sorrows. Alcohol didn’t work for me that way; it heightened the pain, unleashed emotion. When you’re drowning, you already feel out of control. You don’t need intoxication to feel unstable.

No, the only thing for me was frivolous diversion, the most innocuous sitcom or infomercial I could find on the tube, the easiest beach-read paperbacks I could buy. I couldn’t handle extremes, so I was reaching for the soft middle.

In some ways, it’s better now, but in most ways it’s worse. The death of a loved one is unfathomable initially, this amazingly horrible thing that can’t have really happened, and then you’re immediately assigned to the rather mundane tasks of notifying people, arrangements with the cemetery, planning a funeral. And then everyone you care about is surrounding you, delivering food in Tupperware and lingering about for a required length of time. After a couple of weeks, everything returns to normal, and that’s when you realize that
normal
has a new meaning. That’s when you realize that this is your life now, that you own a three-bedroom, two-bath home with a nursery done up specially for a daughter you don’t have, sleeping in a bed for two when there’s only one.

I fell asleep watching syndicated reruns, sitting up in bed with my clothes on, probably some time around two in the morning. I had a dream, the contents of which evaporated from my memory when my eyes popped open; the only thing I recalled was the sound that had awakened me—the sound of Emily crying out, as she had so many times in the depth of night, a whimper that slowly grew into a wail.

It was dawn. I was desperately tired but unable to sleep. I got out of bed and went to the bathroom, getting the toilet lid open just in time to vomit. I sat on the floor of the bathroom, taking deep breaths, scolding myself to no avail. I threw up again and then took a shower.

At nine, I got in my car and drove to see Tommy Butcher, the one witness in Sammy’s case who could actually help us. From what I had read in the report he gave to the police, on the night of Griffin Perlini’s murder at the approximate time of the murder, Tommy Butcher was leaving a bar called Downey’s Pub when a black man came running out of Perlini’s apartment building. Being someone who, like most people, prefers to mind his own business, Butcher thought nothing of it and went on with his life.

Butcher gave his statement to the police only three weeks ago, after reading about the case in the newspaper—meaning that by that point, the police had long ago arrested Sammy and fixed their focus on him as the murderer. Once the police decide they have their man, it’s game over for them. I knew that the prosecution would go to great lengths to discount Tommy Butcher’s testimony and, if possible, discredit him personally.

For starters, Butcher’s statement to the police came roughly a year after the murder, which would make someone wonder how he could be so sure about the precise date that he saw the black-guy-fleeing-the-scene. And undoubtedly, Butcher’s memory would be expected to be faulty, after he’d spent a night in a bar. But maybe something had stood out that made him remember the event particularly well. Maybe the black-guy-fleeing-the-scene had said
I just killed Griffin Perlini
as he sprinted by.

He’d asked to meet at a coffee shop near 87th and Pershing, which was near a job Butcher was working. Tommy Butcher was a principal at Butcher Construction Company, a family-owned construction firm that had offices in the city and in a large downstate town called Maryville, principally known as the home of Marymount Penitentiary. Butcher Construction had built the addition to the prison and did some other work in that area, but mostly the company did public construction jobs here in the city. Fair or not, you think of big city contracts, you think connections. You think corruption.

Butcher looked like a guy with a lifetime in the trade, a wide guy with half a head of hair; a rough, tan complexion; and a meaty hand that engulfed mine when he greeted me. He sized me up and didn’t seem too disappointed, though I couldn’t guess what criteria he was using. Having had some experience with contractors when Talia and I did some renovation work on our home, I generally put the integrity of construction types right up there with politicians and car salesmen.

“Doing the new park district building over at Deemer Park,” he told me, as we waited for coffee. “City’s throwing a shit-fit because we’re two weeks behind schedule.”

I thought he was trying to tell me that he didn’t have much time for me, so I got right to asking him what happened.

“I’m over at Downey’s,” he began. “Having a few drinks. I left about ten, maybe, something like that. I’m walking east, I guess—yeah, east on Liberty and I’m going by this building. It’s got a walk-up, a staircase, up to the front door. Looks like a real fleabag place, so it fits right in with the surroundings, right?”

“Right.”

“Right. So anyway, this black guy comes out of the door real fast, right? And he’s flying down those stairs. His jacket’s flying open kind of, while he’s running and all, and I see this guy has a gun stuffed in his pants. So me, I don’t want no part of this guy, right? So he goes running past me, and I’m not getting in this brother’s way, right? Guy flies right past me and that’s about it.”

I nodded. I was scribbling some notes.

“And so, yeah, I guess it sure seemed like this guy wasn’t running away because he’d done something good. But what am
I
gonna do? I didn’t do nothing. What am I gonna do, call the cops and say I saw a guy running?”

“Nothing for you to report,” I agreed.

The coffee arrived, and he filled it with cream. “Nothing to report. Right? Am I wrong?”

I’d already answered that question. There’s no crime in running out of a building, and Butcher hadn’t known that someone had been shot.

“So then, okay, I’m reading about this guy who’s been shot at this building, and I’m thinking back, and then I check my calendar and yeah, I was pretty sure that was the night I was at Downey’s, and I call my brother Jake and we think about it and then we’re sure. It was that Thursday, September 21. And I’m thinking, holy Christ, I gotta tell someone.”

It sounded plausible. It would be a lot better if I could come up with a black suspect, and even better if Butcher could ID that suspect. But I didn’t have anyone, not yet, at least.

“Can anyone confirm you were at Downey’s that night?” I asked. “You mentioned your brother.”

“Yeah, Jake, my brother. He could say.”

“Who else?”

He shook his head. “Just me and Jake.”

I asked him for brother Jake’s contact information. He gave me a cell phone number.

“You pay with a credit card?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. Why, someone’s gonna say I wasn’t
there
?” He didn’t seem happy about the prospect. I figured Tommy Butcher was used to being in charge and didn’t appreciate dissent.

“It won’t be me. I’m on your side.” I thought that last point was worth making. I wanted it to be us against them. I wanted to harden his resolve for the inevitable doubts that would be forthcoming.

“Do you remember what he was wearing, this black guy?” I asked.

“I remember the gun, mostly.” That stood to reason. Most witnesses, when they see a gun, don’t remember much else. They find themselves predominantly concerned with whether that weapon might be pointed at them in the immediate future.

“The man seen leaving Griffin Perlini’s apartment was wearing a brown leather bomber jacket and a green stocking cap,” I said. It was simply a harmless, innocuous observation, not a blatant attempt to coach the witness.

He thought about that for a minute. “Coulda been,” he said. “Coulda been.” His fingers played on the table. Then he nodded at me. “Your guy got a chance to win this case?”

I shrugged.

“I mean,” Butcher continued, “paper said this douche bag got killed, this guy Perlini, right? They said he killed your guy’s sister. So I guess that gives your guy a pretty good reason to do what he did.”

“If he did it,” I answered.

He exhaled out of his nose, a wry smile, like I’d just made a joke. I thought he was suggesting to me that a jury wouldn’t convict a guy avenging his sister’s murder. He was thinking, perhaps, that I had a pretty good case. I needed him to understand otherwise. I needed him to understand his importance to my case.

“Problem is,” I said, “Perlini was never convicted of killing my client’s sister. They couldn’t make a case against him. He walked. So I can’t get up and say that to the jury. I can’t say Sammy was doing this for his sister, because there’s no proof of it.”

My explanation seemed to trouble Tommy Butcher, which was precisely my intention. “I mean, we all know Perlini killed her,” I said. “I just can’t prove it. Not yet, that is.”

Butcher repeated my words. “Not yet.”

“Not yet. I’m trying. But digging up an almost thirty-year-old case—and I’m not a cop, I don’t have an arsenal of investigators or anything. I’m trying, but it’s going to be hard. And I don’t have much time. So you’re the best I have, Tom.”