The Hidden Man

CAN’T MAKE IT, your brother tells you. Got an algebra test Monday.

An algebra test. It doesn’t sell with you. Your brother’s made every home football game, all six your freshman year at State and the four, so far, your sophomore year.

Everything okay? you ask, but you know you won’t get an answer. And you know, with a sinking feeling, what the answer is.

I just have a damn test, don’t make it a big frickin’ deal, he snaps.

You don’t push it. You don’t know-you can’t know-what it’s like for him now, since you’ve left the house. You haven’t bothered to ask because you know he wouldn’t say anything anyway. Pete has always kept his distance that way.

The conversation echoes in your head through Friday and Saturday, even during the game, looking up into the packed stands that seem empty without him there.

The game, a mid-afternoon start, goes well. You don’t score but you have nine catches for over a hundred yards by the third quarter. Your finest moment comes next, not even a pass, a running play, a sweep right. You cut back on an angle and make a beeline for the middle linebacker, who is shuffling to his left. You feel the momentum build with your speed. You want it; you can taste it. He sees you, but it’s too late. You plow into him, the top of your helmet connecting just under his face mask, your shoulders pads barreling into his chest. You knock him off his feet, driving his body backward. You land on him with a force, but you’re not done, you keep driving your feet even as he’s on the ground beneath you, your helmet forcing up his face mask, almost taking his helmet off his head. He pushes you off and you slam your fist into his face mask as the whistle blows but you keep throwing punches at him until someone grabs you and lifts you off.

What the hell are you doing, Kolarich? your teammate shouts at you, as the referee picks up his yellow flag and points at you.

Fifteen yards, personal foul, another fifteen for unsportsmanlike conduct, and you’re out of the game. On the sidelines, the coach is furious, but you don’t even hear him. You walk past him, past your teammates, and off the field.

You throw off your pads in the locker room and don’t even shower. You find your car in the parking lot by the dorm, your piece-of-shit Ford, and you drive the ninety miles home. You’re surprised by your calm, the icy deliberation. When you get home, the house seems empty. Both cars are gone. Pete! you call out. He comes out of his room, surprised to see you, still with the black paint under your eyes, in your sweats.

What’s going on? he asks, before he realizes exactly what’s going on. He immediately turns his head to the left, but you’ve already seen the shiner, the swelling and bruising beneath his left eye.

He did that? you ask.

No, I-I fell-

It’s even worse to hear the denial, the covering up for an abusive father. It means Pete’s not only been beaten physically but mentally. You leave the house, return to your car, and drive. You don’t know where Jack is-he could be working, hustling somebody, but he has a couple of familiar haunts and you find his car at one of them, a dive off the highway called, of all things, “Pete’s.”

You wait. He won’t be there forever. Not because he’ll stop drinking, but because he’ll run out of money.

At ten o’clock, he stumbles out with another guy, but they separate. Jack Kolarich staggers over the gravel rock of the parking lot, unaware of you. When he reaches his Chevy, he stops and then, as if he senses your presence, turns and looks down the way, four cars down. His eyes squint in the darkness, looking at you like you’re an apparition.

You walk slowly toward him, watching the expression on his face take a tour of emotions from confusion to anger to apprehension, but back to anger. Always back to anger.

Superstar, he says to you.

You close the distance swiftly, and it is clear that he knows why you’re here. He takes a step back, draws in his shoulders, a proud man unaccustomed to backing down to one of his boys but realizing his physical disadvantage here. You got the height and build from your mother’s side of the family. You have a good four inches and thirty pounds on your father.

Go back to school, he says, as you swing and hit the side of his skull, a miss, but with enough force to send him against the trunk of his car, off balance. He covers up and you start swinging, both hands raining down blows on him until he slides off the trunk and falls to the ground. You turn him over and continue the onslaught, blood spurting from his battered face, your anger cresting now, and you feel the tears on your face as you keep pummeling your father until his screams subside and he is barely conscious, his face broken, swollen and beet-red, soon to be purple.

Never again, Jack, you say. Or I’ll kill you.

PETE AND I hit a drive-through for some burgers, and then we stopped at his place so he could get a few changes of clothes and some toiletries together. For the next week or so, the plan was, Pete would stay at my place with me. I felt the need to keep my brother close.

I took him to my house, ordered him to shower and get some sleep, and then we’d talk.

He was set up, he’d said. You hear all kinds of similar stories from defendants. Usually it’s portrayed as a misunderstanding, but sometimes the paranoia rises to an allegation of intentional police misconduct. Like anyone would care enough to take the time to frame some asshole small-time criminal.

Still, I’d watched Pete closely from the time I picked him up at the station until he was at my house, throwing his clothes into a dresser and preparing to shower. If he was an addict, he’d be what the prison guards would call “dope-sick,” feeling withdrawal pains. His stomach would be churning. He’d have the shakes. Pete was run-down from the ordeal and clearly terrified, but he wasn’t in withdrawal.

So my gut told me that Pete wasn’t an addict, and that, to me, was the first crack in the foundation. If he was merely a recreational user, then turning to crime would be more a conscious decision than a desperate need, and I just couldn’t see Pete taking that plunge.

I sat on the sofa in my living room, my head fallen back on the cushion, staring at the ceiling, trying to think through the situation. When it rained, it poured. I was up to my ears just keeping up with Sammy’s case and his mysterious benefactor, Smith. Now my little brother was jammed up in a big way. I didn’t know if there was enough of me to go around.

I heard Pete coming down the stairs. He walked into the living room in sweats and bare feet, his hair still wet but combed, smelling fresh and clean again.

“You need sleep,” I said.

“No, I need to tell you that I was set up.” He took a seat in a soft brown leather recliner that Talia conceded for me, even though it didn’t particularly match the green and yellow dйcor of this room. It was the best spot on the planet to watch a college football game.

I rested my elbows on my knees. “Start from the start,” I said.

“Look, I’m an idiot. I know that. I was buying some coke. Same guy I always buy from.” He seemed to catch himself-the always part suggested more prior usage than he’d wanted to concede.

“Just tell me,” I said, weary. “Start with his name.”

“John Dixon,” he said. “J.D. He’s a pretty reliable guy, real discreet.”

“How does it work with you two?”

He shrugged. “I’d call his cell phone and he’d find me.”

“How much would you buy? Typically.”

Pete grimaced. “Why does this matter-”

“You let me decide what matters. Answer me.”

“Well, ‘whatever’ is the answer. Sometimes, just a gram or two. Sometimes more, if some of us are gonna party.”

“Eight-ball? Something like that?”

He nodded. “So I called him on his cell phone last night. He tells me to meet him at this spot over on the near-west side, this warehouse out past Dell. He says it’s that or nothing.”

“And what time was this?”