The Hidden Man

“Mr. Kolarich, it’s Jim Stewart.”

“Thanks for getting back,” I said. His parents must have been awfully big fans of the actor, because, I mean, come on, you give a kid a name like that, he’s gotta deal with the comments his entire life, the crappy impressions-Ah, ah, say, now, ah, ah-and Christmastime must have been hell with that damn movie playing every other minute.

“Your message mentioned Lightner? You work with Joel?”

“Yeah, he gave me your name. Said you were stand-up.”

He laughed. “He probably said I was a good-for-nothin’ drunk.”

“That came up, too.”

“Right, right. Anyway,” he said, “sounds like we should meet?”

I looked up and down the street for my tail, which at the moment I couldn’t see.

“You got some time for me this afternoon?” I asked.

“ HONEY, I’M HOME!” I call out, something out of a ’50s sitcom, a standing joke with my wife. It’s a not-so- hectic week for me at the office. They don’t come often so I try to make them count.

“Daddy!” Emily hears the door. She comes bounding down the stairs as I open my arms.

“Hey, princess!” I say, in that soothing voice I reserve for my daughter. We go through the usual routine, kisses, tickling, gleeful squealing. As Emily and I climb the stairs, I hold Emily upside down to her nonprotest ing protest.

I find Talia in the bedroom, just having walked out of the master bath, wiping at her eyes. She smiles at me but there’s something besides innocuous happiness to her look.

“Hey, babe.” I set down Emily and fix on my wife. There is something equivocal in her expression, not necessarily good or bad, but important. My eyes find their way to the bed, to an open box, a thin strip of paper next to it, a set of folded instructions.

“Oh.” My eyes shoot back to meet hers. We’ve talked about it in a serious but casual way, serious in that she knew I meant it, casual in that we hadn’t been formally trying.

“Is it-are you-?” I move around the bed and take her hands in mine. “We’re gonna have a-?”

My forehead touches hers, an instant connection of body heat. She can no longer restrain her emotions. “This is what you want, right?” she whispers.

I wrap my arms around her. “Of course this is what I want, babe. Of course it is.” I turn to Emily, who seems to understand that she is being left out of a secret. “C’mere, sweetheart,” I say. I crouch down and lift my daughter into the air. “How’d you like a baby brother or sister, Em?”

I LEFT THE cemetery a little after one, a surge of bitterness gripping me, the mixing of anger with the ubiquitous anguish. I resented Talia. I wanted to close the book on what happened. I wanted to pretend that I’d never met her, we’d never had Emily. But the book, I knew, would never close. I’d just flip back to the beginning, or the middle, when I reached the end.

I wanted to understand it. I really did. I wanted to believe that there was a God, and He had a plan, and this was all a good thing in some way, but there was no way that a beautiful young woman and our precious, innocent child dying violent deaths could possibly be for the greater good.

The sky was debating another rainfall, and the temperatures had fallen. Midwestern October always does this, flip-flopping between extended summer and early winter, occasionally giving us the autumn we desperately prefer.

“If you hate me,” I said, looking upward, “then I hate you back.”

I drove on, conscious of a black SUV a few cars back. These guys really didn’t have to switch cars every day. The fact that they did so told me that they were trying to maintain a surreptitious cover. They thought I wasn’t aware of them. That, in and of itself, told me something. These guys were serious customers but they weren’t pros, at least not in the cloak-and-dagger business.

I deviated from my normal destination and had to think a little bit about the proper route to St. John’s. It was the parish Talia and I had chosen, among many on the north side. It was hard to wave your arm in the city without hitting a Catholic church, but we settled pretty quickly on St. J’s, as most people called it. Talia liked it because of the choir. I preferred it because I liked Father Ben, a younger guy with a good sense of humor and a self- deprecating style. Catholicism, twenty-first-century style.

None of them had the feel of our parish growing up in Leland Park, St. Peter’s. St. Pete’s looked like it had barely survived an aerial bombing in World War II and hadn’t felt the need for an update in the interim. The priest at St. Pete’s preached his homilies like he was Moses descending from the mountain following his one-on-one with the burning bush.

But Father Ben, he was okay in my book, as okay as I could feel about a man of God today. When I walked into St. J’s, I found him coming up the stairs from the meeting rooms downstairs. I avoided looking to the right, to the sanctuary itself, to the altar where Emily was baptized at three months.

“Jason, it’s good to see you.” Father Ben was in a white shirt and dark trousers. His flyaway hair wasn’t in its usual order. It always seemed weird to see a priest out of uniform. I let him work me over a minute. I’d expected some gentle chiding for my lack of attendance since the funerals but didn’t receive it. We covered how I was doing, then talked a little football.

When the small talk subsided, he seemed to struggle with what would come next. I preempted him by saying, “Thanks for your help today, Father.” And for not asking me why, I didn’t add.

He gave a heavy sigh and surprised me by putting his hand on my shoulder. I raised my hand because I didn’t want to hear whatever he might say. “Please, don’t,” I said, drawing away.

“Okay, okay. No homilies today. But can I just say one thing?”

I could hardly deny him.

“He didn’t leave you, Jason. Don’t leave Him.”

I nodded slowly, a bitter smile creeping forth. “Or what?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Or what, Father? What’s He going to take from me, He hasn’t already taken?”

Father Ben deflated. His eyes searched me for something, I wasn’t sure what. I tapped my watch. “I gotta do this,” I said. “Thanks again for your help.”

I took the stairs down to the meeting room. Jim Stewart, it turned out, didn’t look anything like his namesake, the actor. This guy was short and stout and dour, a military crew cut, a guy who seemed like he didn’t have a lot of friends. In his line of work, he probably didn’t.

I thought of one of the actor’s best roles, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. I thought I might like a sequel. Maybe Smith Goes to Prison.

Or Smith Goes to the Morgue.

“I’ve got a problem,” I told Jim Stewart. “I need your help.”

38

THE ITALIAN DELI and coffee shop about two blocks from the criminal courts has been a fixture since long before I was a prosecutor. The proprietors, two Sicilian immigrants now in their sixties, are there every day chatting up the customers and telling stories about how things used to be in the city, before the federal government starting sticking its nose into the cesspool of local government, pinching aldermen, exposing bogus city contracts, generally bringing sunlight into areas of public works where shade used to predominate.

It’s mostly a hangout for the lawyers who populate the criminal courts, though cops like to hit the place as well-the exorbitant price of the coffee and pastries notwithstanding. Detective Denny DePrizio was at the counter, as expected, at ten-thirty sharp this fine Friday morning.