The Hidden Man

“This is ridiculous,” I said.

“No.” For the first time, Kenny Sanders eyeballed me. “No, sir.”

He needed this, he was saying. He was being rewarded handsomely for giving himself up as a scapegoat. I could follow my conscience and my preppy-white-boy guilt, but Kenny wanted the payday.

“Please,” he said, eyes averted again, nodding insistently. “Please, sir.”

And in the end, Kenny Sanders wouldn’t go down for this. The prosecution had their sights set on Sammy. No, the only thing stopping me was my ethical constraints, and I’d already checked those at the door.

“Okay.” I slipped him my card. “The prosecution’s going to want to talk to you,” I said. “That will happen soon. You’ll probably be testifying even before trial.”

“Okay, yeah. Good, okay.”

“I-have to take this picture,” I said. He knew I’d need to do this.

I had a digital camera I’d given to Talia two Christmases ago. She was the photographer in the family, but I wasn’t completely useless. I snapped Kenny’s photo and stopped at a drugstore on the way home to get the picture developed with copies. When I had it in my hand, I made the call to Tommy Butcher, my only eyewitness.

“I need you to look at something,” I told him.

42

I FOUND TOMMY BUTCHER at the work site in Deemer Park where Butcher Construction was erecting a new facility for the city park district. I don’t recall what previously existed, what had been torn down, but the replacement building was a massive structure, big enough to house indoor tennis courts. First time we met, Butcher had explained to me that his company was a few weeks behind schedule with the project. Apparently that was still the case, if working full-boat on a weekend was any indication.

Men on scaffolding were working on the building’s facade, while others moved in and out of the building through an opening that, one day, would house double doors. Tommy Butcher was surveying their work while he spoke on a walkie-talkie. I caught his eye and he looked away casually, then did a double-take to return to me. He waved to me as he tried to get off his radio. “Okay, Russ, write up the change order and we can decide later. You gotta make a record with these fuckin’ guys, understand me? Now, this isn’t coming from the old man. The old man isn’t working this. It’s coming from me.” He clipped the radio to his belt and gestured in the direction of the building. “These people are gonna be the death of me,” he said.

“The park district?”

He nodded. “Everything’s our fault with these guys. These guys write up the worst specs you’ve ever seen, but we’re supposed to read everyone’s minds. Every time we talk, we gotta make our record with those people.”

“Sounds like someone who’s afraid of a lawsuit.”

He looked at me. “Oh, they’ll sue us. That’s a given. It’s just a question of how much we can get back in a counterclaim.”

So much of the business world is like this now. Litigation is just another cost of doing business, no different than payroll and insurance and bribes to city inspectors. “So, Mr. Butcher-”

“Tommy.”

“Tommy, I have a photo for you to look at.”

He drew back. “No fuckin’ foolin’? You found this guy?”

I struggled with that-or pretended to. “I’d rather not, uh, put ideas in your head.”

The message was clear enough. “You found him,” he repeated.

“Can you just take a look?”

Butcher glanced around before he leaned into me. “Mr. Kolarich, I saw this guy a year ago, runnin’ past me. Right? Understand?”

“Tom-”

“Listen, I saw a guy. I told you that. A black guy. That’s the God’s honest. You tell me you did some digging, you found the guy, I say great. You tellin’ me you got your man? Then it’s the guy I saw. You tell me it’s not your man, then it can’t be the guy I saw. Right?”

I deflated. I couldn’t believe I was even having this conversation. The process was being turned on its head. Usually, Kenny Sanders would be a legitimate suspect only if Tommy Butcher saw him that night. Here, Tommy Butcher saw him only if he’s a legitimate suspect. There are some cops, and maybe some prosecutors, who did it this way. I was never one of those guys. I wore that pride like a badge.

“Hey, look,” he continued, raising his hands, “you got a client who did right by his sister, sounds to me like. Guy killed his sister, so he kills that guy. Me, I might do the same thing. But if it’s me on trial, and there was a black guy barreling out of that building with a gun in his belt, I’d want someone to step up and say so. So I’ll say so. Believe me, I got a hell of lot better things to be doin’ than goin’ to court. But I’ll do it, if you found the guy.”

The wind was whipping up, dropping the temperatures to near freezing. I thought of Talia. I thought of Sammy. And Audrey. I thought about justice and fairness and how rules we put forth to guide a criminal justice system don’t always get it right. There was something larger at play here, a higher ethic. If Sammy killed Griffin Perlini, he didn’t deserve to spend his life in prison. And if he didn’t do it, he sure as hell didn’t deserve a single day inside. No rule of law could alter that truth.

“I found the guy,” I said. “But you didn’t hear me say that.” I handed him a copy of the photo of Kenny Sanders.

He took the photo and didn’t even look at it. “Okay, then. I didn’t hear you say that.”

I told him to keep the photo, which was a subtle direction for him to study it, to commit details to memory. I told him the prosecution would fight his testimony hard and probably try to exclude it prior to trial. Then I left him to his construction project, retreating to my car, safe from the wind. I drove off, secure in the knowledge that I now had two legitimate suspects, Kenny Sanders and Archie Novotny. Each of them was a plausible alternative to Sammy Cutler as the killer of Griffin Perlini. I was disavowing everything I was taught about my profession, crossing virtually every moral boundary, mocking every canon of ethics I had once held sacred. I had fabricated evidence, put words into witnesses’ mouths beyond any typical lawyerly cajoling, and I felt absolutely nothing. No regret. No self-doubt. Just the realization that I was now a lawyer in name only, a man hiding behind a title. I would focus on winning and ignore what I had willingly lost.

“ HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, happy birthday to you.”

Talia sits patiently at the table, wearing that sweet smile and a party hat we have forced her to don for the celebration. I’ve acquiesced in letting Emily carry the cake, dominated by lit candles, from the kitchen to the dinner table. Talia’s parents join in the singing, her mother holding our infant daughter, Justine. Her parents have glasses of wine in front of them, but not for Talia, who is just beginning to show with our third child, a boy.

“Mommy, how old are you?” Emily asks, taking a seat like a big girl at the table.

“Old enough, honey.” She laughs in her self-deprecating way.

“You don’t get any more birthdays,” says Talia’s mother, Ginny. “Because that means I get older, too!” Little Justine, in her lap, begins to whine. She is shaping up to be a carbon copy of Talia.

I am cutting the cake, screwing it up as usual, as Justine is handed over the table to Talia. I pause a moment to watch them, mother, daughter, granddaughter, the shared olive complexion and dark Italian features.

When her parents have left and the children are in bed, I take Talia in my arms and drink in the smell of her shampoo, the silky skin of her neck, the dark, watery eyes that always seem to project multiple colors, the forming lump in her belly. My heartbeat pounds against my chest, against her body joined to mine, and it feels like I love you doesn’t even begin to cover it.

I BREATHED a sigh of relief when the clock passed midnight, as if there were something magical about the