A Visible Darkness

by Jonathon King

  I drank half the beer with two long, breathless swallows and the cold spread up into my cheekbones and made my eyes tear. Out on the horizon a soft string of bruised clouds was piling up. The late afternoon sun gave them color. The washed out shades of gray, purple and pink looked like a child’s watercolor spread with too much moisture. I sat back on the chaise and thought about the first time I’d seen both my and Billy’s mothers together.

  My mother had been working at the First Methodist Church on Bainbridge and Fourth Street in the historic section. For her own reasons my mother had left her lifelong Catholic church in South Philly, and every Sunday she took an early bus ride to First Methodist. Since my father had never stepped foot in church since his confirmation, it was not a subject he cared about or controlled her with. At the church she would work the kitchen, setting up coffee and rolls and morning juices for the clergy and their assistants. Because it was a volunteer position and a 6:00 A.M. requirement, she was mostly alone. I had already joined the police department and had come with her to help before, but when we arrived this day there was a stout, black woman in the kitchen. She had on an apron and was setting out heavy white coffee mugs.

  She greeted my mother by her first name and with a meaningful hug. When I was introduced she offered her hand and said, “Oh my, Ann-Marie—this can’t be the boy you been talkin’ bout. Why, this is a man!

  “Son, you is twice the size of my boy Billy.”

  I looked at my mother. Her face was prideful and soft and more comfortable with this woman and their morning embrace than I had ever witnessed at home among blood relations. Their friendship would not have been easy in either of their respective neighborhoods, but it had a simple existence in this church basement. It was also a secret friendship that I admired because I knew my father would never have allowed it. That she had moved behind his back gave me a special appreciation for her.

  In the weeks and months to follow I would see them several times in that kitchen, laughing together over a sink of dishes or huddled with their hands cupped over one another’s at the long empty table.

  One winter morning I had come to pick her up, and when I came down the steps the two of them were whispering to each other and didn’t notice me. At first I thought they were praying, their hands again clasped together on the table.

  But this time I saw a small bottle being passed, short and made of brown glass like an old apothecary bottle. And this time the tears had not been wiped away from my mother’s face. When I looked at Mrs. Manchester’s wet eyes she bent to my mother and whispered, “It’s all right, baby. The Lord will forgive.”

  My mother refused to tell me why she had been crying. As far as I knew she had never let loose the demons in her life to anyone save a priest or her own version of God. She was quiet for the entire trip home but when I helped her out of the car and to the stoop, she turned to me and said, “You should go to Florida, Maxey. Mrs. Manchester’s boy Billy is a lawyer down there. You should meet him. You could leave this behind.” Then she spun with the back of her hand turned up to me, her sign of enough said, and stepped up into the house.

  “M-Max?”

  Billy was standing next to me. A glass of white wine was in one hand and a sweating bottle of beer in the other.

  “You are absorbed.”

  “Thinking about old times,” I said. “And mothers.”

  “Ahh,” was his only response.

  Billy and I had spent many nights on this porch, hashing out our mothers’ scheme. When the pieces were put together, he’d understood his own mother’s burden of complicity, and I had a clearer grasp on gratitude.

  We both looked out at the ocean. Three miles out it was raining. I could see the dark curtain slurring down with thick bands falling in curls.

  “To old times,” Billy said, raising his wine. We touched bottle to glass but neither of us drank.

  “Our investors are t-taking us on quite a ch-chase,” Billy said, interrupting the thought.

  Billy had been tracking the investors. He’d run their incorporation records back through the state’s Bureau of Professional Regulations. He’d found three companies filed under fictitious—but not necessarily illegal—names. He’d finally found the names of corporate officers, but none of them had raised any red flags.

  “Just incorporated b-businessmen. We can follow the t-trail of money that maybe p-puts McCane’s middleman in direct contact with them. But it’s still a hard case t-to make.”

  “Invisible,” I said, more to myself than Billy.

  “In m-many ways, yes.”

  “And if all our theories are correct. They still might not know what’s going on with their money?”

  “Oh, they know w-what’s going on with their money,” Billy said. “This kind always knows w-what’s going on with their money.”

  18

  I stayed in Billy’s guest room, on clean sheets and in air conditioning. I had drunk too much, and the good old bad times kept swimming in my head. Once I woke up shivering and pulled a blanket up from the foot of the bed. I curled up like a child and fell back into an old and recurring dream of the night my father died.

  I was working patrol on the B shift. It was 5:00 A.M. and my mother had probably sat as long as she could while the daylight crept in and pushed the dark out of their room. When she could see him lying there, she couldn’t stand it any longer and called.

  The sergeant got me on the radio and asked me to meet him at the roundhouse. I figured I’d screwed up again on some paperwork, until I saw his face in the dispatch room. My uncle Keith, another lifetime cop, was standing next to him.

  “Let me drive ya home, kid,” Keith said.

  Eighth Street was slick with morning rain when we made the corner at Mifflin. Porch lights and street lamps were still reflecting on the sidewalks and the wet hood of the M.E.’s van double-parked in front of my parents’ house. I still had my uniform on and the beat cop, who I only knew in passing, took off his hat. On the porch next door Mrs. O’Keefe stood with her fingers curled over her mouth.

  I walked in the front door and past the stairs and down the narrow hall where I knew I would find my mother, sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in her flowered day dress, staring up at the east side window like she had done every morning since I could remember. Her hands were folded like a supplicant praying to daybreak.

  “Mom?”

  “Maxey?” she answered, turning from the light. I pulled a chair across the wooden floor and sat in front of her and took her hands in mine.

  “You okay, Mom?”

  “I’m fine, Max. Just fine now.”

  There was not so much as a glisten in her eyes. Her face was drawn and sallow, but no more than it had been in the two years that the old man had been sick. He had gone weak fast since a liver ailment had pulled him down from his hard-drinking, anger- spitting heights. He’d been on disability with the department. Several months ago, when they’d tried to appease his hate of hospitals by bringing an oxygen tank and mask into his room, he’d slapped the offending thing away and cursed the technician until the guy slammed the front door.

  But my mother remained vigilant, always with the homemade soup that he demanded. Always within earshot of his denigrating orders, and frequently still within slapping distance of his hand.

  As we sat there I heard the creak of the loose wood on the third step from the top of the staircase, and I winced at the sound—and saw my mother blink also. How many times had we both heard that creaking step and held our breaths, lying in our beds hoping his anger would not visit us?

  When I was young, and he came to my door first, I would cower and cry and could only wish him away and then cover my head with the pillow to drown out the curses and accusations that would inevitably come and to ward off the open-handed blows. Then when he left I would keep the pillow over my ears to shield the noise from down the hall, where a hardened fist and my mother’s stifled cries bit into the night. When I got older, I wished him to my door an
d engaged him with a measured defiance, in the hope that at least some of his energy would be spent before he went to her. When I was fourteen I took a handful of nails and pounded them into the riser on that third step. But it never stopped the warning sound.

  This morning it was my uncle’s weight coming down from where his brother lay dead that creaked the stair. And like his brother, Uncle Keith’s broad build filled the kitchen door. My mother looked up, dry-eyed, into his face.

  “You alright, Ann-Marie?”

  “Yes,” she said and I felt her hands flex once under my own.

  “Max boy. You wanna see him once upstairs before they take him out?”

  “No,” I answered.

  He didn’t react, knowing enough not to say more.

  “Then I’ll take care of it, Ann-Marie,” he said, crossing the kitchen floor and laying a hand on her shoulder. She reached up to pat his back and he pressed a small brown apothecary bottle into her palm.

  “So you take care of this. OK?”

  I was up early. Billy had already started coffee and was practicing his morning ritual with the paper. We apologized for our respective hangovers and I went down to the beach for a run to purge my pores and memories.

  When I got back, sweat-stained and vowing to do more than two miles next time, Billy was on his way out.

  “There is f-fruit blend in the refrigerator and S-Sherry called,” he said. “T-Tell her I appreciate w-what she’s doing.”

  I reached her on her cell and arranged to meet her at Lester’s Diner.

  “Just trying to fatten you up, Freeman,” she said. She had some paperwork that she needed me to see. When I wondered out loud why we couldn’t just meet in her office, she knew I was needling her.

  “Sure. Come right up and say hello to Hammonds. He’ll be thrilled to hear you’ve got your fingers in another one of our cases.”

  When I pulled into Lester’s it was past noon. There were several pickups and a couple of truck tractors in the parking lot. Lester’s was built in the tradition of the old Northeast railcar diners. Long and rectangular, the outside was lined with windows. Inside, chrome swivel stools were lined up at the counter. There were three rows of booths upholstered in slick red vinyl. Richards was in the last booth in the corner, sitting on the bench facing the door. She was dressed in jeans and a buttoned blouse and she had left her hair down. Papers and what appeared to be a city street map were spread out on the table. As I slid into the seat opposite her she took a few stray strands of hair and tucked them behind her ear.

  “Nice choice for a workplace,” I said.

  “Might as well be an annex,” she said. “Sit here long enough and you’ll see nearly every patrol officer and detective on two shifts.”

  The waitress came, dressed in a dingy, ’50s-style white uniform that looked like it might have been new when she was young.

  “Can I get cha, hon?”

  I couldn’t help smiling, waiting for the gum to crack.

  Richards picked up on the grin.

  “Julia Palamara. Max Freeman,” she said in introduction. “He’ll have coffee.”

  “Pleasure,” the waitress said.

  The coffee cup was heavy, ceramic and huge. Julia left a brown plastic pot for refills. I liked the place.

  “So here’s the stack of rape and homicide files, all of them grouped in the same general area and going back ten years,” Richards started. “No fingerprints, a hodgepodge of DNA in only the recent cases, and statements by the rape victims that are sketchy, incomplete and pretty damn vague considering.”

  “I mapped the locations all out on here,” she said, spinning the map to face me. “The cases we looked at are red, then I stuck your list of what were classified as naturals in green.”

  The circle that enveloped twelve different spots from the high school press box to the concrete bunker to the Thompson house was way too tight. I just looked up at her and then took a long sip from the deep cup.

  “It was spread over time,” she said, her voice sounding defensive. “They weren’t all linked together, and considering the neighborhood…”

  I still said nothing. And then she quit, too. Julia came back and gave us both an excuse to stop staring at the map and avoiding each other’s eyes. We both ordered breakfast.

  “OK,” I started. “Let’s assume the women fit in with the others, just for now. Do that and you’ve got three motives; sex, violence for the sake of violence, and money.”

  “Wrong, Freeman,” she said, tightening up her voice. “You haven’t been out in that shack that long. Rape isn’t about sex. It’s all about violence and control.”

  “OK, OK. Agreed,” I said. “If we’re going on the theory that your guy wasn’t just after sex that got out of hand and that’s why you’ve got some victims still alive.”

  “Still violence, Freeman.”

  She was looking full into my face, her eyes a pewter gray. I couldn’t hold them.

  “OK. You’re right,” I admitted.

  “Good,” she said. “Now, tell me again where the money comes in other than to your so-called investors, who sure as hell aren’t out here in their three-piece suits killing clients.”

  I told her about Billy’s paper chase, how he’d come up with a possible middleman, some guy named Marshack, who was connected with a finder’s fee. I also told her about McCane and how the insurance investigator had tailed Marshack to the liquor store. When I pointed out the location on the map, it fell just outside her circle.

  “And you say the only thing he got from the store clerk was that the white guy with the Caprice comes in once every month or so? That’s pretty thin, Max,” she said. “I know the place isn’t much for white clientele. But how come the clerk even marks this guy?”

  “The hundred-dollar bills,” I said. “Guy always pays with a clean hundred.”

  I started to pick up my coffee when she reached over without a word and cradled the big cup in her hands and took a sip.

  “So you’re thinking this middleman has found somebody in the neighborhood who already doesn’t mind killing to do the old women, quietly and carefully?”

  “And get paid,” I said.

  “And never leave a clue?”

  “In a place where people aren’t looking too hard for clues,” I said.

  “Careful, Freeman.”

  Our plates came with omelets and hash browns and buttermilk pancakes. We talked about the possibilities as we ate. Would the theoretical killer have to be local, someone who knew the area? Or an outsider doing good surveillance?

  “Get out of South Philly, Freeman. Hard to see some big white Italian sitting in his Chevy watching those houses very long without somebody noticing,” she said. “Despite what it looks like, we do run patrol down those streets. And especially in the drug areas they’re going to stop any suspicious white guys who might be buyers.”

  “OK,” I said. “So he belongs there,” I offered. “He’s a local.”

  She took a couple of bites. Thought about it.

  “Someone who stays a lot to himself because you know how word gets around,” she said. “He’s not somebody who’s going to be out bragging about it, or some cop’s informant would have used it by now.”

  “True,” I nodded.

  “So what does this hit man do when he isn’t killing old ladies, or if we lump them, also raping and strangling street walkers and addicts?” she said.

  “Maybe he’s buying things,” I said, the thought coming to me. “With hundred-dollar bills.”

  The grinding was starting in my head, but it was new, something I’d have to roll around to get the size and shape of. She took another bite, then reached over and stole another sip of my coffee, leaving a trace of lipstick on the cup. I brought the coffee cup to my own mouth and she watched me.

  “You know, you’re not too bad at this cops and robbers stuff. You ever think of coming back? I mean down here, not Philly?”

  Unconsciously my fingers went to my neck and
touched the circle of soft scar tissue.

  “Yeah, I might have thought about it,” I said and then let it go.

  “Hell, Freeman. I might even write you a recommendation.” And there was that smile again.

  She gathered up her paperwork while I paid the bill. As we left she was stopped by officers coming in.

  “Hey, how’s it going, Sherry?” Or “Detective. Long time. You mean they let you guys out for lunch?”

  Each one of them nodded at me, maybe waiting for an introduction, maybe just sizing me up, trying to place me into a category. It is something cops do. I was doing it, too.

  Outside I walked her to her car. She stopped before opening the door.

  “You know why I like you, Max?” she said, pulling my attention to her eyes. “Because you’re careful.”

  The question must have risen into my face. It was the second time she’d brought it up.

  “You’re careful because you see the bad possibilities in everybody.”

  I couldn’t think of a response.

  “Call me on my cell,” she said. “We’re sharing here. Right?”

  “Yes,” I said, and walked away.

  19

  I drove back toward the northwest, heading to Ms. Thompson’s house with a purpose that wouldn’t pan out without the right people. And it was there that I’d last seen them.

  When I rolled past the front of her house only the carport door still held the yellow crime scene tape across its threshold. At the next corner I turned back south, this time using the narrow alley. Behind the Thompson house, I stopped and got out, assessing the way a stealthy man on foot might have approached. The alley-side street lamp was a jagged cone of broken glass.