A Visible Darkness

by Jonathon King

  “You can go down to the Salvation Army yonder and get you some,” one offered, pointing to the east with a plastic fork.

  Eddie stood silent. He had never gone to the feeding programs anywhere in the city. He’d seen the men, sometimes women and kids, lining up when the traveling kitchens stopped in the park on the west side. But he stayed away, his momma’s voice in his head: “We ain’t no welfare case, an’ we don’t take nothin’ that ain’t our deservin’.” Eddie didn’t try to figure why then she mostly took her dinner at the church in the last few years. “That’s from God,” she would say, bringing home leftovers. “And we are all deservin’ from God.”

  Eddie determined that he was hungry now, and took a step closer to the men. When the headlights of a tractor-trailer swept through the bushes and momentarily lit his face, the three men got up and backed away, leaving their meals behind.

  After he had eaten Eddie sidestepped his way down the steep embankment to his cart. He still had a hundred-dollar bill deep in his pocket, and he needed his bundle. One bundle would get him through, he convinced himself. Just one until Mr. Harold came again.

  The thought of the heroin had warmed his veins and set him to pushing up the empty street toward the train station that was always empty at night. From there he could slip into the neighborhood, where he would again be invisible. And now he was out in the street.

  31

  Someone had put Springsteen on the jukebox. Billy was drinking a bad Merlot. Richards was sipping on a glass of white wine and I was studying a green bottle of beer that had long ago lost its soggy label. On Richards’s suggestion, we were sitting in a booth at a cop bar named Brownie’s.

  I’d spent the day on the streets looking for the dark shape of Eddie Baines. I tried to think like him, a man who could hide himself out in the open, someone who worked in the corners of a neighborhood where he both belonged and didn’t belong. The crime scene guys at the Baines house had found signs that someone had been there. Food crumbs that were new, scuffings on the dusty floors that showed the drag of a heavy boot. What was in a man’s head who could bind his mother and leave her in a closet to rot?

  With no authority and carrying the obvious white man’s presence in a racial community, I’d poked through an abandoned bus depot near the interstate. I had introduced myself to an ancient man with a face creased and dry like dark and weathered leather at the local recycling shop. I walked the edges of the park and pulled up at the rear of the small local groceries, studying the knots of men with yellowed eyes who looked up first with anticipation and then turned away, waiting for the sound of my door opening and the yelp of some command. When I got out and showed the booking photo of Baines to a group of men playing dominoes at a corner park, they simply stared through the square of glossy paper and shook their heads. Three times during the day and into the night I’d crossed paths with patrol cops doing the same thing I was. Word had been passed at their shift briefings that I was a P.I. working the case independently. At dusk the one called Taylor crossed me at a four-way stop, pulling his cruiser into the middle of the intersection where he sat for several seconds, blocking my way, looking with a blank face into my windshield before slowly moving on.

  With Billy feeding her insurance information and his own list of computer acquaintances, Richards and a BSO computer-crime expert named Robshaw had spent the day looking for someone who they could muscle into admitting they’d downloaded a stolen hard drive for a big, drawling ex-cop looking for anonymity.

  Everyone was exhausted by our collective lack of success.

  “We did six guys in Miami, eight here in Broward and at least that many in Palm Beach,” Richards said. “Hell we’ve got as many ex-con hackers as we’ve got bank heist guys.”

  “One of our 1-leads is living in a two-story b-beach house overlooking the Gulf in K-Key Largo,” Billy said, keeping his voice purposely low in a public place.

  “A man with a briefcase can steal more money than any man with a gun,” I said to no one in particular.

  Richards’s eyes grinned with recognition of the song lyric. Billy just frowned.

  “Don Henley, 1989,” I said. My friend just shook his head.

  “Diaz and his guys already confiscated a dozen computers from the local pawn shops trying to find some crackhead who might have done Marshack, but the chances are slim on that side,” Richards said.

  Her eyes were red-rimmed and the irises had faded to gray and I tried to catch them with my own when she locked onto something over my shoulder.

  I turned and saw Hammonds making his way to the bar. Several of the officers in the place instinctively turned away from him, all of them losing two inches of height as their necks disappeared into their shoulders. It was nearly midnight, but the chief was still in his suitcoat. The knot of his tie had not been loosened.

  “Give me a couple of minutes,” Richards said, sliding out of her side of the booth.

  I watched her move across the room and stop at Hammonds’s side, and the two of them stood at the bar and leaned into their elbows for a guarded conversation.

  “You know the history b-behind this p-place?” Billy said, and I shook my head, knowing he did. There was age in the wood of the long, standard bar. The ceilings were low and the wall paneling knotted and lacquered.

  “In the 1930s there was a live band performing every Saturday in the back,” he explained, tipping his head to a door that opened up onto the parking lot. “It w-was an open air d-dance floor and drew a young crowd. S-Some of the old-time attorneys tell about s-seeing Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald here. At the t-time, black performers were n-not allowed to play at white d-dances in Dade County. To m-make the trip worthwhile the traveling acts would book p-places like this.”

  I looked around. On this night the ethnic mix looked pretty broad. But I could tell from the body language, haircuts and conversation that most of them were the same color: blue. I had spent a lot of nights in the same kind of bars in Philly.

  Richards came back and slid in next to me.

  “The chief says Robshaw has a lead on a hacker in Miami. Guy got busted a couple of years ago on a case where some CEO type had dipped into the corporate piggy bank to buy some expensive artwork, then later reported it stolen and tried to collect the insurance. He hired the hacker to do some eraser work on the company computers.

  “Hacker flipped on the CEO but still had to do some time. They’re trying to track an address on him now.”

  I turned to get a look at Hammonds but he had already disappeared, a full glass of beer left untouched on the bar where he’d been standing.

  When I looked back at Richards she held my eyes.

  “He’s also opening investigations on our elderly women. He’s sending crime scene teams back out to their homes with explicit instructions to check the metal jalousie tabs for any stress bends.”

  Billy leaned in.

  “I m-might help you w-with the insurance connection. You can get the file on this hacker?”

  “I told him that and he said you’re free to call Robshaw and coordinate with him,” Richards said.

  Billy flexed his fingers and his eyes started to dart. I’d seen him get cranked before with the possibility of a challenge.

  “If you w-will excuse me, f-folks,” he said moving to get up. “I must go b-before they start p-playing Jimmy Buffett.

  “I will be up,” he said to me. “Just call.”

  A fresh beer had appeared and I filled half of my glass. Richards finished the wine.

  “You stink, Freeman,” she finally said.

  There was a pull at the corner of her mouth.

  “You are correct,” I answered. I had been wearing the same clothes for two days, slept and sweated in them.

  “How about a shower and a couple hours sleep?”

  “Deal,” I said, putting money on the table and following her out the door.

  32

  I followed her to her house and was sitting on the same
steps in her backyard, watching the light from the pool dance in the tree leaves and holding a warm cup of coffee. The night was windless and still.

  I closed my eyes for the fourth time in ten minutes and chastised myself for letting my head drift back to Philadelphia. Time after time I had questioned why I’d followed my father’s path into this kind of work, knowing that something would happen to make it all feel like a bad mistake. When Richards came back out onto the patio, I realized my fingers had gone to the scar on my neck, and I dropped my hand.

  “Your turn,” she said, sitting down beside me, wrapping a long robe around her knees.

  Her feet were bare and the smell of fresh soap and the assumption that she was naked under the robe started my blood moving, and I shifted my weight uncomfortably.

  “Stay to your right down the hall, first door,” she said, and her eyes looked dark and oddly expressionless in the aqua light.

  I passed her my half-full cup and got up saying, “I hope you left some hot water.”

  She had left most of the house dark. A light over the stove in the open kitchen illuminated some hanging pots and reflected off the ceramic-tiled countertop. There was a small light glowing red on the instant coffee maker. I thought of my own crude pot in the shack, and I was jealous.

  Down the hall the bathroom light left a patch on the wooden floor. I tried to steal a look into the far bedroom door but it was too dark.

  The bathroom was standard except for the modern, glassed-in shower that Richards and her husband must have installed in the old house. She’d left a fresh towel and a dark blue T-shirt, size XL, folded up on a wicker clothes basket. On top of the shirt was a can of shaving gel and a man’s razor. I hurried through the shower and scraped off my stubble while I stood in the spray.

  When I came back outside she was still sitting, her chin on her knees, staring into the pool water. But when she heard my steps she got up and met me halfway across the patio and stepped into my arms. Her hair was wet and cold against my cheek and I could feel her shivering against me.

  She kept her head down against my chest and I lost track of time and when she finally moved it was not toward the hammock, but instead she laced her fingers into mine and led me back into the house.

  Eddie was crouched in the bushes, obscured by the oak tree where the man in the blue pickup had been, watching the Brown Man do his business.

  The rhythm was here. The same runners. The same hangers on. The girl with the tears and the ratty-ass mouth was hanging at the end of the block. But this time Eddie was scared. He had seen three police cars on his way here. One, parked in an alley that Eddie often used, had surprised him as he swung the corner. He had jolted to a stop only twenty feet away. But they still had not seen him, or cared if they did, he thought. Still, he had ditched his cart after that, putting it behind a dumpster, and then moved mostly through yards and along fence lines.

  Now it was late. The Brown Man would not stay out much longer and Eddie would be stuck without his bundle. The cramps were getting worse. He couldn’t keep his eyes from watering or the inside of his mouth from going dry. He reached deep into his pocket and felt the hundred-dollar bill there and when the traffic stopped, he stepped out to cross the street.

  The Brown Man saw him coming, raised his head when Eddie was halfway across the street and started shaking it back and forth. Eddie came on.

  The dealer hissed at him when Eddie stepped into his swale. His runners had not recognized the junk man at first without his cart, but when they did, they stayed away, having been told not to mess with him.

  “Get the fuck outta here, man.”

  The Brown Man spit out the words and the runners turned their heads at the sound of both the agitation and the strange hint of fear in the dealer’s voice.

  “You nothin’ but trouble, junk man. Take your raggedy ass someplace else to get your shit.”

  Eddie stopped, confused. He cut his eyes to either side, saw no one who looked like they might be the police and then stared back at the Brown Man. The dealer could not hold his eyes.

  Eddie reached into his pocket and held out the hundred-dollar bill, but the action just seemed to agitate the Brown Man more.

  “Goddammit, nigger. Put that shit away. I ain’t need your money no more. Find some other chump to do your bidness with. I’m serious now,” he said, and the runners watched as the dealer slid off his stool and stood up.

  Eddie saw the man’s hand go to his waistband and watched the gun come out. The Brown Man held it close to his stomach so only he could see it. Eddie had seen lots of guns and had never been scared of them. The hundred-dollar bill was still in his outstretched hand. He had come for what he needed. And Eddie always got what he needed.

  “A bundle,” he said, stepping forward and looking into the Brown Man’s face.

  “You fuckin’ crazy?” the dealer yelled, this time the fear in his voice scaring his own runners. “You some kinda retard?”

  The gun was pointed at Eddie this time, but then the big man’s other hand snapped out and swallowed the weapon and pulled the dealer into his chest.

  The two men were locked into a tight, hissing dance, and the runners started to jump to the aid of their boss but froze when they heard the gun’s muffled explosion. When a second shot sounded, the dealer squealed and fell away, holding his curled hand to his hip.

  Eddie looked down at him and then at the gun in his own hand and then turned and tossed the piece clattering across the concrete.

  The runners did not move. Not a single light came on along the street. Eddie looked up into the faces of the Brown Man’s boys until they backed down and then he turned and limped away, a bloodstain growing at his side.

  The feel of her leg moving off mine started me awake. She sat up, and the shift of weight on the mattress was something I had not felt in years. When I opened my eyes I could see the outline of her hip and the curve of her shoulder in the light of a still-lit candle.

  Then I caught the muffled electronic ring of a phone.

  “It’s not mine,” she said, turning from the nightstand.

  “Then let it go,” I said, and reached out to touch her back with my fingertips. The ringing stopped.

  “See?”

  She was quiet, and raised a single finger.

  The ringing began again.

  “Shit,” I said, getting up and walking naked through another man’s house and finding my phone on the porch, wrapped in a bundle of my dirty clothes.

  “What?” I snapped into the mouthpiece.

  “Your motherfuckin’ boy busted my damn hand,” came the shouted answer.

  “Who the hell is this?”

  “I knew they was gonna be trouble. Soon as those dogs from the other side come askin’ bout hundred-dollar bills I knew I shoulda kept my mouth shut.”

  “Is this Carlyle?” I asked, putting it together.

  “Don’t you call me that,” he snapped. “Your got-damn junk man done come over here lookin’ for trouble and I shot his ass up.”

  “He’s there? You killed him?” I said, trying now to keep my voice controlled.

  “I didn’t kill the motherfucker. He come round tryin’ to buy more shit and I tried to chase his ass off and the simple motherfucker done grabbed at my piece and it went off into his own damn belly.”

  “Is he still there?” I repeated.

  “Hell no, he ain’t here. He ran his ass down the road.”

  “You hurt?”

  “Damn right. Dude’s got hands like a damn vise, man. He crushed every fuckin’ bone in my hand.”

  “Alright. Call nine-one-one. Call an ambulance and I’ll be right there.”

  “I ain’t callin’ nobody. You get that fool’s ass or I waste him my own self, know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Right,” I said and hung up. I was standing on Richards’s back porch, naked in the moonlight with a cell phone and a shiver that had just started down my back.

  33

  Richards called in
the shooting to dispatch while we both dressed.

  “No report, not even an anonymous call on gunshots fired,” she said, pulling a T-shirt over her head and then grabbing her radio and a holstered 9mm from the nightstand drawer. While she locked the house I went out, started my truck and then opened the passenger door when she came out through the gate.

  When we got to the dope hole, two patrol cars were spinning their lights, a shift sergeant was on the scene, and the Brown Man was gone. The sergeant was pacing the sidewalk, and the Brown Man’s stool was lying tipped over in the grass. I could see another uniformed cop standing on the porch of a nearby house, speaking through a barely cracked front door.

  “Good morning, Detective,” the sergeant said as Richards approached.

  “Sergeant Carannante,” she answered. “Anything?”

  “Nothing but your call, Detective. Unusually quiet for a Saturday night, but the trade usually ends at midnight or so.”

  The sergeant was a thick, Italian-looking man with an insouciant demeanor that said he’d seen it all before. He took me in with his eyes and did not bring them back to Richards until he was introduced.

  “Uh, Max Freeman,” Richards said. “He’s been working with us on a case.”

  Carannante shook my hand.

  “OK. Nice to know who’s on the field,” he said and turned back to her.

  “Street was empty when the first unit got here. We swept the area best we could and then came back to see if we could pick up something with the flashlights. No blood spots, no shell casings, nothing. I got unit nineteen doing a canvass of residents who of course haven’t seen or heard anything. And I sent another car to our man Carlyle’s to see what’s what.”

  He was a veteran cop. Giving the facts, not passing judgment on the call or the possibility that violence had occurred. Richards was herself looking unsure.