A Visible Darkness

by Jonathon King

  A hiss came from Carannante’s radio and he spoke back, then walked back toward the patrol car. I stepped over to the toppled stool, then took a few steps further and looked across the street. I was standing on the spot where Eddie Baines had stood the first time I had met his eyes.

  “Walker!” the sergeant yelled past us, signaling the cop on the porch and then moving with a purpose toward his own car.

  “Dispatch says twenty-seven Bravo has spotted a big guy pushing a cart over by the river where, what, this guy Baines left his mother for dead?” It was half report, half question and directed at Richards.

  “Going home to lick his wounds?” she questioned right back.

  “Let’s roll over there. If it’s him they’re going to need help throwing a perimeter,” Carannante said. The cop named Walker jumped into the other squad car. “The initial report was that he could be armed. Right?” said the sergeant, again asking Richards.

  She nodded and watched both cars spin U-turns and head north, their blue and red lights still throwing color on the building fronts, their sirens silent.

  “Let’s go, Max,” Richards said.

  I was looking down the street, watching the corner of a fence that led to an alley about a block down. I raised my hand and heard her footsteps behind me.

  “What is it?”

  “Wait a second,” I said, not turning.

  The block stayed quiet. Windows stayed dark. I watched the alley entrance.

  “We need to go, Max. If they corner Baines we need to be there.”

  “Yeah, I know, just give me a minute.”

  She didn’t sigh in resignation, or huff in exasperation. There was an element of trust going on.

  We were standing in the swale, just behind my truck. I crouched down and sat on my heels and Richards followed. In less than a minute there was movement at the fence. I could pick up the light- colored material of clothing, then watched someone moving our way. There was a stumble, and a girl’s quiet curse.

  When we stood up she yipped in surprise, her hand to her mouth, and then started to spin away on her blocky shoes. Richards snapped, “Hold it.” The girl was experienced enough to freeze.

  We flanked her and she was looking defiantly at me when Richards flashed her badge.

  “We’re police officers,” she said. “Where not going to hurt you.”

  “No shit,” the girl said.

  She was the young woman I had seen before, the one who the Brown Man had slapped across the face, the one who had spat at the feet of the junk man. She was wearing the same summer skirt but had changed her shirt.

  “Have you been around all night?” I asked.

  “No, I been at church all night with my girlfriends workin’ the brownie sale,” she said, folding her arms over her skinny chest, challenging me with her eyes.

  “You didn’t see your friend the Brown Man tonight?” I tried again.

  “Carlyle? That fool ain’t no friend of mine,” she spat. “Juss a punk think he all high and mighty cause he got the franchise on the block.”

  She had raised her voice but then looked past us both, nervous at her own words thrown out in the dark. I reached out and grabbed her upper arm and spun her around to face me and her eyes went big.

  “Ditch the attitude,” I said. “You were here when Carlyle shot the junk man. What happened?”

  She looked down at my hand and winced and I tightened the grip.

  “She’s the cop, I’m not,” I said. “I don’t need to worry about how I get my answers. What the fuck happened?”

  The girl tried to catch Richards’s eyes for some kind of protection, but she had turned away.

  “Wasn’t no shootin’. Not like a real one anyways,” she finally said. “The junk man got in Carlyle’s face an’ when Carlyle got his gun out to scare him this nigger goes an’ grabs it and they was both standin’ there when it goes off. Then Carlyle goes down on the ground whinin’ and cryin’ ’bout how his damn hand was busted.”

  “And the junk man has the gun?” Richards said, now moving in to team up on the girl.

  “No,” the girl said. “He throwed it in the street an’ one of Carlyle’s boys went an’ snatched it up.”

  “Where did the junk man go?”

  She hesitated, looking down the street.

  “He was draggin’ hisself that way,” she said, nodding south.

  “He was wounded?” Richards asked.

  “Mighta been,” she said, gaining back some bravado in her voice. I squeezed the arm tighter.

  “Where did he go?” I shouted.

  “I didn’t follow him,” she said defensively. “He probably go where he always go.” Tears were now coming to her eyes. “He probably go down the blockhouse where he always go.”

  Richards looked up at me and I eased off my grip on the girl’s arm.

  “Are you sure?” Richards asked the girl quietly. “Are you positive? Did he push his cart down there?”

  “He didn’t have no cart with him this time. He was draggin’ his leg an’ he saw me lookin’ and axed me would I help him and he had a hundred-dollar bill so I helped him down at the blockhouse an’ ran out of that place,” she said, unable to remember her own lies.

  “This is the old concrete utility room down off Thirteenth?” Richards asked.

  “Yeah, where all them girls always be gettin’ hurt,” she said, her voice now quiet and young and sorry.

  I opened the tailgate of my truck and guided her to sit. Richards was trying to raise someone on her radio.

  “I already tol’ that other cop where he gone,” the girl said.

  “What other cop?” I said. “The sergeant?”

  “No, not the one with the uniform,” she said. “The big ol’ cracker cop been sneakin’ around watchin’ everybody.”

  Richards and I looked at each other.

  “When?” Richards said. This time she grabbed the girl by the arm. “When did you tell this cop?”

  “Just before you all jumped out and scared me. He come up after all the police cars got here,” the girl said, turning her head to look back toward the corner where she’d been hiding.

  I handed Richards my truck keys.

  “You’ve got to hold on to her. She’s a witness,” I said and started walking south.

  “Max, goddammit, wait for backup, Max,” Richards yelled.

  “And make sure you get that hundred-dollar bill for evidence, too,” I said before jogging into the darkness.

  34

  Eddie was on the blockhouse mattress, bleeding and mumbling. The gunshot wound in his side was bearable. Eddie had a way with pain, to deal with it by keeping it out of his head. The blood had soaked through the bottom part of his T-shirt and had turned the material of his dungarees wet and dark down to the hip. But he found a ragged piece of clothing some junkie had left behind and pressed it into the spot and then leaned against the wall. He could ignore it by thinking about the girl.

  After the Brown Man had shown him the gun, after he’d crushed the dealer’s hand, squeezing the bones around the metal of the gun until they crinkled and snapped under his own palm, after the explosion and quick pain in his side, Eddie had walked away. He wasn’t sure where he was going, just into the dark of the street where no one could see him.

  But he saw the girl around the corner, the one with the sharp mouth who always turned away from his offers, and this time she listened. He asked her to help him, told her he would give her half of his heroin if she would get him to the blockhouse. She’d hesitated at first and then nodded her head. She stayed at his other side, steadied him when he’d started to fall until they’d gotten through the field to the blockhouse where Eddie laid down. Then he’d reached deep into his pocket and came out with the hundred- dollar bill and made her promise to go buy a bundle and bring it back. She took the money and left. He would give her half, he thought, and then he could get himself high and think of what to do.

  Now he was thinking about her. Would she
come back? Would she just use him like the others? His blood was seeping into the mattress, the stain spreading around him. No, she would come back, he thought. He could hear her outside, stepping through the grass. Eddie would get what he needed. Eddie always got what he needed.

  I stayed on the streets, jogging at an even pace down the center, reading the signs at each intersection and recalling the way Richards and I had come the night of our zone tour. I could find the blockhouse again and that gave me an advantage over McCane. I had to figure Eddie Baines would not be armed. If the girl had told the truth he’d tossed the Brown Man’s gun. And in not one of the rapes or killings had a gun been used.

  I hoped he was injured, but not dead. We needed him to talk, not to die. If he had killed Billy’s women, he could make the case against Marshack. With that we could string the payoff evidence to McCane. With that they could go after the insurance investors. “Not dead,” I said out loud.

  When I got to Thirteenth Street I saw the open stretch of darkness and recognized the field. There was no spotlight this time, but the night eyes I’d developed on my river would help me find the dull glow of concrete far in the back of the lot.

  I tried to move quietly through the high grass but each step was like shaking a half-filled paper bag.

  Ten feet away I could hear him breathing, the inhalations like a big, laboring beast but with a low gurgling sound at the end. He was mumbling with each exhalation but I couldn’t make out the words.

  Three long, careful steps more and the cinder block was cool against my hands. The window was around the corner on the wall to my right, the door around the one on my left.

  I moved to the door and crouched for several seconds, listening, and heard him mutter, “She’ll come back.” I stayed low when I breached the doorway and looked high, thinking of his size. He saw me first from his position down on the mattress but in the dim light his face seemed to hold more disappointment than surprise.

  Then he scrambled, digging his heels into the mattress and pushing his way up the wall to gain his feet.

  “Easy, Eddie. Easy,” I said, standing up with my hands out, palms showing but ready to clinch. “I’m a cop, Eddie. I’m a cop. Nobody’s here to hurt you, big man.”

  He rocked his back against the wall and the dull light from the window next to him glistened on the stain covering his side.

  “I knows lots of police,” he said in a low mumble, and I could hear a bubbling deep in his throat.

  “I know you do, Eddie. I know. You know Dr. Marshack, right? He works with the police.”

  I could read the recognition in his face, but his eyes quickly covered it.

  “I do not know,” he said and shifted his left foot forward.

  I took a balanced stance. I’d sparred with big men, knew the dip they often took before lunging or throwing a punch, and I watched for it.

  “Sure you do, Eddie,” I said. “Dr. Harold Marshack, the one who helped you in jail, the one who gives you the money and the names of the old women.”

  Again his eyes changed and he seemed to start to say something when I saw the dip to the right. I shot out a jab, snapping it into his hand as he reached out to grab me. I pivoted away. He stood his ground.

  It was not a boxing ring and far too cramped to dance away. He was not a slow man, despite his size and the bullet wound. When I’d hit his hand hard with my fist it felt like hitting a thick bag of rolled coins, and he hadn’t flinched. I couldn’t let him get a hold of me. I knew what his hands had already done.

  “Come on, Eddie,” I tried again. “Why don’t we just settle down here and we’ll go talk with Dr. Marshack. You trust him, don’t you?”

  “I do not know,” he repeated.

  I was trying to get him to think of something besides crushing me, but I saw him dip again. This time he charged, and I ducked and sidestepped to my right and felt his thick fingers drag across the left side of my neck. He crashed hard against the wall, but then spun.

  Now I was in the corner, away from the door and any chance of escape. Jesus, I thought, how smart is this guy? Now I had my fists up, in a boxer’s stance. The questioning was over.

  He took another, slower swipe with his open left hand and again I punched at it, feeling my fist snap a bone in one of his fingers. He shuffled, but never winced. He was testing me. Watching. Learning.

  I took a step to the right, toward the window, and he moved that way, too. I saw him dip and I reacted by sliding to my left, but he had faked me and when my foot lost purchase on a pile of greasy paper he charged. I tried to spin away but he snatched my left forearm in his grip and pulled me to him as his back slammed into the wall. I felt the muscle in my arm flatten and roll under the pressure of his fingers and an electric pain shot up into my shoulder as he tightened the grip and my vision started to spark.

  “It was their time,” he bellowed and slung me into the opposite wall. “It was their time. Mr. Harold said it was their time.” He hesitated with the words, his eyes seeming to blink at their meaning like he’d made a mistake, and it was enough for me to gain my balance. I set my right foot and pounded my free fist into the big man’s bloodied side with as much leverage as I could find. This time he winced and a stench of breath popped from his mouth and I landed another blow, and another, and now my eyes were closed and I was back in O’Hara’s gym and my father’s face was showing his disgust, and I landed another, and another…

  I was still punching when I felt the presence behind me. When I turned, McCane’s girth had filled the doorway. Light caught the brushed metal of the 9mm in his hand.

  “Don’t stop on account of me, bud,” he said.

  Eddie lay unconscious in the corner and when I looked down at my hand, his blood was glistening on my fist and up to my forearm.

  “Is this what you wanted, McCane?” I said, turning back to the investigator, trying to see his eyes. His face was shrouded in the dark and I could not register his reaction.

  “Hell, Freeman. I’m just helpin’ you out. Like partners, right?” he said, moving from the doorway to the window and taking a quick look outside. “And it does look like you found our man.”

  A sound like a low boil in a deep cave came from down in the corner and I felt one of Eddie’s boots shift against my pant leg.

  “Course, it’s not gonna do either of us any good if this boy lives now, is it, Freeman?”

  “He said enough already, McCane. Enough to tie him in with Marshack. And it’ll be a short jump to put Marshack with you.”

  “Yeah, I heard him,” McCane said, reaching back into his waist band with his free hand and coming out with a small, tape-handled .38.

  “You ever carry a throw-down piece when you worked Philly, Freeman?”

  He was looking at the gun, his other hand still flexing on the 9mm at his side.

  “Now this little shit piece is just the kind that a boy like this might be carryin’. Just the kind he might use when some P.I. tries to arrest him out here in the dark,” he said, waving the short barrel at Eddie.

  McCane moved a step forward. His face was dark and I could still not see his eyes, and he could not see the flash of gunmetal come through the window behind him. My recognition started to turn him when the barrel of Richards’s Glock found the spot just behind the curve of his ear.

  “Freeze it up, asshole!” she yelled.

  McCane did not flinch, but only chuckled at the sound of her voice.

  “Now, missy. Ya’ll sound real tough when you use them movie words. But I don’t suspect you ever pulled that trigger on a real man,” he said, as he subtly shifted the aim of the .38 from Eddie’s chest to mine.

  I could see the skin tighten around Richards’s eyes and I was just about to warn her of the 9mm still in McCane’s other hand when the explosion of noise filled the room and stole the air from my chest.

  McCane toppled, stiff-legged, to the floor, his finger frozen on the trigger of the .38. I stared at the window and could see Richards’s gun, exten
ded into the smoke and smell of cordite. She was still sighting down the barrel.

  “You don’t let anyone point a gun at a fellow cop,” she said, her lips beginning to tremble. “That’s one of the first things you learn when you’re a real officer on the street.”

  35

  Red and blue lights swirled through the trees and headlights crosshatched the open field, and all the sudden attention on the place seemed to make it shrink. A few residents had gathered at a distance in the street.

  I sat on the rear bumper of an open ambulance. One paramedic was trying to cradle my arm into a sling while another was using an antiseptic soaked towel to wipe the blood off the knuckles of my right fist.

  Richards was next to me. Her weapon had been taken and placed into a plastic evidence bag for the shooting review board.

  We both watched as Eddie Baines was taken from the blockhouse to a waiting ambulance. It took four men to lift him onto a wheeled stretcher and push him through the high grass. Sergeant Carannante said Baines was unconscious when they arrived. A paramedic had guessed the man had lost several pints of blood from the gunshot wound. He doubted he would survive.

  Almost apologetically the sergeant explained that the call to the river had been a false alarm, that the man seen pushing a cart had been a late-night janitor wheeling a bin of trash through the alley to a dumpster.

  “There was so much radio traffic, no one recognized your call,” he said to Richards. “The dispatcher thought you were with us, and so did I.

  “Then it took us a while to get here and we couldn’t figure out why Mr. Freeman’s truck was parked in the road with a girl handcuffed to the steering wheel.”

  I looked at Richards and she shook her head.

  “Witness,” she said. “Oh, by the way. There’s a hundred-dollar bill in the locked glove box that needs to be bagged for evidence.”

  The sergeant nodded, as if nothing this night would be an unusual request.

  “And we’ve got to get you over to administration, Detective,” he said to Richards. “Chief Hammonds is waiting. And you don’t want to see this.”