A Visible Darkness Page 13

  As she got closer Eddie could hear her cussing and could see the wetness leaking through the hand she held to her face. He moved on, distracted but hungry. When he got close to the Brown Man’s runners he could feel them step away instead of moving closer to the man as usual. Eddie pushed his cart closer. One of the runners spit out a harsh whisper, “What you doin’, junk man? Cain’t you see five-oh on the street?”

  Eddie never raised his head, never turned around. He just bent over to pick up a beer can and cut his eyes back to the blue pickup that he’d forgotten after the girl. Police on the street?

  The white man in the driver’s seat looked directly at him. Not past him at the Brown Man. Not through him like everyone else did. He was looking Eddie straight in the face in a way that no person had done in years on the street, and it scared him.

  It was then that the marked patrol car came around the corner and Eddie heard the Brown Man say “Fuck” in a low growl. Eddie stood up and pushed away, feeling the cold eyes of the man in the truck on him like two icy nickels being pressed against the skin on the back of his neck.

  I sat watching the dealer on his stool, his wooden throne on the street. The sneer and quick pop of anger had blown a hole in his act of nonchalance. He didn’t like me messing with his action, but he also knew he’d be here tomorrow, and the next day. He knew his customers wouldn’t go away like I would. I’d done my stints on the narcotics cases and done the proselytizing to the local kids when I was walking a beat. I’d stroll up into a group off South Street and know from the active hands going to pockets what was up. I’d try to be cool, say what’s up fellas. They would avoid eye contact except for the one ballsy one who would look me in the face and sarcastically call me officer.

  To him I’d give the speech about the penalty for possession with intent to sell, the mandatory minimums. And as often as not he’d recite the correct amounts of product needed to constitute a charge of intent. The others would hide whatever grin was crawling onto their faces. They were smart enough not to push it. Ballsy guy was not. So I would position my body and cut him off from the others, back him to a wall like a good fighter cutting off the ring and without touching him I’d get my face close and watch his eyes widen like a bad fighter knowing he’s in trouble. The eyebrows would raise and he’d say “What?” By then I would have tilted up my nightstick from its metal ring on my belt and would have stuck the rounded end up into the vulnerable notch where ribs meet below the sternum and I would push.

  “Not on my beat,” I would say, only loud enough for him to hear. “Not on my street.”

  If he nodded, I would let them walk away and I would stand and watch them. Sometimes they would go in silence. Sometimes from a block away I would hear one yell, “Fuck you, cop.” Either way I would wonder why I was out there.

  I was thinking the same thing today when I picked up the dark figure in the corner of my eye.

  He was a big man, shrouded in a long dark coat in seventy- degree weather. He was pushing a grocery cart down the sidewalk in a slow, lethargic pace. His head was tucked down into his thick shoulders like a big, wary tortoise, and he seemed to be mumbling to himself. Then as I watched, he deftly, too deftly, steered the cart effortlessly around a milk crate in his path and then through the drug runners. I was trying to place him, recall where I’d seen his shape before when he bent to pick up a can. I watched the hand slide out of the coat cuffs and swallow the can and that’s when he looked up and I saw his eyes. They were black hollows, set deep in a face that was dark and emotionless. I could not blink and suddenly felt a fine ripple of muscle along my spine like a traveling drop of sweat.

  The yelp of a siren snapped my head away. Blue lights flashed three times in my rearview, and in my side mirror I saw the cop opening the door of his patrol car.

  “Stay in the vehicle,” he said over his P.A. system. He got out of his car and stood for a moment. And then I watched him walk up, hand on the butt of his holstered gun. I checked my other side mirror and saw his partner standing behind his opened door, looking through my back window. Two-man patrol, I thought, a luxury in Philly.

  When I looked back up the street, the big junk man was gone. It had only been seconds, but he had disappeared. Two residents were poking their heads out of partially opened doors.

  “That’s a good place for your hands, sir,” the approaching cop said, staying close to the body of the truck and back over my left shoulder. I had already put my hands up on top of the steering wheel, knowing what made these guys nervous.

  “License and registration, please.”

  For some inane reason, maybe it was just biological to the species, I said, “Is there a problem, officer?”

  He took the paperwork without a word. He was a young guy, mid-twenties, wearing a hard and uncomfortable bulletproof vest under his uniform shirt.

  “You’re the wrong color in the wrong place at the wrong time, Mr., uh, Freeman.”

  I turned my head to look more fully at him and he seemed older and dumber all at once. He said something behind the cab to his partner and then into the microphone clipped to his shoulder lapel, “Sixteen, Echo One.”

  “Echo One,” came the response. The voice sounded familiar.

  “We got a stop here off Twenty-seventh on the drug run that fits your BOLO on suspicious persons.”

  “Echo One responding.”

  The cop again said something to his partner and then began writing off my license.

  “White man in the wrong place,” I said, unable to keep my mouth shut. “That’s a real specific BOLO, officer.”

  The cop stopped writing, but didn’t look up.

  “Freeman,” he said. “Is that Jewish?”

  The question was spoken, but mouthed into the air, like he was just pondering the possibility. I tightened my mouth. This time I did keep it shut, and waited for Richards to arrive.

  When a dark SUV finally pulled up, I popped the handle to get out but the movement rattled the patrol cop. He was back leaning on the open door of his cruiser and fumbled his pad and reached for his holster.

  “Calm down, son,” I said, raising my palms. “I know these people.”

  “Hey, hey. Tranquilo Taylor,” said the Cuban detective climbing out of the SUV’s driver side.

  “This man is the infamous Max Freeman,” he said with a flourish. “Both a friend to, and a pain in the ass of all law enforcement.”

  Detective Vincente Diaz came around the truck with his junior executive smile in place and his hand extended.

  “Max, Max, Max. Long time, amigo. Sherry said she had seen you and here you are, in the flesh and hip deep in the middle of another of your investigations.”

  He shook my hand vigorously and as usual I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or friendly.

  Diaz had partnered up with Richards when she came into the detective bureau. The wiry strength in his small hands offset the pleasant, white-toothed smile.

  “Hey, Max. What, fishing is no good out in the jungle? You got to come slumming in our pond?”

  “I know you better, Vince,” I said. “Your partner tells you everything.”

  He looked at me with that playful raised eyebrow.

  “No, no, no. Not everything, eh?”

  Richards was coming around the SUV, looking at the patrol officer.

  “We got this, Taylor,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, I still got to take a photo for the field investigation file,” he said, showing the old Polaroid he kept in the back seat.

  “Believe me, Taylor,” she said. “Neither your L.T. nor Chief Hammonds want to see this guy’s name on an F.I. card.”

  The cop shrugged and facetiously muttered, “Yes, ma’am,” and got back into his car, put it in gear and backed away.

  “Max,” Richards said, finally acknowledging me.

  “Detective.”

  “You got something for us, or is this just a coincidence?”

  “I do have some bait out. No bites yet,”
I said.

  “Couldn’t have been out there long.”

  “Actually, I wasn’t sure where the current might take it.”

  “But this lovely area is a possibility?”

  “Always.”

  Diaz was watching us, like a fan at a bad tennis match.

  “You two going to go on like this for a while? Cause I’ll go roust some dumpster divers or something else more productive if you want?”

  Richards smiled.

  While all three of us leaned against the box of my truck, Richards told me the sheriff’s office had moved to step up their presence and visibility in the zone. Although detectives were rarely called to the street without a specific crime, the honchos had sent down word to have certain suspicious situations checked out.

  “Like…”

  “A white guy in a fancy truck sitting alone watching the busiest dope corner in the county,” Diaz finished my response.

  “I got to think you’re off on this theory of yours, Freeman,” he continued. “Our guy doing the rapes has to be some low-life just shagging girls when he can. He’s got to be some zone cat and if these people would just wise up and help us out with some information, we’d have his ass sitting on Old Sparky up at Raiford.”

  He made sure his voice was loud enough for the handful of residents still on their front steps to hear. Two more cars started turning down the street but quickly straightened their wheels and rolled away.

  “My esteemed partner believes your theory about a local acting as a hit man for the insurance companies is marginal,” Richards said.

  “How is some moke from in here going to hook up with that kind of scam anyway?” Diaz broke in again. “These are not your rocket scientists of crime out here. Even if your motive is right, Freeman, the two cases are in no way linked. Your guy is too smart. Maybe out-of-town work. Carlyle there would call up and spill on anybody who was out here fuckin’ with his territory by bringing in more scrutiny by us,” he said, pointing to the empty stool the dealer had abandoned.

  “Carlyle?”

  “Yeah,” Diaz grinned. “The dealer. His momma probably named him so he’d grow up tough. Instead he grows up and takes on the illustrious street name Brown Man and makes it as a drug peddler just to get her back.”

  “You ever have a conversation with Carlyle?” I said.

  “One-sided,” Diaz said.

  “So he’s not real forthcoming with information?”

  “But he’d still give up some cheap local out snuffing old ladies just to keep his trade moving.”

  “And nobody’s got a C.I. who’s close to him?”

  Diaz looked around again. Some of the neighbors had wandered back into their homes, some had pulled out lawn chairs as if an early evening show was only minutes away.

  “What can I say, amigo? You see these people out when the drug shop is open? No. They’re afraid,” he said. “Carlyle got his territory set, for now. And believe me, the last thing he wants is local trouble.”

  As we talked I kept cutting my eyes to Richards, caught her watching. The sun was well down but the air was still warm.

  “You two done tilting at windmills for now?” she said.

  Diaz shook his head.

  “Hard as nails and literate too, man,” he said. “You ever have a partner like this, Max?”

  Richards was silent, listening for my answer.

  “Hey,” I finally said. “Cervantes was Hispanic. What do I know?”

  The radios on both of their belts ran a simultaneous string of static and then squawked, “Fourteen, Echo One.”

  Diaz snatched the call, lowered the volume and walked around to the front of the truck. Richards and I stood in a quiet that seemed oddly uncomfortable.

  “The skeptic,” she finally said. “He only wishes he didn’t care.”

  I grinned and looked at her. Even in the dark her eyes were showing color.

  “You got something going?” she said.

  “I got a long shot out,” I said.

  “No. I mean tonight.”

  “Uh, no,” I said. “I mean no, not really.”

  “Come by later?”

  “Sure,” I managed.

  “I’ll make some coffee,” she said.

  “Okay partner,” Diaz interrupted. “We got to hit the road.”

  Richards turned away and started toward the SUV and Diaz shook my hand.

  “I hate to say it, Freeman, but I’ll see you,” he said with a grin. “Be careful, man.”

  Eddie slipped between two buildings and into the alley, running from the cold spot on the back of his neck.

  He rounded the corner of Twenty-seventh Avenue and pushed the cart east, the loose wheel spinning maniacally, his shadow cast out in front from the last light pole. Who was the white man in the truck? And how could he see him?

  Eddie liked routine, and his routine was going to hell. Mr. Harold didn’t show. He couldn’t get his dope. Momma wasn’t talking and now a white man’s eyes had looked into him and Eddie was wondering if his invisibility was also gone.

  He shrugged up into his coat. A car rolled past, the bass from its stereo rippling through him. He pushed on to Second Street and then cruised the back alley of the row, stopping at Louise’s Kitchen where he found a plastic bag of bread heels hung up on a hook above the dumpster. Louise put it out there because she knew the bums would root through her garbage if she didn’t make it easy for them. So she hung the bread up away from the rats. Eddie knew when the bag came out and he was surprised to see it still there. He sat on the bottom of the steps leading up into the back of the restaurant, chewing through several pieces of the bread. The smell of the alley did not register. His own odor, rising up from his collar all warm and ripe from the body heat trapped under his coat did not register. Mr. Harold, Eddie thought, an idea pulling at him.

  23

  When Eddie crossed over the railroad tracks, he had officially crossed over to the east side, and he knew enough to be careful on the east side. By now it was dark, but the street lamps and still-lighted windows in the business buildings pushed Eddie to the shadows. When he made his way to a spot under the Intracoastal bridge he sat there for an hour, tucked back against cold concrete. He wished he’d gotten the heroin before he tried this. He was feeling the need in his stomach. Just a single pop would do.

  The smell of the river was a blend of salt and gasoline fumes and damp pilings. Above he could hear the roll of cars on the bridge surface, humming along the concrete and then singing when the tires hit the metal grating in the middle. He checked the time on the watch from deep in his pocket, left the cart and started over to the parking lot of the county jail.

  He stayed close to the fence, moving from tree to tree. The east- siders thought landscaping made things look nice, so there was always a dark shadow to slip into. He scanned the lot. Most of the light glowed up off the eight-story white stone façade of the jail. But Eddie could still make out the colors and makes of the cars. The fourth row down and in between the two light poles was Mr. Harold’s Caprice.

  He knew that the doctor worked the middle shift and would be getting off at 11:00 P.M., plenty of time.

  He found a way through the fencing, a gap left open by workers at an adjoining construction site, and moved low and slow along an inside row to the car. He peered up over the line of hoods and watched a single, twirling yellow light moving along the front sidewalk. That was the thing about those security carts, you always knew where they were.

  When it disappeared, Eddie moved to the driver’s-side door of the Caprice and reached into his pocket for the old tennis ball he’d brought from his cart. He turned the ball in his fingers to find the shaved side and located the small hole that he’d punched into its middle with a nail. Then he positioned the hole over the round key entrance on the door lock. Holding the seal tight with one hand, he took one more wary look around, then banged the ball with the heel of his other hand. The air from the ball rushed into the lock system hard enough
to simultaneously pop up all four of the door buttons. Eddie opened the left passenger door and climbed in.

  The inside smelled of cigarettes and paper. A box of files sat in the back but there was still room for Eddie behind the driver’s seat. He flipped the overhead light off, locked the doors and waited, his nose twitching with the smell of stale nicotine.

  Eddie was in the backseat less than an hour when he heard footsteps on the pavement. Mr. Harold fumbled with his keys and then unlocked the doors. He tossed a briefcase onto the front passenger side and was already halfway in when the smell caused his face to screw up and he felt a huge hand clamp onto his upper right arm and pull him in.

  The doctor whimpered once before his eyes snapped around to Eddie’s and then quickly changed from wide-open shock to a narrow questioning.

  “Jesus, Eddie. What the hell are you doing here?” said Harold Marshack, his voice jumping from surprise to consternation. “Didn’t I tell you not to come here?”

  Eddie stared at him and for the second time in only a few hours, another man’s eyes looked back. The psychiatrist could see the edge of panic there.

  “Hey, it’s not safe for you here, Eddie,” Marshack said, his voice now going calm and pitched as if he were speaking to a child.

  “You didn’t come to the post office,” Eddie said.

  His big hand was still holding the doctor’s arm, a soft grip for Eddie, painful for the recipient. Marshack again changed his voice.

  “I’ll admit I wasn’t sure what to do, Eddie,” he said, now patting the big man’s hand, hoping to ease the hold.

  “A man was killed, Eddie. At Ms. Thompson’s. What happened, Eddie? Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  Eddie knew the sound of those words. He’d heard that voice that said “Stupid Eddie” all his life. When he was a kid they lured him into the circle with the mock friendship just to steal his money or humiliate him for laughs. The women, the police, even Momma’s preacher. Be nice to Eddie, then when his grip loosens, steal what he has. Eddie wasn’t stupid.