Jonathon King - A Killing Night

The sounds of Roger's handcuffs ringing and his baton clacking on his belt came through the transmission each time he keyed the mic to speak. This asshole was giving him a pretty good run.

He pushed up his speed and then rode the brakes just a touch while blowing through a stop sign. He was watching for the telltale sweep of headlights. Anything dark was just SOL. From other radio traffic he could tell other units were closing in like some kind of foxhunt. But he wanted to get in there first, and without announcing himself or flushing the runner into somebody else's hands.

"Two-oh-four. What's your location?" Dispatch bitch again. "We need to set up a perimeter on the east side of Fifteenth Ave."

Fuck that. Goddamn perimeter guys always miss out on the good stuff. He ignored the call and doused his flashing light bar and gunned the car up Eighth toward the park. The guy'll go into the park. They always go into the fucking park, figuring the patrol cars won't follow them into the trees.

"Suspect is…uh…in the alley moving north…in the six hundred block…uh…toward the park."

Nice, Roger, he thought, and cut the wheel and jumped a sidewalk onto the sod of the park's soccer field and felt the fishtail of the Ford's ass end sliding on grass.

"Description of the suspect, four-eighteen?" dispatch asked.

"White male…heavy, six-foot…wearing, wearing gray cutoff sweatshirt…uh…dark pants…"

Roger was doing a hell of a job but it didn't sound like he was gonna keep up much longer and this fuck is bound to go for the thick pines at the north side. If he makes that fence behind the library and across Federal, we're screwed.

He accelerated, throwing up a rooster-tail of grass and black dirt over the field, and killed his headlights. He used the spillover of light from the baseball diamond to aim for the tree line. The radio crackled again and he heard the rustle of metal clacking again but this time no one spoke.

"Four-eighteen? Four-eighteen, what's your location?" the dispatcher said, worry now sneaking into her voice.

He reached the trees and slurred the car to a stop and kept his eyes at head level, scanning the field for movement. The high baseball lights glowed up and out, leaving the grass in shadow. He opened the driver's door, congratulated himself on remembering to kill the dome light when the shift started, and stepped out. The air was heavy with the drizzle and the smell of fresh-cut grass. He unsnapped the hammer strap from the 9mm in his holster and squinted, tracking to the west and listening. His eye stopped on something on the black background, a dull flash of white that was there, then gone, then there again. He took a few steps in that direction when the radio came back to life.

"Four-eighteen. Suspect in custody," Roger said.

He could hear the crackle in both the radio on his shirt and in the air out in front of him and he started jogging.

"Ten-four, four-eighteen. Location?" said the dispatcher.

"On the soccer field, north end of the park."

As he got closer, he could see Roger, one knee in the back of a big man who was facedown in the grass, bobbing his head from side to side and spitting out fresh clippings that were pasted onto his sweaty face.

"Yo, Rog," he said as he reached the two. "Olympic fucking speed, man. I didn't know you were a cross-country star, man."

Roger's face was glistening in the spare light. His breathing was heavy and he kept his left hand on the man's shoulder blades and wiped at the sweat with the short sleeve of his uniform. He already had handcuffs on the man and he let a grin start on the lighted side of his face.

"Figured he'd head this way and I knew once we got in the clear I'd get him in a sprint," Roger said.

"Olympic fucking speed," he repeated, standing over Roger and the suspect, watching across the park and picking up the blue and red flashes of other units rolling up on the perimeter.

"Hear that, shit-head? Snared your fat ass with Olympic speed," he said and kicked the soles of the man's thick leather boots.

"Where'd you come in, anyway?" Roger said, finally standing up. "I didn't see your car."

"I figured the park, too," he said. "But not on that speed of yours, Rog. Thought I'd cut him off at the tree line."

The two cops talked as if there were no third party, both of them watching the other marked cars swing their headlights into the parking area to the west of the field. They both leaned over and grabbed an arm and brought him to his knees.

"On your feet, shit-head. Time to march the perp march, brother," he said.

"I ain't your fuckin' brother," the man said, slurring his words, talking through clenched teeth like his mouth didn't work right. "An' I didn' do no felony. I was jus' walkin' downa street an' this fuck…"

The man snorted when the first spray of Mace hit him in the face. The second shot of chemical started him coughing and squirming between them.

"Jesus, man," Roger said, turning his own face away from the stinging spray and the canister that had suddenly appeared in the other cop's hand. "Easy with that stuff. We got him."

He looked into Roger's face and gave him that smile of his, holstered the canister and looked back at the gagging prisoner.

"Hey, big man. You do have the right to remain silent," he said, and now they were half dragging the man into the cross-hatching lights of the other squad cars. Behind them their tracks were three dark stains in the wet grass.

"And if you give up that right, I'll give you another shot of that shit into that wired-up mouth of yours."

The big man said nothing.

"That's it, brother," the cop said. "Now you know who's in control."

I was sitting in a low-slung beach chair, my legs stretched out and bare heels dug comfortably into dry sand. My fingers were wrapped around a perspiring bottle of Rolling Rock beer. It was early evening and I was drinking and thinking and carefully watching the light.

It is no new phenomenon. I am sure oceanside peoples have watched the same drift and loss and meld of color for thousands of years from their own shorelines. But for an inner city kid from South Philly who rarely saw a sunset that was not spiked with the corners and spires of buildings, the cables of bridges and the curved necks of light poles, it was a performance. I took another sip from the green bottle and watched a couple of beach walkers pass by, their feet in the run-up of surf, their bent heads silhouetted by the pale blueness still in the sky behind them. I sat long enough to watch the blue color leach away from the Atlantic and at the same time slowly leave the sky. If you watched long enough, and with patience, you could see the two sets of the world, water and air, lose their color together and blend at the line of the horizon, miles out to sea. Eventually even that border lost its distinction and gave in to darkness.

Both as a child and later as a street cop in Philadelphia I took lessons from the night. I never heard my father beat my mother in daylight. I never shot a murderer, or an innocent tagalong kid, before nightfall. I never met a woman who didn't wait until dark to break my heart. Now I was in South Florida, spending hours in the evening, almost with a need, to watch the darkness come, an event I called the "disappearing blue."

I felt the vibration on my hip and reached down to where my beeper was wedged between my waistband and the stretched canvas of the chair. I turned it off and did not bother to look at the display. It had to be Billy. No one else had the number. I spent several more minutes looking out into the now black water, watching the small winking lights of fishing boats and far-off freighters become the new demarcation of where the water met the sky. The surf made a hissing noise each time it brushed up on the sand and I let it fill my ears until I gathered the fortitude to answer the page and find out what civilization had mucked up for me tomorrow.