Jonathon King - Shadow Men

Billy and I looked at each other while McIntyre looked with dark, innocent eyes over the rim of her wineglass.

"Have you ever considered a career in t-tabloid journalism, m- my dear?"

She did that thing she does with one eyebrow.

"Possibly."

We triple-teamed the dishes and then moved out to the patio. The wind was nonexistent, and even from this height you could hear the slight shore break brushing the sand in rhythm. The sky was moonless and the ocean black and vast, with only a few scattered flickers of light from overnight fishermen out on the shallow swells.

"The Everglades is like this, black and silent, late at night, isn't it, Max?"

McIntyre was sitting on the chaise, her back propped up against Billy's knees and shins as he sat back with a brandy.

"If you're far enough in it, yeah," I said. "And most of the time even quieter."

"I can't imagine those men out there, not knowing quite where they were or what the next day was going to bring."

"I can," I said, sipping the cold bottle in my hand. "More of the same. Day after day until they got desperate."

Then we were quiet. Maybe all three of us were looking out on the blackness and trying to visualize what desperation looked like. After a time, Diane got up and made her apologies to leave. "Court again at eight."

She and Billy walked back inside. I stood up at the railing and found one of the boat lights out on the blackness, and as I watched it flicker I tried to put myself into the head of a man in the hot, choking and foreign Glades, his sons next to him, working through his hope of money and the stability it might bring his family as the only motivation to push back his fear. The light in the distance would fade and then come back again. I knew it was the rise and fall of the swells. Sometimes it would disappear completely, but then come back. It didn't move north or south. The captain must have her anchored, I thought. Maybe over one of his favorite night spots. A place he felt lucky or comfortable.

I heard the foyer door close and a minute later Billy came back out and the aroma of coffee came with him. He set a cup on the small glass-topped table beside me and leaned his elbows on the railing, his own cup in both hands, extended out over the empty one hundred feet to the pool below. He may have been watching the same floating light I was.

"You tell any of this to Mayes?" I asked.

Billy nodded. "He r-reacted very quietly. Not w-what I had expected."

"You tell him it was going to be a long haul?"

He nodded again. "I told him it c-could eventually l-lead to a civil suit. But I'm not s-sure our Mr. M-Mayes wants to s-see this through," Billy said. "He has t-told me that he is d-debating whether to enter the s-seminary in Georgia. He s-seems quite at odds with the p-proposition."

The cross at his neck, I thought.

"Can't make up his mind until he finds out what happened," I said, guessing.

"No. I b-believe he is looking for something m-more than that," Billy said. "Something about m-motivation."

The surf was like a soft broom below. We both listened for some time.

"You ever think about your father?" I finally said. "I mean, I know he wasn't there when you were growing up. But, you've got him in you."

Although I had not met Billy until we were grown men, our mothers-a white Irish Catholic from South Philly and a black Baptist from the north side-had cemented our friendship.

"He p-played chess when he was young," Billy said. My question did not unnerve or offend him. "My mother said it was one of the th-things that attracted her when they m-met in high school. Once, without her knowing, I l-looked up his picture in an old school yearbook. He hadn't m-made the official photos, b-but he was in the back row of the chess team picture."

I was quiet and let him look out at the darkness, and the picture.

"I think of him w-when I feel anger, M-Max. The uselessness of it."

I sat and picked up the coffee.

"You're m-meeting with your Mr. Brown tomorrow?" Billy said, moving to the door.

"Noon," I said.

"I h-hope he is helpful. Good night, m-my friend."

I remember the uniforms. Men, all lined up in a row, all with the same dark blue uniforms. They all seemed tall to me, as an eight-year- old sitting on a folded chair trying, at first, to pry my mother's hand from mine and then forgetting and letting her hold it as the line of men took their places on the small stage. My father was the third man on the right, his own uniform brushed and creased, the buttons polished and shoes buffed to a gloss by my mother late into the preceding night. I remember being fascinated by the lights from the television crews gleaming off the brass buttons and bars and yellow gold stripes on some of the men's sleeves. They were all wearing their hats, what my father called his lid, even though we were inside and my mother would have called it impolite. I remember the man at the microphone beginning to speak and my father looking out to find us, and under the brim of his lid he winked at me. The man at the microphone told the story that I had already heard so many times, though he did not include the harsh laughter and cussing that my uncle and my fathers other policemen friends used in the backyard when they were drinking beer. The man used my father's full name and when he was finally called to the podium, he dipped his head and the man draped a gold, shining medal around my father's neck and everyone clapped and I looked at my mother's face to see her reaction and saw a single tear that she caught halfway down her cheek with a gloved finger, and I did not know as a child whether she was too proud or too sad.

For years afterward I would secretly seek out that piece of gold with the red-striped ribbon. I would wait until the house was empty and go into my parents' bedroom and open the bottom drawer of the bureau and find the dark blue case pushed hard against the back corner, buried under the old Arnold Palmer sweaters that I never saw my father wear. I would take out the case and lay it in my lap and open it and stare at the thick carved gold that seemed to grow richer in color over time. Then I would again unfold the newspaper clipping that showed the uniformed men in a line and I would read the story.

Philadelphia police yesterday awarded the medal of valor to one of their own in a ceremony to honor the officer credited with killing the celebrated Mifflin Square Molester in a shootout last spring.

Anthony M. Freeman, 28, a six-year veteran of the department and the son of another decorated officer, was wounded in the gun battle with Roland Previo after Previo was confronted with evidence that he was the man who had brutally raped and killed four young girls in his own South Philadelphia neighborhood three years ago.

Freeman, assigned to the detective unit just days before the discovery of the first victim in the killings, had "tirelessly pursued the case with the dogged determination of a true veteran," read Det. Commander Tom Schmidt.

Although the case had run dry of leads and legal evidence, Freeman's superiors said the young detective developed his own information over two years. While confronting Previo with newly discovered stained clothing that tied the ex-convict to two of the slayings, "Freeman, acting without regard to his own safety, attempted to make an arrest and was twice wounded by his suspect before returning fire and mortally wounding his assailant," Schmidt read during the ceremony.

When asked later for his reaction, Freeman said he did not consider his actions to be heroic and that his determination to find the killer had been a simple pursuit of the truth.

"I just wanted the truth to come out. There were a lot of rumors and lies and legal bull-being passed around over the years. But the families of those little girls deserved the truth," Freeman said.