Jonathon King - A Visible Darkness

The Caprice was an old model but flawless. Not a rust spot or a dent. The paint was unblemished. The chrome sparkling. The whitewalls brilliant and unstained. The license plate was multicolored and decorated with stick figures of playing children and said, "Choose Life."

Eddie took up a position on the sidewalk in front of the car and leaned against Bromell's cantina wall. The young ones paid him no mind, an ol' trash man.

While he waited, Eddie watched another car pull in and park in the back of the lot, near his willow tree. The car looked like a cheap rental. The white man backed into the space, the way a cop might. Eddie kept his head down, peering up through his eyebrows. The ones at the phone nudged each other and under his breath, one hissed "Five-Oh." Eddie knew it meant they'd spotted a cop on the street. Their voices got softer but they didn't move. One of the pay phones rang and they let it jangle eight times before it stopped.

Eddie watched the new car. The outline of the man's head looked huge and Eddie thought he could almost see his eyes. Then he watched the man lift a bottle wrapped in a paper bag to his lips and take a long drink. It wasn't a cop. Just another drinking man.

Eddie's own man came out of the store. He was wearing a short- brimmed touring cap. A package was under his arm and as he passed, Eddie watched his hands. The fingers were pale and thin and cupped. Eddie unfolded his own massive palm and the man dropped a tightly rolled package into it and Eddie's hand snapped shut like a jaw. The man got into his car and only tried to make eye contact after he was behind the wheel. Eddie kept his brow down and pushed away as the Caprice backed out.

No one noticed the exchange or no one cared that a white man had dropped some change into an old black junk man's hand. Eddie jammed the roll down into his pocket next to the watch and moved north, across Sunrise, up Twenty-third and through an alley. He did not hurry, but he did not break stride until he reached the old warehouse where they used to park the city buses and where the mechanic crews had left the packed dirt black and flaky with spilled oil and engine fluids. Back behind a rusted dumpster, he stopped, swung his head north to south, and satisfied he was alone, dug out the roll and loosened it.

Three hundred-dollar bills and the white notebook paper, the kind with the blue lines and the thin red stripe on one side. Typed in the middle of the page: Mrs. Abigail Thompson 1027 NW 32nd Ave.

Eddie knew Ms. Thompson from years past. She may have even gone to church with his mother. He also knew the alley behind her house. Eddie knew all the alleys.

Billy poured himself another glass of Merlot. I took another swallow of coffee. Both of us had had enough shrimp fried rice. I was ready for a prowl car tour of the area where Billy's women had died.

The beach run had been painful. The humidity of surfside Florida teamed up with the soft sand to make my three miles a fine torture. Most of my life my regular runs had been done on Philadelphia streets, several blocks east to Front Street and then north along the Delaware to Bookbinders and back. I was used to cruising on hard concrete, slapping a rhythm, dodging through intersections. If I went down the shore, I'd do miles on the Ocean City beach at low tide when the sand was wet and brown and hard. Here it was slogging, half your energy used digging out of each footstep. My lungs were burning but I'd sprinted the last hundred yards down in ankle- deep water.

The shower afterwards was always a treat. Out at my shack all I had was a rain barrel above my porch that was fed by water flowing from the eaves and fitted with a hose and nozzle.

Billy filled me in on his paper trace while we ate. His women had come to South Florida at different times and they'd bought their insurance policies at different ages but all within a close time period. They probably knew one another because of their era and proximity, but it would have been on a social basis. None was in business with the other. There were no family connections. No shared churches in the recent past.

"Has McCane been any help to you?" I said.

"He has accessed s-some dates and m-medical questionnaires on the policies his company h-held."

"You talking with him?"

"Only on the phone."

"I'll check with him tomorrow. Maybe I should have asked him along tonight."

We traded sideways glances.

"Maybe not," I said, and we both relaxed.

I pushed the plate away. I'd already bagged my things, planning to get back to the river afterwards. I'd dressed in jeans and a dark polo shirt and black, soft-soled shoes.

"How is Sherry?"

"Looks good," I said.

"W-When are you two going to quit d-dancing around each other?"

Billy was trained to be forward and blunt. But he rarely took that step with me.

"She's still got a ghost in her head."

"She's the only one who's b-been able to p-pull you off the river."

"Liar," I said, fishing out my keys.

"Well, I d-don't count," Billy said.

I drained the coffee and tipped the cup at him.

"Yes, you do."

When I got to the sheriff's office I parked my truck near the front entrance and was starting across the lot when a spotlight snapped on me. When I raised a hand to shade my eyes, the light went off. Richards was backed into a spot and was behind the wheel of a green-and-white. I opened her passenger side and climbed in. She was in uniform. Starched short-sleeved white shirt and deep green trousers with a stripe down the leg. Her hair was pinned up. Her 9mm in a leather holster at her side.

"Regulation," she said. "Got to wear the whole rig if you're driving a squad car," she said in greeting.

"I remember," I said.

She slid a clipboard over to me with a form on top.

"Absolves the office if you get hurt. Sign the bottom."

"I think you've got the wrong impression of me and my propensity for getting hurt," I said.

"No, I don't," she answered, grinning as she shifted into drive.

We pulled onto the street and headed west. The strip centers were single-story and second-rate. A carpet outlet. A fish market. "Jiggles" nightclub with "Girls, Live Girls."

We turned north onto a side street and a block and a half off the main thoroughfare we were into residential.

There were no sidewalks but street lamps were set every two blocks. At this time of night cars were parked in most of the driveways, some on the grassless swale. Richards punched off the headlights and swung onto another cross street. Two houses in she twisted the handle on the door-mounted spotlight and snapped it on. The beam caught the black maw of an open doorway and she swept across the windows that were boarded up with plywood.

"Crack houses," she said. "We try to keep them boarded up. But they rip the stuff down faster than we can get it up. The owner who lives god knows where won't keep it sealed even if it is the law."

She flashed back over the doorway and the light picked up some movement inside.

"You arrest them for trespassing or possession and they're out by Friday."

She flipped off the spot and pulled the headlights back on and kept going. As a patrolman in Philly I'd done the same thing. It was exactly the same neighborhood only one-story instead of two. Less brick. More trees. Same despair.

"Your husband work this zone?" I asked and immediately wondered why the question came into my mouth.

The dash lights gave her jawline a sharp edge. Her nose held a small but not indelicate hump. A touch of mascara showed at the corner of her eye, which stayed focused ahead.

"Sometimes," she finally said. "But he preferred the eastern zones. He wasn't much for the action. He worked a lot with kids in the Police Athletic League."