Jonathon King - A Visible Darkness

When my mother became too weak, Mrs. Manchester would come on the Broad Street subway from her home in North Philly, walking the last several blocks to the house. She would clean and cook and sit with my mother for hours, reading from the Bible. The relatives and neighbors accepted the black woman's role in a house where they themselves were not invited by considering her a kind of nurse and housekeeper.

For two more years my mother hung on. Near the end I would come each evening before my night shift started and make sure she had at least eaten something. A real nurse was visiting now, someone from hospice care. They had set up a morphine drip that my mother had refused at first, but then acquiesced to out of pure weakness. I would sit by the side of her bed, the same bed I had slept in through my childhood and teenage years, and massage her legs, the only place she would admit to having pain.

She still recognized me, and when I would bring her hand up to my cheek she would say, "Maxey, forgive me."

And I would repeat that there was nothing for me to forgive.

When she died the rest of the family was aghast when they found out that I was honoring my mother's wishes and having her cremated. She had fought through her duty to lay next to my father for too many years and did not want to do so for eternity.

It was only after she passed that my uncle Keith took me aside and told me about the arsenic poisoning. The liver failure that my father had suffered could easily have been attributed to cirrhosis, even though the medical examiner had come up with an unnatural level of arsenic in his system. Being the nature of the police club, whose circle of influence included the M.E.'s and prosecutors and neighborhood politicos, that information had been quietly buried or simply ignored. It was the first time I had to admit to the benefits of the code of silence.

"Nobody knows," said my father's only brother. "And nobody blames her for the bastard he was, God rest his soul."

Mrs. Manchester came to the funeral service, causing a whispering among the relatives and family friends who attended at the Methodist church. The old black woman sat in a back pew long after everyone else had gone. As I left, she rose and came up to me and held both of my hands and said, "God forgives."

It was well after midnight when Diaz called it quits.

"We ain't going to even see this junk man in the dark," he said, turning down another alley. "I say we get Bravo shift to make sure they stop by the kitchen dumpsters in the morning, try to nab the guy diving for something to eat. The guy has to eat, no?"

I talked him into taking another swing through the alley behind the Thompson house, on a gut feeling.

"You're talking about a psycho returning to the scene of the crime, Freeman, and we don't even know for sure if this guy did the crime."

We were coming out of Ms. Thompson's alley when Diaz flipped on his headlights and the beams caught the off-limits crew huddled on the opposite corner.

"Fuck is this group of homeboys up late on a school night?" Diaz said.

"Pull up," I said.

We stopped with my window facing the crew. The leader recognized me through the open window and took a step forward. Diaz was smart enough to keep his silence.

"You teamin' up wit the five-oh eh, G?" he said, looking past me to Diaz. "I thought you guys didn't get along, you know, all that big- footin' shit you see on the movies."

"I'll assume you haven't got anything," I said, ignoring his act in front of Diaz.

"We got our word out. I'll call you, like I said. But you best answer quick."

I nodded and we moved on.

"That your connection, Freeman? Crew of wannabes working way outside the action zone?"

I didn't turn my head.

"Let's call it a night, Detective. You're probably right, you should turn that kitchen suggestion over to the daysiders."

Eddie was under the I-95 overpass, tucked up as high on the concrete slope as he could get. His coat was wrapped tight around him and he was shivering.

After Mr. Harold had given him two more hundred-dollar bills and promised he would meet him at the liquor store in three days, Eddie went to buy more drugs. He knew Mr. Harold would keep his promise. He hadn't seemed mad at all that Ms. Thompson wasn't dead, if that was true. Eddie had asked him if he should go again to her place on Thirty-second Avenue and Mr. Harold said no, he'd have to talk to someone else and find out what they should do. He had given him the money and even let Eddie get out of the parking lot before he started the Caprice and drove away.

Eddie had started feeling better, was getting back to his routine, pushing his cart at night when he saw the blue-and-red lights flashing down the street near his momma's house. He was coming down off a high and couldn't figure out why the police cars were pointing at each other.

From behind a hedge he watched them waving cars on when they slowed down to look. People that he recognized, neighbors of his mother, were standing near the cars, walking back and forth, asking the cops questions and then turning away in frustration. Ms. Emily was out there with her old robe and slippers on, her hair all standing up straight and stiff-like, her voice like his momma's, all high and preachy.

"Ain't nobody in that house, I'm tellin' y'all. Ms. Baines done left to go back up to Carolina to be with her people," she was singing to one of the cops. "Y'all got us standin' out here for nothin', an' I'm gonna miss my Survivor."

Eddie left after he heard his mother's name used. He took the alleys and the back ways and stopped once behind the auto glass place to mix his last package of heroin. Before the sun came up he was here, under the bridge.

Nearby, three homeless men were taking turns with a WILL WORK FOR FOOD, GOD BLESS YOU sign. Two would stay down under the bridge, sharing a bottle, while the third climbed up for handouts on the off ramp. When one man's allotted time was done, they would switch. When they first saw Eddie curled up, they watched him carefully, eyeing his cart down below. But when they got brave and came close, Eddie unfolded himself and stared into their faces and they backed off and went on with their routine.

Now, with the traffic humming and burring across the concrete above him and the full sun hot just a few feet away, he was cold.

Maybe if he waited for the dark, he thought, maybe then he could be invisible again.

After Diaz dropped me at the sheriff's office, I spent the rest of the night sleeping in my truck, parked in a spot along the ocean- front. It was windless but I could still hear the surf sliding up on the wet sand. I was awake when the sky went from dark to gray to a green-blue blush, and then the sun rose like a bubble of wax. When it cleared the horizon it threw a trail of light crystals across the flat water.

My cell phone rang at 7:00 A.M.

"Sorry if I woke you at an inopportune time," Billy said. "But I did manage to get some information and I wanted to pass it on while you were in the thick of things."

"You saw the news?"

"The demise of Dr. Marshack seems particularly coincidental, and I know how much you despise that standard."

"So spill already," I said, trying to rub my eyes into focus before realizing that there was a film of salt spread across my front window.

"Dr. Marshack did indeed work at the prison at the same time as McCane. He left a year after McCane was bounced."

"Have you talked with our partner recently?" Billy asked.

"I paged him," I said. "Nothing."

"I'll call his main office in Savannah, find out if he is still supposed to be on the job," Billy said.

When I filled him in on the way Eddie Baines was fleshing out, Billy went silent for an uncomfortable stretch.