A Visible Darkness - By Jonathon King Page 0,52

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