A Visible Darkness - By Jonathon King Page 0,66

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.”

29

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