A Visible Darkness - By Jonathon King Page 0,8

I asked the waiter for a Rolling Rock and McCane cut his eyes at me.

“Ya’ll were on the job somewhere?” he said, the New York cop phrase sounding odd in his southern accent.

“Philadelphia. Ten years.”

“Retired?”

“Quit,” I said. “Took disability after a shooting.”

“I seen that scar,” he said, his eyes going to the penny-sized disc of scar tissue above my collarbone. I repressed the urge to touch the soft spot left by a bullet that had miraculously passed through my neck without killing me. I stared across the street, a flash of sun on the window of an opening door flickering behind my eye where the memory of the pale face of a dead twelve-year-old boy hid. I blinked away the vision.

“You?” I asked, turning back to McCane.

“Charleston P.D. for a while. Then over to Savannah some. Retired there. Picked up this investigative work through an old boy I knew for years. Money’s all right. Don’t like the travel much.”

The waiter brought my beer with a glass. McCane sipped his tea, and refused to look as I took a deep draw from the bottle.

Out in the street a river of cars filled up the block and then flushed away with a change of the stoplight. It was a bustle, but unlike a fall day in a northeast city. The people weren’t locked onto a destination; the subway, the train station, the office building where they could get out of the cold. Even on a busy downtown street here you can not stand under a blue sky next to a palm tree and be in too much of a hurry.

“Hard to find P.I. work down here?” he asked, taking another drag on his cigarette.

“I wouldn’t know,” I said, wondering how much Billy had told him about me. “Why do you ask?”

McCane released a lung-full of smoke.

“You know. Just figured if you had to work for him,” he said, nodding in the direction Billy had walked, “things must be tight.”

“It’s a favor,” I said, recognizing now the subtle edge of racism in the man’s voice.

“Yeah, well,” he said. “It all spends the same, don’t it?”

The waiter came back for our orders. I asked for grilled yellowtail, knowing Arturo’s chef would spice it nicely with a Cuban flavor.

“Black beans, sir?” the waiter asked.

“Yes, please.”

McCane had not looked at the menu.

“I’ll have the same,” he said. “Nix the beans, heh?”

The waiter nodded politely and left. When he was gone McCane shifted into business mode.

The connection between two ex-cops was settled at arm’s length. I now knew why Billy called me in to work with a man with whom he could not.

“My company owns three of the policies written on these women more than forty years,” he started. “Some go-getter salesman comes down here in the ’50s. Figures Florida is boomin’ what with all the young WWII vets makin’ a new start.

“But he gets down here and the GIs and flyboys have already been scooped up by insurance companies with government connections. But this ol’ boy ain’t gonna waste a trip. He sniffs out another market and works the other side of the tracks, sellin’ to the blacks who have a few bucks because the whole place is flush.”

Again he seemed to stop a moment for effect.

“Got to give the boy some credit. He targeted the women. The housekeepers who had regular work in white homes. Shop owners who were runnin’ little businesses. He sweet talks them with the old promise of security for the kids. Something for their future. A better life for them when you’re gone. He signs up dozens of them, gets a few bucks up front, figures what the hell, they get a few premiums in before they quit paying, it’s easy money.”

I ate while McCane talked. I was listening, but watching other customers come and go, marking cars in traffic that held more than one male, and noting that each time I took a drink from my beer, McCane would look away. I was also thinking of Billy’s history lesson.

“But some of these women kept up with their payments,” I finally said.

“Yeah. And some even bought additional policies over the years. Especially this last one. Two hundred thousand worth when she sold to the viatical investors.”

I finally cut to it: “You think someone killed them?”

“Hell, I don’t know. The cops don’t think so. The M.E. don’t. But your boy Manchester does and he’s got some kinda clout, cause here I am.”

Billy’s famous connections, I thought. But back in his office he’d