And now all of us but the two backup officers are lifting Riley onto the stretcher and he feels so light with all the hands working that I think to myself, He's too light, he must be dead.
In seconds we have him in and the ambulance pulls away and we're all just staring after it when two more units come swinging in from the north and south. In the crosshatching headlights the intersection is glowing and I am looking around for a familiar face when the mood and attention of the gathering shifts.
For the first time I see what the backup guys are focused on. Their guns are still loosely pointed at a black man sitting on the curb. His legs are stretched out into the street. His head is bent to his chest and long ropes of braided hair are dangling into his lap. His hands are cuffed behind him and one shoulder is oddly twisted. The material of his coat sleeve is soaked and dark. Eight feet away a chrome-plated handgun lies on the sidewalk.
The uniformed guys are standing back. Not one of us from the group that lifted Riley takes a step closer. I turn to the cop holding the blood-soaked towel and ask what the hell happened.
"Fuckin' homeboy shot Danny Riley in a traffic stop's what happened. Danny got a round off and wounded him but the motherfucker put a kill shot into Danny while he was down."
The newly arrived cops are getting the same story. I watch their faces change from an intent listening to an anger that tightens their jaw muscles and narrows their eyes, and when they cut their looks at the wounded man on the curb I know I am looking at my own face in an angry mirror.
A second ambulance pulls up. A police step van right behind it. A sergeant has appeared from somewhere and some of us gather around him as the cop with the towel fills him in. The paramedics climb out of the second unit and approach, watching us, watching the wounded suspect, watching the guns still unholstered.
"Got a guy needs attention here, Sarge," the first medic says, and it is not a question. The sergeant raises one finger to silence him.
"We're securing the scene, doc," he says.
We all watch as the sergeant looks around at the high windows of the darkened buildings around us. He walks slowly over to the sidewalk, scans the area and then walks back to his squad car. He is the ranking officer on the scene. Everyone else is silent as we watch him reach into his car and come out with a plastic evidence bag. He is in no hurry, and even the paramedics seem to be unable to speak. We all watch him walk back toward the suspect and past him to the chrome handgun. He stares at it a full minute and then bends to pick it up and place it carefully in the bag.
He stands and seals it.
"OK. Secure," he says, pointing at the group of officers, "Put him in the van."
All four of us walk over to the black man and grab a piece. I'm left with the bloodied shoulder but I don't care. When we pull him off the curb a low keening of pain rises in his throat and he is heavy and nearly limp. Someone grabs his belt and we drag him across the street to the open van doors and the keening becomes a wail. A cop up inside reaches out and takes a fistful of dreadlocks and yanks as we all boost him into the truck and someone gives him a final shove with a boot to his haunch. The doors slam shut and when I bang my palm on the side panel I turn and see that both the paramedics and the sergeant have turned their backs to the scene. The van pulls away in the direction of the hospital. Towel man catches my eye and then tracks down my arm. I look down to see the blood smear on my hand from the black man's wound and the cop carefully folds the towel with Danny Riley's blood and walks away.
When I wake up the shack is still and the cool night air has drifted in and pushed out the heat but I am still sweating and I know there will be no more sleep this night.
I pull on a pair of jeans. In the swamp outside it's the dead-zone time, a strange biological warp that shrouds this place long after midnight but far from dawn. It's a time when the insects stop their chirping. The night predators have given up. And the early hunters and daytime foragers are still asleep. The quiet is like a pressure on the ears. I interrupt it with the hiss of propane and light the portable stove to heat my coffee.
That night in Philadelphia, Danny Riley would die and the shooter would find ignominious celebrity in the years to follow. He would claim innocence and racism. The courts would end up on trial. The wounded man, the one who knew the truth, would never speak it.
I poured a cup of coffee and stepped out onto the landing to sip it. I stared into the canopy and remembered the scene in the emergency room waiting area that had filled with cops and wives and reporters and camera crews. When the police chief came out surrounded by his captains he made a terse and tearful statement, announcing that Riley had succumbed to his wounds. There was an almost group exhalation, a beat of mutual pain that was interrupted by the blonde radio news reporter who asked the first question:
"Chief, what do you say to the reports that your officers took an inordinate amount of time to transport the wounded suspect and that they beat him before tossing him bodily into the paddy wagon?"
Everyone in earshot turned to look at her and when I did I saw my father, out of uniform, standing near the wall with two of his precinct friends. He was staring at me, nodding his head and smirking with an unfamiliar "atta boy" that he rarely had cause to waste on me.
I'd gone through the coffee by the time the morning was old enough to call Billy. I had tried him several times during the evening but knew that by seven he would be up and sitting on the ocean- front patio of his high-rise apartment going through the Wall Street Journal.
"Counselor."
"Max. Just taking a look at some of these tech stocks that I got you out of two years ago. It may be an opportune time to sneak back in on some of the safe ones to keep things moving in your portfolio. No more of this holding your own and getting savings account level returns. Even we conservatives have to get in the water again."
"Who ever called you a conservative, Billy?"
"Only those who can't figure out how I stay ahead, my friend."
"OK. Then let's move ahead, Mr. Greenspan. What's your plan with this McCane guy, and what do you want me to do that you or he haven't already done?"
I watched an early heron slide its snake-like neck into a patch of water hyacinth while Billy shifted gears. "I don't know how serious McCane and his company are. Maybe no more than the police or the prosecutor's office. Maybe he's just here on the company dime, soaking up the sun and pretending to be working."
"I don't see a whole lot of enthusiasm," I said. Billy hesitated.
"You know I don't ask you into this easily, Max. I thought I could get to it, track it down from the outside."
He listened to my silence.
"My feeling is the answers are in the street, and I admit I won't go there anymore, Max. It doesn't work for me."
My friend had made his escape. I wondered if he knew something I didn't, if he knew I couldn't make mine. Maybe he was right.
I told him I wanted to start in the neighborhood, with the daughter who had first called him in.
"Logical," he said, his voice losing its tension. "McCane has already been over there and wasn't too subtle."
I could imagine the stone-cold looks and the long-ago images of "the man" that would run through most of the minds in such a place when McCane came banging on the door.
"No doubt," I said. "I'm sure that loosened things up nicely for me."
"I'll talk to Ms. Jackson's daughter about you."
When I let the statement sit quiet for a few seconds, he added, "Thanks, Max."