I didn't answer.

"You wouldn't cripple a man like that, Max."

"All right," I finally said, turning my face to the water. "The guy's got issues."

I knew it was a bad choice of words when I heard it come out of my mouth.

"Issues? He's got issues?" She stood up. "What? Are you defending him now? You guys have a few beers, relive old times and then go out and kick some a.s.s together and become brothers in arms all of a sudden?"

I stayed in my chair, knew I hadn't played it well.

"He knows you're after him, Sherry," I said quietly.

"I am am after him, Freeman. And whether you help or not, I'll still be after him." after him, Freeman. And whether you help or not, I'll still be after him."

It is hard to storm away from someone in soft sand. But Richards was a woman with talent and she did it effectively.

I stayed on the beach for an hour after she left, watching people walk the water's edge. The old sh.e.l.l hunter staring down into the sand who made a pouch for her collection in the folds of her long dress. The jogger with curls of gray hair on his chest and headphones clipped over his ears and his mouth moving to a song only he could hear. A young woman walking alone, her narrow shoulders down and her sungla.s.ses pointed out at middle distance, not in a hurry, not with a purpose, her lips in a tight seam. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

I could sit here and let the blue drain out of the sky and the water. I could let Sherry Richards chase her obsession alone. I could let a man who had once saved me from a bullet twist in the wind. I could let the unknown fates of a number of innocent women remain just that, unknown. I could just listen, "no different than anybody else had done," Richards had said. Even though I couldn't change the world, "it's worth it to k-keep trying," Billy had said. But all the roads in this case led back to Philadelphia, a place I had run from long ago.

I sat and listened to the surf whisper and watched the light go out of the sky until the horizon disappeared. Then I got up and went into the bungalow and made some long-distance calls to voices I had not heard in years.

CHAPTER 10.

I changed my plans the minute I walked out of the terminal of the Philadelphia International Airport. I'd have to stop somewhere to buy a coat and at least another pair of socks. I was freezing my a.s.s. changed my plans the minute I walked out of the terminal of the Philadelphia International Airport. I'd have to stop somewhere to buy a coat and at least another pair of socks. I was freezing my a.s.s.

The sky was solid gray and sat low over the city like a dirty tin bowl and I had to search to find the wiper k.n.o.b on the rental car to clear the cold drizzle off the windshield. I got on Penrose Avenue and coming over the George Platt Bridge I could both see and smell the smoke and steam coming up out of the refineries below. I tuned the radio to KYW and listened to that familiar sound of a newswire machine c.h.i.n.king in the background and the patter of a deep-voiced announcer accompanying working folks through their day. I had spent my entire life in an intimate dance with this place. I should not have been surprised by the way I remembered the steps, both the easy ones and the moves that were ankle breakers, but I was.

I turned up Broad Street and saw both the day Tug McGraw led a World Series parade and the night I killed a maniac in an abandoned subway tunnel just below. Farther north I pa.s.sed South Philly High and in my head found the smell of fresh-cut gra.s.s on the football field and three blocks later the odor of chemotherapy drugs dripping into my mother's veins at St. Agnes Medical Center.

A horn blasted behind me and a taxi driver was tossing his hand up at the now green light. I ignored my instinct to flip him off and when I heard an advertis.e.m.e.nt for a coat sale at Kra.s.s Brothers I turned east and moved on into the old neighborhood. The years in Florida had thinned my blood if not my memories. February in Fort Lauderdale is eighty degrees and sun. I needed to get warm and I had work to do.

Before I'd left Florida I told Billy about my confrontation with Bat Man and his unfortunate sidekick and the warning about union organizing and the cruise ship workers. He didn't seem concerned. I told him I didn't have their names yet and he said he'd get them off the public records on the police run sheets and incident reports and then check them out.

When I'd told him I was going to Philadelphia the thought had silenced him in a way I'd never seen before. Billy is never stunned, by calamity or foolishness or the myriad whims of humans. He stared into my eyes as if he were looking for some truth in them and then quickly gathered himself.

"I w-will stay in closer contact with Mr. Colon," he said. "You will do, my friend, what you need to do."

He then helped me find a series of electronic clippings from the Philadelphia Daily News Philadelphia Daily News and the and the Inquirer Inquirer databases on the disappearance of Faith Hamlin and the subsequent investigation of five police officers. Colin's name and suspicion were prominent, especially after the others confessed and supposedly came clean. I thought I recognized two of the other names but couldn't be sure. databases on the disappearance of Faith Hamlin and the subsequent investigation of five police officers. Colin's name and suspicion were prominent, especially after the others confessed and supposedly came clean. I thought I recognized two of the other names but couldn't be sure.

Billy also found the present name and address of O'Shea's ex- wife, through the divorce records he got from an attorney contact in Philly. With a name and date of birth, we found her address in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, across the river from the city. Then I called my uncle Keith. He was still a sergeant in the Eighteenth District and he was understandably shocked to hear from me.

"Jesus Christ, Maxey. Is that you? Where the h.e.l.l are you, boy? You in trouble? Christ, we thought you fell off the f.u.c.kin' edge of the world. You coming to town? You're coming over to the house then, right? No. No. Better you come over to McLaughlin's first. You know your aunt. We'll have a couple before that whole scene. You know she still goes to visit that church your mother turned to in those last years and she says feels her sister there. d.a.m.n, Maxey, it's good to hear your voice, boy."

I hadn't managed ten words. When he finally took a breath I told him I was coming in on business. I was working for a lawyer in Florida and did he know anyone in internal affairs that might help me out?

"IAD and lawyers, Maxey?" I could see him shaking his old Scottish head. "The devil and his henchmen. But for you, son, we can find someone maybe we can trust."

I had planned to go straight to my uncle's but on South Street I stopped at Kra.s.s Brothers. When I stepped out into a puddle of slush in my Docksides, I made a mental note to hit the Army/Navy on Tasker for some boots. In the store the terse, clipped speech-"Whattaya, forty-two long?"-caught me off guard at first. South Florida isn't exactly Southern, but I hadn't realized how much of my own whipcrack city-speak I'd lost. When I told the guy, "Something warm but I'm not going skiing," he tried to get me into a knee- length cashmere. When I told him I wasn't working for the stock exchange he pushed a three-quarter leather on me.

"Hey, I'm takin' my pops to the Flyers' game here!" I said, trying to regain a bit of Philly speak.

He found me a tan, goose down waist-length with cloth elastic cuffs. I thanked him very much.

"Yo, I thought you was just offen' your yacht or somethin'," he said, looking without shame at my shoes.

I got a pair of lace-up work boots on Tasker and then drove through the neighborhood.

The streets seemed too narrow, the stoplights too frequent. People on the sidewalks had their heads down in the sleet, not that I would recognize anyone. On Tenth I got caught behind some joker double-parked but I just sat there five doors down from the house I grew up in the next block past Snyder. I waited, looking at the old stoops and the front window of the house where a kid I knew named Fran Leary used to live. It was still ringed in Christmas lights. A young guy wearing the same leather coat I'd just turned down came out of a doorway and waved at me before he got in to the double- parked car and pulled away.

I moved up until I could see the cut-stone steps and the wrought iron rail that led up to the house I grew up in. The second-floor window that looked out on the street was to my room, where I had spent nights reading books and fantasizing about Annette the cheerleader and listening to the Allman Brothers Band on a tinny old record player. It was also the place where I cowered and tried to ignore the sound of my father's heavy, drunken steps and the sharp snap of a backhand and the m.u.f.fled protests of my mother. I was one hundred feet away but did not want to see my front door and feel the ugly memories that I'd closed behind it. I had seen both of my parents die in that house. My father, a broken and shamed former cop, fell to a slow and deserved poisoning. My mother, who came home from the hospital to die, convinced that G.o.d had filled the hole left by her treachery with cancer.

I turned east instead and then up Fifth and past South Street to the Gaskill House, a bed and breakfast where I'd reserved a room. The place was a redone coach house built in 1828 just a block from Headhouse Square. The manager of the Gaskill had befriended me when I was walking a beat there by showing up with hot coffee at eleven o'clock each night at the corner of Third. His name was Guy and now, years later, he met me at the door with a handshake and what may have been the same huge ceramic-and-steel coffee cup.

He was envious of my winter tan and Florida address. I was, as always, envious of his collections of antiques and the stone and wood eat-in kitchen down on the bas.e.m.e.nt level of the house.

"Your friend Mr. Manchester called and faxed three pages for you, Max," Guy said. "I put them in an envelope on your bed upstairs. We got a cancellation so I've given you the blue room at the top.

"Remember, breakfast eight to ten," he said as I climbed the stairs.

The room was done in Colonial-era furniture, poster bed, writing table, a small fireplace on the west wall. The thick comforter and window treatments were blue and muted yellows and dark burgundy, colors you rarely saw in Florida. I pulled out some paperwork and sat at the desk and called Colin O'Shea's ex-wife. I'd put off contacting her until I got here, not wanting to give her an easy excuse to dismiss me. She was now listed as Janice Mott. It was past five when I called and introduced myself as a private investigator from Florida, which at least keeps people on the line if only for the sake of curiosity.

"I was a Philadelphia officer with your ex-husband, Colin. We actually grew up close to each other in South Philly," I said, a dose of familiarity.

"If Colin has debts, Mr. Freeman, I have no idea where he is. I haven't seen him in years," she said.

I could hear kids in the background. I thought I was going to lose her.

"No, ma'am. I know where he is. I just saw him two days ago," I said quickly, taking a chance, a gamble, that she would care.

She lowered her voice.

"He's not dead, is he?"

"No, Mrs. Mott. He's all right. He kind of got jammed up down in Florida and I'm, uh, trying to find out more about his, uh, domestic background."

Once again, I knew I'd used the wrong wording.

"He never hit me, Mr. Freeman," she said, the words now almost a whisper.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Mott, he..."

"Colin never physically abused me when we were married," she said.

The statement held both a sense of strength and apology.

"I know they called it domestic abuse, but it wasn't physical." She hesitated. "It was a way out."

A way out, I thought. She'd already left him by the time O'Shea got caught up in the disappearance of Faith Hamlin.

"I, uh, really don't know anything about the details of your past relationship, Mrs. Mott," I said. "But honestly, that is the area I'm trying to explore," I said.

"To help him or hurt him, Mr. Freeman?"

She was smart and blunt. And she would see right through any bulls.h.i.t answer I might toss her.

"Honestly, I don't know, Mrs. Mott," I said, and waited.

"Colin does have that effect, doesn't he?" she said.

"Confusion," she answered her own question. "It's his stock-in-trade."

She agreed to meet with me, in a public place. Her son had an ice hockey game at three the next day. Meet her there, with identification, and we could talk. No promises.

I pulled around to the back of McLaughlin's at eight. It was already dark and I had missed the transition from daylight. There was no fade of color, no blue to disappear, no rose-tinged cloud of sunset. The gray had simply turned a deeper gray and then been overtaken by the dusty glow of city light. The sleet had turned to light snow and up in the high streetlights it drifted down and swirled in whatever wind current caught it off the buildings. It turned to slush on contact with the concrete and car tires slashed through it on the street. I was hatless and shivered and then heard the music in McLaughlin's buzz against the window and went inside.

The place was full and conversation was battling with an Irish melody on the speakers, neither winning. For someone used to the natural humidity of the subtropics, the hot, dry air was enough to make you want to drink just to dehydrate. It was a cop bar, dominated by clean-shaven faces, working men's clothing, the pre-game show to the 76ers game, an appropriate locker room level of loud voices and the guffaws of a joke badly told. The few women present were older wives and the young ones' impressionable girlfriends.

I spotted my uncle at a table in the back. He was flanked by a couple of cronies his own age. As I worked my way back I saw his eyes pick me up halfway and make a decision before the smile started. He was out of his chair, rattling the pitcher and gla.s.ses on the table with his girth before I reached him.

"Christ in heaven, Maxey boy," he said, embracing me with his stovepipe arms and wrapping me in the smell of cigar smoke and Old Spice aftershave.

"You are as skinny as a f.u.c.kin' sapling, boy," he said, standing back at arm's length. "And dark as a G.o.dd.a.m.n field hand." A few heads turned, but not for more than a look. My uncle was an old- timer. Gray-haired and thirty years with the department, his language and his political incorrectness was grandfathered in. He introduced me to his friends, both with over twenty years themselves, and we sat. There was a pitcher of beer on the table with a frozen bag of ice floating in it. An open flask of what I knew was Uncle Keith's special blend of Scotch stood as its companion. He poured shots all around and raised his own for a toast.

"To the wayward son, what took the money and run," he announced with a wink.

"Aye," said the others, and we drank.

For the next three hours we drank and they told old stories. Carefully and with loyalty to my uncle no mention was made of my father, the legendary one whose death would always remain a secret of the brotherhood of the blue. We drank and I described only the beauties of Florida, and their eyes went gla.s.sy with reverence of a dream of golf and sun. We drank and my uncle exhorted me to show the bullet wound scar in my neck and they toasted Mother Mary for bad aim and mercy. We drank and they b.i.t.c.hed about pensions and union stewards and the job in general and when I found an opening and asked Keith about an IAD contact they stopped drinking.

"We got a guy there, I called and gave him a heads-up, Maxey," my uncle said. "His name is Fried. He got attached over there a few years back after blowing out his hip in a pileup with a fire truck responding. He was with the detective squad up in East Kensington. He'll give you what he can."

I nodded my head and watched the others doing the same, avoiding my eyes. I could feel the vacuum at the table.

"IAD and lawyers, Max," he said, echoing his words on the phone from Florida. "Can I ask what it is you're into, son?"

We leaned our heads in together and the others tried unsuccessfully to pay no attention.

"I'm actually checking in on a former cop, a guy from my rookie cla.s.s, Colin O'Shea, from the neighborhood," I said. "Any recollection?"

Since I was a p.i.s.sant kid I'd known my uncle's brilliance for names and descriptions. He was the human equivalent to getting Googled. When he hesitated I knew it wasn't because he was stumped. He was considering his answer as he looked around the table and caught the glances of his crew.

"That would be the O'Shea of the Faith Hamlin situation?" he said, now watching my eyes.

"Yeah," I said. "I did some research."

Now he and the rest were looking down into their drinks, uncle Keith shaking his big head.

"Not a good time for the department or the district, Maxey," he said.

"Tell me."

He brought his eyes up and started in, his voice low but his mouth stiffening with the distaste of the telling.

"Had to be four years ago, after you left, word goes out on a missing persons' report out of the district. A woman, middle twenties, ya know, kind that elopes to Atlantic City or something. At first n.o.body pays much mind."

He stopped to sip his special blend. The other guys are straight- faced, like a poker game, but when they follow my uncle's lead, you know they're all listening and agreeing.

"But this girl, people know. She was a kid from the neighborhood who was kind of an outcast. Connellys down on Tasker had taken her in from a relation when she was young 'cause they couldn't handle her. She was, you know, not really r.e.t.a.r.ded, but slow. Kids her age avoided her. But she did know how to, you know, ingratiate herself on people, trying to get them to, uh, accept her I guess."

"An' not bad-lookin', neither," said one of the crew, a veteran who'd been introduced as Sergeant Doug Haas.

"Not that I was going to add that detail," Uncle Keith said, narrowing his eyes at Haas.

"What?" his friend said. "I'm lying?"

Keith turned away.

"The family understood this, her physical attributes, and tried to keep her in someplace low profile," he continued. "They got her a counter job, working the register at this little corner store on Fifth Street near Sinai Med Center. She did the overnight, selling coffee and smokes to ambulance drivers and such who worked late."

"And cops on the beat," I said.

"Yeah," Keith said, and the heads went down and shook together.

"So somebody gets the word when she goes missing and tongues are waggin' because these cops on the Charlie shift are always in the place and they aren't offering up much in the way of information, like on the last time they seen her and such, being that she just disappeared off the face of the earth in the middle of her shift and n.o.body sees anything."

He took another sip, getting to it more slowly than Uncle Keith was used to getting to it.

"The rumor ain't rumor for long. Word gets around that these four cops were pa.s.sing her around, each getting a piece of it back in the storage room while each partner was watching the front."

"They said she liked to pay them back for protecting her," Sergeant Haas broke in again.

This time my uncle just shook his head in agreement.

"And Colin O'Shea was a part of this?" I said.

"He was one of them," Keith said. "And once IAD got onto the case, he was the only one who didn't come out and finally own up to what they'd done."

"They cracked them?"

"Like f.u.c.kin' walnuts, Maxey. All of them were suspended and eventually fired for what they did to the girl even though she wasn't underage and she wasn't around to dispute that it was consensual. But to a man, they all said they didn't know where she'd gone or what happened to her."