~

Eddie woke up, sort of. Light and sound rushed back in. His chest hurt. He felt the cold steel of the gurney beneath him. Not knowing where he was or how he got there, Eddie got up and walked toward the door. It opened automatically, as did the gate of the vehicle bay when Eddie crossed the electric eye. Driven by a need he didn't understand, Fast Eddie walked out into the night.

He was confused. Memories of a warm, safe place where he was loved conflicted with other thoughts. He was talking to someone, someone who was helping him. He heard a noise. He turned. Talking, then more noise, louder this time. Pain. Eddie looked down at his chest. His shirt was open. He could see the holes the loud noise had put there. A clear liquid was seeping from them.

Eddie was still looking at the bullet wounds when he wandered into the street. There was a screeching of wheels, then Eddie was struck by steel, glass and steel again as he went up and over the car that hit him. Eddie stood up and, ignoring the curses of the driver, slowly walked away.

~

"Now what do we do?" Amberson asked no one in particular.

"I don't know about you two, but if he's not back by six a.m., I'm shredding everything and he was never here."

"We'll find him, Jones,"

"We will?" asked Russell.

"Of course," Amberson assured him. "How far can a dead guy go?"

The detectives left the ME's and walked out on to an accident scene: a late-model sedan with pedestrian damage to the hood, windshield and roof; two patrol cars blocking the street; a uniformed officer taking a statement from a distraught driver. No victim, no ambo.

"What happened?" Russell asked one of the officers standing by.

"Damnest thing," came the reply. "Driver here says some junkie walked out in front of him. He couldn't stop in time and the guy went up and over. Says he came down hard, then got up and walked away."

"Driver didn't try to stop him?" Amberson asked.

"Would you?" The officer shook his head. "You'd think the guy would be dead, wouldn't you?"

Amberson looked at Russell. Russell looked back. Neither said a word.

~

Eddie wandered, his thoughts a jumble. He sensed a need, but for what? Dimly he recalled the taste of food, of strong drink. He vaguely remembered the touch of a woman and how that made him felt. Then there was the needle, the high that had made him float and forget. It had taken the place of the others, but it was still not enough, not now, not tonight.

Brightness blinded him. His wanderings had taken him out of the dark streets and alleys and now he found himself on Greene Street.

Streetlights, stoplights, neon and the glow of the not so distant Oriole Park all hit his too sensitive eyes at once. It came back----he needed the light, the golden light he'd been denied earlier. But no, that light was gone, taken from him when he was called back. Its absence left a yearning, a hole to be filled. Instinct turned Eddie to the east, towards the one man who had always given him what he needed.

~

"We've been driving in circles for hours," Russell complained. "It's time to give it up."

"It's only been an hour, and we're not giving up," Amberson said in a flat, determined tone.

"Can't we at least put out a description?"

"And say what? Eastern CID looking for a walkaway from the Medical Examiner's; suspect's a light-skinned black male, about five-nine and believed to be dead?"

"That would do it," Russell said after some thought. "Look, Danny, we're never going to find him this way. We turn right, he goes left and we miss him. We drive straight, he turns down an alley, he's gone."

"So we quit?"

"No, we start thinking like cops looking for a suspect. Eddie never was that bright, and I'm betting that whatever smarts he had died when he did and didn't come back. He's down to memory and habit. Let's hit the Eastside, check out his haunts. See if anybody saw a zombie tonight."

Nobody had. Russell and Amberson hit all the corners where Eddie hung out. They questioned some of the girls he saw when he had the stuff to trade for their favors. They braced the low-level dealers Eddie knew. Everywhere was the same story.

"Nope, ain't seen him."

"Guess you ain't heard, Eddie bought one tonight."

"Hasn't been around."

"Eddie gone, some fool done kilt him over a phone call."

"Eddie got wasted."

"I want a lawyer. This is police harassment."

"Fast Eddie who?"

"You guys don't talk to each other, do you?"

"Eddie wouldn't get off the phone. Junkie wouldn't wait. Blew him away."

"You 5-0, I don't talk to 5-0."

"Thought I saw him. But he be dead, so it wasn't him."

The two detectives questioned this last one more thoroughly. "Where'd you see him? Which way was he going? How long ago?" For answers they got "Around, down there, don't know."

"The good news is," Russell said, as Amberson turned down yet another side street, "is that he's here somewhere."

"So says one lowlife out of ten. And what's the bad news? Other than we haven't found him yet."

"Who says there's bad news?"

"There's good news, gotta be bad news."

Russell thought for a moment. "I guess the bad news is that Santos didn't kill him. Just some crackhead who thought Eddie was taking too long on 'his' phone."

Amberson gave a rueful smile. "Yeah, it would have been nice to pin this one on Santos. Murder one, killing a witness----you get the needle for that."

"Damn shame," agreed Russell. "Santos would have sung just to do twenty to life. Actually would have worked out better than if Eddie have stayed alive to give him up."

Amberson stopped the car, looked at his partner, an idea forming in his mind.

~

I got a good life, Antoine Santos told himself. Not great, but good. A decent house, plenty of food, a nice ride, women when I want them. It's not a mansion in Guilford, steak every night, a Mercedes and Playmates, but it's better than the slobs I deal with have.

Unlike his clients, the ones who bought and resold his product, Santos lived outside the drug area. His house was on the east end of Federal, close enough to the Eastern District police station that it was in a safer neighborhood than most. That's why he bought it, for the security. He also liked the idea of the police helping to keep him safe, that the same cops trying to put him away were, by their very presence, protecting him. Irony, he thought, remembering an old English lesson. It was what Miss Helens back in high school would have called irony.

And was irony, he wondered, about how it ended with that Fast Eddie guy? Word from the street was that Eddie was shopping him to the cops; that he'd worked some kind of deal to trade what he knew about the organization for cash and a ticket out. Santos was going to have the boy hit then he'd found out tonight that he wouldn't have to. Poor Eddie, guess he forgot that you didn't use the holy phone anytime St. Kevin was around. Hell, everybody knew that. Kevin thought that that phone was his direct line to God, that one day the savior would call him up and invite him to Heaven. He got very upset if anyone used it. God might call, and what if He got a busy signal? And who would have thought Kevin had a gun?