By day, they begged for change to feed their vices. When evening came, they pocketed the contents of their cups and walked from trendy shopping and restaurant strips to neighborhoods where self-destruction was for sale.

Sandy knew most of those people by name, because they were the same ones she used to chase from the park as a rookie. There was Spider from Sixteenth Street, who loved to drink, and Easy from City Hall, who was in and out of shelters. Molly was a dope fiend who begged on the restaurant strip. Louie was a crack addict who sang Armstrong near the Kimmel Center.

Sandy would stop one of them every once in a while and try to convince them to do something different. Most of the time, they’d smile and nod politely while she spoke. Then they’d return to smoking or drinking themselves into oblivion.

Tonight, Sandy was too tired to preach. She simply watched from her squad car as they gathered quarters and wrinkled dollar bills and went to search for peace in bottles and plastic bags.

“Knock yourselves out,” Sandy muttered to herself as she continued down Walnut Street and turned at Twenty-first, where a majestic church took up nearly half a block.

As she passed by the church and the two tiny streets that ran between Walnut and Locust, she noticed someone she’d never seen before. He was dressed in black and standing near an exclusive apartment building at the end of the block. He didn’t have a cup and he wasn’t engaging passersby. He was just standing, as if he were in a trance.

Sandy slowed down as she passed him. He didn’t look up. He didn’t look down. He didn’t move. He simply stared straight ahead, his pale face obscured by a wide-brimmed hat that covered his eyes.

For a moment, Sandy wondered if the man was one of the lifelike statues that peppered Center City, like the man holding an umbrella in front of the Prince Music Theater. Then the wind blew, and the hat flipped up, revealing the man’s right eye. It was bright blue, almost sparkling. Yet something about his eye was dead. It was as if the light was just an ember from his soul’s dying fire.

Sandy stopped the car and backed up, nearly colliding with an SUV that had pulled up behind her. She contemplated letting it go. She was tired, and the man had done nothing wrong. Still, something about him wasn’t right. That one glance at his eye had spooked her. She flipped on her siren and tried to back up again, but several cars had already lined up behind the SUV.