The Wolves of Fairmount Park

by Dennis Tafoya

  He said, “If you let go of me, I’ll just drop and be gone. I need to know I can get back.”

  She stood up and pushed him back down on the bed and straddled him, reaching between her legs to open his jeans, holding him in her hands while they kissed, mouths open. She pushed his shirt open and sat back, seeing his thin torso, the ropy lines of muscle, tattoos of crude black demons taken from Mexican broadsheets on his arms and leering red devils he’d had copied onto his chest.

  He reached under her skirt and pulled her panties down onto her thighs and touched her lightly while she said words he couldn’t understand that might have been Spanish or just sounds. She was hot where he touched her, gaping, and he caught small, slick drops on his hands and touched each fine hair with the tips of his fingers, and when she pushed down onto him she said, “Ruin me. Ruin me.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  Danny stood at the bar in the little place on Ridge Avenue where Asa Carmody held court. He fucking hated waiting for Asa, but it was standard, and Danny got that it was part of the game. Carmody letting Danny know he had status. He might set things up for Danny, put him onto people or point him one way or another, but it was on his terms and it wasn’t because Asa was a fuckup who needed to snitch his way out of trouble. It was for his own reasons and in his own time.

  Danny nursed a Coke and watched the arms of the neighborhood rummies going up and down like pump handles. Getting those first drinks of the night to stop the shakes. Danny had on a decent suit, an Italian he’d gotten at the Gallery downtown, and kept his elbows off the greasy bar and looked at his watch. The place smelled like stale beer and fried food and smoke, and the small TV had ESPN going. There was a little hole in the wall above the chair nearest the door that looked like a bullet hole and probably was.

  It was a little after eight thirty when the door opened and a big kid from the neighborhood came in and looked at every face in turn, like the Secret Service, before he went back to the door and opened it, motioned for someone outside to come in. The kid was big across the shoulders, and Danny chewed an ice cube for a minute and finally came up with the name.

  Chris Black, that was it. Christ, Danny had forgotten how big the kid was. His massive head stubbled with black hair, a muscle shirt showing the tattoos. Irish crosses, Celtic knots. The inevitable leprechaun with his fists up, ready to fight, on his right bicep. Danny had locked up his older brother, Shannon, twice before he was found in a car off Kelly Drive in Fairmount Park with a dark hole in the back of his head.

  Now Asa came in, and Danny got that Chris Black was some kind of half-assed bodyguard. That was new. A step up for Asa Carmody, he guessed. Asa nodded, then crossed to a booth, and Danny left his Coke and came to sit across from him. Before he got to the table the door opened again and another guy came in, this one wearing a black leather jacket, and Danny didn’t have to rummage for the name. He knew that one. Angel Riordan.

  Asa put out his hand, and they shook and sat, Chris Black standing near the door and Riordan going to the bar to sit and watch the room. Asa Carmody wore a belted leather coat and a white collarless shirt, and Danny saw he was growing a beard, the hairs wispy and red.

  “What’s all this?” Danny waved a hand toward the two behind Asa. “The Praetorian guard?”

  Carmody shrugged. He dropped his key ring on the table, a shamrock in Lucite, and a book that Danny angled his head to see.

  “Public Enemies. What’s that about?”

  “Dipshits.” Asa held up a hand, and the bartender nodded and began drawing beers. “The 1930s, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, all them, yeah?”

  “Why dipshits?”

  “I mean, it’s interesting as history. J. Edgar Hoover and how the FBI modernized and all that, but the criminals?” He made a face. “Morons, mostly. Hillbillies, for real. From the actual fucking hills, yeah? I know plenty of morons with guns.”

  Asa was a self-improver, Danny knew. He was always reading. Mostly biographies of larger-than-life types who made it big. One week it was Howard Hughes, the next it was Pablo Escobar. Danny saw the thread of need in Asa to be something, to own something and be seen. It had begun to make Danny nervous, but he didn’t see the whole of it, the full shape. On some level Asa was just a neighborhood character who had gone to Roxborough with Danny and kept him in touch with what was going on.

  Like tonight. Danny was here because Asa had someone he wanted to put with him, he said. Something, he said, that would help the investigation of the two kids shot down the hill. Danny knew there was some angle for Asa. No one told the police much unless there was an angle for them. It was one of the first things Danny had learned on the street, but seeing the two pistoleros with Asa made him think a little harder about what the angle was. A Get Out of Jail Free card? Asa had been in minor scrapes when he was a kid, but only really locked up once for a month, and that was a long time ago. Whatever he was into now, he kept it a lot quieter than the bunch of mopes Danny usually ran across.

  He watched Angel Riordan drinking at the bar. He was small for someone in his business, shaggy black hair and pale skin. Sunglasses, now and every other time Danny’d seen him over the years. He was older than Asa and Danny, in his late thirties, and he’d been killing people since he was a teenager. Asa knew that under the black jacket there’d be a gun, and out in his car more guns.

  Asa said, “A couple of minutes my guy’ll be here.”

  “Who are we talking to?”

  “One of the Green Lane bunch, they call him Soap. Or Soapy, or some fucking thing.”

  “I know Soap.” Danny remembered him, one of those unlikely gangbangers who seemed too delicate for the life. Just a get-along, go-along, the way Big John called them. Guys who fell into the gangs and drugs because that was what was around, in the air they breathed, on the corners where they hung with their friends. If people in his set had gone to school and gotten jobs, that’s what Soap would have done, but they didn’t. They got jumped in or they started doing errands and lookouts for the local drug operations, and they went in and out of jail until they died or got too old for the game. They became jugglers, the kids who handled the drugs on the street, and if they lived long enough they might bump up a rung or two, but most of them were never going anywhere but jail.

  Chris Black opened his cell phone and listened for a minute, then put the phone in front of Asa, who took it without looking at him and listened for a minute, then hung up without saying a word. He nodded at Chris and then turned to look at Angel Riordan, who was staring into the middle distance, seeing God-knows-what.

  “Angel,” said Carmody. “Angel.” Then Angel Riordan turned and saw him and came back from whatever dark hole his mind was in and nodded and walked outside, pulling a cell from his pocket. Which answered a question that had been in Danny’s mind. Not a bodyguard, Angel Riordan. Danny had trouble picturing that, and the exchange seemed to confirm it. Riordan wasn’t a guy who would look out for you or watch your back. You pointed him at someone. He was a shotgun that walked and talked.

  Asa said, “When Soap gets here, I’m not in it anymore, okay?”

  Danny nodded, sure. “I appreciate this, Asa.”

  “It’s cool, Danny. We go back, you and me. We have to do for each other ’cause no one else is going to, yeah?”

  Danny said yeah, but he was wondering what he was doing for Asa, exactly. People began to drift in, the beginning of the crowd that would fill the place until midnight. Kids from the neighborhood, working guys and their girlfriends. The guys they’d grown up with, who said “wooder” for water, and during football season bet the Eagles. The “Iggles,” the way it came out.

  They’d drift home around twelve, that crowd, and then for the last couple hours it would be the mopes. Friends of Asa’s, hijackers and dope fiends and second-story men, people who were dangerous, or who wanted the vibe that came off of dangerous people. They’d drink hard, stun themselves with it, do lines off the bar to keep the party going as long as pos
sible and then stalk off into the night, reeling with the effort of standing upright.

  “I can’t be seen to be in this thing, you understand, right?” Asa looked at Danny, dropped his chin to show his serious intent.

  “Sure,” Danny said. Here they were, though, in the bar Asa spent most of his nights in, where he was known. Danny was chewing on all this when the door opened again and Soap came in, his eyes down like he was being called to the principal’s office. He was half a step in front of Angel and another big, tattooed mope from Fishtown that Danny recognized but couldn’t name. Soap had on a loose black T-shirt and a do-rag and heavy boots that looked like they cost a lot.

  Asa turned and smiled and waved him over like they were old friends, then got up and waited while Soap fit himself into the booth, his head down, not making eye contact with Danny but looking at Asa out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t look happy to be there. The guy with the tattoos waved at Chris Black and then disappeared back outside.

  Danny looked back and forth between the young black kid and Asa, waiting. Asa finally touched Soap’s arm, making him flinch a little.

  “This is Detective Martinez, Soapy, man.”

  “How you doing?” the kid said, but his eyes barely flicked up.

  “Good, Soap. How’s your sister?”

  “You know Jelan?” He picked up a little then, raised his head and took Danny in.

  “Yeah, she was at Roxborough with me and Asa, year or two behind us. She works at the nail place down by Ripka?”

  “Not no more. Them Vietnamese women treat her like shit, she moved on up out of there, doing hair and nails in her living room, making twice as much as she did working for them damn Vietnamese. Going to school at night.”

  “That’s cool, Soap. She was a nice lady.” Danny looked at Asa, who tapped Soap again.

  “Tell Detective Martinez what you told me and Angel, Soap.”

  Danny watched Soap’s eyes, flicking over Asa once more and then around to Angel, who had moved to stand at the bar again.

  “Yeah, you looking for the ones shot up that dope house where the Nortes were doing business. Killed that boy.”

  “That’s right, Soap. Lots of people want that closed, right? A cop’s son was hurt. You don’t want that mess on your hands, do you?”

  “No, you don’t.” Asa being helpful, leaning in close to Soap.

  The kid said, “Nah.”

  “You don’t like to talk about your friends, I get that, no one does. But you got to think about this, Soap. This is going to be bad, and it wasn’t like your friends went out of the way to keep it quiet, huh?”

  “My friends.” He looked out of the corner of his eye again. Maybe at Angel Riordan, maybe at nothing at all. “Friends got nothing to do with it. That mess was all Darnell Burns. He wanted them Nortes out, and he sent somebody, I bet that crazy Trey from down 19th Street, to light up that place. Them kids, too. All that mess.”

  “You bet it was Trey, or you know?”

  “Since Darnell’s brother Ivan got locked up, Trey’s been pushing up, you know? Darnell wants things to get done, but he ain’t hands-on, not like Ivan, you know.”

  Ivan Burns was the real power in the Green Lane crew, Danny knew, and he made a note to talk it all out with Big John. Big John had worked the Criminal Intelligence Unit and was the encyclopedia of gang life in Philly. Who was coming up or going down, who was expanding and who was being pushed out of the way. Nothing was ever static in the drug business. You were either getting squeezed out by competition or getting locked up or harassed by the cops. Or you were going big, pushing hard at the boundaries around your turf and making new connections. That drew action and money, but also heat. The game was constant motion, cycles up and down. The players came and went, but the game was always there, twenty-four hours a day.

  “So how do we know it was Trey? How do we prove it?”

  A long pause. Soap shifted in his seat like he couldn’t get comfortable. He looked up and down, everywhere but at Danny. “They got the gun.”

  “Who?”

  “Darnell got it. It’s in his mother’s house, down off Sixty-ninth Street.” He held up his hands. “I can’t say more about this, you understand? I can’t even be here.”

  “I understand, Soap.”

  “This is rude, all this shit. I know people break out, come and do business where they shouldn’t, but you start shooting people all up and down Roxborough Avenue? You start shooting children? There are things a Christian does not do.” He shook his head, looking as sage as any nineteen-year-old drug dealer could. “Ivan ran things tight. Darnell? He wants the money, he wants the respect, but he’s, you have to pardon me, he’s a goddamn idiot.”

  “You saw the gun?”

  “Yeah, it was right out on the table in the dining room. A MAC-10, little thing but with that long clip.” Soap shook his head. “Darnell likes machine guns. Seen Scarface too many times.”

  Then Soap was gone and Danny was on the street talking into his cell. Setting things in motion. Later he’d think about this last couple of minutes, try to remember Soap leaving, Asa walking away. They must have said good-bye. He’d have told Soap thanks, said something to Asa. Later all of that would be important, but in the moment he just lost track of them. He was standing on Ridge Avenue, hunched against the noise of the traffic, talking to Rogan about wiretaps and surveillance, and when he turned around he was alone on the street.

  Michael wouldn’t wake up. The doctors said all the signs were good, but he still wasn’t coming around and it had been two days. Kathleen held her son’s hand and told him about everyone who had called and everyone from school who asked about him. The room was crowded with flowers, and Jeannette Sullivan from Michael’s class came and stood shyly in the door and said she was praying for him, then walked down the hall in tears while Kathleen smiled and Brendan shook his head.

  Brendan went to the door to watch her go, her shoulders heaving, strawberry blond hair shielding her face. He looked to Kathleen.

  “Did you know about that?”

  “I had my suspicions.” She got up and straightened two flower arrangements on the sill, pulling the cards to read the inscriptions. “She was the one he bought the pendant for, when we were in Cape Cod.”

  “Right, the mysterious pendant.”

  “You gave him such crap about that.”

  “I don’t like secrets.”

  “Teenagers need secrets, Bren.”

  He nodded, then came back in and forced himself to look at his son’s slack, pale face. He took a tissue from a box and dabbed it on his tongue and wiped a fleck of white crust from the corner of Michael’s mouth.

  “What else don’t we know?”

  Kathleen straightened things on the night table. “Hon, he’s a good kid. He’s not into drugs.”

  “Did you know he hung out with little George? I thought that kid was gay.”

  “I know the two of them talked once in a while. Michael has a lot of friends. People like him and he likes everyone.”

  “It doesn’t take a bad kid to make a mistake, Kath.” He slumped in a chair and looked at his hands. “Someone says, let’s try this, and they do, and then it’s anything goes. They could have been just curious, or stupid, or there because they dared each other.”

  “When he wakes up, he’ll tell us.”

  “There’s nothing, nothing on earth as dumb as a teenage boy.”

  “He’s a cop’s kid, Bren. He’s your kid. He knows right from wrong.” She went over and touched Brendan’s hair and he caught her hand and kissed it. She was thin, red hair to Brendan’s black, with full lips that always drew his eyes. He knew that people fell out of love, but he knew it the way he knew people could eat insects or speak Estonian. Luis, his partner, had been married and divorced twice. Maybe it wasn’t luck, though, maybe, he thought, he was just too stubborn to change his mind about anything that really mattered. You loved someone, you loved them, and how was that ever not true? His father
, he knew, had loved Maire till the day he died, even though he had to leave her and get Brendan away from her when she went downhill, and in dying cried not for himself but for the loss of her.

  “When he left the house, he said he was going to help little George with a project?”

  “That’s what he said, and Francine said George told her they were going to the coffee shop on Main to work on something for school.”

  Michael’s chest rose and he gave a strange, keening sigh and they both looked up, but there wasn’t anything more and he settled back down. His head was swaddled in bandages, and his black hair peeked out from beneath them, sticking to his cheeks.

  They both got up and stood over their son. Kathleen touched his forehead, as she had done a thousand thoughtless times, and Brendan fought to remember a prayer, any prayer from all those years at Father Judge. What he got finally was the Policeman’s Prayer, which had been shellacked onto a piece of dark wood in his father’s living room and which was somewhere in Brendan’s attic now. When I start my tour of duty, God, Wherever crime may be, As I walk the darkened streets alone, Let me be close to thee. Jesus, he hadn’t thought of that in years. It was the kind of weepy nonsense that kept him away from church, but when he was a kid he used to get a secret thrill from reading it, and every time he did, he’d known he’d become a cop.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Chris Black sat next to Angel Riordan in Angel’s car, a beat-up Accord that Chris was embarrassed to be seen in, his long legs jacked up under his chin. Soap sat in the back firing up a joint and saying didn’t they have some decent music, cause KYW Newsradio wasn’t doing it for him. Mostly Chris wished he could get out at the next light and away from Angel Riordan, who creeped him out with his quiet way, the man like a black cloud lurking all the time. Said almost nothing unless you asked him a question, and even then he’d just stare at you from behind his shades, the little machine inside his head clicking away until he finally gave up an answer, weighing everything he said like each word cost him money.