The Wolves of Fairmount Park

by Dennis Tafoya

  The phone buzzed, buzzed, and he opened it and started talking.

  Zoe knew the thing was not to stop. The thing was to stay up, coasting off the dope as long as they could, not let it slip away. Because what followed was a long drop into nothing. So they’d smoke weed, if that was around, or take pills, if they were around, and when that was gone they drank. Zoe thought of it as formulas, as math; how much it took, how much that cost, all of it to hold off the end, when the world turned back into gritty ash and everything smelled bad and people just seemed small and worthless and music was just sounds and didn’t take you anywhere or show you anything.

  Tonight the moon was up and it was hot. They had scored from the boyfriend of a girl Zoe knew from rehab, and they were still at that point where being out in the street was like walking on the moon, with all the shadows long and crisp on the street and Zoe conscious of her legs moving, the long strides that carried her impossible distances as if gravity itself were tweaked back a little as they made their way up the long hill from the river.

  She wore a black dress and boots and it was a long walk, passing the little cramped houses and churches tucked into the side of the hills overlooking the Schuylkill. There were kids on the street playing with sparklers and they watched them run the blocks, their hands leaving yellow-white trails as they screamed and sang. Zoe touched Orlando’s hair and he smiled at her, though she knew he was thinking about the things the kids said about the boy who was killed.

  His head was hot to the touch, something they joked about. His brain going a hundred miles an hour all the time, she said. The way he watched everything, read compulsively, turned over stones to see the white and eyeless things beneath. The day they’d met he’d started talking to her in the bookstore in Port Richmond and they walked all night in the snow and he talked, his thoughts bouncing from one thing to the next in a way that left her dizzy, straining to keep up. He walked her through bookstores and record stores and libraries, shoving things in her pockets, pointing out things she needed to see, videos she needed to watch, songs she needed to hear.

  They moved up through the neighborhoods, hearing music from the open houses and the bars. He finally stopped, looking up at a boarded-up house and then up and down the block, and she realized it was the house where the shooting had happened. She watched him back up, looking up and down the block, finally coming to rest and pointing toward the block where he and Zoe lived. It was a nice neighborhood. There were kids’ toys in some of the little yards. The dark house with the bullet holes and yellow tape seemed like an aberration.

  “What were they doing here?” He looked up and down the block.

  “Kids wander, Orlando. They go where they’re not supposed to go. They might have been just taking a walk and gotten turned around. Maybe they were looking for a store.” She pointed down the hill toward the quiet neighborhoods close to the river where his nephew lived.

  He held up a finger as if telling her to wait, then started going through his pockets. After a minute he fished out a folded piece of newsprint and walked toward the streetlight, bending the paper one way and another and furrowing his brow.

  He motioned her over and started digging through her purse, finding the cheap cell phone her parents had given her the last time she’d seen them. Which brought back the whole scene, her mother crying and her father alternately spitting curses at her and begging her to come home. Telling her they’d pay for rehab, all was forgiven. Which was bullshit. Old bullshit, and it made her tired to hear it. She knew them, and it was more about how people saw them and their disgrace of a daughter. Even the pleading and the cursing, it was a role her old man put on, like a show for some audience in his head.

  Orlando turned on the phone, waited for the signal, and dialed a number from the piece of paper. While it rang she took the paper off him and looked at it, then raised her eyebrows at him. A list of sex ads, one number circled. He gave her a thumbs-up. “Hey, I saw your ad and wanted to, you know, come over?” There was a rattle of firecrackers from up the block, and he stuck his finger in his ear and hunched his shoulders. “Well, when?” She put her hand on his shoulder, and he waggled his eyebrows at her. “Okay, where should I come?” He listened for a minute, then straightened up. “What? Where did you say? Number what?” He started looking around them, swiveling his head fast, then jogged to the corner and turned down Pechin.

  She heard him talking as she ran to catch up, then saw him look at the phone and hang up, standing in front of a house with black shutters and a small porch. On the door was a tile plaque with the number spelled out in script. Her mother had the same thing on the house out in Berwyn. The number was different, of course, and this one was Forty-two. Her dad hated it because he said it looked common.

  They stood in the living room of number 42, Zoe and Orlando and the girl, who said her name was Mia. The room smelled of perfume, and the furniture was cheap and covered with slipcovers and sheets in purple and red. On an end table was an old porcelain lamp with a cupid base and a jacquard silk shade that colored the room a purplish red. The girl was dressed in a black cocktail dress like she was going to a party. It reminded Zoe of an outfit she’d had once, except that this one had a little black rose at the base of her throat, sculpted out of the same silky material as the dress.

  They talked for a few minutes, the girl friendly, like she was glad for the company, and then the back door opened and another girl came in, taller, a few years older, wearing a red dress and working a scrunchie in her hair until she saw them and stopped short. She was carrying a plastic sack with big bottles of cheap gin and vodka that Zoe could see through the bag. She set the bag she held down on the floor, and her eyes went around the room and then settled on Mia, who told her who they were.

  “They came to ask about the kids.”

  The tall woman dropped her head, wary. Zoe saw they could almost be sisters. Mia introduced her as Tisa, and the woman looked at her with a disapproving roll of her head. “What kids?”

  “Remember, the boys who came by? That night?”

  “No, I don’t remember, and neither do you.” She looked harder at them. “I’m sorry, who the fuck are you?”

  “My name’s Orlando. I live up the block. Mia said your cousin is Santi, right? I know Santi from PICC.” PICC was the prison in Northeast Philly where Orlando had done thirty days.

  “You know my cousin? That supposed to do what? Make us friends?”

  “Look, wait, okay? I’m not running a game, nothing like that. My nephew and his friend were shot. Right up the street, a couple houses away.”

  “You got trouble, I’m sorry. But that’s got nothing to do with me.”

  “The boy with my nephew, the boy who died, he had the ad for this place in his house. And Mia said they were here.”

  “She said that?” Tisa turned and looked hard at Mia, who pouted, her lower lip stuck out like a little kid would do. “Well, she should know better than to say one fucking word about this. But she don’t. ’Cause she’s the kind can’t get her head on straight.” Tisa glared, dug in her purse for a cigarette, and lit one in a fury of quick motion, snapping the lighter like the hammer of a pistol. She pointed the lit cigarette at her friend. “You got to wake up, girl. Everyone is not your friend. This is a business. These boys don’t come around here ’cause they in love with you. Honest to Christ.” She covered her face with her hand.

  Zoe stood up, crossed the room, and slowly took the pack from where it was crushed in Tisa’s hand. “Look, we don’t want to get you jammed up. We’re not the cops, we’re not talking to cops. We just want to know what happened to the kids. You tell us something, we’re gone and we don’t come back.” She put a cigarette in her mouth, then guided Tisa’s hand to its end, and after a beat Tisa flicked the lighter and lit it for her.

  “Talk or not, you don’t come back. You think we run this place by ourselves?”

  Orlando spoke quietly, trying to seem harmless. “Mia already told us the kids were here that
night. Why were they here? Were they looking to party?”

  Mia started up, “No, I told you they were looking for that girl,” but Tisa made a noise with her lips and stood over her so that she stopped.

  “Go upstairs.” She turned to them while Mia rolled her eyes and scooted off the couch to disappear into the back of the house. “Look, you got to go. We got work to do.”

  They got up slowly and moved to the door. Tisa laid a hand on Orlando’s arm. “Look, you know? I’m sorry what happened, but that girl thinks everybody is her friend. You know what we do, what happens here. We can’t be helping everybody’s got trouble. Somebody looks over our shoulder, you know? I don’t own this place. I got a kid, and her?” She pointed with her cigarette into the back of the house and shrugged her shoulders. “She loses this job, what’s she going to do? She got a record already and a boyfriend who takes it out on her when things go wrong, you know? You from the neighborhood? You know Santi, you been locked up, then you know better. You know what goes and what doesn’t.” She looked back and forth from Orlando to Zoe.

  He said, “I know, I know you’re just trying to take care of everybody. I know it all falls to you. Yeah, I been in jail, I fucked up a lot, and that’s why I know Santi. I’m just trying to figure this thing out so this guy can know why his kid ended up dead down the street. If there’s anything you can tell us, I promise this is the last time you’ll see us.” She shook her head and closed the door softly.

  They walked back out to the street, and Orlando took out the newsprint ad again and just held it, looking back and forth between the end of the block where the kids had been shot and the end of the block where Zoe lived in the kicked-in little apartment with its ocher walls and sagging beds.

  Zoe said, “What’re you thinking, Sherlock?” He turned to her but didn’t speak, his eyes caught by something moving in the dark by number 42. She turned to look, putting one hand in her purse, and Mia appeared, brushing at her hair, which had been caught in the branches of one of those little weed trees that grows up where no one pays attention. They heard her curse to herself; then she took a few steps to the curb, smiling shyly and looking back over her shoulder.

  She spoke softly, touching the little black flower at her throat, fingering one long earring. “She would help, she’s not bad. Tisa looks out for me, but she thinks she’s got the weight of the world, you know?”

  They stepped closer so the girl wouldn’t have to raise her voice. “Sienna. Those kids came by, looking for her. She used to work here. She don’t now. She’s pregnant and all fucked up and the guy who owns the place told Tisa to get rid of her.”

  Sienna. Orlando tried to remember when he’d seen her on the street. She had looked bad. Her hair stringy, grime caked in the corners of her eyes and the lines along her mouth as if she were made up for a play, to look like an old woman.

  “How did she get messed up? Did she use?”

  Mia lifted a shoulder. “This job is hard, people don’t know. They think it’s a party. You got to pretend all the time, men touch you whether you want to or not and you got to make them think you want to. She wasn’t cut out for it.” She smiled. “Tisa thinks I’m an idiot, but that’s just how I do it. Act like a dip or whatever. Plus, you know, if you’re nice, people, usually, they’re nice back. But there was something wrong with that girl. She did get high, like a lot. A lot. But she’s also a little, like, unglued or something, you know?”

  “You know where she went?”

  Mia extended her arms, taking in the neighborhood. “Who knows? She came by that night, all fucked up, told Tisa she had a date. But she came and went before I had a chance to talk to her. Wish I could help more.” She looked over her shoulder, then turned and began to move back into the dark.

  Orlando whispered thanks, and she turned and winked at him, and then looked out of the corner of her eye at Zoe and smiled.

  Danny sat in a diner on Second Street, his computer open and the table crowded with printouts and files. He picked up a stack of sheets and paged through them. Here were Gerry Dunn and his brother, Frank; Chris Black and his dead brother, Shannon. He had a diagram drawn on the back of a copy of a tax bill for a house on Lehigh Avenue. Arrows went from name to name, property to property, stars and asterisks and question marks, all surrounding a hole in the center that was Asa Carmody.

  Danny had thought of Asa as a character, a sport—something his dad used to say—but he hadn’t seen everything, hadn’t looked closely, and it made him feel sick. Had he been no better than all those sisters and mothers and cousins in court, the ones that cried and fainted in the hearings, come to find out their brother or husband was a drug dealer, a rapist, a killer?

  Was it because they grew up together? Maybe because he remembered Asa as a little kid with a sunken chest, seen him hit on girls, and listened to him spin out bullshit teenage stories of the money he was going to have, the places he was going to go. The stories they told each other at night when Asa slept at his house, all those nights after his father skipped out and his mother took a downward slide into drinking and sketchy characters from the bars.

  Now he had to see it all, carry away handfuls of dirt like he was unearthing some great fossilized heap of bones and eyeless skulls. The waitress came and asked him something and he stared through her, blank, his eyes unfocused, and after a minute she walked away. Periodically the phone buzzed, moving in an agitated circle on the table. His supervisor, Lieutenant Barclay, and John Rogan both looking for him. He had other cases and should have been working them. A drive-by in West Oak Lane. A guy in his fifties shot dead washing his car on Fairmount Avenue. He was going to be in serious trouble soon if he didn’t start spending time on these things, but he was stuck somewhere in his own thoughts. He’d pick up the phone and picture a conversation, trying to explain himself to the lieutenant. How could he work on anything else until he knew what had happened? Not just what happened to Soap, but how everything had happened to put him and Soap across that table from each other on the same night the boy ended up dead in the river. This wasn’t just about murder, it was about something else. Who Asa Carmody was, maybe who Danny himself was.

  What was it Asa had said that night when they’d met Soap? That once Soap was there he wasn’t in it anymore. Asa had stayed in it, though, sat there coaching Soap on what to say. Making things come out the way he needed them to, maybe. Soap, Darius, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.

  Twice he’d called Jelan and hung up before she’d answered. Drove past her house, saw cars coming and going. Looked at the photographs and reports on Darius Williams. Made himself look. Taking it in. Trying to turn it into something he could use, that sick and helpless feeling. To see the truth of things. To make things right.

  CHAPTER

  13

  Brendan came out of the hospital to find his brother standing in the parking lot, smoking a cigarette. His back was turned, working the lighter, and when he turned to face Brendan, Orlando wondered how he must look. Bad, he knew. Worse, even, than when they’d seen each other last. Orlando’s face thinner, paler, with hollows under his eyes. Brendan stopped, sighed to himself. Orlando could see the effort it took for his brother to talk to him.

  “Bren, how are you? How’s Michael?”

  “Good, he’s looking good. Home tomorrow.” He shrugged, jiggled his keys. “Everything okay?”

  Orlando smiled, trying to look nonchalant. “Yeah, good. Listen, did he say anything yet? About what happened?”

  “He doesn’t remember much of the day. He gets little bits and pieces. He says he remembers him and George were looking for someone. He’s not clear, you know, whether he can’t remember why or if little George never told him.”

  “Looking for someone.”

  “A girl, he says.”

  “Sienna.”

  Brendan dropped his keys. “What?”

  “The girl, her name was Sienna.”

  “How do you know that?” His voice was quiet, but he moved
closer to his brother, kicking his keys under the car.

  “Your keys, Bren.” Orlando bent to look, and Brendan caught his arm.

  “Fuck the keys, Kevin. How do you know the girl’s name? Why do you know that?” There it was again, his middle name. Orlando thought, He doesn’t even see me as a real person. Zoe was right.

  “Why can’t you call me by my right name, Bren?”

  “Why can’t you answer a simple question? Is this some kind of game to you? This is my son.”

  “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t want to help?”

  “What do you mean, help? If you know something, we’ll call the detectives. Otherwise, stay the hell out of it.”

  “You think I can’t do this?”

  “Do what? I don’t even know what the fuck we’re talking about.”

  “That guy, that crazy fuck who shot me. He thought I knew something. I just thought, you know. Maybe I do. Maybe at least I can get to the people who know.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Do you think the cops got it right? Do you think Darnell and those morons from Green Lane shot the kids while they were trying to buy drugs?”

  “No, but I think they were looking for this girl and were in the wrong place at the wrong time. What are you trying to do?”

  “I’m trying to find her.”

  “Find her? Why?”

  “I don’t know. Hear what she has to say, I guess. I’m not sure. It’s something about Parkman Jr. and the girl and his father. I don’t . . .” He trailed off with a helpless gesture, lifting his arms and dropping them. “I know what you think of me. Kathleen, Michael, I can’t think what they see when they look at me. And what the fuck good am I if I can’t do something for Michael? For my own family.” He ran his hands through his hair, all yellow spikes and tangles, not entirely clean, Brendan thought, and saw him again as a little boy, standing on the stoop with a bruise on his face, his eyes red.