The Wolves of Fairmount Park

by Dennis Tafoya

  The kid called to him. “How we doing?”

  “Same as always.”

  “That bad?”

  The kid sat back down, and Orlando held up the bottle, walking west toward Zoe and the apartment, picking up speed as he went. He needed to see her face and hear her voice. He saw a trolley moving west, and he started to run.

  . . .

  Brendan’s cell phone rang, a number he didn’t know, but when Orlando started talking he tagged Luis on the shoulder and they went across Roxborough fast, lights and sirens, and called an ambulance. It came over the radio a second later, a woman lying in the street a block off Green Lane. The guys who picked it up first requested an additional unit to deal with the crowd, and they pulled up to see a few kids from the neighborhood clustered at the curb, and two old Polish ladies Brendan had seen around before who were shouting at the kids to stay back. Luis called in while Brendan got out and looked for the girl and his half brother.

  She was young, with long black hair. Pretty, before whatever had gotten to her. He realized he’d seen her before, in the hospital room where they’d taken Orlando when he’d been shot. She was lying on her side, cradled in his half brother’s arms, her body absolutely slack in the boneless way of people who are unconscious. Her face was slick with sweat and there was a froth on her parted lips. His brother was sobbing, lowering his head to hers, a trail of spit from his mouth, and he was saying something Brendan couldn’t understand. He put one hand on his brother’s arm, gently, so that he would let Brendan get close enough to hear the faint whistle of her breath and see up close her skin leached of blood. He gave Luis the high sign, and his partner hit the mike on his shoulder and put a rush on the ambulance while the first two guys on scene pushed the kids and old ladies back into a rough loop, half on the curb and half in the street.

  Brendan turned, shifted his body slightly to see her face in profile, and remembered her from the hospital room. He swore under his breath and put his hand to her throat to find a slight, rapid pulse there, like a faint code transmitted by her failing heart. He looked around at the crowd and the buildings nearby, saw the open door, and ran up the stairs till he reached the third landing and looked into the tiny apartment, the carpet thin as dust, the kitchen table with its veneer peeled up in one corner. Took in the open glassine bag on the table, kept moving through the apartment, banging open the bedroom door, pulling the shower curtain off its gaping rings. Swearing at his grieving brother, at the poor, dying girl in the street, at his son, at his own failed luck at being tied by blood to all this self-destruction and bad judgment and pain. As he came back down he could hear the ambulance coming closer, the shriek and whine of the siren hitting the hard surfaces of the narrow streets.

  He got back to the street out of breath, just in time to see Orlando struggling with Luis and one of the guys from the other RMP as the ambulance guys got to work. Mouth open, his face contorted and terrible, he was trying to get to Zoe, and Brendan caught his arms and pulled him close, taking in the bruises and scrapes on the kid’s face, the rank smell of him, the water streaming from his eyes and nose. He was still talking but the words seemed random and it was impossible to make any sense of it and Brendan didn’t think it mattered. Orlando windmilled his arms over Brendan’s shoulders, pushing, screaming, finally dropping to the ground to beat at his own face with his hands. The old ladies crossed themselves, and the kids looked at each other, eyes wide.

  Brendan put one hand on Orlando’s shoulder, hard, as if anchoring him to the curb. He saw the white soles of Zoe’s feet, her shoes neatly peeled off as she fell, as if she’d kicked them off and let herself settle flat into the asphalt between two parked cars like a child playing dead. Luis brought a blanket from the car and covered her legs, and Brendan let Orlando put one hand out to touch the edge of it, work it in his fingers while they waited for the ambulance to move her. He talked to the crew and told his brother her pulse was still there, she was still alive, but his brother looked up at him with such concentrated misery in his eyes he doubted himself and wanted them to check again. The ambulance guys fetched some bags and an orange composite board, and Brendan moved his brother back to stand upright.

  Orlando grabbed his sleeve so hard he could feel the nails bite his skin. “Get the dope.”

  “Let’s just get her to the hospital—”

  “I’m going with her. Get the dope. Grab the bag and bring it to me.”

  “It’s evidence now.”

  “Then put it in a plastic bag or something. I don’t give a shit. I need it.” They both turned to watch the medics roll Zoe onto the board, her face slack, and they heard Luis grab one of the EMTs by the sleeve and whisper, “She’s family.”

  Orlando followed them as they carried Zoe, who looked even smaller on the gurney, a sick child, her half-closed eyes sunk in dark, bruiselike circles. He called to his brother, his eyes red with blood. “Get it and bring it to me, I’m not fucking kidding.” He climbed in after the crew and stood on the bumper. “Brendan, it’s about Michael, too. Get the bag. Do it now.”

  The sun went down, and Chris Black drove through Kensington and Frankford, then back to the river and south again, looking for the girl. Asa said she’d lived on Richmond Street a while back, but now she was just a homeless junkie and how tough could it be to find her? He cruised in nearly aimless circles for three hours and decided it was pretty fucking hard. He tried to talk to two kids sitting at the curb in front of a squat on Tulip Street, and one of them started talking about Jesus and spinning a chain over his head with a big fucking lock on the end, so Chris pulled away fast and kept moving.

  There were a lot of homeless people wandering the Parkway in the blocks in front of the art museum. More than he remembered, and it was tough to figure out much about them. Every one looking the same in colorless bundled clothing despite the heat, their coats and their hair and their skin all gone a kind of reddish brown, like old brick. Lugging bags and bundles, pushing carts heaped with shit no one sane would want.

  He found a shelter down on Thirteenth, but it was for men only. He parked near City Hall and walked the parks, seeing everything but young girls who might be the one Asa wanted. He couldn’t ask around, couldn’t show anyone her picture, so he walked circles in the humid dark, trying to eyeball every homeless woman under sixty. All this to kill her. It was insane and getting crazier by the minute. Wherever this girl was, she was gone, and what did it matter? What did she know? Who would listen to her anyway?

  He got back in his car and drifted past Franklin Square, his heart not in it, then turned north and drove past the Electric Factory on Seventh, passing long lines of kids waiting to get into a concert. It was nice to see them after looking at the decrepit and destitute for hours. The girls in short dresses and heels, drifting in clouds of perfume and talking on cell phones. Half present and half gone in dreams, the way the pretty ones were. A couple of the young ones checked him out, or checked out the SUV anyway.

  He took the picture out again and turned on the overhead light and held it up to see it and get her fresh in his mind. She was pretty, with impossibly big eyes, and a kind of sly smile where you could clearly see she was going to be trouble. He’d known a few girls like that, the ones who seemed to like fun without any limits, who would let you do whatever you wanted to them, who always wanted to go out, drink and get high, and they were cool for a while and then they weren’t. They tipped over, from that hunger to be entertained, from being afraid to be still for two minutes, into a manic and then an angry hyperactivity, or just got sad and quiet and disappeared into themselves in a way that made you feel guilty for even buying them a drink.

  He noticed for the first time the ragged edge of the picture where it was torn. A man’s arm came out of the lost part of the photo and went around the girl’s neck and she held it bent over her shoulder with a closeness more proprietary than affectionate. He saw the man’s pale hand, the edge of the brown vest at the torn border. It was Asa. He wasn’t too surp
rised, he realized. He’d never seen the little creepy fuck with a girl, but he figured the guy had one stashed somewhere, and it didn’t surprise him that at some point anyone who had any real knowledge of the guy and his life would end up dead. Dating that guy seemed to Chris like going for a run in the dark woods with some kind of animal with steely claws and a mouth full of teeth.

  He was sitting in his car, making himself laugh by picturing Asa buying flowers and making a mixtape, when he saw her. She was standing at the edge of the crowd on Seventh, watching the lined-up kids, talking or maybe singing to herself. She was dirty, thinner than in the picture, her face drawn and lined with a sooty gray, as if she’d washed her face with ash. She was rubbing her hands together and mouthing something, watching the kids from a distance at the edge of a bright circle of light from a streetlamp.

  The other people at the corner averted their eyes as they went past, like she was the ghost of good times past and to see her was to invite bad luck. She was wearing a heavy jacket that made her shapeless above the waist and her hair jutted in stiff bristles. He saw a gap in the cars at the corner and pulled to the curb, craning his neck to keep her in sight as he maneuvered the big Navigator.

  He jumped out, his keys in his hand, moving slowly from behind her, wondering what to say to her to get her to come with him to the car. Grabbing her seemed like a bad move. There were too many people around for him to muscle her, all the kids appearing out of the dark toward the end of the line for the show, and she was probably out of her mind. He kept his head down, aware of the people passing, the lights ahead, of trying to seem cool, of his own bulked-up shoulders and height. In clubs and most of the time in the street his size worked for him, but now sweat bloomed on his cheeks and under his arms, and he stopped at the corner, a few feet behind her, holding on to the iron fence.

  He was just a couple of feet behind her, and he could begin to make out what she was saying. Her head swiveled as the kids went by, and it looked like she was searching faces, looking for someone. He noticed a big paper bag between her feet, and once in a while she’d reach down and touch the bag, like she was making sure it was still there.

  There was music from the passing cars, and the kids called to each other as they moved down the street, but he began to hear snatches of what she was saying, her voice small and quiet, but rushed, like she was afraid she wouldn’t get it all out. He had to hear it a few times to get it all, and at first he thought it was a song, the way she let her voice waver up and down as she said the words.

  “Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray.” She touched her head, quick, one dirty finger to the center of her forehead. “And do thou. O Prince of the Heavenly Host. By the power of God.”

  He let himself move closer, his head cocked to hear the words, and he saw her small hands rub together again. He hadn’t been in church in years, not to stay and listen. He’d take his mother down to meet her friends at Holy Name, give her money to drop in the basket, but to stay and listen? It was a prayer, though, he knew, and she had some kind of crazed ritual going. Touching her head, the way she rubbed her hands together, over and over. A little kid, frightened of things in the dark.

  “Thrust into hell Satan. And all the evil spirits.” She touched her forehead and swiveled again, as if there were spirits around her and she could see them. “Who prowl about the world.” Her head going, and he had to look, too, over his shoulder. Seeing the tall shadows thrown onto the buildings on Seventh. Her fear that plain. “Seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.”

  She turned and saw him then, and he stopped. She looked at his face and moved toward him, and he saw the bulge at her middle then. The stained and ratty jacket stretched over her belly. She started up again, about Saint Michael, but she was searching his face now, and he stood still.

  She moved toward him, so that he could smell her, a strange and unexpected sweetness underlain with an odor like wet ashes. She reached out one black hand and patted his bicep, and before he could react she had put her arms around him. “I prayed you would come.” He felt the little belly push against his legs, the thin sticks of her arms on his back and her hands patting his shoulder blades. “No wings,” she said. “I prayed so hard.” She held a hand up, then darted back to get the paper bag. She held it up and smiled, making creases in the dirt on her face. She moved close to him again and opened the bag, and he reared a little, afraid of what might be inside, but she reached in and he got the sweet smell again, stronger.

  She came out with a cherry Danish. “They give them away at the Holiday Inn, on Market. Every night they just give them away. But you have to be there right at the exact moment. And they have to like you.” She pushed the big pastry toward him, and he put his hand out and took it to keep her from shoving it in his mouth. “I knew it would be you. I kept them for you.” She smiled, and tears formed at the corners of her eyes. “For some have entertained angels.” She went back in the bag. “I have cherry and I have blueberry,” she said. She smiled and wiped at the tears, making white tracks on her dirty face. “Angels unawares.”

  Orlando sat in the corner of Zoe’s hospital room, unable to take his eyes off her, till Kathleen came in and put her hand on his arm. She told him she’d come get him if anything happened and to go get cleaned up. He’d looked at her for a long moment before going into the little bathroom and running the water. The door opened, and she handed him a bag that he opened to find an oversized sweatshirt and a white T-shirt. She told him they were Michael’s.

  The doctor came in and told them he thought it was something in the heroin. Her lungs had shut down so that there was a terrible hissing machine tied to her mouth and they would have to wait to see if she started breathing on her own again. He went over to the bed, his face still wet from the sink, and bent to her, kissing one hand, seeing the lavender polish on her nails that was chipped and cracked at the edges.

  Brendan came in and tapped him on the shoulder. Kathleen watched them as Orlando nodded at his brother, then dropped his head again and whispered something to Zoe. She thought she saw the girl’s eyes flicker, but then Orlando was taking Brendan’s hand and pulling him outside. Before he left, Brendan told Kathleen to go home to Michael, who now sometimes woke up in the middle of the night and had to check on Kathleen and Brendan before he could get back to sleep. As if they had been the ones who had been hurt, as if they had been the cause of his worry.

  Brendan had a rolled paper bag under his arm, and Orlando followed him to the end of the hall, where his brother set it on a low table next to some couches. He opened the bag and took out Zoe’s purse, which Orlando grabbed and shook out on the cheap Formica, spilling out her keys, pens, lipsticks, a wallet made of stamped leather from Mexico, change, a name tag from work that brought back the last, awful moment they were together when they had fought and he had hit her.

  He pocketed the razor, her phone, sifted quickly through the wadded Kleenex and rattling boxes of Tic-Tacs until he dropped the tip of a trembling finger on a tiny, waxy bag inked with a design in bright colors. A skull in Day-Glo green, little lightning bolts, a single word from one of those dime-store stamps. RADIOACTIVE.

  Orlando stood up and stuffed his shaking hand into his pocket to grip the razor. Brendan touched his rigid arm and looked searchingly into his face and shook his head as if Orlando had spoken aloud, as if they were already arguing.

  “Let me get help. Orlando.” Hoping the name would make a difference. “I can have a dozen cops on them in ten minutes.”

  “They tried to kill her. She didn’t even do anything. Neither did Michael.”

  “Why, then? Why did someone do this to Zoe?”

  “I asked my friends. My fucking friends. About the shooting, about what happened the night the kids were at the dope house. And they tried to shoot me. Down by the El.” Tremors passed through him, starting in the bones of his shoulders and rolling out to the edge of
his fingers like he was suffering an earthquake only he could feel. He pointed at the table, the little bag of dope, to have something to do with his mutinous hands. “It’s all connected, it’s all a thing.” He picked up the tiny bag and tapped the green design. “Where I saw this before? This place? The guy from this dope house is the guy who tried to shoot me. Maybe the guy who shot Michael and Geo.” He wiped at his nose with the back of his wrist.

  He’s sick, Brendan thought. His brother’s body was a collection of leaning sticks, or like something suspended from wires. “I don’t understand. Who tried to shoot you?”

  Orlando breathed through his mouth, like a dog. “I can’t explain it all. It’s something with this girl, I don’t know. Zoe and me went to a house in Roxborough, around the corner from where Michael and Geo got shot.”

  “A dope house?”

  “No, no. Girls, prostitutes. The boys were there that night. The night they were shot. And they were asking questions about that girl, Sienna.” He stepped back. “I gotta go, Brendan. I know I don’t make any fucking sense, but I know who did this to Zoe and I gotta go.”

  “You’re sick, I can see it. Let’s get help. You can explain it all to that detective. Martinez.” He tried to pull his brother closer, hanging on to his sleeve.

  Orlando looked at his brother’s big hand on his arm. He sagged a little. “Okay,” he said, forcing a smile. “Okay, go call somebody. The detective.” He looked up and down the hall.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, go ahead. We’ll get this laid out.”

  Brendan narrowed his eyes, not completely trusting the change of heart, but he turned and pulled the cell phone out of his pocket. A nurse walking from one of the rooms back to the station whispered something to Brendan, and he held up a hand, walked toward the swinging doors to the hall outside the ICU. He had his ear to the phone when he heard a metallic click and turned to see the door to the stairway swinging shut.