The Wolves of Fairmount Park

by Dennis Tafoya

  He swore and called his brother’s name, slapping shut the phone and sticking it in his pocket. He hit the door with both hands and ran down. In the gap through the middle of the stairway he could see his brother, already a level down and moving surprisingly fast for somebody as sick as he was. It should be easy to catch him, but Brendan kept looking over the rail and watching the gap widen between them, hearing the hard bang of his brother’s boots hitting the steps going down and the ringing echo in the cinder-block stairway.

  Brendan lengthened his stride, letting himself drop to the next landing and feeling the hard jolt to his knees. He almost lost his balance and slid along the rough wall, watching his brother bang through the exit door, hands out in front of him, as Brendan clawed at the railing. He was going too fast and went over hard, sliding down the last flight of stairs on his ass and cracking his head hard against the underside of the metal handrail.

  Outside it was dark, and he went through the door limping, cursing. Feeling a hard knot below the skin of his thigh and a throb in his head timed to his racing heart. Orlando was running up Jamestown toward Ridge, his steps erratic, his arms pumping, disjointed, as if he were two separate halves of a human figure, welded together at the waist. Neither he nor his brother was moving fast now, Brendan feeling his legs stiffening, Orlando stopping to heave and spit.

  A car moved by Brendan and paused, a colorless old Honda with long scratches and dents in the side panels. He squinted and held a hand up to shade his eyes, but there was too much glare from the streetlights and it was too dark in the car to see anything. The car sped up, coming alongside his brother and slowing again. Orlando was doubled over, one hand pressed to his chest, breathing hard through his mouth. Brendan saw the car drift to a stop and he pushed himself faster, his legs hitting the ground in an uneven lope as if one were shorter than the other.

  He saw the driver’s side door open and a slight, black-haired guy stood and threw back his coat, bringing a short-barreled police shotgun up and clear of the hood of the car. Brendan’s heart flipped in his chest and he pulled his pistol, a blocky .40 caliber Glock, and threw it out in front of his face like he was going to hit somebody with it. He shouted something; it might have been “police,” and it might have been his brother’s name. The car was maybe thirty yards away, and the guy lifted the gun. He was on the far side of the car, the door open, lights on and the motor running.

  Brendan lost sight of his brother, of everything but the man with the gun, sighting down the barrel of his service pistol and locking his arms. Brendan was screaming, his heart going, his eyes dilated. He thought there was a pulse that started behind his eyes and went out through his arms and shook the ground beneath his feet, the street in front of him. The lights overhead dimmed and brightened and dimmed again. He pulled the trigger and the guy kept moving, lifting the shotgun to his shoulder, Brendan firing over and over, shifting himself left to get a clear view, and when he saw the spray of yellow-white sparks from the shotgun barrel, he screamed.

  Brendan saw the rear window of the car shatter from the Glock rounds, and the shooter jerked the pump, staggering, and then swung the gun his way so that the end of the barrel was a dark hole under the lights. Brendan fired again and dropped to his knees as the shotgun went off.

  CHAPTER

  17

  Chris looked over at the girl, who said her name was Sienna. She had pulled her legs up onto the seat of the Navigator and hummed to herself, stopping once in a while to say something about Jesus and nod her head. She didn’t ask where they were going. She played with the radio, pointed out the window at each of the dots of light that were planes coming into the airport. She said they were angels with a message from God and gave them names.

  He reached behind him and pulled the pistol out of his belt and sat it in his lap for a moment. The little black SIG. He remembered when he’d bought it, gave some pimply kid three bills for it, the kid getting to pretend he was dealing iron instead of just some jackass who’d stolen a pistol from his father’s locked cabinet. He looked over at the girl again, then opened the compartment between the seats and dropped it in.

  The way she was sitting there, her small belly was pushed out between her legs. He’d have to do something with her, and he wasn’t going to drop a hammer on a pregnant head case, or whatever the hell she was. He’d done a lot of dumb shit for Asa, but he wasn’t doing this. For the first time, he saw more of what was going on, like a door had opened in his head. He was policing up some shit, and the more he thought about it, the more it felt like the last thing he was going to do for Asa Carmody.

  What had he wanted? Money, but all he did was hang around the bars and buy jewelry and drinks for girls, and couldn’t he have done that working at the refinery like his old man? He’d followed Shannon, that was the truth of it. Followed him into the life. Made the same bad calls and hung with the same deadend street brawlers, taken up with Asa and done one stupid thing after another because his brother had done it and it was about proving something. Well, hadn’t it been settled?

  He wasn’t as brave as Shannon or Gerry. He wasn’t as stupid or as crazy, either. He wasn’t a stone killer like Angel Riordan and he wasn’t a schemer like Asa Carmody, and he was having trouble remembering when he’d wanted to be those things, like it had all been years in the past. He’d wanted to be somebody, to get respect, but from who? From morons or crazy fuckers who would kill pregnant girls or young kids and think themselves hard.

  He thought through his options. He thought a lot about each possibility, making almost random turns around the city. He thought harder than he had in a long time, even when he’d driven away from Gerry and Frank bleeding in the street. He stopped and got the girl takeout from the McDonald’s on Girard, near the El. She smiled at him around a mouthful of cheeseburger. He took out a wet wipe from a plastic container, and she closed her eyes and jutted out her chin a little, like a child, and he wiped at her face. She smelled like broiled meat and cherry jelly and lanolin.

  She said, “Angels are coming to Philadelphia now. They found me in the street and they wanted to give me money for the baby. I forget which ones are seraphim and which are cherubim.” She pointed at him with a french fry. “Did it hurt? To lose your wings?”

  “No,” he said. “I never felt a thing.”

  Orlando got up slowly from the grass, looking off the way the car had gone, its tires smoking and leaving long tails of black in the street as it rocketed out into the traffic on Ridge Avenue, clipping a parked car before straightening out and disappearing east toward Philly.

  He looked back down along the front of the hospital and saw his brother curled on the lawn, hat off, trying to lift himself up into a sitting position. He called to him and ran back toward him, seeing a blue-jacketed security man jogging from the main entrance, yelling something into a walkie-talkie.

  “Jesus, Bren, are you okay?”

  His brother sat back on his haunches, his eyes wide. He unsnapped a clip from his belt and pushed it into his pistol and released the slide, so that it shot forward with a snap. Orlando saw him shiver and wondered what shock looked like.

  Brendan smiled. “In case that fucker is just going around the block.”

  The security guard was waving up a pair of nurses with a gurney. “Let’s get him inside.”

  “I’m okay, I’m okay.”

  Orlando shook his head and helped him stand upright. He put his hand on a red hole in Brendan’s blues, showing his brother a spot of thick blood. Brendan swore and touched gingerly at the spot, in the meat of his left shoulder just above the collarbone. He grabbed at his brother’s sleeve.

  “Are you okay? I saw him get a shot off at you, I thought . . .”

  “No, I fell on my ass.” Orlando pointed back over his shoulder. “All he got was grass and brick.”

  “I swear to Christ I got him, but he didn’t go down.” Brendan swayed as the nurses jockeyed the stretcher into place behind him. “Fifteen years I never pointed the g
un at anybody. I don’t know what happened.” His eyes rolled over white and he fainted, guided back onto the white sheets by the nurses and the guard and Orlando, who ripped Brendan’s shirt open and ran his hands over his brother’s chest and stomach, looking for more holes.

  A nurse caught his hand and held it gently. “It’s okay. Leave us take him inside and we’ll make sure he’s okay. All right?”

  Orlando nodded, his eyes bright and wide. He helped them spread a blanket over Brendan and then stood at the curb for a moment, watching them go. When they were rounding the corner of the building toward the door, he lifted the pistol he’d taken from his brother’s hands and looked at it.

  It was big and black and squared-off, the weight in the grip, where he knew the magazine was. He’d just seen his brother load it. He didn’t know much about guns. How many bullets were in it? Six, seven? He’d stolen guns and sold them, seen guys wearing them or pointing them, or playing with them like kids, and he’d had no interest. It had little levers, maybe a safety, and a button to press to take the magazine out, but he didn’t have any more bullets, so it didn’t matter. Whatever was in it would be enough. He turned and walked back up the street.

  He crossed the asphalt and looked down at the broken glass and a red shotgun shell, a slightly flattened cylinder with its one yellow brass end. He’d seen the guy’s face and knew it was the same guy, the Irish guy who’d come to kill him on Hope Street. There were drops of dark blood, one flattened with a shoe print. So Brendan had hit the fucker. Good. He started walking, then jogging, and stuck the gun into his jacket. Maybe he’d die, the Irishman. Maybe they’d all die. The ones who tried to kill Zoe, who’d killed Geo, shot Michael. The Irishman and his boss, the one who owned the dope house where Zoe scored the poisoned dope. Who’d tried to shoot him and his brother in the street like it was nothing. He came to Ridge, turned left, threaded the traffic moving east.

  Benigno sat in the dark at the dope house on Shurs Lane, smoking a joint and watching the street in his underwear. He heard Min shift in her sleep and made a face. It was a mistake to stay in the house. He’d given the girl the smack, like Asa told him, the stufflaced with fentanyl that some of the kids called Murder. They should have left when they turned off the lights, though, not waited around to see if the fucking girl died and if anyone figured out where the dope had come from. Maybe it was a one-in-a-million shot, but it was keeping him up.

  Closing shop and moving would mean he’d take a hit. It would take a while to find someplace cool to set up, get his old customers back, or pull new ones in, and fuck that. He’d do that if he had to, he’d done it before, but it sucked, and all for some dumb-ass junkie girl who probably crawled under some porch to die. He told himself, if anyone gave a shit about her, she wouldn’t be copping heroin in the middle of the day in his house. It was what he thought about all the gearheads and base-heads and stunned junkies who wandered through the house, leaking money and staggering back out into the night to steal or work or whatever they did to prop up their habits. He’d started to hate them. Thought, Who gives a shit? Give me your money and get the fuck out.

  He laughed to himself, a little stoned giggle that he was struggling to control when he heard a window break downstairs. He stood up, looked down at Min, and then grabbed the .32 off the nightstand. She was coming awake while he stepped into his shoes, pulling his jersey on and moving toward the door to cock his head and listen.

  She sat up, pulling the covers over her. “Bennie?”

  He made a frantic gesture for her to shut up, wiping the air with his hands, and mouthed, “Stay put,” but she was already spilling out of bed to grab for the shotgun under the mattress. He held up his hands, pleading calm, then slowly opened the door.

  Out on the landing he could hear more sounds from downstairs. Something scraping the wood sash of a window. A bottle thrown down a hallway to crack open in the kitchen. Benigno moved to the head of the stairs, the pistol pointed down. He’d taken one step, trying to remember which ones squeaked, when he heard a hissing rush and saw a bloom of orange light reflected along the hallway at the foot of the stairs. He went back into the room and saw Min raise the shotgun and tense her arms.

  “It’s me, for chrissake!” He crossed the room to pull his pants on while Min twisted the sawed-off gun in her hands. “Get dressed!” He grabbed her purse and swept their keys and phones and everything in with one hand so that pennies and dimes rang on the floor.

  “What’s going on, Bennie? What’s that smell?”

  “The fucking place is on fire.” He jumped up and took the gun from her. “Come on!”

  “Let’s go out the window!” They could hear cracking now, a hiss building to a roar. She pulled on a shirt that flapped over open jeans.

  “The bars. There are fucking bars on all the windows. We’d have to go out the goddamn attic.” He pulled her, one shoe on and one shoe off, out the door and down the first few stairs. He cranked the pump on the shotgun, spitting a live round that plinked down the steps to roll in the empty hallway, now bright with fire from the kitchen.

  He craned his neck to see the length of the house through the rails. He screamed warnings and threats to whoever might be downstairs. Min clung to him, off balance and holding one shoe, pulling at him as she struggled not to fall, and he flapped his arm to keep his distance from her as they sidestepped down the stairs.

  He called them junkie motherfuckers, racked the slide to scare them, called on whoever was in his house to show themselves and die like men. He popped his bushy head up and down to see over and under the banister, pointing the heavy gun into the shadowed corners and swearing under his breath. Finally, he just ran for the front door and threw it open, his back turned to cover the interior of the house with the wildly swinging shotgun.

  He was half out the front door, turning with the gun, when Orlando clocked him hard with the Glock, holding it like a hammer by the barrel and chopping at Bennie’s skull. One solid shot, so that the kid squeezed the trigger and discharged the gun with an unholy echoing roar that shattered the door frame. The gun dropped out of his hands and landed on Min’s small foot. She screamed and hopped to the side of the door, and Orlando grabbed her and pinned her hard against the porch, then righted the pistol and pushed it into her cheek while Bennie moaned and rocked himself upright, rubbing the side of his head.

  “What do you think, you’re going to get rich? Dumb junkie fuck. You’re going to score off me?”

  Orlando said, “You know that’s not why I’m here, so don’t even start a game with me.” The girl moaned, something in Korean, and Orlando breathed hard through his mouth. “I don’t know how this gun works. I don’t know about guns.”

  “I’ll show you in a minute.” Bennie looked at the shotgun at his feet.

  “Did you even know who she was, know her name? Was it just being, like, fuck it, who cares about her? Did you just think it didn’t matter?”

  Bennie watched the fire inside the door, making its way toward where they lay on the porch, his eyes red with the light. “I see all you come here. I used to think it was just partying. This life. People coming and having fun. Then, I don’t know. I see you stealing, whoring, fucking each other over. You all come around over and over and just turn to skeletons.”

  Orlando felt the heat growing on his face. “She protected me. Why would she do that for me?” He held the pistol against the girl’s temple, his mind empty, as if the gun were thinking for him, giving shape and volition to his acts. “What do I do without her?”

  Bennie held up his hands. “I wouldn’t hurt anyone just to do it. I do what I’m told. He sends those big apes around to collect the money, so I do what the fuck I’m told. You think you want to know, you’re mad and you want to get at him, but you can’t. He’s too smart. There are so many people out there who take his money.” He leaned forward, his eyes darting back and forth between Orlando’s wild eyes and the shotgun on the floor.

  Orlando said, “You think I care a
bout living or dying. I don’t care. This isn’t that. She was perfect. Something has to happen if she dies. The world has to end.” He pushed the girl down with the gun at her temple.

  Bennie put one hand out slowly, touching the girl’s foot. “I can tell you his name. I’ll tell you. You think you’ll learn something, but you’ll just die.”

  “If you lie to me, I’ll know it. I saw the bag. I know every bag stamp in this town. I studied every way people get high.” There was a crash inside, things dropping and blowing up. Bottles of liquor, maybe. His hands were cramping, and he turned and breathed through his mouth, trying to keep from getting sick. He sat back, finally, and Min disentangled her hair from his fingers and climbed to Bennie.

  Bennie said, “You already know, then why did you come here?”

  “I wanted to hear you say it. I wanted to see your face and hear you say his name, tell me where he is.”

  The heat was getting worse, and Min’s hair lifted in little updrafts. She said, “Then what? You can’t stop this. You can’t stop anything. No one can. Not the police, not anyone.”

  “No, but I’ll get him. I’ll get him somehow.”

  The door swung on its own, as if the fire were a spirit taking control of the house. Bennie made a face. “You’re sick. I can see it. Right now, you’re sick. Does that gun even work? Is it loaded? You don’t know.”

  Orlando lifted it and they ducked, Bennie and Min. He pointed it at them, his face screwed up in anticipation of the noise. He swung it toward the open door and pulled the trigger, his hand shaking with the effort. There was a pop and Min gave a little shriek. For a while they all looked into the red interior of the house. Watched, fascinated, like animals in the dark for a minute, before Orlando finally got up and they followed him to the curb, to stand and watch the house burn. The house, whatever dope and money there was inside it. They watched expressionless, their thoughts unknowable. The fire trucks appeared at the end of the block, and people began coming out of the other houses to stand blinking with their children, like they had been called against their will.