The invocation of the square can lift jinxes and curses.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked, trying to buy time. ‘How is your father cursed?’
Every few seconds Farren would open the left side of his coat and glance inside. Byrne finally realized what he was doing. There were photos inside the coat. He was trying to mark Byrne as someone he knew, or someone he was supposed to kill. He reached in, touched the photograph on the bottom right. Byrne only saw it for a second, but he could see that the photo was older, vintage, color leached by time. The photo next to it was a close-up of Michael’s father, Danny.
‘It all started with my grandfather when he came to this place.’
‘What place, Billy? Devil’s Pocket?’
Farren nodded. ‘My family has been cursed ever since.’
‘You don’t have to hurt the child, Billy.’
Farren looked down, as if he’d forgotten he was holding the baby. She was asleep.
‘When you are face-blind, people think you’re stuck up,’ he said. ‘People think you’re stupid. If they only saw it from the inside, they would think differently.’
‘Of course they would,’ Byrne said. He stole a glance at the window. He could see the reflection of a sector car’s lights washing the wall opposite. It was getting closer.
‘Kick the police radio over to me,’ Farren said.
Byrne did so.
Farren grabbed a blanket out of the crib, wrapped it around the little girl.
‘We are alike, you and me,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
Farren hesitated a long moment, looking at Byrne as if he were a curiosity in a jar. ‘You have been to the other side. Like I have.’
Byrne had no idea how Farren would have known this, about how more than twenty years ago he had been shot, plunged into the Delaware River and been pronounced dead. How ever since, there had been moments when something akin to a vague and unfocused second sight channeled his thought. It had been a while since he’d had the sensations, but he knew it was something that would never leave him.
‘You came back with an ability, as I did,’ Farren said. ‘But there is also a deficit. A blind spot. Am I right?’
Byrne said nothing.
‘With me it is faces,’ he said. ‘What is your blindness, Detective Byrne?’
For some reason Byrne was unable to speak. He’d never thought about it, but it was true.
Farren held up the two-way radio. ‘I will be taking this with me and listening to the cross-talk. If I hear a word on this radio in the next two minutes about our encounter, you’ll find this baby in the river. Do you understand?’
‘I understand.’
‘Do you care about the life of this child?’
‘Very much,’ Byrne said.
‘As do I. I wish her no harm. Do not force my hand.’
And then he was gone.
The baby was found, unharmed, behind a Dumpster at the end of the alley.
Unless Farren was holed up in one of the hundreds of row houses in the neighborhood–and all police could do was knock on the doors–there was a good chance that he had slipped through the perimeter.
Byrne met with Josh Bontrager and John Shepherd on the corner of 36th and Wharton. Two helicopters hovered overhead. Shepherd’s phone rang. He answered, listened.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
He hung up, remained silent.
‘What is it?’ Byrne asked.
‘The body by the warehouse.’
‘What about it?’
‘It’s Danny Farren’s son Sean.’
‘Michael Farren shot him,’ Bontrager said.
‘Yes,’ Shepherd said. ‘A patrol officer saw him do it.’
‘He doesn’t have anyone to help him now,’ Byrne said. ‘He’s on his own.’
The detectives looked out over the city.
Michael Farren could be anywhere.
37
The last time Byrne had stood this close to Danny Farren was more than twenty-five years earlier. It was on a street corner in Devil’s Pocket the night a woman named Miranda Sanchez was savagely beaten by Danny’s brother Patrick. It was Christmas Eve. It was the night Michael Farren died and Billy the Wolf was born.
At that time Danny Farren had looked as intimidating as his reputation and rap sheet indicated.
Now, even though he was in his seventies, his biceps were still big. Still the mad dog, maybe with a few less teeth.
They met in a small room off the main cell block at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility on State Road. CFCF was opened in 1995, and named in honor of Warden Patrick N. Curran and Deputy Warden Robert F. Fromhold, who were murdered at Holmesburg Prison on May 31, 1973.
On a monitor in a nearby room, Jessica watched Farren’s penetrating blue eyes. There was a good chance that the man knew what Byrne was going to say, but it was protocol for a member of the PPD to make the notification.
Byrne entered the room. Danny Farren sat waiting. His hands were shackled to a bolt in the steel table. Jessica knew that the man’s attorney was standing by, watching the proceedings from another room. He had surely advised his client not to meet with Byrne alone. It was not surprising that a man like Danny Farren would want to do things his way.
The two men sat across from each other for a full minute without speaking.
‘I remember you,’ Danny Farren finally said.
‘Mr Farren, I’m sorry to inform you that your son Sean has been killed.’
Farren just stared at Byrne. No reaction at all. Jessica couldn’t imagine living a life where the slightest tic of emotion would be read as weakness. Even when learning about the death of a child.
‘Was it a cop who did it?’ he asked eventually.
‘The incident is still under investigation,’ Byrne said.
‘Was it a cop?’
Byrne took a moment. ‘It was not.’
Farren looked away for a moment, back. ‘And I’m supposed to believe you?’
‘I have no thoughts on that,’ Byrne said. ‘I’m just telling you what I know.’
‘You killed my brother. And now you’ve killed my son.’
‘I didn’t kill your brother, Danny. I think maybe your memory is failing you.’
‘My memory is perfect.’
‘I was there, yes. But I didn’t kill him.’
‘Then what the fuck do you call it?’
‘I call it an unfortunate incident. Your brother pointed a firearm at a police officer. A man he knew was a police officer.’
‘And for that he should be killed?’
Byrne leaned forward. ‘Yes. Every single time.’
Nothing.
‘Call your son off,’ Byrne said.
Farren raised his eyes.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.
‘Call Michael off.’
‘I know who my boy is. I’ve just got the one now, you see. Going to make quick work of my Christmas shopping this year.’
‘Every cop in the PPD is looking for him. So is the FBI.’
‘Good luck with that.’
‘That’s thousands of armed men and women. I think your son is the one who needs the luck.’
‘And yet he’s managed to elude custody.’
‘Get word to him that if he surrenders, I will personally see to his safety.’
Farren lifted his iron-clad hands, looked at the walls around him.
‘I’m in a fucking cage. How am I supposed to get word to anybody about anything?’
‘If he turns himself in, I will see to his safety,’ Byrne repeated.
‘What, like my brother Desmond? Like the PPD worked on the case in ’76 when Desmond was found floating in the Schuylkill with a bullet in his fucking head? That kind of safety?’
Byrne said nothing.
‘My mother sent a letter to that dago piece of shit Rizzo. He didn’t have the fucking decency to answer.’
Frank Rizzo w
as the controversial mayor of Philadelphia from 1972 to 1980. Before that he had been the commissioner of police.
‘I was in junior high school then, Danny.’
‘So was your boy.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Danny Farren rolled his shoulders, his neck. It was the kind of thug move that always preceded a left-hook sucker punch thrown in a bar, something at which Farren had a lot of experience. Unfortunately for him, that was not going to happen today.
‘That Doyle punk,’ he said. ‘Jimmy Doyle.’
‘What about him?’
Farren leaned forward. ‘You think I don’t know what happened in the park that day? You think I didn’t know how he cut my brother?’ He leaned back. ‘Now he wants to put away the last of the Farrens.’
The two men fell silent.
‘I’m fucking dying,’ Farren said.
He turned his arms. There, amid the Celtic crosses on each forearm, were the marks left by the chemotherapy treatments.
‘I’ve done a few things in my life,’ he finally said. ‘I’m no fucking choirboy. But this thing? This murder charge? It wasn’t me.’
Jessica knew that when Farren was arraigned, he had pleaded not guilty to all charges. It was SOP for men like him. Still, with so little to lose or gain at this point, she wondered why he was still clinging to the claim that he had not committed the firebombing of the store.
‘You’re on surveillance tape, Danny. Your prints were on the bomb.’
Men like Farren, if they knew who had done it, would still take the hit, and bide their time, waiting and plotting revenge.
He said nothing.
Jessica saw Farren give a look to the corrections officer standing at the door. It meant this meeting was over. Byrne had done his duty by notifying a citizen of the death of a family member. He’d also made a plea on behalf of the people of Philadelphia.
Byrne stood up.
‘This isn’t going to end well for your son, Danny. If you really gave a shit about him, like you pretend to do with all this talk of family and legacy, you’d call him off.’
‘You done?’
‘Right now there are a lot of cops gunning for him. Think about it. You know how to get hold of me. I can get a news crew here in ten minutes and we can put it on TV in twenty.’
‘I won’t be calling.’
‘I don’t imagine you will,’ Byrne said. ‘But on your last day in this life you’ll remember that I was here. On your last day you’ll remember that I tried to save your only son, and you did nothing.’
Danny Farren remained silent.
‘You did what you could,’ Jessica said. As soon as the words left her lips, she realized how inadequate they sounded. She trusted that Byrne knew what was in her heart.
They were standing in the visitors’ parking lot at CFCF.
‘I remember, when we were kids, the Farren brothers were like the boogeymen,’ Byrne said. ‘I mean, we all postured like we were Irish tough guys, but the Farrens were the real thing.’
Jessica remembered her own neighborhood growing up. It was the Italians, but it was the same thing. Her father was both proud and ashamed to be Italian-American whenever a story was told about the local gangs.
‘Some of us could have gone that way, but we didn’t,’ Byrne said. ‘Do you know why?’
Jessica had a pretty good idea. She asked anyway.
Byrne pointed at the facility. ‘It was because of places like this. We were scared shitless of ending up here. It stays your hand, cools your temper. Men like Danny Farren never have that fear, that governor of their actions. Inside or outside, doesn’t matter. They are going to do what they want to do, they are going to take what they want.’
Jessica considered this. ‘But don’t you think that privately, when the lights go off and they’re alone with their thoughts, they regret those choices?’
‘I hope they do. For me to think otherwise would be to give up on the entire concept of rehabilitation.’
Jessica considered their options. ‘I might have an idea.’
‘What is it?’
‘I’d have to clear it with my boss, but what if we offered Danny something?’
‘What do we have to offer that he would want?’
‘We can offer him his only son back.’
‘I’m not sure I follow,’ Byrne said. ‘How do we do that?’
Jessica lined up her thoughts. ‘We can promise him that if Michael is taken into custody, tried and convicted, he’ll be sent to the same facility as his father.’
‘The DA is not going to go for that,’ Byrne said.
‘We don’t necessarily have to deliver; we just have to make him think we will.’
Byrne gave it a second. ‘You think the DA will make the offer?’
Jessica took out her phone. ‘Let’s see.’
Twenty minutes later, Jessica glanced across the parking lot. A man was walking quickly toward them. It was Farren’s lawyer.
‘You said you can get a TV crew out here quickly?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Jessica. ‘Why?’
‘My client said he’s willing to make a televised appeal to his son.’
All three local stations were on site within fifteen minutes. They agreed to use pool footage from the NBC affiliate.
Jessica and Byrne returned to the Roundhouse. They entered the video monitoring unit at just after ten. The large room had three tiers of curved tables, each bearing a number of terminals where video devices could be patched into the thousands of cameras deployed around the city. Any table monitor could be mirrored on the ten-foot screen at the front of the room. When Jessica and Byrne arrived, this was showing color bars. They were soon replaced by a live feed from the local news stations. After a brief introduction, they cut to the recorded plea made by Danny Farren.
As Byrne watched, he thought about his encounter with Michael Farren. He’d had Farren and he’d let him get away.
Anyone else that Michael Farren harmed would live in his soul forever. Byrne knew that the man had had the drop on him–and had a baby in harm’s path–but it didn’t ease his conscience, nor, he suspected, would it ever.
He was a guardian, and he had failed.
He looked at the television, at Michael Farren’s mug shot superimposed in the upper-right-hand part of the screen.
The eyes looked out at him.
Feral eyes.
Billy the Wolf.
38
Billy spent the night and most of the day in Fairmount Park. By the time he made his way back to the motel room, it was just after three o’clock in the afternoon.
A pair of PPD sector cars were parked about a block away in either direction.
It mattered little. Billy had everything he needed in his knapsack. One change of clothes, a hundred rounds for his weapon, over fifteen thousand dollars.
He lifted his collar, walked back down the street, toward the river.
Billy sat at the end of the bar, his right shoulder to the wall. There were only a few patrons at this hour. The televisions above the bar showed the Phillies game.
He finished his beer, ordered another. Before it arrived, he grabbed the bills from the bar, pocketed them, entered the men’s room.
He drew some paper towels from the dispenser, wetted them and washed his face, his neck, his hands. He ran his hands through his hair, dried them.
He stepped back, looked into the mirror.
It was empty.
When he returned to his seat, there were a few more patrons. He looked at the bartender as the man brought over a fresh beer.
Blue T-shirt, red hair, small ears.
Billy dropped a five on the bar. The barman took it.
The television now had a news break-in. It showed the photograph of a man.
‘Police have identified the subject as Michael Anthony Farren of Schuylkill,’ the newscaster said. ‘He is wanted in connection to multiple counts of aggravated murder. In an unprecedented move,
police have released a plea from the suspect’s father, Daniel Farren, himself awaiting trial for the firebombing death of a Philadelphia woman.’
The conversations in the bar all but ceased, a few dozen eyes glued to the four TV monitors. The image switched to an older man in an orange jumpsuit. He looked right at the camera. Right at Billy.
‘Mickey, you have to turn yourself in. I talked to the police. They told me if you walk into any police station, put your weapon on the floor and your hands in the air, no harm will come to you. I believe them. You have to do this.’
A few seconds later the screen image returned to the local anchor, with a still photograph of a man superimposed on the right side of the screen.
‘If you see Michael Farren, do not attempt to apprehend him. He is considered armed and extremely dangerous. Call the police.’
Underneath it all they put the phone number.
As the TV returned to the game, the conversations in the bar slowly picked back up. Billy could not discern the topics, but he didn’t need to. They had nothing to do with him.
He glanced to his left, saw a man in his twenties.
Black hoodie, ripped jeans, full beard.
Next to him, another man in his twenties.
Yellow T-shirt, curly blond hair, bandage on his left wrist.
Billy turned back to his beer, finished it. He collected his change and walked out the door.
Since he had been in the tavern, a thick bank of gray clouds had settled over the city. At first Billy was a bit disoriented, thinking it was early morning, or much later in the day.
It was only rain clouds.
He put on his watch cap and sunglasses, began to make his way to the tracks. He would follow them until Ellsworth Street, and make his way across the Pocket on foot.
‘Hey, stud.’
Billy turned to the sound of the voice. There stood two men.
‘You’re a TV star.’
Black hoodie, ripped jeans, full beard.
Billy said nothing.
The other man, the shorter of the two, said, ‘They say you’re some kind of desperado. Killed an old man and a woman. Somebody’s mother. That true?’
Yellow T-shirt, curly blond hair, bandage on his left wrist.
Billy watched the tall man’s hands. They were at his sides, but his light hoodie was unzipped. He held a beer bottle in his right hand; his left hand was empty.
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