The Wolves of Fairmount Park

by Dennis Tafoya

  Benigno said, “His name is Asa Carmody.”

  Orlando dropped to the curb, exhausted, and folded his legs under him. He saw Bennie holding Min and watching the house as if they were any young couple losing their home, as if they were poor sodbusters watching a grass fire reduce their hovel on some prairie as coyotes circled and whined. He thought about how everyone thought they had the right to do whatever they did. Everything, no matter what. People just built a little bridge of self-justified bullshit over whatever terrible things they did to each other. Orlando saw it all around him, and knew he had done it, too.

  He was conscious of them moving, now, Bennie herding Min with furtive movements away from the light and commotion on the street. Orlando got up and followed, all of his body flaring with pain so intense he thought it should be audible, a high whine like a drill. They began to pick up speed, both of them in their underwear, weaving around neighbors and firemen. Orlando caught them at the end of the block, jammed the pistol discreetly in the hollow under Bennie’s ribs.

  The tall kid sagged. “All right, then.” He closed his eyes, said something in Spanish. Crossed himself. A few steps away, Min put her hand across her face, a kid at a scary movie, wanting to see and not see.

  “No,” Orlando said, “not that.”

  “What?”

  “Can I borrow your car?”

  Bennie shook his head, wiped at the tears at the corner of one red eye. “Jesus, I pissed myself.”

  The bar was loud, the place on South, crowded with young people, and Angel pushed his way slowly to the end of the bar to claim a seat where he could see her. To see Hannah, finally. The sight of her giving him a physical rush of pleasure as if he’d touched her. He’d had to move slowly, one foot in front of the other, concentrating on staying upright, staying awake. It was ending, he knew, and he was glad of it. He hadn’t thought he’d be so ready, thought he’d fought it all those years, used his skill to ward it off, but he saw plain that he’d been looking for his own death for a long time.

  He held himself erect, watching her take the orders, the way she had of cocking her head, her hair coiled in the braids he liked so much, changing colors under the lights, gold and then red and then gold again. He grabbed a handful of napkins from the bar and stuffed them inside his shirt, trying not to be noticed. The music was going, something he didn’t know, but he liked it, about living fast and dying young. The girls moved around him, dancing, looking at each other but doing it for the boys. Their hands up, arms cocked, making circles in the air with their slim hips. Smelling of perfume and sweet drinks and the sweat of dancing.

  He’d never danced with Hannah, but watching her work was like that, so he’d take it with him. She was making her way down the bar, grabbing glasses and soda guns, doing her practiced thing, people calling to her and everyone happy, everyone wanting their drinks. Soon she’d turn and see him and then he could relax and sit back and let go. He just needed that one more time, that smile. That crooked line across her broad face, her lips dark. What was that geometry that added up to beauty? Lines, points along a curve. That was all.

  It was hard to wait. He wanted to grab her, take her outside, stop traffic, open his coat in the street. Fire his guns at the moon, hold her close while he smiled with blood in his teeth like the dead African boy on Hope Street. This was all right, though. As good as anything, as good as anywhere. Someone slipped behind him; he heard voices, and a girl screamed about blood on the floor. The place was loud, roaring, so nobody noticed, but it was hard to hold his head up, hard to wait for her to see him. His hands were wet from holding himself together, and he was tired.

  Finally he had to let his head down on the bar. Somebody’s drink was spilled, somebody was touching his arm and wanted to talk, but he was focused on her, and she was turning, finally. Seeing him, and there it was, the smile. He reached up, took his glasses off. Put them on the edge of the bar and smiled back. Closed his eyes. Wondered if he’d dream.

  Danny was sitting in his car in the dark in front of Rodi’s, drinking Old Grand-Dad from a pint bottle. Officially, he was on leave. There had been some kind of meeting, he knew, between the Captain and Lieutenant Barclay, and then Barclay had called him into the office and told him to take three days. The lieutenant was talking fast, his head down, moving him toward the door as if he were afraid Danny would infect him with something. He’d called Rogan, but the phone just rang through to his voice mail, and Danny had hung up without leaving a message. He’d gone home just long enough to change, then gotten back in the car and started driving. The Grand-Dad had calmed him down, muted the frantic feeling he’d had since seeing Derrick Leon.

  His phone rang and it was Brendan, a little wild, a little doped up, telling him about the gunfight and Zoe and his brother out looking for whoever poisoned his girlfriend. He could hear Brendan struggle against whatever they’d given him for pain.

  “The kid’s all fucked up, I don’t know what he’d do. He’s got, he’s all messed up. And he’s sick. Withdrawing, I’m pretty sure.”

  “He said where the dope came from? That made his girlfriend sick?”

  “A place around the corner. Shurs Lane. I don’t know the address, but he told me what it looked like.”

  The house on Shurs was Asa’s, he knew that now. He’d cruised it three times, watching the people go in and out, seeing the bars on the windows and the reinforced door. It was in Asa’s mother’s name. One of the ghosts that held all the paper on Asa’s life.

  “Who’s he looking for, Danny? Do you know?”

  “Same person I am.”

  Danny cranked the ignition on his car and picked up his notebook. He’d been driving by places Asa owned all day long. The places were in other names. His mother’s, a brother who’d died when Asa was four. There were three houses in West Philly where people were probably processing or storing dope. The place on Shurs, a small apartment building in Kensington. A couple of bars, a workingman’s place down in Chester, and Rodi’s, and Danny was cruising them figuring he’d run into Asa at one of them. Now he lifted the notebook and looked at the last place on the list, a garage on North American, up above York.

  Danny opened the window and threw the pint hard at the front of the bar so that it broke open on the stucco front. A guy in a Flyers jersey swore and ran over to the car, and Danny opened his coat and pulled his piece. The guy stopped short, and Danny laughed and said, “Yeah, I thought so.”

  Chris’s mother had lived in the same house for fifty-three years, on Tulip Street in Fishtown. The real Fishtown, below Norris Street, not the made-up one going all the way up to Lehigh Avenue. Chris would have to listen to this rant once a week from his mother, about how everybody wanted to be in Fishtown now and they should have seen it twenty years ago, by which she meant forty years ago, when it was just the run-down places and the bars and Goodwill stores, not the galleries and restaurants full of young couples tattooed and pierced, even the women. Chris had to wake her up before he left, show her the girl, who carried the stale pastries with her and sat in the corner of the living room, rocking, doing her prayer, talking to the unborn baby. His mother stood with her hands on her hips, asking what she was supposed to do with her and saying she wasn’t the welfare office and then stamping back upstairs to watch her TV shows.

  He should be used to it. It had been worse when Shannon was alive. His older brother would come home cut, fucked up from bar fights, running from the cops, asking his mother to sew up a hole in his cheek, asking her to put up some rummy he’d met in a bar, asking her to hide a gun. He’d been her favorite, and when Chris asked for the smallest thing it was a big deal and she whined and started the litany about raising two boys on her own, so he would just pick her up, drop her off, give her money, and keep moving. When Shannon had showed up dead she wailed, tore at her hair, performed the whole opera for her friends, the priest, all the neighborhood people who’d turned out for the funeral, and most of them looking at his body in the casket the way you’
d look at a bloodied shark on a dock.

  He let the girl hug him one more time before he left, getting something off her small hands on his back, smelling her crazy-girl smell of glazed sugar and cherries and soot, and then went back out and started the Navigator. He pulled the gun out of the console and put it on the seat next to him. He realized there was no one he trusted, and if things had gone different he’d have brought Gerry and Frank with him to go see Asa, and for the first time he missed them.

  She stood at the window and watched him, then ran to the door and came out to pull open the back door and climb in.

  “Go inside.”

  “It’s okay. I’m not here.”

  “It’s not safe.”

  “No, she smells bad. The baby doesn’t like her. Thy womb Jesus.”

  “Yeah, she does kind of smell bad, huh? Like I don’t know. Cabbage and Bengay or something.” He laughed and listened to her settling down onto the floor behind his seat. “Stay down low, okay? You hear me?”

  “Defend us in battle. Saint Michael.”

  “My name is Christopher.”

  “He’s not a real saint.”

  “No.”

  CHAPTER

  18

  Danny crossed Diamond and pulled up half a block from the garage on American, letting his car coast to a stop against the side of a dark job-shop. He got out slow, a little unsteady from the bourbon, though it was burning out of his system quick enough. He took the small H&K pistol out from under his coat, snapped off the safety, and moved through the quiet night, trying to see into each of the few passing cars that went by and staying close to the shadowed and shuttered buildings looming in the dark.

  There was a big SUV parked at the curb, and as he got closer a head appeared inside, as if someone had been low in the seat and suddenly popped upright, and Danny froze and watched, halfway across an open area bordered on his right by a chain-link fence. He stood, his hand on the pistol held down behind his thigh, watching the figure in the black SUV. It was a Navigator, the engine loud even when it was just idling, and Danny kept moving forward, his heart kicking up, conscious of the blood moving in his chest and arms.

  He got close enough to hear the radio thumping behind the glass, see the silhouette of whoever was at the wheel. It looked like he was talking to himself, shifting his body. Trying to work himself up to something, maybe, or talking to somebody on a cell phone. Danny’s breath was loud in his ears, and he flattened himself in the shadow of the garage, just steps away from the Navigator, and he brought the pistol forward and put both hands on it. Another few feet and he’d be on the car, and he hoped it was Asa. He hoped it was Asa and that he’d do something stupid, make some move.

  He closed the last few feet as the figure in the car lifted a pistol, barrel up, still not registering that Danny was there next to the car. Danny was hyperventilating, alert, shifting his eyes quick back and forth between the lit windows of the garage and the SUV, watching for movement, trying to see what was going on in the dark car. Danny saw the pistol and raised his, pointing it at the head in the car and screaming to be heard over the thump and rattle of the radio.

  The head swung left, then right, and then jumped when he registered Danny just beyond the door, the pistol going out, but he probably never heard what Danny said, identifying himself as a police officer and telling him to freeze. The first thing he probably heard was the shot and the glass breaking as Danny emptied the pistol through the door, aiming each shot, the shots spaced out with a breath after each one. When the window broke, the radio got loud all of a sudden, something Danny knew but couldn’t name, and it was one of those songs about being hard, being invulnerable, a badass.

  Danny moved around the car, dropping the clip, but got to the driver’s side to see Chris Black drop out of the Navigator, a long, slow fall, grabbing at the seat, blood pouring out of him, trying to say something. The gun spun away on the ground, and Danny stood over him, the kid shaking his head and smiling even as his eyes filled with tears.

  He pulled himself up, one arm hanging limp and blood coming out from under his jersey and splattering on the sidewalk, making a noise like rain. “Jesus, that hurts. Is she okay?”

  Danny knelt beside him, pulling the cell phone out of his pocket. “Lay still. The medics are coming. Is who okay?”

  The door to the garage opened slowly, and Asa stepped out, his eyebrows up as if he was surprised to find visitors this late. He took in Chris on the ground, Danny with his pistol out, the broken glass and blood running into the street.

  “What the fuck,” he said, and then he laughed. “Jesus, Danny.”

  Chris Black brought up his dripping hand and pointed. “That’s the one. That fucker there. Jesus, I’m feeling bad. Where’s the girl?”

  Asa lifted one shoulder, let it drop. “Whyn’t you shut the fuck up now? Save your strength.”

  Chris grabbed at Danny’s sleeve. “Jesus, I’m dying. I never went anywhere. I never left this fucking place once. Make sure she’s okay?” His fingers tightened on Danny’s arm. “I shot those kids. Me and Gerry Dunn. He sent us.”

  Asa stuck his hands in his pockets, rocking on his heels as if he had better things to do somewhere else. “Yeah, good luck proving that. You piece of shit. Your brother would piss on you right now, you know that?”

  Chris opened his mouth, baring his teeth and hissing, and it took a minute before Danny figured out he was laughing. “I shot him, too. Shannon. I put two in his head. My brother. Fucking Shannon. I fucking spit on all of you.”

  “You’re not helping your case here, rat. I hear you saying you killed a bunch of people in front of a police officer.”

  Danny looked up at him. “Shut up, Asa.”

  “Do you believe this crap, Danny? You know me.”

  “Yeah, I do. Finally, I do. I know you’ve been bringing me your competitors for a long time. Instead of killing them yourself. You’ve just handed them to me. Derrick Leon and Darnell Burns. All those words in my ear. All that bullshit.”

  “Danny, think about this. You start some shit now it isn’t going to stop with me. This looks bad, you know? Not just for me. For you. I go down, what happens to you?”

  “I know how it looks.”

  “Can’t you just . . . be smart?” Asa walked to the street, cocking his head as if listening for something. “This was good for both of us, Danny. You got good arrests, right? The promotions, the shield. Got some bad people off the street. You’re going to fuck that up? Why?”

  Danny got out his cell phone, turning to keep both Asa and Chris in his field of view. He dialed the phone, holding the pistol out and down. “You used me like you used these crazy, fucked-up kids. Those people you put me onto were your competitors in the drug business.” Danny pivoted, keeping his back to the street and trying to watch Asa and Chris and the garage. He wasn’t thinking clearly, his heart racing from the shooting and confronting Asa. He wasn’t controlling the scene.

  “Oh, grow the fuck up. You think you know something special? Everybody gets something. Nobody gets out of bed unless they get something. People need shit, and I get it for them, and it doesn’t matter. You arrest me, you think what? People are going to stop using?” Asa moved around behind Danny so that he had to shift to keep him in sight, and he saw Asa’s eyes go to the ground like he was searching for something.

  Danny looked at his own hands, at the pistol that was still locked open and empty. He closed the phone and started fumbling in his pockets, feeling for the other clip. He wished he hadn’t had so much to drink. He said, “You sound like Derrick Leon now.”

  “Then he’s smarter than I thought.”

  “And I know about DeAngelo Barnes. And Darius Williams.” Danny became aware of Asa shifting, reaching for something on the ground.

  “Who?” Asa stood up, and he had something in his hands. A gun.

  Orlando tore up American Street, jamming his foot hard against the floor and banging through the stop signs. Bennie and Min had a CD i
n and he recognized it, “Modern World,” Wolf Parade. About a torch driving savages back to the trees, and that sounded right to him. He swerved around teenagers in the street and actually veered by a cop in the street at Berks, the guy sweeping his arms up like a matador making his veronica as Orlando rocketed by, inches away. The engine roared and thumped, started a rattle that grew as he ran north, until he could actually feel it through the foot plastered to the accelerator by the time he blasted through the light at Diamond. He saw the Navigator at the garage and stood on the brakes, jumped out with Brendan’s gun up, and ran toward where the SUV door stood open and shot full of holes, the light inside bright and a chime going because the keys were still in the ignition.

  There was somebody slumped against the side of the truck, a big kid he didn’t recognize, dark blood moving in a slow current from his legs to the street. The door to the garage stood open, and there was another guy curled in a ball by the door, only this one was still moving, holding a gun up against his chest. He was young, smaller than the hulking guy bleeding out by the SUV and wearing wire-rim glasses. His face was white and he was breathing fast and trying to talk to Orlando, motioning with the gun, his hand red. Orlando moved slowly, hearing sounds from inside the garage and a voice talking, complaining and swearing, and somebody throwing things around.

  When he got close the guy by the door reached with one shaking hand into his jacket and brought out a blood-soaked wallet that he tried to open, but he dropped it and Orlando saw the badge and nodded, moving to the left of the door and into the shadow, lifting Brendan’s gun to point it at the door.

  “I’m a cop,” the guy said, panting. “My name is Daniel Martinez. I’ve been shot by the man inside. His name is Asa Carmody. Just go around the corner.” The cop tried to grab Orlando’s wrist, his breathing ragged. “He’s got a gun. Just go around the corner and you’ll be okay.” The words slow, spaced by hard breaths. “Take my phone and call the police. I can’t get my phone.”