The Wolves of Fairmount Park (16 page)

This girl didn't care about Gerry Dunn; she was lost in her head, performing for somebody who wasn't in the room. The lights turned her pallid body red, then blue, then a brilliant white that was almost hard to look at. There was a wan smile on her face like she was listening to a joke; she hung just out of reach, untouchable, her eyelids hanging half over her eyes in a
pantomime of drowsy lust so that the boys beat the wood of the bar and howled. She did “Fast Car,” Wyclef Jean's version, and then “Fuck U Gon' Do Bout It” and “The Dope Show,” and the way she was, the way she moved her hips twisted the meaning of the songs so that it was all about the boys watching and the thing they wanted from her that they couldn't have and anyway the wanting was better than the thing itself, even staring up at her, inches from it, aching, their pupils open so that Chris thought that to her they must look like a ring of reflective eyes, like animals circling her in the dark.

Danny sat up slowly, his neck stiff and a red pulse behind his eyes that made him sick. He was wearing only his suit pants and hadn't gotten under the covers. He looked left and thanked God that at least he was alone.

He remembered Rogan talking him into last call at the Shamrock, and he remembered shots of Jameson's. The good, eighteen-year-old stuff that went down like water. He remembered singing with John at the top of his lungs, banging on the bar. “Knockin' on Heaven's Door.” “I Fought the Law.”

He lurched to the bathroom and got sick, the pressure bulging his eyes as he emptied himself, then sat on the edge of the tub. He reached over and turned on the tap and drank from the faucet, lapping at the cold water, then rested his head on the cool white porcelain.

He forced himself up, dressed slowly, pausing after each item of clothing to pant like a dog, finally pulling on his tie and making
for the door at almost three o'clock. He drove north from the river to Ridge and then followed it west until he came to Jelan's street of low-rise apartments, parked, and counted doors as he walked.

Jelan opened the door as he approached, and he was unprepared for her, the fact of her, after conjuring her in his head the way she was at Roxborough. She was no longer that agile child, but she was still beautiful, and after he took in the lines at the corners of her eyes, the worry etched in her face by her younger brother, he had trouble keeping his mind on the task at hand.

“Danny,” she said and pulled him into the narrow hallway of the apartment. “Thank you.” He saw that her mother was there, a tall woman, a bright band in her hair. Proud in the way Jelan was proud, her head erect, her eyes bright. He had to keep reminding himself to say Soap's right name. Darius. Soap was a gangbanger, a would-be player. Darius was a wayward kid, basically good, loved by his sister, his mother, aunts from Kingston and Saint Mary.

They told their story and as much as they knew of Darius's life, though Danny could fill in more from his own experience. He knew how this thing was in the air for kids with time and not enough focus, and it was literally true that Soap—Darius—was a good kid, and he had trouble banishing the thought from his head as they talked that the kid was probably dead and Danny should have seen it coming. There were countless kids like Darius out there, and no one to care about them except their families. Anxious mothers and absent fathers; that part of the story as familiar as “once upon a time.”

Jelan's apartment smelled like hair products, and her partner
had a thick-waisted woman in a kitchen chair and was treating her head with some kind of brown foam. The two women, the one in the chair and the partner, a tiny woman with huge brown eyes and gold earrings like palm leaves, shook their heads and made affirmations of support while Jelan and her mother talked about Darius and his life. The lure of the street and his good-for-nothing friends. Danny made notes and tried not to look at Jelan too much and to remember why he was there.

She walked him to his car, wearing a purple smock and touching her head with the effort of making sure she had told him everything. He had to restrain the impulse to take her hand, but standing at the open door of the unmarked he touched her shoulder and said he'd find Darius, and she dipped her head.

“I told myself to think of him as lost when he took up with Darnell and Ivan. But I couldn't.”

“I know. He's your brother.” He thought of his own brother, Pete. Two years younger and a sniper in Iraq on his second tour. Sending Danny e-mails full of misspellings and impenetrable military jargon, digital photos of himself cradling a rifle and wearing blue wraparound shades. The memory triggering again in Danny's mind the constant shift of pride and fear, the disappointment that he hadn't gotten his brother to stay in school. Thinking more of Pete than Soap, he said, “How much can you protect them?”

She looked back up the street toward her apartment. “I always thought you were a good person, Danny. Even when we were kids.”

It caught him off guard, and he nodded and shrugged to
keep himself from saying something stupid. About what he'd always thought of her. She smiled that knowing smile he hadn't seen since they were teenagers, and an electric current ran along his jaw.

“You liked me. Then.”

He smiled, looked at his keys, his hands. When had he gotten this shy around women? Realized he hadn't been on a real date in almost a year, asked a woman out, gone to dinner. He met them in bars. Saw a nurse from the ER at Penn University Hospital a few times, but that was mostly swapping war stories in a bar near the university after work. Talking past each other. Hurried sex in her car, reaching under her whites to grab at her, both of them giddy from long shifts and lack of sleep. Filling a need, really, and it drifted down to nothing after a few weeks.

Now he let himself take Jelan's hand, slowly, letting something creep into it. Thought of different things to say, but then just nodded. When he stepped back and closed the door, she was looking at him intently, as if suddenly recognizing who he was.

Kathleen parked across from the hospital and walked through the cracked and canted lot, feeling the heat even as the sun began to lower in the sky. A group of neighborhood girls walked by her on their way to Ridge, dressed in shorts and sleeveless shirts, and it gave her a pang that Michael was missing these days, the start of summer. His older friends would be graduating in a few days, and Kathleen stopped to watch the girls go by, suddenly
angry, wanting to go in and shake her son until he woke up, the way she'd done a thousand times, his long form stretched out, his pale legs exposed, the sheets wound around his torso. His face sweet in repose, mouth parted. When sleep was just rest, a few lost hours. Not a lost week, his face blank and empty and almost unrecognizable to her.

On the steps to the lobby she saw Jeannette Sullivan, watching the girls go by, her head tilted. She was wearing jeans and a top that looked too big, and she worked the tail of it in her hands. Kathleen stopped, and Jeannette turned and saw her and sat up straight as if caught at something. Kathleen noticed for the first time that Jeannette's eyes were gray tinged with blue and that there was an intensity in her, a self-possession that would have captured her son, who loved passion in other people, was drawn to it like fire.

“Jeannette. You're here early. How was school?”

The girl lifted one shoulder high. “I didn't go.”

“Come on in and see Michael.”

“No.” She looked away up the street, her blond hair picked up in the wind. “See that girl, the one with the red shirt? She cheated on her boyfriend with a boy from Bala Cynwyd. I saw them down on Main Street. Just acting like, you know, whatever. And her boyfriend's sister saw them. So he dumped her.” She looked down at her hands and tried to smooth the wrinkles she'd made in her shirt. “It's just so stupid, all these games. To make someone jealous or whatever. Just to mess with people. To make something happen, and you have no idea what you even want.” Her voice skittered, broke.

Kathleen sat beside her on the hot concrete. She put her arm
around Jeannette and the girl stopped moving and after a minute fat drops fell onto the backs of her long, freckled hands.

“We had a fight.” Her voice was small, a whisper, and Kathleen had to lean her head in to hear over the sounds of the cars, the hot breeze. “Michael and me. Everyone is like patting me on the back because I visit Michael at the hospital and we're such a great couple and all of that. And no one even knows it was my fault.” She pushed at her eyes with the back of one hand.

Kathleen waited. “Did you see Michael that night? Did you know what he was doing down there, Jeannette?”

“No. He told me Geo needed his help, but we were supposed to go to see that Jack Black movie. He wanted to tell me what they were going to do and I was just mad, okay? And I told him fine, whatever, all pissed. Go have fun with Geo. Like I care.” Her shoulders were shaking and Kathleen put her hand on her head and her crying got worse, became little shrieking hiccups. “Please don't hate me. I didn't know what they were going to do. Buy drugs or whatever 'cause I made Michael upset.”

“Geo is George Jr? They called him Geo?”

“Yeah, all of us did. Except Steve Chesna and those other retards, the ones who are always getting detention. They liked to mess with Geo.”

“Geo. I didn't know that. Could those boys have had something to do with what happened?”

“Oh, no.” Jeannette raised her head, horrified. “No, they were just dipshits who liked to make trouble because Geo was, you know.” She shrugged. “He was different.”

“Was George Jr. gay, Kathleen?”

“Geo? No. That's what Steve Chesna and his dipshitty friends
thought. He was just, I don't know. He was just different. Smart. He read books that weren't assigned. He baked stuff for the bake sales and volunteered at a homeless shelter.” Kathleen went into her purse and fished for a tissue and unthinkingly put it under Jeannette's nose. “He was seeing a girl. Marianne Kilbride. At least he was in the spring, then they, I don't know. They broke up or something.”

“Did George use drugs?”

“I don't know. I don't think so. You can't always tell that about a person, can you? He just kind of went his own way.”

They sat, and Jeannette leaned into Kathleen and she thought again about how it would have been to have a girl. After they'd had Michael she'd stayed home for a year and they'd struggled on Brendan's salary. Things got easier when she went back to work teaching ESL for the archdiocese, and they just never made the room in their lives for another baby. The time went by and the moment seemed to pass. She touched Jeannette's long hair and the girl's eyes filled with tears again.

“I just want to tell Michael I'm sorry. I just want him to wake up so I can tell him.”

“Jeannette, listen to me. Whatever happened, I'm sure it had nothing to do with anything you did or said, okay?” Jeannette lifted her face again to look at Kathleen, who smiled at her, but Jeannette was looking over her shoulder, her head cocked, so Kathleen turned and saw one of the security guys in his blue blazer, holding the front door open and making a
come on
gesture with his arms. One of the ICU nurses was coming out the door, blinking in the sunlight, and the guard was pointing to
where they sat on the steps. The woman turned to them, concerned, but when she saw Kathleen her face broke open into a smile, and Kathleen exhaled with a hard sigh, as if she'd been holding her breath for a week. He was awake.

Angel Riordan sat in a bar on South Street. He hadn't noticed the name when he came in, but he ordered a beer and a shot and let his breathing ease, working his jaw and occasionally reaching into his coat to find the pistols he carried most of the time, touching the butt of each in turn. The gesture calmed him, the way working a rosary had comforted his aunt in Clonard in Belfast. She'd put him on a boat to New York when he was thirteen, thinking she'd make him safe from the violence that had taken his brothers and father.

He'd been taken in by his aunt's cousin in Philadelphia, Tom Devlin, who worked strong-arm for the roofers union. Tommy Devlin was tall and balding and silent, except when the rage took him and he'd grunt and chuff like some great animal about to put his horns into someone. Devlin put him to work burning nonunion rigs, and then beating the ones who didn't get the message, and then Angel was as lost as if he'd stayed home throwing rocks at British APCs in the Falls Road.

Now he sat and stared and realized a tall girl with a broad face and blond hair in braids was standing in front of him behind the bar. She was smiling, wearing a black T-shirt that read
OVERWORKED AND UNDERFUCKED
. She moved closer to him and
extended her hands, slowly, toward his face. He sat up straight, holding himself still, and she put her hands on either side of his head and slowly took his sunglasses off. She put them down carefully on the bar by his elbow and nodded with her lips pursed, as if pleased at the effect.

“That's better. Whatcha doing there, Irish?”

He shifted in his chair, dropped his head, looked up and down the bar. Finally he said, “Trying to keep from putting a bullet in my boss.”

“I hear that. Let's get a drink in you. That will help.”

“It couldn't hurt, could it?”

She put a shot glass in front of him and got down a bottle. Jameson's, the twelve-year-old stuff, and he nodded thanks and pointed to her and she got herself a glass and ran the bottle across from one glass to the other without lifting it.

“Sure that's wasting good whiskey.”

“I don't think we have to worry about them running out, do we?”

He nodded. “How'd you know I was Irish, just to look at me?”

“Please, I know the look. Like it's always about to rain. Like your mom just died and your dog got run over. Anyway I've been working in an Irish bar for six years, give me some credit, huh?”