The Wolves of Fairmount Park

     THE
 WOLVES
          OF
FAIRMOUNT
           PARK

 

 

 

 

 

ALSO BY DENNIS TAFOYA

 

Dope Thief

DENNIS TAFOYA

  
MINOTAUR BOOKS
  
  
NEW YORK

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE WOLVES OF FAIRMOUNT PARK
. Copyright © 2010 by Dennis Tafoya. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tafoya, Dennis.

The wolves of Fairmount Park / Dennis Tafoya.—1st ed.

     p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-312-53116-4

1. Drive-by shootings—Fiction. 2. Witnesses—Fiction. 3. Fairmount Park (Philadelphia, Pa.)—Fiction. 4. Pennsylvania—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3620.A33W65 2010

813'.6—dc22

2009047490

First Edition: July 2010

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

 

 

For my children

Writing is a famously solitary occupation, but the truth is it takes a ton of help to get to a finished manuscript. I want to say thanks to my agent, Alex Glass at Trident, my manager, Brooke Ehrlich, and to my editor, Kelley Ragland, and her assistant, Matt Martz, as well as Hector Dejean, India Cooper, and everyone at Minotaur Books.

Deep appreciation goes to my developmental editor Laurie Webb, who was with me every step of the way, as a sounding board, a first reader, and a wise friend; to August Tarrier, gun moll and intrepid navigator, who read the book in early drafts and made invaluable suggestions. To my excellent friends in the Liars Club, Jon McGoran, Ed Pettit, Jonathan Maberry, Don Lafferty, Kelly Simmons, Greg Frost, Marie Lamba, and the rest of the gang, for camaraderie, endless support, and invaluable advice; to Scott Phillips and all the other writers who have become my friends and guides in the last two years. To Rachel, Shilough, Lauren, Julian, Greg, Scott, and dozens of other independent bookstore owners and workers who went out of their way to support my work and give it a home. To Karen, Peter, Marie, Dick, Olivia, Dan, Christine, Jessy, Lucy, Maria, Bren, Cori, and Anita for their patience, wit, and friendship; to Shannon and Patrick from the Other Side, for
generosity above and beyond the call of duty. Lastly, I have to thank my family, especially Elena, David, and Rachel Tafoya, for the inspiration to write this book. You make me proud every day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am the son
and heir
Of nothing in particular

 

—Morrissey

     THE
 WOLVES
          OF
FAIRMOUNT
           PARK

When Michael Donovan and George Parkman Jr. were shot in front of the dope house on Roxborough Avenue on a Thursday night in June, Mia and Tisa were standing on the stoop at Pechin Street. They had some time, a little break before the next johns—the fat, shy Jewish kid who always brought blow and the old Polish guy from the neighborhood who smiled wide and told dumb jokes and kept his money in one of those little plastic things that you had to squeeze to open, like Tisa's grandmother had to keep her nickels and dimes in. It had the name of a bank on the side of it, she remembered. So on nights when the old man came by that was what she thought about, her
abuela,
a nice old lady from Ponce who always smelled like baking.

Tisa moved to the edge of the porch and lifted the hair off the back of her neck because it was hot inside and she was sweating a little, and Mia followed, digging in her bag for her smokes and bringing out two. A single moth ticked against the porch light. Tisa watched Mia screwing up her face to see the end of the cigarette, and it always made her laugh when she was high, which she was a little.

Mia lit her cigarette and then Tisa's and then waved out the match, leaving blue trails of smoke, and because she was high,
Tisa had to watch them curl and dissolve in the hard white light until they were gone. They picked up their conversation from earlier, talking about how Mia's man was getting out again and how did she feel about that? Mia said he was so good to her when he wasn't loaded, and Tisa gave her a look and said, “Yeah? When was that?” With that look like
will you please?
That was when they heard the shots, like popping noises from up the street, and saw the black car go by, the radio blaring and a girl screaming, “
No, no, no.
”

Michael Donovan's father, Brendan, was getting in his car at the Roundhouse at Eighth and Race, the Police Administration Building that was supposed to look like a big pair of handcuffs, and wondering if he was doing the right thing asking to get off the street. He sat in the car and watched motorcycle cops come and go and thought about his own father standing on a chair at the Shamrock and toasting Brendan in his new uniform the day he graduated from the academy. The only time he could remember the old man really drunk, his eyes shining and rimmed pink. The place was full of cops, the guys the old man had worked with, the stone-faced Irish and Italian guys who voted for Rizzo because he was one of them, the guys Brendan thought of as his uncles.

He was sitting in the car and lost in his head, remembering the bitter shellac taste of the Scotch and Patsy McDonnell's sister Iris pulling him to her in the corner by the big old Rock-Ola jukebox all those years before. He was thinking about those
days, when women were mysterious and unknown to him as visitors from another country, then the radio made its hissing squeal and reported shots fired on Roxborough Avenue, and Brendan had the thought,
Someone else's problem now.

Asa Carmody and Detective Danny Martinez were down at a strip club on Front Street. Danny was on the edge of getting hammered, feeling the vodka starting to work in his blood. His eyes shining, he was watching a red-haired woman dance while he was trying to sort out fives from ones on the bar in front of him. Asa was buying rounds and calling attention to himself like he was wearing a sign,
I'm here. Remember me here.
Wearing a green T-shirt with a yellow shamrock from a bar on Ridge Avenue, and the leather vest that was the only thing his father left for him when he disappeared down a rabbit hole when Asa was nine. Looking at his watch every few minutes and making a circle in the air with his finger for Doreen to set them up again, Danny and him and a couple of rummies from the neighborhood. One more round, the night was young, yeah? Danny was trying to put this all together in his mind, but he was slow tonight. He watched Asa peel off bills and stick them in the girl's G-string and whisper something and point to Danny. Asa with his stiff ginger hair and his hooded eyes, all business all the time. Thinking he was looking like a guy having fun at the bar with the friend he grew up with. Danny knew Asa, and knew he wasn't ever having fun. It wasn't in him.

The woman's eyes were guarded, hard to read, but she nodded.
So then Danny knew she was his to take home with him, and something wasn't right about that. The woman was tall, and her hair was a hard, opaque red, like plastic, and she smiled shyly at him, but it wasn't like she was attracted to him. It was more like she was afraid. Danny was wondering how many more vodkas it would take for him not to care, how many more to shut off that voice in the back of his head that said he was being played. Being moved as if by magnets under the floor. When the cell phone went off, he was relieved. Now he could make excuses and get away from Asa. Get his head straight and get back in the game.

George Parkman Sr. was leaving his girlfriend's apartment on the river, wiping his mouth compulsively like he always did, trying to erase the perfumed waxy residue of her lipstick and wishing the wind would pick up and blow the smell of her out of his suit jacket. Telling himself he'd stop coming here. Call her and end it. Give her a few bucks, help her get set up with that store she was always talking about opening, Jesus, whatever, he had too much at risk to be so fucking dumb.

It was just that out on the floor at the plant, the metal stamping shop out on Rising Sun Avenue he had inherited from his father, he could feel his life going by in a rush. That green light that made them all look like they were dying, all the guys in their blue shirts and safety glasses and the smell of the cutting fluid that used to smell like money to him and now it felt like he was drowning in it. Home was no better, with a strange, delicate
son he didn't know and Francine telling him the same story every night about her mother's cataracts or some shit. So he needed something real in his hands, someone he could hold on to who looked back at him with eyes that weren't lined with disappointment at what the money never bought. Was that a crime? Was that a sin? Was it?

Orlando Kevin Donovan, Michael's uncle, Brendan's half brother, was nodding, lying on a tattered couch on the roof of his girlfriend's house, a needle in his slack white fingers, his eyes opening and closing, opening and closing, the orange light from the street caught in the mist blowing down Green Lane toward the river.

He was still new with the needle, getting used to the hard rush of light into his head. He was carried along in a warm current and he had a lurching sensation of motion in his stomach and he remembered the first time he went on a real roller coaster. Dorney Park, somewhere up in the country, it took forever to get there. It was summer and Brendan had taken him and brought a girl and Orlando loved it all, being with his older half brother and the shy, pretty girl and eating hot, greasy funnel cakes white with sugar and the crush of people all around. He remembered sitting in the rigid bench of the coaster and the bar going down in front of them with a hard clank and the feeling of the chain catching under the car and the long ride up into the cloudless sky. The feeling in the pit of his stomach now was the same as that day when they crested the rise and teetered
on the summit, Brendan grabbing his hand on the bar and saying,
Are you ready? Are you ready?
and Orlando shrieking and shaking his head and laughing.

Now, on the couch, the dope blowing up in his head, he was thinking that summer was coming, July was coming and another birthday and he was still alive. Still here, the blood tunneling through him and the lights pulsing in his eyes, red over green over white, the city coming awake in the dark and the faraway popping of guns a signal, a salute to him. The black sky was an ocean and he was suspended in it, the winking lights all around like the glow of phosphorescent life pulled in the current, and the echoing rumble of his heart resonating with the crack and shift of the plates in the earth.