The Wolves of Fairmount Park Read Online Free PDF Page A

of a runner, the other pale white with freckles and broad across the shoulders. Both had shaved heads, the way they all wore it now, so many of them coming out of the service. The shorter one pointed a metal clipboard toward the car where a pasty kid with blond hair stood with his hands in his pockets, and it took Brendan a minute to recognize his half brother.
    Orlando moved to stand at the periphery of the porch, looking down the way he always did, one arm cocked over his face and the hand touching his hair. The same stance Brendan had seen a thousand times when his brother was in trouble. With the old lady, or at school with the nuns. In police stations and courtrooms. Hiding behind his pale hand, his eyes flicking up. Poised for the blow.
    â€œSir?” The young cop looked apologetic. They’d know, of course; every cop in the city knew about Michael by now. “This individual says he’s—”
    â€œYeah.” Brendan waved a hand, cutting him off and showing his teeth in something that wanted to be a smile. “Yeah, he’s with us.” He waved, one quick, sharp flap of his hand. “Get in here.”
    The kid tucked his shoulders in and skirted the cop and slid past Brendan and into the living room without a word. Brendan stepped out to the porch, smiling again to show everything was okay. The two cops looked at each other; then the taller one came up and shook his hand and said he was sorry and they were all pulling for his son. The pale, black-haired one looked sheepish and said he was sorry to disturb him and Kathleen but an elderly woman down the block had called them when she’d seen . . . The cop motioned with his head past Brendan toward the inside of the house. Brendan told them he appreciated their coming and keeping an eye on things. Cop to cop, the way he talked to the guys on the job. His face burned red, and he wiped at his mouth and nodded to them as they got back in the RMP. At the door he turned and looked at the blank faces of the houses up and down the narrow street and wondered how many of his neighbors had seen what happened. Great, he thought. Just what they needed now.
    Brendan came back in and shut the door to find his half brother standing in a corner of the living room, his hands in his pockets, his eyes flicking around the room. He had always been a good-looking kid, but now he looked tired and maybe sick. His eyes were red, his skin pale and blotchy. His leather jacket was scuffed, and his jeans looked unwashed and greasy. Brendan let out a long breath. He was trying to remember the last time he’d seen him. It was at least a year. Maybe it was the time he’d seen Orlando coming out of a social club on Broad Street that Brendan wouldn’t have gone into with a shotgun and a dozen friends. The Tip-Top, that was it. Jesus Christ.
    He’d almost called Orlando by his middle name, Kevin. It was something he’d begun doing when his younger brother had started to seriously fuck up, in high school. The name Orlando was ridiculous for a grown man. Something their crazy, drunken mother had named him in one of her moods. A weightless name that seemed to pull his brother away from normal life and into the dark corners where she’d lived. Where she wandered until she died, frozen solid behind a Dumpster, shaped to the hard ground like a bundle of rags.
    So let his junkie friends call him Orlando, or Little Brother, he’d heard that, too. Brendan wanted to hug the kid, and smack him hard on the side of the head. Both feelings working on him at once. And of course it wasn’t just his brother and the mess he’d made of his life. It was Michael lying unconscious in the hospital. From standing on the steps of a dope house. Someplace his brother, God help them all, had probably copped.
    â€œYeah,” said Orlando, and Brendan came to himself again. “I know. I’m sorry. I just heard and I didn’t . . .” He