The Wolves of Fairmount Park by Dennis Tafoya Page A

ever seen. Some kind of dagger, speckled with rust and as long as his forearm. Angel paused for one second, drew a breath, then placed the tip of the knife between two of Soap’s ribs and pushed down. He pushed it hard, cords in his pale neck straining, working the grip in his hands until the hilt hit the kid’s chest.
    Chris stood, transfixed, saying,
Jesus, Jesus,
in his head. “What the fuck,” he said quietly. “I don’t, um. What the fuck.”
    Angel pulled the knife out, and it made a long and terrible noise as he worked it free. He set the tip against Soap’s abdomen again, this time lower down, and pushed it hard. There was nothing in his face, no rage or disgust, nothing at all that Chris could see. It was just work.
    There was an exhalation from Soap’s body, a breathy hiss that made Chris jump.
    â€œIt’s nothing.” Angel tugged the knife up again. “Just air.” He lifted the tail of Soap’s shirt and wiped the blood off the knife in long smooth strokes. “See? You make some holes they go down and don’t come up so fast. Otherwise he’s there floating for all the world to see.” Chris caught the faint accent then, the hard, clipped tones of Northern Ireland. Chris had an uncle that sounded like that. Like the old man was working stones in his mouth when he talked.
    Angel stood up again over the body and made the knife disappear into his coat again, then stood back and pushed the dead boy into the water with his foot. He pushed at his feet, then at his shoulders, the body rasping over the lip of river stones. When he was done, one of the kid’s hands was still in the mud at thelapping edge of the water, as if even in death he didn’t want to go that way, and Angel toed it gently with his boot until the kid floated away toward the city and the lights.
    Chris opened his cell phone while Angel stood still on the riverbank and watched.
    Chris said, “Yeah, we’re all done.” There was a pause. “Yeah.” He closed the phone, waited a minute.
    â€œAngel, man, we got to go, we got things to do.” He shuddered a little, he couldn’t help it. To see the kid’s face go slack, his eyes go blank and dry. To know it again, that we’re machines that can get turned off. And the other, Angel working like a butcher on the kid’s chest and stomach. Hard not to cross himself, ward that off somehow.
    He got back to the passenger side of Angel’s car, wanting him to hurry up but not wanting to get into his shit when the man was in his shooting mood. Eventually, whatever Angel was doing was over and he came back and opened the door, looking over the car roof at Chris in the dark.
    â€œYou talk too much.”
    â€œWhat? I talk too much?”
    â€œAlla you people,” he said and got in. Chris got in, too, his mind going, chewing on what the fuck that might mean, hoping it would never be just him and Angel down here on the river.
    The moon was a perfect white circle of ash, and Orlando and Zoe were laced together on the couch on the roof, her skirt around her hips, hair wild on her shoulders, both of them breathinghard as winded sprinters. She dropped her head to his chest and he twined her hair in his fingers. She fished in her purse for her cigarettes and put one in her mouth. He took one from her and stuck it unlit in his own, felt the expansion of her lungs through his own chest as she pulled the smoke in, held it, let it go.
    â€œI saw Mary from Conrad Street today.”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œYeah, she was in with her baby. Getting dinner for her and Marty.”
    â€œMan, I ain’t seen Mary in, I don’t know.”
    â€œYeah, she looked good.”
    He kissed her along her hairline, watched her eyes. “Tell me.”
    â€œThat baby was so pretty. Just couldn’t stop looking at it, you know?”
    Mary and Marty were a couple that used to hang out with them when they first