The man in the wrinkled white suit stuttered across the square like a wounded finch, the soles of his shoes strapped to the uppers with black electrician’s tape, his zipper frozen at quarter-mast. He wore dark wire-rimmed glasses.
His name was Desmond Farren.
Although the man was not yet forty, his hair was a muddied gray, long but mathematically combed, the part arrowed down the middle. On the right side, just above his ear, was a small, perfect circle of white.
Desmond Farren sat down on the bench in front of the shoe store, his stick-man silhouette all but lost in the bright posters behind him –
50% Off Selected Merchandise! Beach Sandals, Buy One Pair, Get One Pair Free!
The four boys sitting on the opposite bench – none having yet reached the age of fourteen, nor anywhere near the height they one day would – paid the man scant mind. Not at first.
Someone on the square had a radio playing Elton John’s ‘Philadelphia Freedom’, already an anthem in the City of Brotherly Love.
The boys were one month into their summer vacation, and the girls in their tube tops and short shorts, having a year earlier endured the brunt of nervous, poorly told jokes, had suddenly reached a state of grace that eclipsed every Act of Contrition ever said.
In a city of neighborhoods, of which Philadelphia boasted more than one hundred, boundaries only moved in the minds of those not tasked to keep watch.
Follow the Schuylkill River north, from its confluence with the Delaware – past Bartram’s Garden and Grays Ferry – and you will find, in the shadow of the South Street bridge, a small neighborhood of seventy or so families pleated into the eastern bank of the river, a crimp of peeling clapboard row houses, asphalt playgrounds, small corner stores and brown brick buildings as old as the city of Philadelphia itself.
It is called Devil’s Pocket.
On listless July days, when the sun radiated off the colorless wooden houses and glinted off the windshields of the rusting cars that lined Christian Street, women in the Pocket wore sleeveless cotton sundresses, often with lace handkerchiefs tucked into their bra straps at the shoulder. The men wore Dickies work pants, white T-shirts, packs of Kools or Camels crafting square bulges in the front, their Red Wing boots and trouser cuffs sifted with dust from the brickyards.
The bars, of which there were a half-dozen in as many blocks, served well whiskeys and national brands on tap. On Fridays all year, not just during Lent, there were fish fries. On Sundays there were potluck dinners.
The prevailing theory on how the neighborhood got its name was that sometime in the 1930s, a parish priest said the kids there were so bad they would ‘steal the chain out of the devil’s pocket’.
To the four boys sitting on the bench across from the man in the white suit – Jimmy Doyle, Ronan Kittredge, Dave Carmody and Kevin Byrne – the Pocket was their domain.
Years later, if asked, the boys would recall this moment, this unspoiled tableau of summer, as the moment the darkness began to fall.
The boys watched as Desmond Farren took out a phlegm-crusted handkerchief, blew his nose into it, wiped the back of his neck, then replaced it in his pocket.
‘Philadelphia Freedom’ began again, this time from a second-story apartment over the square.
Jimmy put a hand on Ronan’s shoulder, chucked a thumb at Des Farren. ‘I see your boyfriend’s not working today,’ he said.
‘Funny shit,’ Ronan said. ‘Wait, is that your sister’s handkerchief?’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Not my type.’
Kevin got their attention, put a finger to his lips, nodded in the direction of the corner.
They all turned to look at the same time, all thinking it was a nun from St Anthony’s, or someone’s mother, and they would catch a backhand for using the F word. It was none of the above.
There, standing just a few feet away, was Catriona Daugherty.
The only child of a single mother who worked at the Naval Home as a nurse’s assistant, eleven-year-old Catriona had light-blond hair, sapphire-blue eyes. She was rarely seen without a flower in her hand, even if it was only a dandelion. She always wore a ribbon in her hair.
There were some who said she was a bit slow, but none of those people were from the Pocket, and you said such things at your peril, especially in the presence of Jimmy Doyle.
The truth was, Catriona Daugherty was just fine. Perhaps she processed things a little more thoughtfully than most people, gave things more painstaking consideration, but she wasn’t slow.
‘Hey, Catie,’ Jimmy said.
Catriona looked away, back at Jimmy, blushed. None of them had ever met anyone who reddened more deeply, or quickly, than Catriona Daugherty. Everyone knew that she had a crush on Jimmy, but she was in sixth grade, and that made Jimmy her protector, not her boyfriend. Maybe one day, but not now. Catriona was, by any measure of a teenage boy in the Pocket, or Philly as a whole, still a little girl. They all felt protective of her, but Jimmy was her chosen knight.
‘Hey,’ Catriona said softly.
Jimmy slid off the bench. Catriona instinctively backed up a little, which left her tottering on the curb. Jimmy took her by the elbow, gently moved her back onto the sidewalk.
‘Watcha doin’?’ he asked.
Catriona took a deep breath, said: ‘Going to get a water ice?’
Catriona’s grandmother was from Ireland, and Catriona spent much of her summers with the woman. As a result, she had that curious Irish lilt that made all statements sound like a question.
‘What’s your flavor?’ Jimmy asked.
Another blush. She paused, waiting for a SEPTA bus to pass. When it did, she said: ‘I like the strawberry?’
‘My favorite!’ Jimmy exclaimed. He reached into the right front pocket of his jeans, took out his roll, which was really three or four singles with a ten on the outside. ‘Got enough money?’
Catriona looked away, toward her house, back. She held up a small white handkerchief, rubber-banded around a few coins. ‘Mom gave me enough, she did.’
Two summers ago they had watched Catriona stop on the way to the corner store to jump rope with some of the neighborhood girls.
They had all seen her drop her hankie purse while she was jumping, and saw, as it opened, coins spilling onto the sidewalk. With one hard look from the then eleven-year-old Jimmy Doyle, no one dared move. When Catriona was done with the Double Dutch, she collected the coins – fully unaware that she had dropped her own money – and ran up to Jimmy bursting with excitement and pride.
‘They threw money at me, Jimmy Doyle! Money!’
‘Yes they did,’ Jimmy said. ‘You were
great
.’
Had the two of them been older, they might have hugged at that moment. Instead, they both backed away.
On this day, as Jimmy put away his roll, Kevin sensed someone exiting the grocery store, crossing the sidewalk. It was Catriona Daugherty’s mother.
‘Hello, men,’ she said.
They all greeted her. Catriona’s mother was younger than most of the mothers of school-age children in the Pocket, her fashion sense a little closer to the teenage girls with whom the boys were obsessed, a little more in tune with the times. She was always good for a laugh.
‘You boys staying out of trouble?’ she asked.
‘Now where’s the fun in that?’ Jimmy replied.
‘Don’t make me call your ma, Mr Doyle. You know I’ll do it.’
Jimmy held up both hands, palms out, in mock surrender. ‘I’ll be good. I promise.’
‘And I’ll be Miss America next year.’ She smiled, wagged a finger at them, then reached out a hand to her daughter. Catriona took it.
‘Enjoy your water ice, Catie,’ Jimmy said.
‘I will, Jimmy.’
Catriona continued down the street, hand in hand with her mother, floating a few feet above the sidewalk.
Ronan tapped Jimmy on the shoulder, pointed at the shopping bag at Jimmy’s feet, the one he’d been carrying around all morning.
‘So you got them,’ Ronan said.
‘As if this were in any doubt,’ Jimmy replied.
He reached into the shopping bag, took out four beautiful new walkie-talkies he had artfully boosted from a Radio Shack in Center City a few days earlier.
Yet as much as they wanted to use them, there was one small hurdle. Batteries.
Batteries cost money.
F&B Variety was an old-school store on Christian Street. It had been there longer than anyone could remember, and that included the three old men who sat on lawn chairs out front, by turns dumping on the Eagles, the Phillies and the Sixers. The Flyers, having won the Stanley Cup the two previous seasons, were currently exempt.
Inside, F&B wasn’t any more modern than the day it opened. The store sold the staples – lunch meats, shelf breads, condiments, laundry and dish detergents – as well as a selection of gift and tourist items, such as plastic Liberty Bells and bobble-head dolls that bore only a passing resemblance to Mike Schmidt and Greg Luzinski.
Toward the back of the store were a few racks of paperback books and comic books, with an aisle dedicated to knockoff toys.
On the end cap, facing away from the register, and the watchful eye of the owner, the perpetually sour-faced Old Man Flagg, were the batteries. It was summer, and that meant portable radios came off the shelves, so F&B always had a good stock.
The plan, as always:
Ronan would stand in line at the counter. When he got to the register, he would ask for change for a dollar. Kevin would stand at the rack of comic books, looking as suspicious as possible, which was not all that hard. He was the biggest of the four boys, and therefore the most menacing.
While Dave observed through the front window, Kevin would knock a few comic books from the rack, drawing Old Man Flagg’s attention for just a few seconds. But a few seconds was all Jimmy needed. He was a natural.
Contraband acquired, they coolly emerged from the store, met up on the corner and walked to Catharine Street. Once there, Dave sat down on the steps of a row house and began taking the battery covers off the walkie-talkies.
They would be on the air in minutes.
Before Jimmy could get the batteries out of his pockets, a shadow appeared on the sidewalk beneath their feet.
It was Old Man Flagg. He’d seen the whole thing.
Charles Flagg was in his sixties, a prude of the first order. He made everybody’s business his business, even going so far as to form a neighborhood watch group so he could stick his nose even further into the lives of people in the Pocket. Rumor had it that Old Man Flagg got manicures at a Center City salon.
‘Empty your pockets,’ Flagg said to Jimmy.
Jimmy took a step back. For a split second it looked as if he might make a run for it. But they had all seen the PPD sector car parked a block away. No doubt Flagg had seen it too. Jimmy had no choice. He slowly reached into his pockets, front and back, and pulled out eight nine-volt batteries, still on the card. Each of the cards clearly displayed the small orange F&B price sticker. Flagg took them from him.
‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You’re a Doyle. I know your father.’
Jimmy balled his fists. Nothing got his blood up faster than this. ‘He’s not my father.’
Old Man Flagg looked slapped. ‘’Scuse you?’
‘I said, he’s not my father. He adopted me.’
Flagg shrugged, looked over Dave’s shoulder. He pointed down the street, in the direction of the Well, a shot and beer tavern. This was all you had to say about the geography of Tommy Doyle’s life these days. Work. Bar. Sleep. Repeat.
‘I know where he is right now,’ Flagg said. ‘Stay put.’
The next three minutes were spent in silence. Each of the boys dedicated the time to trying to concoct the most plausible story for how this had happened. The only one who had a shot was Dave – being the smartest – but even he was stumped.
Jimmy was fucked.
A minute later they saw Jimmy’s stepfather emerge from the shadowed doorway of the Well.
Tommy Doyle was over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, hands like Tim McCarver’s mitts. As he crossed the street, they all saw him weave slightly. He had an unfiltered Lucky in his right hand, burned almost to the nub.
When he reached the corner, they could smell the booze from five feet away.
Tommy Doyle pointed at Jimmy. ‘You don’t fucking move,’ he said. He swept the finger across them. ‘None of you.’
There had been a time when Tommy Doyle – if you caught him only one or two beers into the day – could be the nicest guy you would ever meet. Once, when Kevin’s mother got her Dodge Dart stuck in a snowdrift, Tommy Doyle spent the better part of an hour digging her out with nothing more than a bent license plate he’d found in the gutter.
Then there was the time he broke his own wife’s jaw with a left hook, supposedly because there was some dried mustard left on a plate he had taken out of the cupboard.
Kevin, Ronan and Dave all looked anywhere but at Tommy Doyle, or Old Man Flagg. Jimmy stared straight into his stepfather’s eyes.
‘What do you have to say?’ Tommy asked him.
Jimmy remained silent, the words solid and immovable inside.
Tommy Doyle raised a hand. Jimmy didn’t flinch. ‘I asked you a fuckin’ question.’
Jimmy glared straight through him, said softly: ‘I’m sorry.’
Tommy Doyle’s hand came down hard. It caught Jimmy on the right side of his jaw. They all saw Jimmy’s eyes roll back in his head for a moment as he stumbled into the brick wall. Somehow he found his footing. He did not go down.
‘Get the fuckin’ marbles out of your mouth,’ Tommy Doyle yelled. ‘You babble again and I swear to Christ on the cross I will take you apart right here and now.’
Jimmy’s eyes welled with tears, but not one dropped. He looked at Old Man Flagg, took a deep breath, and on the exhale said, loud enough for everyone in the Pocket to hear:
‘I’m
sorry
.’
Tommy Doyle turned to Flagg, reached into his back pocket, pulled out a wallet on a chain.