The scene at U-Cash-It had been a bloodbath. Dennis LoConti was found in the office, bound to a chair, the walls painted with his blood. At first it appeared he had been shot once in the head and twice in the chest. A review of the surveillance recording showed that Sean Farren had emptied the .38 Police Special, which was found on the floor near the office door, into the man’s chest.
Joe Sadik, who had been watching from across the street from the moment he made the call, had seen a white Econoline van speed away from the scene. He wrote down the license plate.
Within five minutes of the shooting at the end of Reed Street, a perimeter was established. A boat from the marine unit was scrambled. The ID unit had an officer on scene to fingerprint the victim.
When Byrne arrived with John Shepherd and Josh Bontrager, there were twenty sector cars on scene, more than forty patrol officers on foot.
Byrne pulled up to the warehouse. The three detectives exited the car. Byrne spread a map on the hood of the car.
There were dozens of row houses on the three nearest blocks.
Byrne took the block on Reed Street. While two patrol officers covered the front of the houses, he slowly made his way down the alley behind them. One by one he stepped close to the back doors, the windows, listening. Only four of the houses had lights on.
He knew that the patrol officers would be knocking on the front doors, ringing the bells.
When Byrne got to the third house from the end of the block – a house with no lights on – he looked at the door jamb.
The back door was slightly ajar.
He stood on the top step, listened. The house was silent. He turned down the volume on his two-way radio, tapped lightly on the door jamb. No response. He tapped again. No lights, no response.
His weapon at his side, he bumped the door with his shoulder, rolled into the kitchen. The only illumination was from the small light on the range hood.
The kitchen was empty. Byrne took a deep breath, moved down the short hallway toward the living room. There was a door in the hallway, probably leading to a pantry or powder room. He tried the knob. Locked.
When he got to the end of the hallway, he paused. The lights from the sector cars on Reed Street washed the living room walls with red and blue light.
In the flashing light he saw the layout of the living room, saw his pathway to the stairs leading to the second floor. As he turned the corner into the dining room, he felt something against his foot. Something heavy.
The woman was face down on the dining room carpet. Byrne knelt down, put two fingers to her neck. She had a pulse. He shone his Maglite on the back of her head, saw the blood.
Before he could get his two-way radio in hand, he saw the shadow to his left.
He turned. Michael Farren stood behind him. In one arm he held a three-month-old child. A little girl in a red one-piece. In his right hand he held the Makarov. Attached to it was a suppressor.
‘Put your weapon on the floor,’ Farren said.
Byrne complied.
‘Hands out.’
Byrne put his hands out to his sides.
‘Who are you?’ Farren asked.
Byrne slowly rose to his feet. ‘My name is Byrne. I’m a detective with the Philadelphia Police.’
Farren pointed at Byrne’s weapon. He held the baby closer to his chest. He stepped behind Byrne, out of eyeshot.
‘Very slowly, take the magazine out.’ Byrne did as instructed. ‘Now jack the round out of the chamber.’ Again Byrne followed directions.
‘Empty your pockets.’
Byrne did. He imagined that the killer wanted to know whether he had a second gun, or an extra magazine. He had neither.
‘Lift your pant legs. One at a time.’
Byrne complied.
Michael Farren stepped back in front of Byrne, indicated with the barrel of the Makarov for Byrne to cross the room, sit on the chair by the fireplace. When he did, Farren picked up the magazine, removed all the cartridges, put them in his pocket, along with the single cartridge removed from the firing chamber.
The two-way radio chattered. Byrne cast a glance to the passageway into the kitchen. He knew that the back door was still open. He waited for one of the rookie patrol officers to stumble into the house, weapon drawn. He waited for disaster.
‘I want you to get on the radio,’ Farren said. ‘I want you to tell them that you’ve cleared this house and that you’re going to keep searching the other houses.’
Byrne didn’t move. He was waiting for permission. Farren touched the barrel of the suppressor to the baby’s head.
‘I saw the address on my way in,’ Farren added. ‘I know where we are. Do it now.’
Byrne slowly reached for the two-way, got on channel.
‘I’m in 3702,’ he said. ‘The third house from the corner. It’s clear. Moving on.’
‘Fine,’ Farren said. ‘Now turn the volume down, but not off. Put it on the floor.’
Byrne did. He kept his hands out to his sides.
‘The block is pretty tightly cordoned off,’ he said.
Farren nodded, but said nothing. He shifted the baby’s weight.
As the headlights of a sector car washed across the walls, Byrne got a better look at Michael Farren. In the grainy photograph taken from the surveillance footage from Sadik Food King, as well as the most recent mug shot, he’d seen a suspect – male, white, mid-thirties, brown hair, blue eyes, medium build, scar on his right cheek.
But in this moment, in this place, he saw the ten-year-old boy running out into the middle of the street.
Byrne remembered the night as if it were yesterday. He remembered the snow. He remembered the song, ‘The Little Drummer Boy’, coming from the tinny speakers in the bodega. He remembered Danny Farren standing on the corner with his two ten-year-old sons. He remembered the car coming around the corner, the sickening sound of the impact, the snow falling on bright red blood.
‘It’s time for me to go,’ Farren said. He held the baby closer. ‘You better hope your fellow officers aren’t too trigger-happy.’
‘No one’s going to do anything, Michael.’
‘Michael is dead, detective. Your kind killed him on Christmas Eve 1988. There’s only me now.’
‘Okay,’ Byrne said. ‘What do I call you?’
Farren looked at him as if this might be common knowledge. ‘Billy.’
Billy the Wolf, Byrne thought.
He nodded. ‘Billy, then.’
A siren screamed to life a half-block away, began to fade. Farren tensed, drew himself closer to the passageway into the kitchen.
‘Why all this, Billy?’ Byrne asked. ‘Why these people?’
Farren stared into the darkness for a few moments.
‘Grandfather, Uncle Patrick, Sean. They were all cursed. As am I.’
He lowered his weapon, kept it at his side.
‘And now my father. There is only one way.’
The Sator Square, Byrne thought.
Five words, five lines.
The invocation of the square can lift jinxes and curses.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked, trying to buy time. ‘How is your father cursed?’
Every few seconds Farren would open the left side of his coat and glance inside. Byrne finally realized what he was doing. There were photos inside the coat. He was trying to mark Byrne as someone he knew, or someone he was supposed to kill. He reached in, touched the photograph on the bottom right. Byrne only saw it for a second, but he could see that the photo was older, vintage, color leached by time. The photo next to it was a close-up of Michael’s father, Danny.
‘It all started with my grandfather when he came to this place.’
‘What place, Billy? Devil’s Pocket?’
Farren nodded. ‘My family has been cursed ever since.’
‘You don’t have to hurt the child, Billy.’
Farren looked down, as if he’d forgotten he was holding the baby. She was asleep.
‘When you are face-blind, people think you’re stuck up,’ he said. ‘People think you’re stupid. If they only saw it from the inside, they would think differently.’
‘Of course they would,’ Byrne said. He stole a glance at the window. He could see the reflection of a sector car’s lights washing the wall opposite. It was getting closer.
‘Kick the police radio over to me,’ Farren said.
Byrne did so.
Farren grabbed a blanket out of the crib, wrapped it around the little girl.
‘We are alike, you and me,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
Farren hesitated a long moment, looking at Byrne as if he were a curiosity in a jar. ‘You have been to the other side. Like I have.’
Byrne had no idea how Farren would have known this, about how more than twenty years ago he had been shot, plunged into the Delaware River and been pronounced dead. How ever since, there had been moments when something akin to a vague and unfocused second sight channeled his thought. It had been a while since he’d had the sensations, but he knew it was something that would never leave him.
‘You came back with an ability, as I did,’ Farren said. ‘But there is also a deficit. A blind spot. Am I right?’
Byrne said nothing.
‘With me it is faces,’ he said. ‘What is your blindness, Detective Byrne?’
For some reason Byrne was unable to speak. He’d never thought about it, but it was true.
Farren held up the two-way radio. ‘I will be taking this with me and listening to the cross-talk. If I hear a word on this radio in the next two minutes about our encounter, you’ll find this baby in the river. Do you understand?’
‘I understand.’
‘Do you care about the life of this child?’
‘Very much,’ Byrne said.
‘As do I. I wish her no harm. Do not force my hand.’
And then he was gone.
The baby was found, unharmed, behind a Dumpster at the end of the alley.
Unless Farren was holed up in one of the hundreds of row houses in the neighborhood – and all police could do was knock on the doors – there was a good chance that he had slipped through the perimeter.
Byrne met with Josh Bontrager and John Shepherd on the corner of 36th and Wharton. Two helicopters hovered overhead. Shepherd’s phone rang. He answered, listened.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
He hung up, remained silent.
‘What is it?’ Byrne asked.
‘The body by the warehouse.’
‘What about it?’
‘It’s Danny Farren’s son Sean.’
‘Michael Farren shot him,’ Bontrager said.
‘Yes,’ Shepherd said. ‘A patrol officer saw him do it.’
‘He doesn’t have anyone to help him now,’ Byrne said. ‘He’s on his own.’
The detectives looked out over the city.
Michael Farren could be anywhere.
The last time Byrne had stood this close to Danny Farren was more than twenty-five years earlier. It was on a street corner in Devil’s Pocket the night a woman named Miranda Sanchez was savagely beaten by Danny’s brother Patrick. It was Christmas Eve. It was the night Michael Farren died and Billy the Wolf was born.
At that time Danny Farren had looked as intimidating as his reputation and rap sheet indicated.
Now, even though he was in his seventies, his biceps were still big. Still the mad dog, maybe with a few less teeth.
They met in a small room off the main cell block at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility on State Road. CFCF was opened in 1995, and named in honor of Warden Patrick N. Curran and Deputy Warden Robert F. Fromhold, who were murdered at Holmesburg Prison on May 31, 1973.
On a monitor in a nearby room, Jessica watched Farren’s penetrating blue eyes. There was a good chance that the man knew what Byrne was going to say, but it was protocol for a member of the PPD to make the notification.
Byrne entered the room. Danny Farren sat waiting. His hands were shackled to a bolt in the steel table. Jessica knew that the man’s attorney was standing by, watching the proceedings from another room. He had surely advised his client not to meet with Byrne alone. It was not surprising that a man like Danny Farren would want to do things his way.
The two men sat across from each other for a full minute without speaking.
‘I remember you,’ Danny Farren finally said.
‘Mr Farren, I’m sorry to inform you that your son Sean has been killed.’
Farren just stared at Byrne. No reaction at all. Jessica couldn’t imagine living a life where the slightest tic of emotion would be read as weakness. Even when learning about the death of a child.
‘Was it a cop who did it?’ he asked eventually.
‘The incident is still under investigation,’ Byrne said.
‘Was it a cop?’
Byrne took a moment. ‘It was not.’
Farren looked away for a moment, back. ‘And I’m supposed to believe you?’
‘I have no thoughts on that,’ Byrne said. ‘I’m just telling you what I know.’
‘You killed my brother. And now you’ve killed my son.’
‘I didn’t kill your brother, Danny. I think maybe your memory is failing you.’
‘My memory is perfect.’
‘I was there, yes. But I didn’t kill him.’
‘Then what the fuck do
you
call it?’
‘I call it an unfortunate incident. Your brother pointed a firearm at a police officer. A man he
knew
was a police officer.’
‘And for that he should be killed?’
Byrne leaned forward. ‘Yes. Every single time.’
Nothing.
‘Call your son off,’ Byrne said.
Farren raised his eyes.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.
‘Call Michael off.’
‘I know who my boy is. I’ve just got the one now, you see. Going to make quick work of my Christmas shopping this year.’
‘Every cop in the PPD is looking for him. So is the FBI.’
‘Good luck with that.’
‘That’s thousands of armed men and women. I think your son is the one who needs the luck.’
‘And yet he’s managed to elude custody.’
‘Get word to him that if he surrenders, I will personally see to his safety.’
Farren lifted his iron-clad hands, looked at the walls around him.
‘I’m in a fucking cage. How am I supposed to get word to anybody about anything?’
‘If he turns himself in, I will see to his safety,’ Byrne repeated.
‘What, like my brother Desmond? Like the PPD worked on the case in ’76 when Desmond was found floating in the Schuylkill with a bullet in his fucking head? That kind of safety?’
Byrne said nothing.
‘My mother sent a letter to that dago piece of shit Rizzo. He didn’t have the fucking decency to answer.’
Frank Rizzo was the controversial mayor of Philadelphia from 1972 to 1980. Before that he had been the commissioner of police.
‘I was in junior high school then, Danny.’
‘So was your boy.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Danny Farren rolled his shoulders, his neck. It was the kind of thug move that always preceded a left-hook sucker punch thrown in a bar, something at which Farren had a lot of experience. Unfortunately for him, that was not going to happen today.
‘That Doyle punk,’ he said. ‘Jimmy Doyle.’
‘What about him?’
Farren leaned forward. ‘You think I don’t know what happened in the park that day? You think I didn’t know how he cut my brother?’ He leaned back. ‘Now he wants to put away the last of the Farrens.’
The two men fell silent.
‘I’m fucking dying,’ Farren said.
He turned his arms. There, amid the Celtic crosses on each forearm, were the marks left by the chemotherapy treatments.
‘I’ve done a few things in my life,’ he finally said. ‘I’m no fucking choirboy. But this thing? This murder charge? It wasn’t me.’
Jessica knew that when Farren was arraigned, he had pleaded not guilty to all charges. It was SOP for men like him. Still, with so little to lose or gain at this point, she wondered why he was still clinging to the claim that he had not committed the firebombing of the store.
‘You’re on surveillance tape, Danny. Your prints were on the bomb.’
Men like Farren, if they knew who had done it, would still take the hit, and bide their time, waiting and plotting revenge.
He said nothing.
Jessica saw Farren give a look to the corrections officer standing at the door. It meant this meeting was over. Byrne had done his duty by notifying a citizen of the death of a family member. He’d also made a plea on behalf of the people of Philadelphia.
Byrne stood up.
‘This isn’t going to end well for your son, Danny. If you really gave a shit about him, like you pretend to do with all this talk of family and legacy, you’d call him off.’
‘You done?’
‘Right now there are a lot of cops gunning for him. Think about it. You know how to get hold of me. I can get a news crew here in ten minutes and we can put it on TV in twenty.’
‘I won’t be calling.’
‘I don’t imagine you will,’ Byrne said. ‘But on your last day in this life you’ll remember that I was here. On your last day you’ll remember that I tried to save your only son, and you did nothing.’
Danny Farren remained silent.
‘You did what you could,’ Jessica said. As soon as the words left her lips, she realized how inadequate they sounded. She trusted that Byrne knew what was in her heart.
They were standing in the visitors’ parking lot at CFCF.
‘I remember, when we were kids, the Farren brothers were like the boogeymen,’ Byrne said. ‘I mean, we all postured like we were Irish tough guys, but the Farrens were the real thing.’
Jessica remembered her own neighborhood growing up. It was the Italians, but it was the same thing. Her father was both proud and ashamed to be Italian-American whenever a story was told about the local gangs.
‘Some of us could have gone that way, but we didn’t,’ Byrne said. ‘Do you know why?’
Jessica had a pretty good idea. She asked anyway.
Byrne pointed at the facility. ‘It was because of places like this. We were scared shitless of ending up here. It stays your hand, cools your temper. Men like Danny Farren never have that fear, that governor of their actions. Inside or outside, doesn’t matter. They are going to do what they want to do, they are going to take what they want.’
Jessica considered this. ‘But don’t you think that privately, when the lights go off and they’re alone with their thoughts, they regret those choices?’
‘I hope they do. For me to think otherwise would be to give up on the entire concept of rehabilitation.’
Jessica considered their options. ‘I might have an idea.’
‘What is it?’
‘I’d have to clear it with my boss, but what if we offered Danny something?’
‘What do we have to offer that he would want?’
‘We can offer him his only son back.’
‘I’m not sure I follow,’ Byrne said. ‘How do we do that?’
Jessica lined up her thoughts. ‘We can promise him that if Michael is taken into custody, tried and convicted, he’ll be sent to the same facility as his father.’
‘The DA is not going to go for that,’ Byrne said.
‘We don’t necessarily have to deliver; we just have to make him think we will.’
Byrne gave it a second. ‘You think the DA will make the offer?’
Jessica took out her phone. ‘Let’s see.’
Twenty minutes later, Jessica glanced across the parking lot. A man was walking quickly toward them. It was Farren’s lawyer.
‘You said you can get a TV crew out here quickly?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Jessica. ‘Why?’
‘My client said he’s willing to make a televised appeal to his son.’
All three local stations were on site within fifteen minutes. They agreed to use pool footage from the NBC affiliate.
Jessica and Byrne returned to the Roundhouse. They entered the video monitoring unit at just after ten. The large room had three tiers of curved tables, each bearing a number of terminals where video devices could be patched into the thousands of cameras deployed around the city. Any table monitor could be mirrored on the ten-foot screen at the front of the room. When Jessica and Byrne arrived, this was showing color bars. They were soon replaced by a live feed from the local news stations. After a brief introduction, they cut to the recorded plea made by Danny Farren.
As Byrne watched, he thought about his encounter with Michael Farren. He’d had Farren and he’d let him get away.
Anyone else that Michael Farren harmed would live in his soul forever. Byrne knew that the man had had the drop on him – and had a baby in harm’s path – but it didn’t ease his conscience, nor, he suspected, would it ever.
He was a guardian, and he had failed.
He looked at the television, at Michael Farren’s mug shot superimposed in the upper-right-hand part of the screen.
The eyes looked out at him.
Feral eyes.
Billy the Wolf.