There''s a body on the Gurney Street tracks. Female, age unclear, probable overdose, says the dispatcher. Kacey, I think. This is a twitch, a reflex, something sharp and subconscious that lives inside me and sends the same message racing to the same base part of my brain every time a female is reported. Then the more rational part of me comes plodding along, lethargic, uninspired, a dutiful dull soldier here to remind me about odds and statistics: nine hundred overdose victims in Kensington last year. Not one of them Kacey. Furthermore, this sentry reproves me, you seem to have forgotten the importance of being a professional. Straighten your shoulders.
Smile a little. Keep your face relaxed, your eyebrows unfurrowed, your chin untucked. Do your job. All day, I''ve been having Lafferty respond to calls for us for further practice. Now, I nod to him, and he clears his throat and wipes his mouth. Nervous. -2613, he says. Our vehicle number.
Correct. Dispatch continues. The RP is anonymous. The call came in from a payphone, one of several that still line Kensington Avenue and, as far as I know, the only one of those that still works. Lafferty looks at me. I look at him. I gesture to him. More.
Ask for more. -Got it, says Lafferty into his radio. Over. Incorrect. I raise mine to my mouth. I speak clearly. -Any further information on location? I say. After I end the call, I give Lafferty a few pointers, reminding him not to be afraid to speak plainly to Dispatch-many rookie officers have the habit of speaking in a kind of stilted, masculine manner they have most likely picked up from films or television-and reminding him, too, to extract from Dispatch as many details as he can.
But before I''ve finished speaking, Lafferty says, again, Got it. I look at him. Excellent, I say. I''m glad. I''ve only known him an hour, but I''m getting a sense for him. He likes to talk-already I know more about him than he''ll ever know about me-and he''s a pretender. An aspirant. In other words, a phony.
Someone so terrified of being called poor, or weak, or stupid, that he won''t even admit to what deficits he does have in those regards. I, on the other hand, am well aware that I''m poor. More so than ever now that Simon''s checks have stopped coming. Am I weak? Probably in some ways: stubborn, maybe, obstinate, mulish, reluctant to accept help even when it would serve me to. Physically afraid, too: not the first officer to throw herself in front of a bullet for a friend, not the first officer to throw herself into traffic in the pursuit of some vanishing perpetrator. Poor: yes. Weak: yes. Stupid: no.
I''m not stupid. I was late to roll call this morning. Again. I am ashamed to admit it was the third time in a month, and I despise being late. A good police officer is punctual if she is nothing else. When I walked into the common area-a drab, bright space, devoid of furniture, adorned only by peeling policy posters on the wall-Sergeant Ahearn was waiting for me, arms crossed. -Fitzpatrick, he said. Welcome to the party.
You''re with Lafferty today in 2613. -Who''s Lafferty, I said, before I thought better of it. I really didn''t intend to be funny. Szebowski, in the corner, laughed aloud once. Ahearn said, That''s Lafferty. Pointing. There he was, Eddie Lafferty, second day in the district. He was busying himself across the room, looking at his blank activity log.
He glanced at me quickly and apprehensively. Then he bent down, as if noticing something on his shoes, which were freshly polished, somehow glistening. He pursed his lips. Whistled lowly. At the time, I almost felt sorry for him. Then he got into the passenger''s seat. Facts I have learned about Eddie Lafferty in the first hour of our acquaintance: He is forty-three, which makes him eleven years my senior. A late entrant into the PPD.
He worked construction until last year, when he took the test. (My back, says Eddie Lafferty. It still bothers me sometimes. DonÕt tell anyone.) HeÕs just rolled off his field training. He has three ex-wives and three almost-grown children. He has a home in the Poconos. He lifts.
(IÕm a gym rat, says Eddie Lafferty.) He has GERD. Occasionally, he suffers from constipation. He grew up in South Philadelphia and now lives in Mayfair. He splits Eagles season tickets with six friends. His most recent ex-wife was in her twenties. (Maybe that was the problem, says Lafferty, her being immature.) He golfs.
He has two rescued pit mixes named Jimbo and Jennie. He played baseball in high school. One of his teammates then was, in fact, our platoonÕs sergeant, Kevin Ahearn, and it was Sergeant Ahearn who suggested he consider police work. (Something about this makes sense to me.) Facts Eddie Lafferty has learned about me in the first hour of our acquaintance: I like pistachio ice cream. All morning, during Eddie LaffertyÕs very infrequent pauses, I have tried my best to interject only the basics of what he needs to know about the neighborhood. Kensington is one of the newer neighborhoods in what is, by American standards, the very old city of Philadelphia. It was established in the 1730s by the Englishman Anthony Palmer, who acquired a small tract of nondescript land and named it after a regal neighborhood-one that was, at the time, the preferred residence of the British monarchy.
(Perhaps Palmer, too, was a phony. Or, more kindly, an optimist.) The eastern edge of present-day Kensington is a mile from the Delaware River, but in its earliest days it bordered the river directly. Accordingly, its earliest industries were shipbuilding and fishing, but by the middle of the nineteenth century its long tenure as a manufacturing hub was beginning. At its peak it boasted producers of iron, steel, textiles, and- perhaps fittingly-pharmaceuticals. But when, a century later, the factories in this country died in great numbers, Kensington, too, began a slow and then a rapid economic decline. Many residents moved farther into or out of the city, seeking other work; others stayed, persuaded by allegiance or delusion that a change would come. Today, Kensington comprises in nearly equal parts the Irish-Americans who moved here in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and a newer population of families of Puerto Rican and other Latino descent-along with groups who represent successively smaller slivers of Kensington''s demographic pie: African-American, East Asian, Caribbean.
Present-day Kensington is shot through by two main arteries: Front Street, which runs north up the eastern edge of the city, and Kensington Ave-usually just called the Ave, an alternately friendly or disdainful appellation, depending on who''s saying it-which begins at Front and veers northeast. The Market-Frankford elevated train-or, more commonly, the El, since a city called Philly can''t let any of its infrastructure go unabbreviated-runs directly over both Front and Kensington, which means both roads spend the majority of the day in the shadows. Large steel beams support the train line, blue legs spaced thirty feet apart, which gives the whole apparatus the look of a giant and menacing caterpillar hovering over the neighborhood. Most of the transactions (narcotic, sexual) that happen in Kensington begin on one of these two roads and end on one of the many smaller streets that cross them, or more often in one of the abandoned houses or empty lots that populate the neighborhood''s side streets and alleys. The businesses that can be found along the main streets are nail salons, takeout places, mobile phone stores, convenience stores, dollar stores, appliance stores, pawnshops, soup kitchens, other charitable organizations, and bars. About a third of the storefronts are shuttered. And yet-like the condos that are sprouting, to our left now, from an empty lot that has lain fallow since a wrecking ball took out the factory it used to house-the neighborhood is rising. New bars and businesses are cropping up on the periphery, toward Fishtown, where I grew up.
New young faces are populating those businesses: earnest, rich, naive, ripe for the picking. So the mayor is getting concerned with appearances. More troops, the mayor says. More troops, more troops, more troops. ItÕs raining hard today, and this forces me to drive more slowly than I normally would when responding to a call. I name the businesses we pass, name their proprietors. I describe recent crimes I think Lafferty should know about (each time, Lafferty whistles, shakes his head). I list allies.
Outside our windows: the usual mix of people seeking a fix and people in the aftermath of one. Half of the people on the sidewalks are melting slowly toward the earth, their legs unable to support them. The Kensington lean, say people who make jokes about that kind of thing. I never do. Because of the weather, some of the women we pass have umbrellas. They wear winter hats and puffy jackets, jeans, dirty sneakers. They range in age from teenagers to the elderly. The large majority are Caucasian, though addiction doesn''t discriminate, and all races and creeds can be found here.
The women wear no makeup, or maybe a hard black ring of liner around their eyes. The women working the Ave don''t wear anything that shows they''re working, but everyone knows: it''s the look that does it, a long hard gaze at the driver of every passing car, every passing man. I know most of these women, and most of them know me. -There''s Jamie, I say to Lafferty as we pass her. There''s Amanda. There''s Rose. I consider it part of his training to know these women. Down the block, at Kensington a.