The new plan for getting dope money came to them out of the blue. Kylie was waiting outside the Chinese joint, searching for someone to buy a six-pack for them, when the guy she propositioned, propositioned her right back. Her mind was quick enough to figure out the angle straightaway. She motioned to Seamus and Wayne before leading the man down the street, around the corner, over the railroad tracks, to the fort. And then, just when the creep thought he was going to get some underage action, the boys went at him, Wayne especially. They sent him away, bloodied and broke, and split between them two hundred dollars. It was so simple, so obvious, so safe, because the mark could never go to the police, could he? The next time it didn’t just happen, the next time Kylie cast her gaze like a weighted bass plug and reeled in a mark, and it went off as smooth as the pale skin on her lovely cheek.

And the thing of it, for Wayne, was that it excited him more than he wanted to admit, even to himself. Yes, he liked the huge boom box they bought with the money and kept down at the fort, and yes, he liked being high, like, all the time, but it was the thrill of it that hooked him, different from the other thieving they had done. The angry spurt of jealousy he felt when he saw the mark trying to make his Kylie. The fear that roiled his stomach as he and Seamus followed them across the railroad tracks to the patch of weeds outside the fort, not ever sure how the violence would unfold. The raw thrill of saving Kylie, the girl he loved, from some older man who was putting his hands on her, pulling her close, stroking her hair and rubbing her thigh and bringing his crusty lips close to her innocent mouth. And the fear on the mark’s face, yes, that, too, when they pulled him away, and began to rain on blows, and stripped him of his wallet, and stripped his wallet of cash.

And Wayne would always remember the look on Kylie’s face, flushed and triumphant and proud, and maybe disappointed, too, though that he didn’t understand. And then the way they sat together around the fire at the fort and smoked and laughed and hugged and were as they always were.

Until the one time it didn’t play out like they had planned. When they followed Kylie and the mark, and the mark started fiddling with her hair, started stroking her leg, drew her close, bent down to bury his face in her neck. They rushed in to pull them apart, but she stared at Wayne and Seamus, stared at them with dead eyes, and mouthed to them, clear as chalk on slate, “Go away.” And they did what she said, as they always did what she said, they left, the two of them, left her with the man, left like whipped dogs.

Wayne wanted to go back, to stop it, to stop her, but it was Seamus who kept him away. “It’s what she wants,” he said.

“She doesn’t want him,” said Wayne.

“Or us, or anything,” said Seamus. “She wants only nothing. This is just like the cutting and the drugs. But there’s nothing we can do about it, Wayne. There never has been.”

And so they stayed back, out of sight, just hearing the rude calls of the mark who wasn’t a mark anymore but had become a john. And when it was over, Wayne followed him back across the tracks and fell on him like a wolf and beat him bloody, beat him unconscious, beat him until Seamus pulled Wayne and his red fists off the lifeless figure.

That got the police involved. The man wasn’t dead, but it was close, and all of Fishtown was talking about it. And what they were talking about was that it was the three of them, the trio of degenerate friends, that had done it. The police brought them in, and put them in separate rooms, and laid into them like they were cop killers on the lam. But they said not a word. Wayne’s knuckles had been scraped playing basketball. Seamus had been playing basketball with Wayne that afternoon when Wayne fell on the concrete and ripped up his hand. Kylie didn’t know anything about it. And the guy was an outsider, and pretty soon some other horrific act of violence came to sweep up the neighborhood’s attention, and that was that. Nothing but suspicions.

But that was the end of them, the end of the trio, the end of the fort. They all knew that something had turned, and now beer or reefer or even sex wasn’t enough. So Kylie went off in search of something harder to help her escape from what had become of her life, something that would more easily take her out of herself, and Seamus and Wayne, they went along for the ride. For if that’s what she wanted, self-obliteration, that’s what they wanted, too.

And it wasn’t so hard to find.

“After a while we sort of drifted apart, the three of us,” said Wayne. “The connections just seemed to disappear.”

“What were you on, son?” said Father Kenneth.

Wayne rolled his shoulders guiltily. “Everything. Pills, cocaine, reefer laced with embalming fluid we swiped from the funeral home.”

“My God,” said Father Kenneth.

“Not bad, actually, if you could get over the taste,” said Wayne. “And then heroin.”

“Was Seamus on heroin, too?” I asked.

“We started together. That’s what made what happened so strange.”

“Him getting killed by a drug dealer? That doesn’t sound so strange at all.”

“No,” said Wayne. “Before that.”

I looked at Father Kenneth. Through the whole of Wayne’s sad, lurid tale, I had been expecting the father to explode in some sort of righteous condemnation. But that hadn’t happened. Instead he had kept a benign expression on his face, showing only the measure of disapproval required of his position at the more troubling points, enough to say that the story had registered, not so much to discourage Wayne from continuing. He was good, the good father, I had to give him that. Probably had plenty of experience in the confessional, but still it was impressive.

“Tell us about it, Wayne,” said Father Kenneth. “Tell us what Seamus did.”

“There was an addict name of Poison, a big guy with this sort of electric gaze that drew to him the most desperate losers on the street. Which is how I fell in with him. He had contacts with some dealers, and he could keep you supplied so long as you stayed with his program. But his program was mostly about following his orders and taking the risks for his risky schemes and letting him hit you when he wanted, which was pretty much all the time. But you couldn’t just walk away from Poison. Once you were in, that was it, he’d kill you sooner than let you walk away, and he had done it once, right in front of us. Stuck his knife into some guy’s gut.

“Now, I hadn’t seen Seamus for over a year. I had heard things, though. I heard some old poof had sort of taken him up, was keeping him off the street. He even had arranged to get Seamus’s teeth fixed. It sounded worse than Poison to me, and I didn’t know that Seamus was like that, a boy toy. But, you know, when you’re desperate like we were, anything goes, and I figured he had followed Kylie down that route. So I had written off Seamus. I figured I’d never see him again.

“And then one night we were in the fort, Poison and his crew. It was a cold snap, and I had showed Poison our old place so we could build a fire to stay warm. And we were huddled around this fire, the crew, strung out, talking about our next scam, when this shadow just appears in the doorway. You couldn’t make out anything but the outline. It was tall, wide, and it was wearing this long coat that almost reached to the ground. And then the shadow talked.

“ ‘I’m looking for a piece of scum called Poison,’ it said.

“Poison scurried out of the light of the fire and said, ‘What do you want with him?’

“ ‘I have a proposition,’ said the shadow. ‘It can be worth some money to him.’

“ ‘Go ahead,’ said Poison.

“ ‘Not until I know who I’m dealing with,’ said the shadow.