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Saturday, December 15, 9:35 P.M.

After exiting the Delaware Expressway just past all the blinking bright lights of the two enormous gambling casinos, Piper Ann Harrison glanced at the clock in the dash of her five-year-old silver Toyota Prius and then sighed heavily.

I really don’t have time for this, Piper Ann thought.

The twenty-one-year-old college student, pale-skinned, her jet-black shoulder-length hair highlighted with streaks of purple, wore a silver stud in her right nostril. She had three other piercings in each ear, though these were now vacant.

At five-foot-five and one-ninety, she embraced what she called her “healthy earthy look,” though she still occasionally complained about being at least thirty pounds overweight.

I should have just stayed home and finished packing, she thought, then glanced in the rearview mirror. The two big cardboard boxes of sandwiches and hot chocolate were visible on the backseat.

But I just couldn’t let all that go to waste. And it’s definitely needed . . .

Each of the boxes contained a stainless steel thermos full of hot chocolate, twenty insulated foam cups, and twenty ham and twenty Swiss cheese sandwiches. Each sandwich was on whole wheat bread with low-fat mayonnaise and individually wrapped in cellophane with a business card included. There was an additional stack of about forty cards wrapped in a rubber band in the box.

The cards all read:

PATHWAYS PREVENTION

HELP & HOPE FOR WHEN YOU ARE READY

FREE COUNSELING! FREE MEDICAL CARE!

CLINIC OPEN TUESDAYS–SUNDAYS 8AM—6PM

DIAMOND & N. HOWARD STREETS

HOTLINE — 215-555-1567 — ANSWERED 24/7

Piper Ann had decided that, before traveling on a mission trip to the Republic of Cuba with her professors in the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College, she would dedicate part of what she called Winter Break—she shunned the idea of Christmas—to helping the city’s local homeless population, many of whom were known to have severe drug addictions.

Working on a double major, in Spanish Studies and Social Work, Piper Ann had discussed her idea with one of her professors. He in turn had put her in touch with the free clinic, which was about a dozen miles from her small, expensive (fewer than 2,000 students and an annual tuition of about fifty grand) private women’s liberal arts school in suburban Philly.

When she contacted Pathways Prevention, one of the staffers—a former addict by the name of Jimmy “Bones” Packer, an extremely skinny thirty-two-year-old who looked fifty—suggested she adopt McPherson Square, and offered to give her a tour at her convenience.

—

“Needle Park ain’t as bad as some folks think,” Bones had told her as he gestured toward it on a cloudy gray Wednesday in early December. “It’s gotten better than it was years ago. But it still ain’t pretty. Fact is, probably won’t ever be. There’s always gonna be addicts because people always gonna have problems they want to forget. And of course the drugs just make them feel better. We’re trying to help one person to cope, one day at a time, and hopefully get help. Like I got help.”

As they walked, Piper Ann saw that McPherson Square covered an entire city block. Sidewalks lined all four sides. It was studded with mature trees, and the pathways cutting across it created a giant X with two concentric rings. In the center of the X, wide steps led up to a branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

As they approached the library, two girls around age ten were sitting on the steps and playing a frenzied game of Go Fish.

When Piper Ann looked at the back of the cards, she did a double take.

“Is that what I think it is printed on those cards?” Piper Ann quietly asked Bones.

He looked down at the cards, saw the familiar design, then pointed across the park. A white panel van was parked on the sidewalk. On its doors it had the same image the cards did—the logotype of the blue-and-gold Philadelphia Police shield.

“The cops have been giving them out,” Bones said. “That van’s from the Twenty-fourth Police District. They keep a pretty steady presence here, both walking and biking the beat, and the druggies, no surprise, keep clear of them. Those playing cards are an interesting idea. We thought about having the clinic make some up. Be better having the clinic info. Kids looking at photos of murder victims probably ain’t the most ideal.”

“No kidding.”

Bones shrugged. “But since their mothers are here watching, I’m betting the lady in the library gave the deck to one of the mothers. These people don’t have nothing. Absolutely nothing. And a free deck of cards is exactly that—a free deck of cards. Cheap entertainment.”

Piper Ann saw that there was a small playground nearby, and smiled at the sight of two young mothers watching six little children running from one piece of equipment to another.

“And there’s one thing you gotta watch for,” Bones said, and nodded in the direction of the playground.