Shame the Devil (21 page)

“Please,” said the reverend.

“Your journey is just beginning,” said Farrow with a smile. “You’re going to a better place. Isn’t that what you’ve been telling
those old people out at the home, the ones who are about to die?”

“Yes, but —”

“But, what?”

The reverend looked up at Farrow with bloodshot eyes. “What if I was wrong?”

Farrow laughed. His laughter echoed in the church and then it was erased by the deafening explosion of the .38. The reverend’s
hair lifted briefly from his scalp and fragments of his brain sprayed out across the altar. He fell back; his head made a
flat, hollow sound as it hit the wooden floor. A widening pool of blood spread behind it.

Farrow stood over the reverend and shot him again in the side of the face. He walked from the church.

Farrow drove a half mile down Old Church Road in the opposite direction of the interstate until he reached Lee Toomey’s house
at the edge of the woods. Toomey was loading some cable wire into his utility truck as Farrow pulled the Ranger into the yard.
Toomey’s eyes clouded when he saw that it was Farrow behind the wheel. He noticed the light yellow gloves on Farrow’s hands
as Farrow stepped out of the truck and crossed the yard.

“Lee.”

“Frank. Thought you left town.”

“I didn’t. Where’s that family of yours?”

“Martin’s playin’ that TV game of his. My wife and daughter are in the kitchen, I’d expect.”

“Let’s walk into those woods a bit.”

Toomey spit tobacco juice to the side. “Why would we need to do that?”

“We won’t be but a minute. C’mon.”

They went in through a trail and then off the trail until they were out of the house’s sight line. Toomey leaned against the
trunk of a pine and regarded Farrow as he lit a cigarette.

Farrow let the Kool dangle from his mouth. He pulled the .38 and tossed it to Toomey. Toomey caught it and stared back at
Farrow.

“I just used that on the Reverend Bob, back in the church. Blew the top of his head off, right up there on the altar. That’s
a real efficient weapon you gave me, Lee.”

“Thought I heard a shot,” said Toomey slowly, not taking his eyes off Farrow’s.

“What you need to do now,” said Farrow, “is get over there with some cleaning supplies. I wouldn’t wait for the blood to get
too dried in. Scrub that altar down real good and drive the reverend out to that nature preserve we talked about. I was you,
I’d bury him up there. Ground’ll be hard, but not too hard. You can thank this mild winter for that. Then I’d throw your gun
in the bay, seeing as how it’s got your prints all over it.”

“You,” said Toomey.

Farrow chuckled. “You know, for a moment there I saw the old Toomey in your eyes. Now, that was one bad-ass boy. Getting the
Jesus into you, though, it really tripped you up. You and I both know how soft you are now. You’d never make any kind of play
on me.”

“That’s right, Frank. I never would.”

Farrow dragged on his smoke. “But just to make sure, I ought to let you know that I’m not going to be far away. I’ve got a
little business to take care of up in Washington, D.C., probably keep me in this part of the country for the next couple of
weeks. If I even get an idea that you’ve been talking to the law about me, Lee, I want you to remember that I’m just an hour
and a half away. I can easily get down here and make a visit to that beautiful family of yours. Or I could pay someone else
to do the same. And I’d never forget. Do you understand?”

Toomey felt his blood ticking and his head grow hot. He hadn’t had this feeling for a long while, but it was a familiar feeling,
nonetheless. He wanted to kill Farrow right now. He
could
kill him right now.

Toomey said, “I understand, Frank.”

“Good. You’ll be okay if you move fast and leave nothing behind. The reverend leaving town, well, it happens. Folks’ll just
figure he was throwing it to one of the parishioner’s wives. Anyway, you bury him deep enough and they’ll never find him.”

“I’ll do it.”

Farrow looked at Toomey. “See you around, Lee.”

Farrow dragged on his cigarette, dropped it on a bed of pine needles, and crushed it beneath his boot. He walked out of the
woods and straight to the truck. Toomey stayed behind, the gun in one hand, the other picking at his beard.

Later that night, when Toomey had finished his task, he phoned Manuel Ruiz at the garage outside D.C. “Manny?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Toomey, bro.”

“Lee, what’s up?”

“Frank Farrow’s heading back to D.C.,” said Toomey. “We need to talk.”

TWO O’CLO,” SAID
Maria Juarez. “My time, right, Mitri?”

“Yeah, Maria,” said Dimitri Karras, checking his watch. “Go ahead and let it roll.”

Maria slipped the tape that Karras had bought her into the boom box and turned up the volume. Karras had picked it up at an
international record store near the old Kilamanjaro club the night before. He had asked for something danceable and Latin,
and the clerk had assured him that this one moved.

A Spanish female vocal with Tito Puente’s band behind it came from the box. Maria met James Posten in the middle of the kitchen,
and the two of them began to dance, James doing his idea of a chacha. Darnell, from where he stood over the sink, turned his
head and smiled. He looked over at Karras, leaning on the expediter’s station, and nodded one time.

“Olé, baby!” said James. His eye shadow was on the maroon side of the rainbow this afternoon.

“Like this, Jame,” said Maria, taking two steps in, retreating two steps, and twisting her hips on the dip.

“That’s what
I’m
talkin’ about,” said James, following her lead, twirling the spatula like a baton.

“You doin’ it, Jame,” said Maria.

“Tell the truth,” said James, “and shame the devil.”

Karras studied Maria’s face. She had shown up that morning with her right eye blood gorged and swollen close to shut. She
had a truly beautiful spirit; anger had welled up in him immediately when he had walked in that morning and seen her face.
He was glad he had picked this day to give her a gift.

Anna Wang entered the kitchen, a cigarette dangling from her lips, a tray of butter patties in her hands. She joined Maria
and James momentarily on her way to the refrigerator, where she stowed the covered butter in the rear.

“Nice work today, Karras,” said Anna on her way out the door.

“She wants somethin’,” said James, still dancing. “You could bet it.”

“Just giving the man a compliment, J. P.,” said Anna.

Karras said, “Thanks.”

A half hour later they had begun to shut down the kitchen. James switched the radio to R&B as Maria covered the components
of the cold station with plastic wrap. Ramon hurried in with a bus tray and dropped it off on the edge of Darnell’s sink.
He stepped on Darnell’s foot deliberately, and Darnell grabbed his hand, pressing his thumb down on the crook of Ramon’s thumb.
Ramon pulled his hand away and stood there rubbing it, a crooked smile on his face.

“Ah, here we go, y’all,” said James as the Army Reserve commercial came on the radio at its usual time. James turned it up
as the announcer’s voice rose with the build of the music.

Karras, Darnell, Maria, James, and Ramon stopped working. At the same moment they all raucously sang, “Be… all that you can
be!”

James and Maria doubled over in laughter, their hands on each other’s shoulders. Darnell gave Ramon skin.

Karras smiled ear to ear. His face felt odd, and then he knew why. He had forgotten what it felt like to smile with that kind
of abandon. It had been a long time.

“How’s that flounder?” said Darnell, sliding onto a stool next to Karras at the bar.

“Good — what’d you, brush it with butter?”

“Yeah, and squeezed some lemon on it, too. Wrapped it up in foil and baked it in the oven. That’s the way you need to be cookin’
fish. Simple like that. Course, I would have spiced it some. Phil doesn’t want anybody thinkin’ we’re turnin’ this place into
a soul-food joint, nothin’ like that.”

“It’s good just like this,” said Karras.

“Thanks, baby,” said Darnell to Mai, who had placed a glass of juice in front of him. “What’re we listenin’ to, anyway?”

“The Bee Gees,” said Mai, shooting a finger to the ceiling and cocking her hip, her breasts jiggling beneath her Semper Fi
T.

“Sounds like someone’s pullin’ hard on that singer’s berries.”

“My shift,” said Mai, stepping away.

“Say, Dimitri,” said Darnell, “I been lookin’ at your tickets as I was walking by. You get a medium burger on the ticket,
I noticed you call it out medium rare to James.”

“That’s right. I figured out early, James always overcooks his burgers by one level, no matter what. So I adjust on the call
rather than waste time arguing with him.”

“You trickin’ him, huh? I should of thought of that my own self. Me and him used to have some serious fights when I was doin’
the expediting. The man was just thick that way.”

“I used to manage all the employees in my friend’s record stores,” said Karras. “Over the years I picked up some experience
with diplomacy.”

“So much to learn about runnin’ a business.”

“You could do it, Darnell. You’re smart. And you’ve got a work ethic like I’ve never seen.”

“That’s for other people, man.”

“It’s for anybody who’s got what you’ve got, and a will. Look, my friend I told you about, the record store guy? He makes
a living now setting people like you up.”

“Dishwashers?”

“African Americans looking to open up small businesses in the city. I’m meeting him tonight at the Wizards game. I’m gonna
talk to him about you.”

“Look here, Dimitri, square business: I know my limits. It’s just not for me.”

“All right, Darnell. But you know I’m gonna talk to you about it again.”

Darnell drank down his juice and used the napkin to wipe sweat off his face. The bell over the front door jingled, and Roberto
Juarez entered the bar. He stayed up on the landing as always and waited. Karras nudged Darnell.

“I see him,” said Darnell under his breath.

Karras looked through the reach-through at the end of the stick. James had his hands on Maria’s shoulders, and he was close
to her face, giving her a serious talk. She nodded her head and kissed James on the cheek.

James emerged from the kitchen, his fox-head stole worn over a clean outfit, his amber-stone walking stick in his hand. He
stepped around Maria’s husband on the landing, who smiled and said something to James in Spanish. Karras couldn’t understand
the words, but he knew from the tone that Maria’s husband had called James some variety of faggot. James kept walking and
left the bar.

Ramon stood by the stairwell to the basement, leaning against the frame, picking at his cuticle with a penknife, watching.

“Hard life,” said Darnell as Maria came from the kitchen in her cheap coat, meeting her husband with her head down and following
him out the door.

“Yes it is,” said Karras.

“That was real kind of you, buying her that tape.”

“It made her happy for a little while, I guess.”

Darnell got off the stool and stood, stretching his long frame. “Well, let me get back to my dishes.”

“Nick coming in today?”

“He’s working one of his cases. I expect I’ll see him tonight.”

Nick Stefanos sat in the living room of Terrence Mitchell’s house, off Sargent Road in the Chillum district of Prince George’s
County. Mitchell lived on a treeless street of clean ramblers near power lines strung between steel towers set on rolling
hills of brown grass. Many of the homes around Mitchell’s had barred storm doors, but Mitchell’s was along the lines of a
fortress: It featured a high chain-link fence crowned by double-rowed barbed wire, a padlocked gate protecting the driveway,
and a No Trespassing notice as big as a stop sign on the fence. In the driveway sat an immaculate late-model blue Volvo sedan.

The interior of Mitchell’s house was no less cold. Certificates from the Metropolitan Police Department and the U.S. Army
hung on the walls. A photograph of a young Mitchell in his blues and a photograph of a younger Mitchell in army fatigues,
surrounded by his buddies in Vietnam, showed him with the same stoic, humorless face.

Soon after the interview began, Stefanos’s first impression at seeing the home’s security setup was confirmed. Mitchell, the
ex-soldier, ex-cop, was some sort of paranoid. He never smiled once during their meeting. It couldn’t have been any kind of
fun for his daughter, Erika Mitchell, to live under his roof.

“So let me get this straight,” said Stefanos. “You don’t remember if your daughter went out with Randy Weston on the night
of the murder.”

“That’s right.”

“Randy tells his attorney that you gave him a lecture the night he picked her up for the movies. Randy had gotten her home
past her curfew the last two times he’d taken her out. Randy says you went into one of those ‘three strikes you’re out’ things
with him.”

“I could’ve, yes. But I don’t remember what night it was.”

“You being a cop and all, I thought you’d remember the exact night.”

Terrence Mitchell was a broad-chested man with a thick mustache, dark skin, and a full head of hair, not yet gray. He might
even have been a handsome man when he smiled. He almost smiled at Stefanos then — but didn’t.

“I don’t remember what night it was.”

Stefanos swallowed spit. He was thirsty, but Mitchell had not even offered him a glass of water when he’d entered the house.

“You like television, isn’t that right, Mr. Mitchell?”

“What’s that?”

Stefanos nodded at the large-screen television set in a bookshelf across the room. “Randy Weston says you watch a lot of television.
Loud.”

Mitchell blinked his eyes slowly to indicate that he was bored. “I lost some of my hearing on the job, Stefanose.”

“It’s Ste
fa
nos. The reason I mentioned the loud part is, Randy couldn’t help but remember that you were watching
Home Improvement
while you were giving him that lecture. I mean, the laugh track was blaring in his ear.
Home Improvement
runs on Tuesday night; Donnel Lawton was murdered on a Tuesday night.”