Shame the Devil (32 page)

ALL RIGHT, JAMES
,” said Dimitri Karras. “I need to call out some burgers.”

“Go ahead, man.”

“You wanna turn down that Luther first?”

“Yeah,” said Darnell, not turning his head from the sink. “Can’t think with that man bellowin’ and shit.”

“How much you need to think about to clean off a dish?” said James.

“Now you gonna take me for bad?” said Darnell. “Arabs and Jews be walkin’ down the street holdin’ hands the day I let a man
wearin’ makeup talk to me like that.” Darnell laughed deeply.

“Aw, go ahead, Darnell.”

James Posten twirled his spatula and sang as he went to the box, cut the volume on the Luther Vandross by a notch. He patted
Maria Juarez on the ass as he went by, and Maria turned and did the same to him. But it was a halfhearted step back from their
usual kitchen play. Maria’s left arm was bruised from elbow to shoulder, and the pain was clear on her face.

“James?”

“Talk about it, Dimitri.”

“I got a bacon-cheddar, rare. I got provolone, well. And I got a plain, extra rare.”

“You want it bleedin’, huh?”

“Knock the horns off it and walk it through a warm room.”

Anna Wang entered the kitchen and pinched Karras on the arm as she passed.

“What’s happenin’, Anna?”

“Melvin’s at the bar reciting the entire eighteen-minute Isaac Hayes version of ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix.’ He’s still
on the intro. I needed a break.”

Anna went to Maria and kissed her on the cheek. “Nice presentation on the salad today,
senora
.”

“Thanks, Ann.”

“That’s
senorita
to you, girl,” said James. “‘Cause Maria looks young as one and pretty as one, too.”

“Okay, James. Can I just add, the burgers are coming out perfect?”

“Go on, girl,” said James, “get back to the dining room where you belong. We don’t need your kind around here, or your compliments.”

James smiled to himself as Anna left the kitchen. He turned to say something to Maria, but he saw her wince as she tried to
pick up a bowl of lettuce and his smile turned to a frown.

Nick Stefanos walked into the kitchen after the rush. They were all glad to see him back after missing so many shifts. Karras
had the feeling Stefanos had been avoiding him, though, the entire afternoon.

“Hey, Dimitri.”

“What?”

“Dan Boyle called. Remember his uncle he talked about, the cop who knew your father and my
papou?
”

“Yeah?”

“He’s not doing so hot. They’ve got him in a nursing home, and Boyle says he’s failing. Boyle’s been talking to him about
you and me, and he asked to see us. It would be a good thing to do. What do you think?”

“When?”

“Later this afternoon, after my shift.”

Karras shrugged. “I can do that. I’ll go home and shower and meet you back here in the bar.”

“Sounds good. Hey, you seen James out there on the floor? I got a live ticket with some hots on it and I need him.”

“He’s out by the basement stairs, talking to Ramon. They been gabbin’ about something for the last ten minutes. I’ll tell
him to come on back.”

“Say, Nick…” said Karras as Stefanos left the kitchen.

Karras knew Stefanos had heard him. It was odd that he would just walk away.

Roberto Juarez came in around three o’clock and stood on the landing. He wore a white imitation-silk shirt under a thin leather
jacket. He stared at Stefanos behind the bar without recognition or a smile. Stefanos went to the reach-through and told Maria
that her husband had come to pick her up.

At the top of the basement stairs, Ramon went, “Tss,” and Roberto Juarez turned his head. Ramon connected his thumb to his
forefinger and put them to his lips, miming an imaginary toke. Juarez grinned stupidly. Ramon went up to the landing, and
Juarez followed him out the door.

A couple of minutes later, James Posten emerged from the kitchen dressed in his fox-head stole and carrying his jeweled walking
stick. Stefanos watched him go to the front door, open it, and go outside.

James Posten walked down 8th. He said hello to a pool player named Mattie, who stood outside Athena’s, the neighborhood women’s
bar, smoking a cigarette. He passed the riot-gated athletic-shoe store and turned the corner into the alley.

Ramon and Juarez were back in the alley, hitting a joint. James stopped for a moment to prop his walking stick against the
brick wall and then kept striding toward Juarez. Juarez held the joint up in offering, pursed his lips, and made kissing sounds
at James. Juarez smiled contemptuously at James, and when James reached him he threw a deep right into Roberto Juarez’s face.
He aimed for the brick wall behind Juarez’s head, and the punch landed squarely and collapsed his nose.

Juarez screamed. Blood splashed out into the alley.

Juarez tried to cover up, but James Posten combinated to the same spot. Juarez’s nose had been pushed off to the side, and
now it was just smashed cartilage and a loose flap of skin. Juarez went down to the alley floor moaning, tears streaming across
his ugly face.

He reached out to Ramon, and Ramon laughed.

“Now you know what it feels like to get hit by a man,” said James very quietly. “Don’t even have a dream about takin’ your
hand to your wife or your little girl again.”

James walked back to the head of the alley and picked up his walking stick. Ramon followed. They turned and headed down 8th
Street, back toward the Spot.

“Where you learn that, Jame?” said Ramon.

“West Baltimore,” said James.

Maria was waiting by the service bar with Darnell when James and Ramon came back in. Anna Wang was sitting at the bar next
to Karras, who was eating his lunch. Happy sat alone, working on a Manhattan. Stefanos was behind the stick, one foot up on
the beer cooler.

They watched James give Maria a kiss. Five minutes later Roberto Juarez entered the Spot and stood on the landing. Blood covered
his white shirt and smeared his face. His eyes were glassy, and he was having trouble standing up.

Happy turned his head, looked Juarez over, then turned back to his drink.

“James just took away everything that guy ever had,” said Stefanos.

“Someone ought to call an ambulance,” said Anna Wang, reaching for one of Stefanos’s cigarettes.

Karras nodded and cut into his chicken-fried steak.

Roberto Juarez reached a hand out to his wife. Maria’s eyes narrowed as she buttoned her cheap coat and raised her chin.

“You do that?” said Darnell to James.

“Sure did,” said James.

“Hard to believe a man wearin’ eyeliner could put a hurtin’ on another man like that.” Darnell looked admiringly at James.
“You sure you tellin’ the truth?”

“
Got
to tell the truth,” said James.

“An’ shame the devil,” said Maria Juarez.

She straightened her shoulders and raised her chin. They watched her cross the barroom floor.

Dimitri Karras finished his lunch and drove his old BMW up into Northwest. He walked to his building at 15th and U. He took
the elevator to the fifth floor, walked down the hall, and turned the corner to his apartment. Thomas Wilson stood outside
of Karras’s door.

“Dimitri.”

“Thomas. What’re you doing here? Aren’t you working today?”

“I took the afternoon off. Needed to see you, man.”

“You sick or somethin’? Your eyes don’t look right.”

“Need to talk to you, Dimitri. Need to tell you somethin’
now
and get it out quick. Don’t stop me while I’m talking, ’cause I might not ever have the courage to tell it again.”

Karras regarded Wilson curiously. Wilson’s gaze was level and true.

“Say it,” said Karras.

By the time he was done, Wilson was sobbing. Karras’s shoulders had sagged and there were tears welled in his animal eyes.
His lip was trembling, and his fists were balled and shaking at his side.

“Dimitri,” said Thomas Wilson. “I am so sorry for what I’ve done.”

Karras screamed. Wilson stood passively as Karras leaped toward him.

He’s going to kill me now
, thought Wilson. He was strangely relieved. It surprised him for a moment that he was not afraid.

Wilson saw a white blur in the dim hall light. He saw nothing, felt nothing after that.

BOYLE AND STEFANOS
were at the bar drinking when Karras arrived, late in the afternoon, at the Spot. Stefanos was working on a beer, and Boyle
was tipping a shot of Jack Daniel’s to his lips. Karras put his hand on Stefanos’s shoulder and nodded at Boyle. Stefanos
turned his head; Karras’s face was tight-jawed and pale.

“Anything wrong?” asked Stefanos.

“Not a thing,” said Karras.

Boyle drank off the rest of his beer and stashed his Marlboro reds in the side pocket of his tweed while Stefanos went around
the bar and grabbed a six-pack from the cooler. Mai made a couple of hash-marks on his tab. Stefanos, Karras, and Boyle exited
and got into the Coronet 500 out on 8th.

The nursing home, a one-story, white-brick affair fronted by a flat, brownish lawn, was in the town of Greenbelt, in Prince
George’s County. They signed in at the desk under the scrutiny of a chubby receptionist, who was eating a late lunch from
a sectioned foam tray. Boyle had two cans of beer tucked beneath his raincoat.

They walked down a carpeted hall, the smell of soiled diapers cutting the still air. They passed a room where a woman sat
with her face down on a table. A man’s gravelly voice came loudly from another of the rooms: “Nurse… nurse… nurse,” over and
over again. The nurses on shift, black immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa, stood together at the end of the hall, conversing,
ignoring the man’s plea. Television sets, the volume turned unnaturally high, blared from every direction in the home.

“In here,” said Boyle, and they followed him through an open door.

A heavy, shapeless old man was lying in a railed bed, his head elevated by pillows. He stared through a large window, shafts
of sunset streaming across his body. Next to his bed was a small table on wheels, on which sat a tray of cold, untouched,
pureed food. The stench of urine drifted off the bed. The room had the unmistakable smell of death.

“Uncle Jimmy,” said Boyle, and the man turned.

“Danny.”

Jimmy Boyle smiled. His face was fleshy, his jawline nearly invisible. Ashen baggage hung beneath his faded brown eyes. A
thick hearing aid had been surgically implanted in one of his ears. His dome was covered with brown spots, and the strands
of hair that remained were like brittle thread, both yellow and gray in the light.

“This is Dimitri Karras,” said Boyle. “And this is Nick Stefanos.” Jimmy Boyle looked directly into Karras’s eyes as he shook
his hand.

“Good to meet you,” said Karras.

“And you.”

Jimmy Boyle made a tired gesture with his fingers. “Come on, fellas, have a seat.”

Stefanos pulled up the room’s sole chair, and Karras had a seat on the edge of the bed.

“It’s too crowded in here for me,” said Dan Boyle.

“Go ahead,” said his uncle. “Give us some time alone.”

Boyle kissed his uncle on the top of his head. Before he left he said to Stefanos, “I’ll be down in that sitting room by the
reception desk.”

“Close the door on your way out,” said Karras. He couldn’t stand to hear the voice of that man, still calling for the nurses.

When Dan Boyle was gone, Jimmy Boyle said, “Well. Always nice to have visitors. Thanks for coming out.”

“My mother spoke of you often,” said Karras.

“Your mother was a fine woman.”

“Thanks. She said you were one of my father’s closest friends.”

“Going back to the Depression,” said Boyle. “We were a gang who all grew up in Chinatown together. Sons of immigrants, all
of us. Your father and a kid named Billy Nicodemus, who was killed on the beach at Anzio, in the war. Joe Recevo, an Italian
boy. Perry Angelos. Perry’s still around.”

“What happened to Perry?”

“He got rich. Opened a few carryouts and bought the properties early on. He’s got nine grandchildren or something, and he’s
been with the same girl, Helen, for over fifty years. Perry always was the smart one of the bunch.” Boyle smiled weakly. “Didn’t
look for trouble like the rest of us. But he’s a good egg.”

“Do you have children of your own?” asked Stefanos, who noticed the absence of cards, candy, and photographs in the room.

“I never married,” said Boyle. “Except for a spell when some pharmacist got me hooked on pep pills, I’ve always been fat.
A helluva lot fatter than I am now. The ladies didn’t much care for men built like me, but the fact is I had my special preferences
myself. I always did crave the company of colored women, see? But back then, well, you’d never think to bring a colored girl
home to meet your father. Funny, here I am getting sponge baths from dark-skinned gals every day. What I dreamed of my whole
life, right? Trouble is, I can’t get the equipment to come to attention anymore. But it’s still pleasant. I do look forward
to those baths, every day.”

“Speaking of the nurses,” said Karras, “why don’t they respond to that guy yelling for them right now?”

“Ah,” said Boyle with a dismissive wave of his hand. “There’s nothing wrong with that guy. He’s just afraid to be alone. How
a man faces death is as important as how he lives his life. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think so,” said Karras.

“Sure you do. You’re your father’s son. And your father feared nothing, to a fault. Hell, Pete’s the man responsible for getting
me my gold shield.”

“I heard something about it from my mother,” said Karras.

“There was this killer named Gearhart, a big dandy who worked for a loan shark named Burke. Pete tagged Gearhart as a killer
and handed me the collar. I was made detective straight away.”

“Burke,” said Karras.

“You know the name,” said Boyle.

“I know that someone named Burke killed my old man.”