Shame the Devil (35 page)

Otis looked down and studied his cousin’s face. “Naw, man, he gonna be all right. C’mon.”

They got into the Mark V and started down the long drive that cut through the woods to the two-lane. After a bend in the drive,
Otis snapped his fingers and cut the engine.

“Hold up, Gus. I forgot my driver’s license at the house. Gonna walk back and pick it up.”

“We could just back up the car.”

“Need to stretch my legs before that long trip we got. Be right back.”

Otis got out of the car and walked toward the house. When he got to the yard, he looked in the front window. He did not see
Frank. He went to Kendricks and grabbed him by the ankles and dragged him into the woods. Kendricks was slight and easy to
move. His head bounced on rocks and a tree stump, and his body swept a path in the dirt. Otis took him down a grade to a gully
of brush and dried leaves.

Otis stood over Kendricks. His forehead was caved in and cracked open. Otis could see a part of his cousin’s brain through
all the blood.

Otis recited a brief and meaningless prayer. He had known Booker’s mother, and she would have liked him to say a few words
over her son.

“So long, cuz,” said Otis. “You done gone and talked yourself to death. Now these animals out here gonna do you like you been
doin’ them.”

He went back to the car.

Out on 301, Lavonicus fiddled with the radio dial.

“Want you to take care of my sister now, Gus, you hear?”

“I will.”

“Ain’t gonna lose that temper of yours with her, are you?”

“I’d never raise a hand to Cissy, Roman. You know that.”

Lavonicus lit on a song and saw Otis smile.

“You like this one?” said Lavonicus.

“ ‘Love Won’t Let Me Wait,’ ” said Otis, “by Major Harris. That’s a bad motherfucker right there.”

Nick Stefanos locked the front door of the Spot from the inside and went back around the bar. He rotated a few cold beers
out of the cooler, stocked a couple of cases of warm in the bottom, and put the cold bottles back on top. He took a bottle
of Bud that he had buried in the ice chest and popped the cap.

“Thought you weren’t going to drink tonight,” said Alicia Weisman, who sat at the bar.

“I said that?”

“After how you felt this morning, remember?”

“Just gonna have one to take the edge off,” said Stefanos with a tired wink. He tilted the bottle to his lips.

Alicia watched him. “Want to see some music? Nashville Pussy’s playing at the Cat.”

“The only pussy I want to see is right here in front of me.”

“You silver-tongued devil.”

“I make the language of seduction an art.” The phone on the wall rang. “Excuse me.”

Stefanos picked up the receiver. It was Boyle on the other end of the line.

“How’s it going?”

“We’re sittin’ here watching that show set in the emergency room. The doctors got personal problems and I give a fuck.”

“Anything?”

“Not a word. Bill feels better me bein’ here and all, but if we don’t hear anything by the weekend, I’m gone. He misses his
family, and my old lady’s complaining I’m not around. What’s up with you?”

“Not much,” said Stefanos.

“All right. Keep in touch.”

Stefanos went back and stood in front of Alicia.

“So,” she said. “What do you think? Do you want to go out?”

“Let’s just go back to my crib, okay? I might be getting a call there.”

“You working on something?”

“I just need to be near my phone.”

Stefanos lifted his beer bottle and Alicia took it gently from his hands. She set it down on the bar.

“You don’t need that,” she said. “Right?”

He did need it. He loved her but, God, he needed it. It was stronger than her or anyone else.

“Right,” he said, pushing the bottle away with the back of his hand.

She leaned over the bar and kissed him on the lips.

Thomas Wilson ordered a cognac at the bar of an African club up on Georgia and Missouri, near the old Ibex. Wilson couldn’t
pronounce the name of the place, but he liked it all right. Once you listened to their music for a while, it got way under
your skin, too. Those Africans talked real loud, standing around the bar. Sometimes you couldn’t tell if they were arguing
with each other or just being friends. But they pretty much left him alone.

Way he looked now, cut in the face and with a fucked-up eye, wasn’t no one gonna try to talk to him, anyway.

Yeah, Dimitri had really worked him over. Afterward, even with the pain, it was funny how different he’d felt. Not good, exactly,
or happy. More like clean.

Now that he’d done it, he wished Bernie had been there as well. He looked forward to seeing Bernie again. He wanted to tell
him like he’d told Dimitri, and take it from Bernie like he’d taken it from Dimitri, if that’s how it had to be. He wanted
to feel clean with Bernie, and with Stephanie, too.

First he’d have to do this thing with Dimitri. Step up and be a man for Dimitri and Bernie and Stephanie. And for Charles.
He could do that. He felt that he could.

Someone bumped him from behind. Wilson looked over his shoulder, not hard or anything like that, but in a curious way. The
man who had bumped him started shouting something at him in a foreign tongue. Wilson ignored him, but the man kept shouting.
One of the man’s friends came over, and he could hear them laughing behind his back.

Wilson fired down his cognac. He got off his stool and left money on the bar. He was careful not to look at anyone as he walked
from the club.

Dimitri Karras drove north on Connecticut Avenue, downshifting at the start of a long grade. The old BMW had lost its juice;
Jap cars and domestics passed him on either side. The Beamer’s paint job had faded and its engine was weak, but he’d decided
to hang onto it. Cars meant nothing to him anymore. The only time he’d get stoked by a ride was when he’d see a restored Karmann
Ghia on the street. It reminded him of his old Ghia, that decade, those times. Yeah, the seventies had been a glorious ride.

Karras turned off Connecticut and parked along the curb.

He’d had a quiet day at work. Nick Stefanos had asked him a couple of questions and he’d answered him shortly or not at all.
He didn’t like to be unkind to Stefanos, but Stefanos was out. He was sorry he had talked so freely with him the night before.
He shouldn’t have gotten so drunk.

He got out of his car and took the sidewalk back to Connecticut. He walked to an apartment house on the corner, stood at the
glass doors, waved to the woman at the desk, and was buzzed in.

After work, he’d met Thomas Wilson at his place. Thomas had told him the plan. It was a very simple plan and as good as any
plan, he supposed. If he kept his nerve, and Thomas kept his nerve, it could work.

He took the elevator up to the sixth floor and walked down a carpeted hall. He knocked on a door and he heard muffled steps.

Stephanie Maroulis opened the door.

“Dimitri.”

“It is me. Why so surprised?”

“It’s not Tuesday,” she said.

“I know it,” said Karras.

They looked into each other’s eyes.

“You’re breaking our arrangement,” she said. “You do this and everything changes.”

“I’m ready for it to change,” he said.

Stephanie stepped aside. He walked through the open door.

THIS WILL BE
the last day of my life.

It was the first thought that came to Thomas Wilson when he woke on Friday morning. He turned onto his side in the bed and
shut his eyes. His stomach flipped, and he thought he could be sick.

Please don’t let me be a coward, God. Please.

The phone rang, and Wilson reached across the bed and picked it up.

“Thomas, it’s Nick Stefanos.”

“Nick.”

“I was with Dimitri on Wednesday night. I know you told him everything. I know what you guys are planning to do.”

Wilson had promised Dimitri that from here on in he’d keep his mouth shut. He did want Stefanos’s help. He welcomed it. But
he wouldn’t betray Dimitri, not again.

“There is no plan,” said Wilson.

“Bullshit,” said Stefanos. “You guys have got something happening and you think you can pull it off yourselves. I told Dimitri
and I’m telling you: You try this thing and you will die. You understand me, Thomas?”

“I gotta run,” said Wilson. “My uncle’s waitin’ on me, man, and I got to get myself into work.”

“You still have my card?”

“I got it.”

“You call me, Thomas. You give me a call, hear?”

“I hear you, Nick.”

“Thomas —”

Wilson killed the connection and sat up on the edge of his bed. He stood and dressed for work.

Friday’s lunch, like every Friday lunch, was the most hectic two hours of the week at the Spot. Dimitri Karras, Maria Juarez,
and James Posten had little time for idle conversation as they struggled to stay ahead of the orders flowing into the kitchen.
Nick Stefanos and Anna Wang were in the weeds in the dining and bar area from noon to two. Ramon and Darnell had both broken
full body sweat by the time the rush was through.

At two o’clock, Maria put her Tito Puente tape into the box. James grabbed his spatula, and he and Maria began to dance. Karras
walked over to Darnell, who was wiping down his slick arms with a rag, his backside against the sink.

“How’d that catfish go today?” said Darnell.

“Went good, buddy. Looked good, too. In fact, I called eighty-six on it to Anna even though we had one order left. That one’s
for me.”

“You earned it, Dimitri. Nice work today.”

“Thanks.” Karras drew a card from his wallet. “Here you go, man. This is the number for that friend I been telling you about.
Marcus wants to hook up with you, show you how easy it can be to do this thing, if that’s what you want to do. Got all sorts
of options he wants to lay out for you, Darnell. Says he’d like to meet with you next week.”

“That’s cool. But I thought you were gonna come with me.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Karras, smiling sadly at Darnell. “If you still want me to.”

“Damn right I want you to, Dimitri.”

“Then I’ll be there,” said Karras, and he shook Darnell’s hand.

Karras hugged Maria and James and thanked them for the good job they had done that day. He untied his apron, dropped it in
the laundry hamper by the door, and left without another word. He sat at a deuce and ate the catfish special, avoiding conversation
with Stefanos, and when he was done he told Anna and Ramon to have a good weekend, said good bye to Stefanos, and left the
bar.

Stefanos caught up with him out on 8th.

“Dimitri!”

Karras turned. Stefanos walked to him in his shirtsleeves and met him by the alley. He put a hand on Karras’s arm.

“Where you off to, man?” said Stefanos.

Karras shrugged. “Goin’ home.”

“Don’t just walk out of here without telling me, Dimitri.”

“Telling you what?”

“When and where. I’ve got a right to know.”

Karras looked around the street. He waited for a man to pass them on the sidewalk. When the man was out of earshot, Karras
found Stefanos’s eyes.

“Listen,” said Karras. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, Nick. You hooking me up with this job, it put me back
in the world. I’m almost at that place where I can see myself having some kind of normal life. But there’s one thing left
to do, and you can’t be a part of that. You’re out of it, Nick. It’s not your affair. So forget it.”

“I won’t forget it,” said Stefanos. “When is it going down?”

Karras looked down at the cracked concrete. “Tomorrow night.”

“Look at me, man.”

“It’s set for tomorrow night.”

“Where?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“You’ll call me?”

“Okay, Nick.” Karras nodded. “If that’s what you want. Yes.”

Karras and Stefanos shook hands. Stefanos buttoned his shirt to the neck and watched Karras walk to his faded navy blue BMW,
parked along the curb.

“Liar,” said Stefanos, who had seen the hesitation in Karras’s eyes.

It wasn’t going down tomorrow night. It was going down tonight.

Thomas Wilson worked the day quietly with his uncle Lindo. He listened to Lindo talk about a woman he’d met at church and
he listened to Lindo’s Frankie Lymon tapes on the cheap cassette player in the dash of his shitbox truck. He listened and
tried to answer when Lindo asked him questions, but other than those short responses he didn’t say much.

Time crawled that day, but when quitting time came it seemed to have come too quick.

Wilson had gotten out of his coveralls in the warehouse bathroom and he went to the particle-board desk where his uncle sat,
wearing spectacles and organizing the day’s tickets. His uncle had swept the warehouse like he did at the end of every week,
whether it needed it or not, and specks of dust swirled in the air. A dying fluorescent tube flickered in the drop ceiling
above the desk, its light flashing on the warehouse floor.

“I can fix that for you before I go,” said Wilson, looking up at the light.

“Got a box of replacement lamps coming in next week,” said Lindo. He looked closely at his nephew. “You seem troubled today,
Thomas. Somethin’ you want to talk to me about?”

“No, sir.” Wilson buried his hands in the pockets of his slacks. “Everything’s fine.”

“Go on, then, son. Have a good weekend. Rest up, ’cause come Monday we have a busy week.”

“Okay, Uncle L. Thank you for everything, hear?”

Lindo glanced up at Wilson. “Go on, boy. Don’t be so serious all the time. Go out and have yourself a little fun.”

As he drove home, Wilson’s guilt deepened over using his uncle’s warehouse that night. His uncle took pride in that place,
even if it wasn’t much more than a cheap desk and some cinder-block walls. Wilson stopped in a surplus store in Lanham and
bought a half dozen blue plastic tarps.

He passed the turnoff for his house and kept north on Georgia Avenue, turned left onto Quackenbos, made another left, and
parked the Intrepid in an alley alongside a church. He stepped onto the grounds of Fort Stevens Park.