Shame the Devil (36 page)

He and Charles had played here as children. He walked into a dry moat, then climbed a steep hill and jumped down alongside
one of two cannons that remained in the park. A tattered American flag hung at half-mast nearby and made rippling shadows
at his feet. He could picture Charles as a child, running with an imaginary rifle cradled in his arms, diving and rolling
down those hills. He could hear Charlie’s gleeful laugh.

Charles,
thought Wilson,
I won’t let you down.

But a block from his house his stomach betrayed him, and Wilson pulled over to the side of the road, where he opened his car
door and vomited his lunch onto the street.

Dimitri Karras got up off the bed at around six o’clock. He had been lying there on his back for a couple of hours. He was
oddly calm.

He found Bernie Walters’s Colt .45 and a box of shells in the bottom of his dresser, wrapped in an old pillowcase. He ejected
the magazine into his palm. He loaded seven rounds into the magazine, testing the tension of the spring on the last round.
He pushed the magazine into the butt of the gun and slipped the .45 into its leather holster. He dropped the rig onto the
bed and phoned Thomas Wilson.

They discussed the specifics of the plan. When they were done, Karras said, “Pick me up at eight.”

Wilson said, “Right.”

Nick Stefanos phoned Dan Boyle at William Jonas’s house and got Jonas first. He exchanged a few words with Jonas and asked
to speak to Boyle.

“You going to be there all night?” asked Stefanos.

“Yeah,” said Boyle. “Why, what’s up?”

“I might need to speak with you.”

“Something going on?”

“Sit tight,” said Stefanos. “I’ll let you know.”

Thomas Wilson sat at a small desk in the foyer of his house on Underwood. He broke the cylinder of his five-shot .38 Special
and thumbed shells into its chambers. He spun the cylinder and wrist-snapped it shut. The snub-nosed revolver with the narrow
checkered butt and the worn-down bluing felt small in his hand. He held the gun under the desk lamp and noticed that his hand
was shaking. He concentrated and tried to make his hand stop shaking, but he could not.

He laid the gun down on the desk and pulled the phone toward him. He dialed Dimitri Karras.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” he said when Karras answered the call.

“You can,” said Karras. “See you at eight.”

Wilson listened to the dial tone. He dialed Bernie Walters’s home number. Bernie’s recorded voice came through the speaker
and then there was a long beeping sound.

“Hey, Bern… Thomas here. I guess you got a couple more days of that Jeremiah Johnson thing you’re doin’ down there in God’s
country. I’m just callin’ to say hello again. Was thinkin’ maybe I’d drive down tomorrow morning and surprise you. Take you
up on that offer you been makin’ to me these last couple of years. Be a good chance for the two of us to talk, buddy. ’Cause
we
need
to talk, see? Anyway… listen, if I don’t happen to make it down there, man… I just wanted to tell you… I wanted to say
that you been a good friend. I’m sorry for everything, but I’m fixin’ to try and make it right. You been a good friend, Bern.
You, uh…”

Wilson found himself stumbling on his words. He said good bye to Bernie and cut the line.

“You all packed?” said Farrow.

“Ready,” said Otis.

“I got a meet point from Wilson. Says we’d get lost if we tried to find it directly. Behind a closed gas station near the
industrial park.”

Otis nodded. “Here you go, Frank. This is you.”

He handed Farrow one of the two .45s he had copped on Sepul-veda, back in L.A. Farrow hefted the gun and checked the action.

“Where’s your cousin?”

“Booker? He didn’t come home last night and I ain’t seen him all day.”

Otis didn’t want Frank getting angry over Gus’s little accident. Once they got on the road and headed back west, Frank would
never know.

“Just as well,” said Farrow. “Leave some money on the table for him. That’ll be good enough.”

Otis pulled his hair back off his shoulders and banded it. He holstered his .45 into his waist rig and put on a ventless,
checked wool sport jacket over his clean white shirt. He looked in the living-room mirror and smiled, admiring his gold tooth,
the cut of his jacket, his hair. The look.

He left money on the table — a fifty-dollar bill on top of ten ones, so Frank wouldn’t get suspicious. Wasn’t any point in
leaving too much for a corpse lying in the woods, even if the dead man was your kin.

“You ready?” said Farrow as he walked back into the room.

“Yeah,” said Otis. “Let’s go.”

Dimitri Karras was waiting on the corner of 15th and U as Thomas Wilson pulled the Intrepid to the curb at eight o’clock.
Karras settled in the passenger bucket and fastened his seat belt. “You finalized it with Farrow and Otis?” said Karras.

Wilson nodded. He drove east.

They crossed the city. They rode the Beltway for fifteen miles and exited at Route 4. Wilson slowed as they drove through
old Upper Marlboro.

“Run through it again,” said Karras.

“I’m meeting them behind a Texaco that’s been out of business a couple of years. We’ll be passin’ it in a mile or so. After
I get you settled, I’ll leave my car there and come in with them.” Wilson swallowed. “Afterwards, we’ll clean the warehouse,
drive them back, and dump ’em behind the station. Get back into my car and split.”

“It’s simple. I like that.”

“Yeah, it’s simple. ’Cept the killin’ part.”

“You shouldn’t have any problem with that. Just try to remember what they did to your friend.”

Wilson’s face was grim and strained in the glow of the dash lights. “Only God should do what we’re plannin’ to do tonight.”

“You’re scared,” said Karras, “that’s all. Don’t cloud this up with talk about God.”

“Yes, I’m scared. I don’t want to die.”

“Neither do I.”

“You don’t have to worry,” said Wilson. “I’m gonna go through with this. But don’t you tell me not to think of God or whether
this is right or wrong. If I live through this, I plan to beg forgiveness every day for the wrong I’ve done. Knowing it’s
wrong is what separates me from Farrow and Otis.” Wilson looked across the bucket. “What separates you?”

“Nothing. I hope to be just like them. I hope to kill them the way they killed my son.”

Wilson spoke quietly. “You’ve lost your faith, I know. But if you make it tonight, believe me, you’re gonna need to have something
to help make you right. I was you, I’d look to God. Promise me you’ll try.”

“All right, Thomas,” said Karras, staring straight ahead. “I promise that I’ll try.”

The road darkened as they went past the town. Wilson pointed to a boarded-up gas station with a pay phone out front. Then
there was more dark road and signage for an industrial park. Wilson turned right, took the asphalt road that went along rows
of squat red-brick warehouses starkly lit by spots.

Wilson drove straight to the back of the deserted park. He made a tight turn at a green Dumpster and went through the long
narrow alley to the wide parking lot that ended at another set of identical red-brick structures. He parked in the middle
of the strip, cut the engine, and removed the tarps from the trunk.

“What’re those for?” asked Karras.

“Gonna try to keep my uncle’s place clean. We’ll roll ’em up in these when we’re done.”

Karras waited while Wilson opened the warehouse door and hit the lights. The two of them stepped inside. Fluorescents flooded
the space with an artificial glow. A single ceiling lamp flashed over a cheap desk.

Karras looked at the desk. “Doesn’t this place have a phone?”

“My uncle uses a cell.”

Wilson and Karras unfolded the blue plastic tarps and spread them out on the concrete floor. The warehouse was cold, and their
labored breath was visible in the light.

“I better get goin’,” said Wilson when they were done. “They’ll be there pretty soon.”

“Go ahead.”

“Remember: You’re the man who made me the key. You’re looking for a payoff before they do the job. Don’t complicate it more
than that.”

“I won’t.”

“Shoot Farrow quick.”

“All I want is to look in his eyes.”

“Don’t waste no time, Dimitri. Shoot him quick, hear? I’ll take care of Otis.”

“All right.” Karras shook Wilson’s hand. “You all set?”

Wilson nodded. He turned and walked out the door. Karras heard the Intrepid drive away.

It was suddenly quiet. Karras stood on the blue tarp in the center of the warehouse and listened to the low, steady buzz of
the fluorescent lights.

“You got the directions?” said Farrow.

“Got ’em,” said Otis.

They walked across the yard to their cars.

“Smells like something died out here,” said Farrow.

“Well, we are in the woods.”

“Be glad to get back to civilization.”

“I heard
that,
” said Otis, dropping behind the wheel of his Mark V. Otis put the car in drive. He hit the CD player, rotated the disks to
Slow Jams, Volume 2.

“Oh, zoooom,” sang Otis, “I’d like to fly away….”

Otis turned onto the two-lane. Farrow followed in the Mach 1.

Thomas Wilson sat in the idling Intrepid behind the Texaco station. He turned off the heater. He could smell his own sweat
coming through his clothes.

He looked at his watch. Farrow and Otis would be way up 301 by now. Another half hour, they’d be pulling into the lot.

He’d been all chest out when he was with Dimitri, talking about how he was going to “go through with this,” saying it strong,
like there wasn’t any kind of doubt in his mind. But now that he was alone, the fear had slithered back in. Truth was, if
he was to pull a gun right now, it would slip right out of his hands.

And then there were Farrow and Otis. They had that way of theirs that made him feel small and weak, even back in Lewisburg,
when they pretended to be his friend. Otis sometimes referred to him as his boy. Errand boy was more like it. He never was
one of them, and they had always let him know it, too.

The .38 dug into the small of his back. He shifted in the bucket.

He and Karras needed help. There wasn’t any sense in denying it anymore. Maybe Karras was strong and crazy enough to pull
it off on his end. But Wilson knew he couldn’t do it. He’d be punked out like he’d always been punked out. He’d get the both
of them killed.

Wilson was out of the car and walking around the side of the gas station. He was walking to the pay phone, telling himself
that this was not another betrayal, that he wasn’t being a coward, that he was trying to help his friend. He was talking to
himself, sweating and shivering in the cold, when he dropped the coins and dialed, and he was still muttering something when
the phone rang on the other end and the line went live.

“Hello.”

“It’s Thomas Wilson.”

“Thomas —”

“Ain’t got no time to bullshit, Nick. I need your help.”

Jonas handed the phone to Dan Boyle. “It’s Stefanos again. For you.”

Boyle put the phone to his ear and listened intently. Jonas watched his face as Boyle nodded and spoke excitedly.

Boyle said, “See you then,” and handed Jonas a dead phone.

“What’s up?” said Jonas.

“I’m goin’ out.”

Boyle went back to the guest bedroom, grabbed a pair of gloves from his overnight bag and shoved them in the pockets of his
khakis. He unzipped a canvas gym bag, drew his Python, and checked the load. He holstered the Python, reached into the bag,
and withdrew his throw-down, a .380 double-action Beretta with a thirteen-shot magazine. He examined the magazine, slapped
it back into the butt, and dropped the gun in the side pocket of his Harris tweed. He looked over his shoulder, then went
back into the gym bag and extracted a Baggie holding confiscated snow-seals of powdered cocaine. He slipped the Baggie into
the other pocket of his jacket and walked back out to the living room with the holstered Python in his hand.

“You gonna tell me what’s goin’ on?” said Jonas.

“When I get back. You got your piece?”

“It’s in the drawer over there.”

“Get it,” said Boyle, lifting his wrinkled raincoat off a chair. “Until you hear from me, you keep it in your lap.”

The two-tone Continental and the red Mach 1 pulled into the back lot of the Texaco station. The Mustang skidded on gravel
as it came to a stop. Otis killed the engine on the Mark V, stepped out, and walked to the Intrepid. Wilson opened his door.

“T. W.,” said Otis.

“Roman.” His mouth spasmed as he tried to smile.

“Come on, man. We’ll go in Farrow’s short.”

Farrow rolled his window down as they neared the car. “These brakes are shot again,” said Farrow. “If you just push the pedal
in, you get nothing. You got to pump the hell out of these things to bring it to a stop.”

“Booker put the fluid in,” said Otis. “I seen him do it.”

“I’m tellin’ you, Roman, they’re fucked.”

“Let me drive over to the joint, man, so I can see my own self.”

“Suit yourself.”

Farrow did not greet Wilson as he stepped out of the car. Wilson climbed into the backseat, and Farrow went around to the
passenger side. Otis got under the wheel and put the car in gear.

“Where to, T. W.?”

“Pull out,” said Wilson, “and make a right onto the road.”

Otis tested the brakes both ways as they hit the asphalt. He pumped the pedal and managed to bring the Mustang to a stop.

“You’re right, Frank. These brakes
are
fucked. Have to use the Mark when we do the job for real.”

Farrow looked over his shoulder to the backseat. “What’s wrong with your face, T. W.? How’d you get marked?”

“Got stole in the face in a bar,” said Wilson.

“Let yourself get stole, huh?” said Otis. “Imagine that. You look a little tight, too.”

“Got a minor problem, is all it is.”

“What’s that?”

“The inside man, the one who got me the key? He thought about it and now he wants an extra grand.”