Shame the Devil (5 page)

“Eight days ago. I know, it doesn’t prove the light was out the night those cops arrested him last summer. It doesn’t disprove
it, either.”

“The prosecutor will argue relevance — that a busted street lamp from a week ago has no relevance to a crime that occurred
six months ago. And the judge will sustain it.”

“Yeah, but I figure it’ll put, whaddaya call it, the seed of doubt into the jury’s mind.”

“Seed of doubt? You’re getting fancy on me now, Nick.”

“Sorry. But if the prosecutor can’t prove without a doubt that someone saw the kid dealing —”

“They caught him with a Baggie of herb in the Maxima.”

“Where was the buyer?”

“By then the alleged buyer had beat it on foot.”

“That’s possession, not possession with intent to distribute.”

“That’s my case. Which is why I’m going to use these photos — they’re the only thing I’ve got. I get this reduced to a simple
possession charge, they throw the jury trial out. Under the new District law, crimes carrying penalties of less than six months
go before the judge without a jury.”

“The kid’ll walk, then.”

“It depends on who I draw behind the bench and what their temperature’s like that day. But most likely my client will get
a tongue-lashing and community service.”

Stefanos lit a smoke, side-exhaled, and tossed the match into the Styrofoam cup. In accepting these assignments from Elaine
Clay, he’d known all along what his role would be. Still, it was hard to feel clean about his part in this daily cycle. He
wondered how Elaine did this, every single day.

She pulled a manila folder from her bag and dropped it on the table. “I’ve got something else for you, Nick, if you want it.”

“What is it?”

“I’m defending a kid named Randy Weston on a murder charge. The trial’s coming up in a couple of weeks.”

“So?”

“Weston’s a known low-level dealer with priors. On the day of the murder, he was seen arguing with another dealer, Donnel
Lawton, who’d been encroaching on Weston’s turf. Lawton was shot to death that night at First and Kennedy with a Beretta ninety-two.
An anonymous informant made Weston as the triggerman. And when the police searched his place they found a Beretta nine. The
markings from the slug that killed Lawton matched the gun.”

“An anonymous informant?”

“A woman. It was enough to get a warrant.”

Stefanos tapped ash off his smoke. “Sounds open-and-shut to me.”

“Weston’s got an alibi. He was with his girlfriend that night. She’s not cooperating, but I believe him. He doesn’t look like
a killer. It’s his eyes — and after a while, you just know.”

“Does it make a difference to you if he’s guilty or innocent?”

“No. I defend them all the same way, Nick. I thought it might make a difference to you.”

Stefanos hit his smoke. “What else makes you think Weston’s telling the truth? Besides, you know, his eyes.”

“Around the time of the murder, a kid who works in one of those neighborhood Chinese grease pits, place called Hunan Delite,
says he was closing up his parents’ shop, heard shots and tires screeching on the road, then saw an old vehicle speeding past
on Kennedy.”

“What kind of an old vehicle?”

Elaine peered inside the folder. “A red Tempo, I think. No, here it is… a red Ford Torino.”

“What’s Weston drive?”

“A Legend.”

“Color?”

“Red.”

“Even if you find the driver of the Torino, and even if he has something to do with the crime, the prosecutors will bring
up the sameness of color in court.”

“You’re talking about two cars with over twenty years’ difference in terms of style.”

“Maybe.” Stefanos looked around the cafeteria. “But I’m not interested.”

“You’re interested. I can see it —”

“In my eyes?”

“Thought you might want to pick this one up, see what you can do with it.”

“I told you the first time you hired me —”

“I know. You no longer get involved in, how did you put it, ‘murder gigs or other kinds of violent shit.’”

“I said that?”

“Something like it.”

Stefanos dragged on the filter of his Camel. “Get that big Indian you use. Nobody fucks with that guy.”

“He’s busy on another case.”

“What about Joey A.?”

“Joe A.’s tied up, too.” Elaine pushed the folder across the table until it touched Stefanos’s hand. “Look, I need your help,
Nick. I’ve got another one of these files in my office. Take this one with you, okay?”

“I don’t think so.” Stefanos moved his hand and dropped his cigarette into the half inch of coffee left in the cup.

“Right. Let’s put that aside for now, then, and shift gears.”

“What, you’ve got something else?”

“Well, yes.”

“Go ahead.”

“I mentioned that I was working with you to my husband last night. Marcus said he thought you might know his friend Dimitri
Karras. You remember Dimitri, don’t you?”

“Sure. I haven’t seen him for over ten years. But I was just thinking about him on the way over here. The
Post
ran their quarterly Pizza Parlor Murders piece in this morning’s paper.”

“Dimitri’s been in a real bad way.”

Stefanos nodded, drew a fresh cigarette from the pack, tamped it on the table. He rolled the cigarette between his fingers.

“There can’t be anything worse than to lose a child, Nick.”

“Wasn’t he with your husband in those record stores?”

“Yes. Marcus cashed out ten years ago, went back to school and got his M.B.A. In the meantime, Dimitri met his future wife,
Lisa, in rehab. Dimitri and Lisa got married and had a child straight away. Marcus and a friend named Clarence Tate created
a retail consulting business designed to help African American startups and brought Dimitri in as a partner, despite the fact
that Dimitri’s —”

“Greek Like Me?”

“Dimitri was always good with people, so that didn’t seem to matter all that much when all was said and done.” Elaine spread
her hands out on the table. “But when Jimmy was killed, he pretty much fell apart. After a year or so, Marcus and Clarence
couldn’t carry him anymore. And Dimitri didn’t want them to. It just didn’t work out.”

“What about Karras and his wife?” “They didn’t make it. She’s still at their old house, pretty much a shut-in. He’s living
in an apartment on U at Fifteenth, still making do on what’s left of his inheritance.”

“Marcus feels guilty.”

“Yes. He feels like, if Dimitri can get himself into a work environment — get around people again, every day — he can start
that healing process he needs. It would be like, you know, placing him with some kind of family.”

Stefanos cleared his throat and slid the unlit cigarette back in its pack. “I’ll ask around. If I hear of any job openings
around town I’ll let you know.”

“I was thinking of that place you work.”

“The Spot? Elaine, you ever seen the place? It’s just a shitty little bar in Southeast.”

“They serve food, don’t they?”

“Yeah, we serve food. In fact, we just hired a couple more people for the kitchen. The owner expanded the menu. He’s trying
to beef up the lunch business.”

“Well, there you go. Dimitri could do kitchen work part-time. Wash dishes, anything. With you there, he wouldn’t be walking
into a nest of strangers. Marcus was thinking —”

“Marcus?”

“Okay, it would be a personal favor for me, too. Look, I didn’t think you’d mind if I asked.”

“I don’t mind.” Stefanos stood. “Like I said, I’ll ask around, Elaine. How’s that?”

“Thanks, Nicky.” She wrote down a phone number, tore off a piece of paper, and handed it to Stefanos.

Stefanos reached into the side pocket of his leather, pulled out a CD, and put it in front of Elaine. “Here you go.”

Elaine’s face brightened. “What’s this?”

“
Live Evil.
It just got reissued on domestic disc. I knew you were an electric Miles freak, so…”

“You know, I’d always see the Japanese pressing of this in the stores, but I never wanted to spring for it.”

“I heard a couple of tracks at the listening station. Some of the pieces were recorded right here at the old Cellar Door in
1970. Johnny McLaughlin on guitar, Michael Henderson on bass — it’s a boss band. It doesn’t cut
Agharta,
but it’s pretty hot.”

“Nick, that was so sweet.”

Stefanos winced. “A woman shouldn’t ever call a guy sweet, Counselor. It’s like calling him dickless or something.”

“But it
was
sweet.”

“Yeah, okay, it was sweet.” Stefanos shuffled his feet.

“You all right? You’re looking a little run-down.”

“I’m fine. Listen, I’ll talk to you later, hear?”

“Soon.”

They smiled at each other, and Stefanos turned to go. She watched him walk from the cafeteria and disappear into the crowd
gathered at the entrance.

“Who was that?” said the young attorney at the table to her left.

Elaine turned to face the man who’d been a CJA attorney for less than a year. “Nick Stefanos. An investigator I use.”

“From his appearance, I’d say that guy’s been around the block a few times.”

“I suspect he has.”

“He looks like some kind of ghost.”

More like a street angel, she thought, as the voice from the loudspeaker called the young attorney’s name.

“That’s me,” he said. “Show time.”

“Don’t forget your client,” said Elaine.

“There he is. He’s coming now.”

Elaine looked at the kid, thought immediately of her own son, Marcus Jr., now sixteen years old. The kid’s shirt was out and
his boots were unlaced. M. J. had begged her to buy him that same brand of boots this Christmas past.

“You might want to tell him to tuck in his shirt,” said Elaine. “Lace up those Timbies, too. He’s liable to trip on his way
up to the bench.”

“Timbies?”

“His boots.”

The attorney stood from his chair and collected his papers. “That Stefanos guy,” he said. “You mind if I borrow him sometime?”

Elaine shook her head. “Sorry.”

“He does good work, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, he does good work. But he’s mine.”

THE GROUP GATHERED
once a week in the basement of a Presbyterian church at 23rd and P. A social worker with the police department had set up
the support sessions originally and assigned the group a freelance shrink, who, after three weeks, was politely asked to leave.
Two and a half years had passed, and the group continued to meet.

Ernst, the church’s live-in custodian, stood near the group, seated in a disjointed circle in the middle of the common room.
“Please,” said Ernst. “Pull the plug on that coffee urn when you’re done.”

“We’ll take care of it, Ernst,” said Bernie Walters.

“Ya, sure,” said Ernst, giving them a fangy smile. Clumps of gray hair grew from several large moles on his face. He was older
than dirt, and it seemed an effort for him to lift his hand to wave before he walked from the room.

When he left, Thomas Wilson said, “Where’s Ernst from, with that accent of his? Anybody ever figure that out?”

“Latvia,” said Dimitri Karras.

“Where the hell is that?”

“He’s a good old bird,” said Walters, who at fifty was the senior member of the group and its unofficial leader. “Anyway…
where were we?”

They started, as they always did, by getting reacquainted. They talked about the things that had happened at their jobs, what
they’d done on the weekend, the trades the Skins needed to make to win next season, celebrity deaths, favorite television
shows, the latest high-profile trial.

After a while they refreshed their coffee cups and came back and took their seats. Bernie Walters lit a cigarette.

“Funny how you’re the only one of us that smokes,” said Stephanie Maroulis.

“You know us veterans,” said Walters, snapping shut the hinged lid of his lighter. “Marlboro reds and Zippos. We never go
anywhere without ’em.”

“
Vanity Fair
did a piece on the Zippo lighter,” offered Karras, “and its place in American society relative to Vietnam.”

“Here it comes,” said Thomas Wilson. “‘Relative to Vietnam.’ Now the professor’s gonna explain to us unwashed types what it
all means.”

Karras had been, among other things, an American lit instructor in his past life. He had mistakenly mentioned it to Wilson
and Walters one night over beers at the Brew Hause.

“Give it a rest, guys,” said Stephanie, trying to head off the inevitable.

But Karras said, “I could bring in the magazine for you, Thomas. If you didn’t want to take the time to read it you could
just, I don’t know, look at all the pretty models and dream.”

“Look at ’em and yawn, you mean. I’ve seen those gray girls you’re talking about. Clothes look like they been draped over
a wire hanger and shit. Naw, you can keep your Caucasian junkies, Dimitri. And anyway, you know I prefer women with a little
back on ’em.”

“Yeah, but what do they think of you?”

Karras smirked at the glimmer in Wilson’s eyes. Wilson liked to try and shock the group — play their idea of the street spade
if he could get away with it. Karras didn’t let him get away with it.

Walters pushed up the bill on his faded Orioles cap — just the bird, no script — and scratched his graying beard. He was barrel-chested
gone heavy, but he carried the weight on a broad back.

“So what’d the article say, Dimitri?” said Walters.

“It talked about how the soldiers used to have all these sayings engraved on their lighters.‘Born to Die,’ like that. How
the GIs were very attached to those lighters.”

“I used mine,” said Walters, “to burn villages. I must have torched at least a dozen like that. You could set a really good
fire to those straw roofs they had. That article say anything about that?”

“It did say something, now that you mention it.”

“Course they do know a lot about Vietnam — in New York.”

“I mentioned your smoking,” said Stephanie, “because, I don’t know, usually in these kinds of groups it seems like everybody
smokes. Right, Dimitri? It’s unusual that it’s only you who lights up, Bernie.”