Shame the Devil (7 page)

In the end, the writer had been afraid. In general, thought Farrow, that was the flaw in most people, a timidity that separated
them from those who were strong. They used their idea of Goodness and Love as an excuse for living a life of weakness. People
were afraid to go to that black place and use it when the time came, or even admit that it was there. To be powerful and free
while on this earth, and to stay alive as long as possible, these were Farrow’s goals. In death there was only the equality
of failure.

Farrow hit the interstate, open country on either side. He passed farmland with flocks of gulls resting in the icy pockets
of plow lines. Ahead, the straightaway lay clear and stretched for a quarter mile. He downshifted the Ford to second, redlined
it, caught air at the peak of a grade, slammed the shifter into third as the wheels touched asphalt. Manuel had been right
about the Ford: It could really fly.

ROMAN OTIS STEPPED
up onstage. There were just a few people in the late-afternoon crowd, sitting at the bar. The joint was down on the east
end of Sunset, just past Fountain, one of those places that served Tex-Mex as an afterthought. The sign said El Rancho, but
in his mind Otis called the place El Roacho because he had seen plenty of them crawling the brick walls. No, he’d never eat
the food at El Roacho, but they did have a nice karaoke machine set up with a premium sound system, and that was why he came.
Otis had slipped the owner a few bucks to buy the tapes of some of those old ballads and midtempo tunes he loved so much.

Past the stage lights that shone in his eyes, Otis could make out silhouettes at the bar, a couple of Chicanos and a woman
named Darcia, nice-lookin’ woman with a fat onion on her, who had come in to hear him sing. At the end of the bar sat Gus
Lavonicus, top-heavy and kind of leaning to the side, with that cinder-block-of-flesh-looking head of his. Otis would be done
in a few minutes, and Gus could have waited outside in the Lincoln. But Gus was a thoughtful kind of guy who liked to support
Otis whenever he performed. Otis felt it was a damn shame that his sister and Gus weren’t getting along.

The music track began. Otis closed his eyes as his cue for the first verse neared, and then he jumped in. He kept time with
his hand against his thigh, kept his other hand free to gesture along with the music. He thought of it as a kind of punctuation,
what he liked to call his “hand expressions.” This would have been his signature as a performer had his life gone the other
way. But it hadn’t gone the other way, and to get negative about that now went against his principles of positivity. He was
fulfilled, in his own small way, just singing in places like this when he got the chance.

“So very hard to go,” sang Otis, “’cause I love you sooooo…”

Yeah, this was a good one. He sounded right, stretching out and bending those vowels against the Tower of Power horn section.
This here was one of his favorites, had inspired him to get the custom-made “Back to Oakland” ID bracelet he wore.

“Thanks, y’all,” said Otis as the music ended, Gus and Darcia’s applause filling the dead air. “I appreciate it. I truly do.”

Otis stepped down off the stage and went to the bar. He put his car keys down in front of Lavonicus.

“Go ahead and get the Mark warmed up, Gus,” said Otis. “I’m right behind you, man.”

“You sounded good, bro,” said Lavonicus.

Lavonicus got off his stool, uncoiling to his full seven feet. He ducked his head to avoid a Budweiser mobile suspended from
the ceiling as he turned. One of the Mexicans nudged the other as Lavonicus passed.

Otis pushed his long hair back off his shoulders, rubber-banded it in a tail. He said to Darcia, “Get up, baby. Let me have
a look at what you got.”

Darcia stood up, smiled shyly, struck a pose. She wore cinnamon slacks with a matching top.

“Now turn around,” said Otis, and as she did, Otis nodded his head and said, “Yeah,” and “Uh-huh.”

“You like the way I look, Roman?”

“Baby, you know I do.”

“We gonna see each other tonight?”

“Wished I could, but I can’t. Gonna be out of town for a few weeks, I expect. But when I get back we’re gonna hook up, hear?
Maybe I let you cook me a nice meal. Afterwards…” He leaned forward and whispered in her ear. She giggled as he brushed a
hand across her hip.

“For real?” she said.

“I’m gonna get a nut in you
real
good, baby. I wouldn’t lie.”

Otis signaled the bartender with a finger-wave over Darcia’s glass. The drinks were cheap here, cheaper still this time of
day. He left dollars on the bar, kissed Darcia on the neck, and walked across the wooden floor. Wasn’t no kind of trick to
gettin’ pussy when you got down to it. You just needed to know how to talk to a woman, that was all.

“Say, man,” said Otis as he scanned to 100.3, L.A.’s slow-jam station, on the radio dial.

“What,” said Lavonicus.

“You get to keep one of those red, white, and blue balls when you came out of the league?”

Lavonicus breathed through his mouth as he thought it over. He had thick red clown lips and large gapped teeth. Otis found
him to be an ugly man — like that Jaws-lookin’ sucker from that bad run of Bond movies — but he understood why his sister
Cissy loved him. The man was as loyal as a spinster to her vibrator.

“Naw, I didn’t keep one,” Lavonicus said, his voice monotonous and deep.

“ ’Cause I’d pay good money to have me one of those with some of your old teammates’ autographs on it. Especially Marvin Barnes
and Fly Williams. Listen, I was incarcerated when y’all were playin’, and they didn’t even televise those ABA games back then.
But even so, Barnes and Williams were legends in the joint. Those were two black men who took shit from no one.”

“Barnes and Williams both ended up doing time.”

“That’s what I know.”

“Barnes.” Lavonicus shook his head. “He could party all night and still play. Fly gave himself that nickname, but nobody was
more fly than Marvin Barnes. The man drove a Rolls-Royce, wore a full-length mink, platform shoes… shit.”

“Y’all had Maurice Lucas, right?”

“Uh-huh. Freddie Lewis, too. Caldwell Jones…”

“And Moses Malone?”

“For a while.”

“Shoot, man, why didn’t you win the championship?”

“We beat the Nets and Dr. J. in the first round of the play-offs.”

“Yeah, I remember that.”

“But the Kentucky Colonels took us to school after that. Hell, Roman, we were just out there having fun.” Lavonicus smiled.
His knees touched the dash. He lowered his head to look through the windshield. They were heading west on Little Santa Monica.
“Where we going, bro?”

“Frank’s supposed to call me any minute on my cell. Gotta pull over when he calls, ’cause we need to have a serious talk.”

“What about after that?” said Lavonicus.

Otis said, “Gonna pick us up a couple of guns.”

Otis turned up the volume on the radio. The O’Jays were doing “Brandy.” Now that was one pretty song.

“Sippin’ on a cherry soda pop,” sang Otis, “building houses made of sand…”

He looked out the driver’s window as he sang, let his hand dangle in the wind. Palm trees in the middle of the city. Who would
want to live anywhere else?

Now he’d have to make some money to keep this lifestyle going. Because it couldn’t get much better than this. Cruising through
Los Angeles in a Mark V, the sun shining every day, listening to the O’Jays… free.

I’LL GET THIS,”
said Bernie Walters as the waitress laid the check on the table.

Thomas Wilson put his hand over the check and slid it in front of him. “I got it, man.”

“C’mon, Thomas, you always buy.”

“That way, y’all can’t never say that a man who hauls trash for a living didn’t hold up his end.”

Walters and Wilson sat at a four-top in the Brew Hause, a glorified beer garden on 22nd, one block east of the church. The
waitresses here were forced to wear ridiculous outfits, a combination of Heidi and Pippi Longstocking, and it showed on their
embarrassed, overworked faces. Karras and Stephanie Maroulis had done a round and left a half hour earlier.

“So you and Charles used to hang at Fort Stevens when you were kids,” said Walters.

“Yeah. We played army, cowboys-and-indians and shit over at that fort all the time.”

“Vance always wanted to go there when he was a boy, but I never got around to taking him. Might as well add it to the list:
another thing I never did with Vance.”

“You were a good father, Bern.”

“Yeah, sure.” Walters swigged beer. “Hey. I just thought of something. A company motto for your uncle’s business. Okay, you
ready? ‘We don’t just talk trash. We
haul
trash.’ What do you think?”

“It’s good. But one of our competitors in the District uses a phrase damn near like it already. Even has it painted on the
side of his pickup.”

“Maybe that’s why I thought it up. Maybe I’ve seen his truck and I didn’t remember. Like one of those subconscious things.”

“You don’t get into the city enough to have seen it.”

“The city? You can have it. I come downtown once a week for the meeting, and believe me, that’s enough. When I retire from
the U.S. Postal Service, which is gonna be damn soon, I’m gonna move down to my property in St. Mary’s County and never look
back.”

“What you got, some kind of
Gone with the Wind
thing goin’ on down there?”

“What I got
temporarily
is a pop-up trailer-tent with a Jiffy John beside it. Five acres of woods and a little clearing by a deep creek. You oughtta
come down.”

“I love you like a brother, Bernie. To tell you the truth, though, it doesn’t sound like my thing.”

Walters stabbed his cigarette into the ashtray and patted his breast pocket, where he kept his pack.

Wilson dropped money on the table. “Hey, Bern. Dimitri and Stephanie left together again tonight. You notice that?”

“She doesn’t drive. He gives her a lift home. So what?”

“Dimitri lives down below Malcolm X Park, and she lives uptown, on Connecticut.
You
live out in the suburbs. If it’s just a question of a ride, make more sense for you to drop her off on your way.”

“She didn’t ask me. And besides, the two of them being Greeks and all that, they probably have a lot to talk about.”

“And Karras is a booty monger from way back.”

“Cut it out.”

“I’m tellin’ you, man, ’cause I know. One can spot another from a mile away.”

“You’re major league in that department, huh? So why is it that I never see you with a woman, Thomas?”

“Shoot, none of the fräuleins in this joint are to my taste, that’s all. What you gotta do, you gotta come up around
my
way if you want to see me operate. ’Cause you know I like to play in the nappy dugout.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Forget it.”

“Yeah, forget it. And forget about Dimitri and Stephanie, too. Everybody’s got to grieve in their own way. You’ve got your
own private way, whatever that is. Stephanie gets by on her positive attitude. I tend to lean on the good Lord. And Dimitri
—”

“Likes pussy. Matter of fact, I got ten dollars right here says that Dimitri is hittin’ it right now.”

“Leave it alone, Thomas.”

“I’m just makin’ conversation.”

“Yeah, okay.” Walters drained his beer. “You ready?”

“Sure, Bernie. Let’s go.”

“So,” said Karras. “Would you like to be undressed from in front or behind tonight?”

Stephanie smiled. “Oh, I don’t know… in front, I guess.”

Moonlight and streetlight illuminated her deep brown eyes in the darkened room. Karras unbuttoned her blouse. He peeled it
off her shoulders, and she slipped her arms free. He unfastened her bra and dropped it to the floor.

Karras cupped her heavy breasts, leaned in and licked a mole centered between them. His tongue flicked at her right nipple.
She stroked his gray hair, and he came up and kissed her deeply on the mouth.

They moved to the bed and undressed completely. Then they were naked atop the sheets. Karras put a pillow beneath her. She
was ready for him, quick of pulse and wet. Her smell was strong in the room.

“
Ella,
Thimitri.”

“Not yet.”

“No, now.”

“So you’re giving the orders around here, eh?”

“C’mon.”

He penetrated her, pulled out, rubbed the head of his cock along the inside of her muscled thigh.

“Quit playin’ around.” She reached down. “Whaddya, need a map or something?”

“Careful, you’ll tear it off.”

“It feels sturdy enough.”

“Okay… okay.”

Stephanie arched her back as he walked her ribcage with his fingers. She took his hands and put them on her breasts. He buried
himself inside her until there seemed no more of her. Then she adjusted her hips and he slid farther into her gloved warmth.

“There we go,” she said.

“
Opa,
” said Karras.

Karras washed himself, phoned his apartment, came back into the bedroom, and had a seat on the edge of the mattress.

Stephanie got up on one elbow. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just got a message from a guy, called my place. I haven’t seen him in years. Greek guy named Nick Stefanos. My
old man used to work for his grandfather a long time ago.”

“What’d he want?”

“He wants to give me a part-time job in a bar he works in, down in Southeast. Kitchen help.” Karras rubbed his cheek. “Things
do come around.”

“Why’s he calling you now?”

“My friend Marcus’s wife, Elaine? She hooked it up. Elaine uses Stefanos as an investigator on some of her cases.”

“Are you going to talk to him?”

“I don’t know.”

“It would do you good to get out in the world a few hours a day.”

“I know it.”

“I’m serious.”

“Stephanie, I know.”

She pulled him down on the bed, her hair falling and touching his face. She smiled, looking into his eyes. “You were really
ornery tonight, Dimitri.”