George Pelecanos - Firing offence

I look behind the counter at my grandfather. He is slicing a tomato that he holds in his hand. The juice of the tomato stains the yellowish apron he wears around his ample middle. There is a Band-Aid on his thumb from his accident on the meat slicer earlier in the day. He sees the tabloid open in front of me and knows my daily ritual.

“Anything good today at the movies, Niko?” he shouts across the store.

“Nothing much, Papou.”

“Okay, boy,” he says, and continues to slice the tomato. There is a smile on his wide, pink face.

I threw my head back and killed another beer. More horns sounded. I pulled back within the lines of my lane and turned left on Florida Avenue, heading east.

I ran the red at North Capitol and bore left onto Lincoln Road. I passed houses with rotting back porches, alleys littered with garbage, and packs of young men grouped like predators on street corners.

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Then I was veering left, passing under the black, arched iron gate of the Glenwood Cemetery. I pulled the top on another beer and stayed to the right, driving slowly around long curves and lazy inclines, by rows of headstones and monuments crammed together, their symmetry broken only by the occasional dogwood or pine.

As the names on the headstones changed from Protestant to ethnic, I slowed down. When I reached a section that only contained the graves of Greeks, I stopped the car.

I remained seated and drank my last beer. When I finished it, I crushed the can, tossed it into the backseat, and slipped the pint bottle inside my jacket. I got out of the car and staggered onto the grass.

Spartan immigrants had chosen to lie here. They were buried on a long hill overlooking the road and a junior-high playground. A few of the headstones mentioned their native villages and the year in which they came to America.

I recognized many of the family names. Some had been friends with, or had known my grandfather: Kerasiotas, Kalavratinos, Stathopoulos, Psarakis. On the headstone of a guy named Vlatos, the inscription read, “I Wish I Was in Vegas.”

I had a seat under an oak tree across from my grandfather’s headstone. I reached into my jacket and pulled out the pint, tilted it back to my mouth, and watched bubbles rise to its upturned base. I swallowed, toasted my grandfather with the bottle, and replaced the cap.

Though it was probably very cool, I felt comfortable. I listened to the faint laughter and yells of the boys playing ball on the playground at the foot of the hill. The wind blew small yellow leaves around my feet. And I stared at the headstone that bore my name: Nicholas J. Stefanos.

I stayed in that position for the remainder of the afternoon. I was unable to focus my thoughts on any one thing; all of my emotions seemed to flow through me at once. In the end there were only a few pathetic certainties: I was thirty years old, unemployed, and sitting dead drunk in a graveyard, an empty pint of rotgut bourbon in my hand.

Sometime after the skies had darkened and the sounds of the playground had died away, a man in a caretaker’s uniform walked towards me. He kicked the soles of my shoes lightly. The name stitched across his chest, on a white patch, was Raymond.

“You better get on up,” he said. “They’ll be lockin’ the gates, and just before that the police cruise through.”

“Thanks,” I said, using his arm to help me up.

“You all right, man?”

“Yeah, Raymond. Thanks a million.”

I don’t remember the ride home, except that there was shouting and more hornblowing. There was also a nasty bit of business at the National Shr ine, where I attracted a small crowd when I pulled over to vomit.

I woke up early the next morning, halfway on my bed and fully clothed. There was some puke splashed across my denim shss›

I had a cold shower. After that, I put on side two of the Replacements’ Tim, the most violently melodic rock and roll I owned. I cleared the room and forced myself to jump rope.

By the time Bob Stinson’s blistering guitar solo kicked in, on “Little Mascara,” my eyes were closed and I was working the rope, my body soaked with sweat and alcohol.

I took another shower, as hot as I could stand it, and shaved. I cooked breakfast, made a pot of coffee, and finished them both. I put on clean clothes and ran fresh water into the cat’s dish.

Then I climbed into my Dodge and pointed it in the direction of James Pence.

The buzzer unlocked the glass doors automatically. I stepped into the building, past the security guard and the woman at the switchboard, and into the elevator. I rode it to the tenth floor and walked the narrow carpeted hallway to Pence’s apartment. The door was open as I arrived.

The final drag of Pence’s cigarette burned between his fingers. The familiar smell of Old Spice and whiskey drifted towards me.

“You look like hell,” he said.

“May I come in?”

“Certainly.” He stepped aside as I passed.

I walked into the living room, hearing his padded footsteps behind me. I turned to look at him. The grief of the last weeks had taken years from him, years he didn’t have.

“Coffee?” he asked.

“No coffee. Why don’t you just get me a screwdriver. A Phillips head, can you do that?”

“Yes,” he said. “I own one.”

“Then do it.”

I heard him rummage through a drawer in the kitchen. I picked up the VCR from the lower shelf of the television stand and moved it over to the dining room table. It felt very light.

Pence brought me the screwdriver. I took it and worked on the back of the recorder. He lit another cigarette and sat watching me from the end of the table. His face was reddening from embarrassment, but there was also a look on him something like relief.

When the screws were off, I lifted the back panel and put it aside. I reached in and felt around, then looked it over with a perfunctory glance. I sat back in my chair and stared at Pence. He looked away.

“It’s empty,” I said. “But you knew that.”

“Yes.” He looked at his lap boyishly and blew some smoke at his knees. ‹

I walked over to the window and raised the blinds. Then I cranked open the casement window and breathed cool air.

“Is my grandson alive?” Pence said in a small voice.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you know, Mr. Stefanos?”

I turned and looked at him angrily. “I know now what you’ve suspected for weeks. The people I used to work for are involved in some sort of drug trafficking. They’re moving the drugs through the warehouse in these VCRs. I think that Jimmy stole one and brought it home. Do we agree so far?”

“Yes.”

“When he got it home and saw it was dead, he opened up the back and found its contents. He was never fired from Nathan’s, he just never went back. But he knew they’d figure out eventually who took the VCR. So he got scared and left town with the drugs and a couple of friends he made along the way. You figured all this out and came to me for help. Then you put the VCR out where I could see it, knowing I’d notice it, right?”

“That’s right,” he said. “Believe me, I’m not proud of how I got you into this. Playing on your sympathies, and so forth.”

“So forth. You mean lying, don’t you?”

“Yes. I’d do more than that, to protect my grandson. When you have children, you’ll understand.”

“I’m not interested in understanding your motives.” I shook a cigarette out of his pack and lit it, then dropped his Zippo on the table. “Why did you come to me?”

“After I found the empty recorder in Jimmy’s room and linked it with his rather erratic behavior and the company he was keeping, I didn’t know what to do. Going to the police seemed out of the question. After all, Jimmy was involved, in a criminal sense. I went to Mr. McGinnes for help-he was the only one in the organization I knew-and he suggested you. When he said your name, I recognized it. Jimmy had mentioned you to me, several times. It wasn’t all a lie, Mr. Stefanos.”