George Pelecanos - Shame the Devil

Stefanos left his number and hung up the phone.

“Shit,” he said, realizing then that he was half lit, wondering what kind of cockeyed message he had just left on the machine.

He went back to the stick and settled his tab. He bought a go-beer from the tender, slipped the bottle in the inside pocket of his leather, and left the bar.

Stefanos ignitioned his car and turned on the radio while he looked in the ashtray for the tail end of a joint he had placed there a few nights back. There was a news brief on the radio: A local middleweight contender who had been in and out of trouble with the law over the years had been gunned down in the lobby of the cancer institute of the Washington Hospital Center, where he had been receiving treatment for a malignant tumor. The assassin had stood over him and emptied his gun into him after he had fallen. Five bystanders were injured by wild shots. The boxer was dead.

Stefanos had seen Simon Brown fight the boxer at the Pikesville Armory in Baltimore County when the boxer was coming up through the ranks. The boxer had taken himself out in the fifth round with an alleged broken hand. Even with that loss, the middleweight had been talked about then as a fighter with a future.

“A murder in a hospital, where people be goin’ to get well,” said the announcer. “Look, I’ll say it again for y’all who haven’t been listening. Black-on-black violence is wrong. We are killing our own people. This madness has got to stop. Don’t smoke the brothers. Peace.”

Stefanos found the joint, fired it up. He took in what was left of it and dropped the roach out the window. He opened his beer, took a swig, and placed the bottle between his legs. He pushed a Steve Wynn into the tape deck and pulled out of his spot.

Stefanos drove east on U, cut up 15th to Irving, and took that east, passing the hospital where the boxer had been killed. He liked to drive the city at night when he had a buzz, and he had one now. He found himself on North Capitol, and he took it north for a couple of miles, cutting a left onto Kennedy Street before the New Hampshire Avenue turnoff.

He knew all along he’d come here tonight. He turned the volume down on the deck and cruised slowly down the dark street.

He passed boxy apartment buildings, barber shops, braid parlors, hair and nail salons, a variety store, a Laundromat, a CVS chain pharmacy, two bars, a barbecue joint, and several houses of worship, including a storefront iglesia and the Faith Mission Temple, whose parking lot was fenced and topped by concertina wire. He passed the Brightwood Market, which seemed to be the center of the neighborhood; several young and not-so-young men stood outside, their shoulders hunched, their hands deep in their parkas and Starter coats. A couple of men were boxing playfully, feinting and dodging under a dim street lamp.

One of the men outside the market yelled something at Stefanos as he drove by. Stefanos went along.

He pulled over past the 1st Street intersection, in front of the Hunan Delite, a place that advertised “Fried Chicken, Fried Fish, Chinese, Steak and Cheese.” The carryout was the last of several businesses on that particular hundred-block of Kennedy. A Lexus with custom wheels and spoiler sat parked in the six-space side lot.

Through the plate glass window Stefanos could see a kind of lobby and a wall-to-wall Plexiglas shield that separated, and protected, the employees from the clientele. A revolving Plexiglas tray, like a commercial lazy Susan, had been screwed into the middle of the shield. The tray took money in and was large enough to put food orders out. There was a printed menu posted above the shield that was normally lit but had been turned off. A young Asian guy, clean-cut in a turtleneck and slacks, swept the lobby behind a locked front door.

In his rearview, Stefanos saw a couple of the men from outside the Brightwood Market walking down the sidewalk toward his car.

Stefanos no longer worked at night. He wouldn’t even think of getting out of his car here after dark. It wasn’t paranoia. It was real.

He drove west.

Nick Stefanos parked on Colorado at 14th and walked around the corner to Slim’s, a small jazz club run by Ethiopians. Live music hit him as he went through the door into the nearly packed house. He wove around tables of middle-class, middle-aged blacks and one interracial couple. There was one empty deuce, and he took it, his back to the wall. He shook out a cigarette from his deck of Camels and put fire to tobacco. He dragged deeply as the waitress set a shot of Beam Black and a cold bottle of beer down in front of him.

“Thanks, Cissy.”

She was tall and lovely, with clear reddish-brown skin. “You want to run a tab tonight, Nick?”

“I better.”

Applause filled the room. The leader of the quartet, Marlon Jordon, took a small bow, his trumpet in both hands. The band had a hot rhythm section, and Jordon could blow. They launched into “Two Bass Hit” as Stefanos downed his shot. Heads were bobbing. Some of the patrons were keeping time with their feet, their palms slapping at the tabletops. Stefanos dragged on his cigarette and closed his eyes.

Beautiful. When it’s this good it’s fucking beautiful. I’ll never stop drinking. It just feels too fucking good.

He was drunk by the time he made it home. It was only a couple of blocks from Slim’s, but he had driven it with a hand over one eye.

He walked around the back of the house to his apartment. Inside the door, on a small cherry-wood table, he saw the day’s mail. Atop the stack sat an unstamped manila envelope, labeled with his name and address. He opened the envelope and examined its contents: the folder on the Randy Weston case. Elaine Clay had messengered it over earlier in the day.

Stefanos dropped the folder on the table and went into his bedroom. He could see Alicia’s form beneath the blankets of the bed.

“Hey,” said Stefanos.

“Hi,” she said.

He got out of his shirt, removed his wristwatch, and dropped it shy of the dresser top. He bent down, picked up the watch, and put it in place. He unzipped his jeans and stumbled getting out of them.

“You all right?” said Alicia.

“Yeah. I, uh, had a few. I didn’t realize…”

“Come to bed. Come on.”

He got under the sheets. She was naked and warm. He turned on his side, and she pressed herself against him, kissing him behind his ear. He could feel her sex and her hard nipples against his back.

“Alicia?”

“Ssh.”

She rubbed his back, and after a while he fell to sleep.

Lee Toomey lived on eight acres of woodland ten miles south of Edwardtown, on Old Church Road off the interstate. The old church, hugged by a stand of oak, had been gutted and rebuilt and now carried a new facade of white aluminum siding. Farrow passed the New Rock Church and a half mile later made the turnoff onto Toomey’s gravel drive.

Toomey’s utility truck, boldly lettered with the company name of Toomey Electric, was parked before his house alongside Toomey’s black El Camino. Farrow parked the SHO on the other side of the truck, walked around a bicycle carelessly dropped in the yard, and knocked on the front door of Toomey’s brick rambler.

Viola, Toomey’s wife, answered the door. She had mousy brown hair, a nothing chest, a flat ass, and a buckshot of acne on her chin. Farrow didn’t know how Toomey could stand to fuck her. Viola carried Ashley – a white-trash name for a kid if Farrow had ever heard one – their two-year-old daughter, in her arms.

“Hi… Larry.”

“Viola. Lee asked me to come on out.”

“He’s back in the den.”

She stepped aside, bumping her back on the wall. Viola was afraid of Farrow, and that was good.