George Pelecanos - Shame the Devil

“Just after nine-thirty at night.”

“How do you know it was nine-thirty?”

“Just after nine-thirty. Because we close then, and I had just locked the door.”

“You recognized the sounds as gunshots?”

“Two gunshots, yes. And I know what that popping sound is.”

“When you heard the shots, were you in the lobby or behind the Plexiglas?”

“In the lobby, sweeping up.”

“So you could see clearly through the front window.”

“Yes.”

“Let’s see… After the gunshots, you say you heard rubber laid on the street, then saw a red Ford Torino blow by.”

“That’s right.”

“The boxy version from the sixties or the more rounded version from the early seventies?”

“Rounded.”

“Color?”

“Red.” Stefanos saw a light in Sun’s eyes. “Like I already told the real cops.”

“What about tags?”

“No tags.”

“You mean you couldn’t make out the state?”

“I mean the car had no tags on it. That much I could see.”

“Okay. I’m not gonna keep you, Jerry.” Stefanos handed Sun his card. “Mind if I call you if I think of something I missed?”

“Sure.” Sun’s eyes lit with amusement once again. “Just call information and ask for Hunan Delite.”

Stefanos grinned. “This city’s probably only got, what, a hundred or so of those in the phone book?”

“Yeah, it took a long time for my family to come up with the name.”

“You spelled ‘Delight’ wrong. You aware of that?”

“You’re very funny.”

“I’m trying.”

“The thing is, we barely sell any Chinese food. Some fried fish, and then the rest is steak and cheese. ‘Steak and cheese everything,’ that’s what I hear all day.”

“Thanks for your help,” said Stefanos.

“That your Dodge parked next to my Lexus?” said Sun.

“Yeah.”

“Those pipes. You put them on yourself?”

“They’re Borlas. I bought ’em through Hot Rod and had them installed.”

“Nice.”

“Take care, Jerry.”

Sun waved and walked away.

Stefanos walked across the street to the Brightwood Market and stopped the least threatening looking young man he could find. He identified himself as an investigator and asked the man if he had been acquainted with either Donnel Lawton or Randy Weston. The young man shook his head. He asked him if he had heard anything on the street or had any knowledge at all about the murder. The man walked off without a word.

Stefanos had spoken loudly in hopes of getting a blind response to the names from the other men who stood around outside the market. He heard an obscenity muttered and looked around: A couple of the men stared at him with smirking eyes. He asked them as a group if any of them had known Donnel Lawton or Randy Weston. They ignored him completely.

In the year he had worked for Elaine Clay as an investigator, he had been threatened several times in a benign way, slapped across the face by a woman on the doorstep of her row house, and chased down the street by a clubfooted drunk wielding a butcher knife. There had been no serious incidents. This was as much due to luck as it was to the precautions he had taken in his manner and dress.

And there was something else, too. A black man could seriously injure or kill another black man in town and get a tepid response from the police and the press. When a black attacked a white, though, the cops and the media came down hard on both the perpetrator and the neighborhood. It had always been that way. As a white investigator in a predominantly black city, Stefanos had an edge.

There was nothing here for him today. He hadn’t expected there to be. He glanced at the market’s windows and down along the concrete landscape as if he were looking for something in particular, and then he walked back to his car.

Ronald Weston lived with his mother and younger sister in an apartment on 9th, between Missouri and Peabody, about a mile northwest of 1st and Kennedy. The radio towers of the Fourth District Police Headquarters rose behind the roofline of the complex, a half dozen boxy units with screened porches in the rear.

Stefanos parked on 9th. He had phoned Ronald Weston early that morning, and Weston had told him to come on by.

Weston opened the door to the apartment. He was a thin boy, not past his mid-teens, wearing an oversize T-shirt, extrawides, and unlaced Timberland boots. His ears were too long for his face. He had large brown eyes and crooked teeth. He gave Stefanos a casual nod, reaching for hard.

“Nick Stefanos. I called.”

“Come on in.”

Stefanos followed him back through a hall. Go-go music grew louder as they entered a living room. A Nintendo 64 was hooked up to a large-screen television in a cheap hutch set against the wall. Fast-food wrappers littered a glass-top table, and a Big Gulp soda sat half full amid the wrappers.

A phone rang. Ronald Weston found the cordless beneath a Taco Bell bag. He activated the phone, said something to the caller, said to Stefanos, “Hold up,” and walked away. Stefanos could see him in the kitchen, hand gesturing as he spoke. From Weston’s shy smile Stefanos guessed that he was talking to a girl.

Stefanos went to a portable stereo, saw a Northeast Groovers CD atop a nearby stack. He turned the volume down to conversation level as Weston came back in the room.

“All right, man. Had to talk to this jazzy girl I know. I’m all done with that.”

Stefanos had a seat on the couch and pulled out his pad and a pen. Weston chose a hard-armed chair beside the glass table. He kept the phone held loosely in his hand.

“So Ronald -”

“Yeah.”

“Like I told you on the phone, your brother Randy’s trial is coming up. We’re still working on his defense, and I need to ask you some questions.”

“They gonna put me up there on the stand?”

“I don’t think so.”

“’Cause whatever I said, they’d say I would lie for my brother, right?”

“Would you?”

“To keep him out of jail? Goddamn right I would.”

“Okay, but do me a favor. Just don’t lie to me today.”

Weston looked Stefanos over. “You get paid, right?”

“Yes.”

“They pay you good?”

Stefanos looked down at his pad. “Your brother – did he deal drugs?”

Weston laughed and shook his head. “Damn, you go right to it, don’t you?”

“Did he?”

“Why you think I’m gonna tell you that?”

“Look, I’m not going to pass on any information that would hurt your brother. Like I told you, I’m working for the woman that’s defending him. I’m just trying to find out what happened, okay? So let me ask you again: Did Randy deal drugs?”

Weston licked his lips. “He had a little thing goin’ on, yeah.”

“Rock?”

“Uh-uh. Powder. He didn’t fuck with no rock.”

“How big was his operation?”

“Wasn’t no operation, man. He just had a little somethin’ personal goin’, like I said. Little extra on the side to put next to his other money.”

“What other money? He had a job?”

“No. Not since last year.”

“But he did have his own apartment down the street from here, and a nice car. And a girlfriend, too. So his business must have been bigger than what you’re describing.”

Weston looked past Stefanos. “He had a couple of younguns runnin’ for him, that’s all. No gunslingers, no kind of drama like that.”

“Down around First and Kennedy?”

“Yeah. But it wasn’t no thing. Boy name of Forjay runnin’ the shit down there, and Randy always made sure to step out of Forjay’s way. Randy, he just gettin’ a little bit of it for his own self.”

“Okay. What about Donnel Lawton?”