George Pelecanos - Shame the Devil

“When did you get this?” asked Boyle.

“Couple of days ago. It was sent to the station house and forwarded here.”

“And you think -”

“Yeah. I think it might have come from the shooters.”

Boyle forced a reassuring smile. “Could have come from anybody, Bill. What we do for a living, we’re gonna accumulate a lot of enemies.”

“I know it. But the man I killed that day was the only man I’ve ever killed. I’ve been threatened plenty in my career, mostly by the families of men I put away. But the majority of that was talk. This here has a different kind of tone to it, wouldn’t you say?”

“It is pretty direct.”

“And it comes straight out of the local paper, which means the one who sent it could be right here in town. It worries me, man.”

“You can get the Post anywhere in the country.”

“It worries me just the same.”

Boyle looked down at the blank envelope Jonas had handed him. “This the way it came?”

“No, it was mailed. I have the original right here.” Jonas wheeled himself to an end table, opened a drawer, wheeled himself back, and dropped the envelope in Boyle’s lap.

“Can I touch it?”

“My prints are already all over it. Go ahead.”

Boyle studied the envelope. “Typed address… mailed from Los Angeles. I’m gonna take this with me, Bill. And the photograph, all right?”

“That’s why I asked you to come by.”

“Don’t worry. It’s nothing, most likely.”

“That’s my boy whose face is cut out there.”

“I know.”

They sat without speaking for a minute or so. Boyle closed his eyes and drank beer while Jonas stared down at the afternoon sunlight spreading across the floor.

“The families of those people,” said Jonas, his eyes still on the floor.

Boyle nodded. “I met one of them, just before I came over here. Dimitri Karras, the father of the boy got hit by the car. Karras is working in the kitchen of a bar I drink in from time to time.”

“The department still sponsoring that support group for those people?”

“Yeah. What I heard is that the group asked the shrink we put in there to leave. But they still meet on Tuesday nights, and we still pay for the space. As much as they were in the news, it’s hard to forget them: Karras and the bartender’s wife. The waiter’s father. The pizza chef’s best friend. Bet that’s one happy group, right?”

“I ought to stop by one night and sit in with them. For a long time I thought I’d be intruding. And there was that other thing, too – I dreaded seeing those folks. I had the idea that they’d think maybe I could have done more that day -”

“You did plenty.”

“I know, but that’s what was goin’ through my mind. How did Karras seem to you?”

“Quiet,” said Boyle.

“Those people won’t be right until we find the shooters.” Jonas rubbed his cheek. “Maybe they’ll never be right.”

Boyle stood up and got into his raincoat. He slipped the envelope and photograph into the inside pocket. “You want me to get a watch put on your house for a while?”

“No, that’s okay.”

“Bill, you’re still listed in the phone book, for Christ’s sake. Better let me do that, just for grins.”

“It’s okay. Like you said, it’s probably nothing. Didn’t mean to overreact. But someone threatens your kid -”

“No problem. How’s Christopher doin’, by the way?”

“Real good. Studying to be a biologist.”

“That’s great. He’s one tall kid, too. Bet he can jam a basketball without even thinking about it.”

Jonas chuckled and shook his head.

“What’s so funny?” asked Boyle.

“Nothin’. You just cost me ten bucks, is all.”

“How’s that?”

“Never mind. Listen, Dan… keep on it, hear?”

“Bet it,” said Boyle.

The two of them shook hands. Boyle killed his beer, crushed the can, and set it on the living-room table.

Jonas got himself over to the window and watched Boyle amble down the sidewalk toward his car. Two teenage boys approached him, and Boyle opened his raincoat enough so that the butt of his Python showed. The boys stepped off the sidewalk and let Boyle pass.

Stupid bastard, thought Jonas. Stupid, crazy bastard.

He needed a cop like Boyle now.

Dimitri Karras opened his eyes. He stared up at the bedroom ceiling and unballed his fists. He’d been trying to nap, but he’d flashed on Jimmy and knew then that he’d never get to sleep. Other people were startled into insomnia by thoughts of their own mortality. With Karras it was always the image of his little boy.

He got out of bed and went to get something to drink.

His apartment on U Street, near 15th, was sparsely furnished with his old Trauma Arms living-room furniture, moved from the rec room of his house in upper Northwest. From that house he’d also taken his clothing, his books and records, and his stereo. Nothing else. He’d left Lisa with everything the two of them had accumulated in the course of their marriage and found himself this apartment a year after Jimmy’s death.

That he and Lisa wouldn’t make it was almost predictable. He’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t blame her for what happened, though he couldn’t stop thinking that if she’d kept up with Jimmy that day, stayed by his side… That was the problem; he couldn’t stop himself from thinking. And vocalizing those thoughts in the many horrible, unreasonable arguments that followed.

Blame and guilt, said Lisa’s shrink, the one who always seemed to take Lisa’s side. Blame and guilt would kill their marriage if they let it. They let it, almost from the start. It wasn’t long before the two of them were done.

When he moved to the apartment he thought it would be better, being away from Lisa, and especially being away from their house, where memories laughed at him in every room. But it wasn’t much better in the apartment. It was only more quiet. So quiet sometimes that he’d catch himself speaking out loud. He’d check himself then because he knew that this kind of quiet could drive him mad.

Karras stood at the sink drinking water. He watched a roach crawl over the backsplash of the countertop and disappear. Jimmy would have called it a “woach.” Just about everything he’d see or hear reminded him of Jimmy when he let it. Jimmy in death was a scream that was always in Karras’s head.

Karras paced the apartment. He found himself sitting on the edge of his bed.

Sometimes he’d be sitting in his bedroom like this in the old house, and he’d hear Jimmy fall, and he’d hear him begin to sob. Jimmy would call, “Daddy!”and Karras would say, “I’m in the bedroom, son,” and Jimmy would come in and run into his arms. Karras would hold him, rub his back, and kiss his head. Karras could still smell Jimmy’s scalp, the peculiar mix of sweat and Johnson’s shampoo.

Karras looked at the open entrance to his bedroom. He stared at the space, but there was nothing, no one, there. After a while he looked away and saw his reflection in the dresser mirror. He noticed that he had been crying, and he wiped the tears from his face.

The meeting was tonight. He’d be with his friends. He’d lie down with Stephanie later on. Things would be much better tonight.

But that was a few hours away. He decided to take a shower and change his clothes. Maybe he’d go down to the Spot, sit at the bar, find someone to talk to. Kill some time.

Nick Stefanos was sitting at the bar of the Spot, having a bottle of beer when Karras stepped down off the landing. Karras slid onto the stool to Stefanos’s right.

“Hey, Dimitri.”

“Nick. What, you’re hanging out here on your night off?”