George Pelecanos - Shame the Devil

“I’m never off. I worked this afternoon, something I’m doing for Elaine. I’m meeting my friend Alicia tonight, but I had a few hours to kill first. What about you?”

“I’ve got my group later on. I had some time to kill as well.”

“Dimitri,” said Mai, stepping up behind the bar in her Marine Corps T-shirt.

“Mai. Give me a ginger ale, please. From the bottle, not the gun.”

Mai had an Abba CD playing on the house system. It bothered Stefanos that groups like Abba and the Carpenters were considered hip now. Stefanos figured that anything that blew the first time around still blew, period. Retro appreciation was nothing more than blind nostalgia.

“Hey, Mai,” said Stefanos, “give us a break with this ‘Dancing Queen’ bullshit, huh?”

Mai set a glass of ginger ale on a bev nap in front of Karras. “My shift, Nicky, my music.”

She drifted away as Karras looked down the bar. A couple of neighborhood guys were arguing about what the Wizards “needed,” and a plainclothes cop from the Prostitution and Perversions division sat alone, sipping a red cocktail.

“She’s right, Nick. She ought to be able to play what she wants when she’s behind the bar. Besides, none of the customers seem to mind.”

“Helen Keller would notice more than those guys,” said Stefanos.

“In the kitchen it’s the same way. Everybody arguing over what’s coming out of the boom box. What they did back there was, each person got their own time slot to listen to whatever they want.”

“Yeah, I know. Maria gets her half hour right after the rush.”

“The thing is, what I noticed, the Spanish station she likes plays one song during that period and the rest is news. So she gets ripped off.”

“Sounds like you been thinking about work a lot, Dimitri.”

“I just noticed it, is all.”

Stefanos signaled Mai for another beer. She served it, and he lit a cigarette.

“Phil tells me you’re catching on,” said Stefanos. “I know from the shifts you and I have pulled together, the food’s coming out pretty fast.”

“Thanks,” said Karras. “And thanks for hooking me up. It’s been good for me, man.”

“Yeah, this place gets under your skin.”

Karras looked through the reach-through at the end of the bar. Ramon was in the kitchen, trying out a spin-kick on Darnell. Darnell stepped away from it and laughed.

“Me and Darnell,” said Karras, “we had a talk. It wasn’t any big thing. I get the feeling we’re going to get along all right.”

“You’re doing a good job. He’s not the type to hold a grudge. It’s like I told you, he’s a man.”

“That guy could do more if someone took him under their wing. He could open his own little place if someone showed him how.”

“No one’s ever taken that much interest in him, I guess.”

Karras watched Stefanos close his eyes lovingly as he took a long swallow of beer.

“I met Dan Boyle today,” said Karras.

“Uh-huh. He was curious about you. You know, twenty-four and seven a cop and all that.”

“He says his uncle was boyhood friends with my father.”

“Yeah. He claims his uncle used to drink coffee in my grandfather’s lunch counter, too, when his uncle was walking a beat. My papou never mentioned him, but it makes sense, I guess.”

“Strange guy, Boyle.”

“Not really. He’s not too hard to figure out.”

“You know him pretty well?”

Stefanos hit his cigarette. “Me and Boyle have a history together.”

Karras looked into his glass. “He knew about my son.”

“Not surprising. He’s Homicide.”

“Maybe he knows what’s happening. The progress, I mean, with the investigation.”

“Don’t think about it. Getting on the wrong side of Boyle can hurt you. But so can being his friend. My advice is to keep your distance.” Stefanos crushed out his cigarette. “Just stay away.”

“Maybe you can ask him what’s going on for me.”

“Sure. I’ll ask him.”

Karras thought of the passage of time, looking Stefanos over. “I remember the first time I met you. You were a kid. A stock boy at that place on Connecticut.”

“Nutty Nathan’s.”

“How’d you get from there to here?”

“You want the condensed version of twenty-two years?” Stefanos flicked ash off his smoke. “I got married, moved up through the ranks at Nathan’s, and became a ‘retail executive.’ Then I got divorced and blew up my career when I stumbled into investigative work. I walked into this bar one day, and here I am.”

“You’re just working for the Fifth Streeters now?”

“Not anyone but Elaine. The private cop business wasn’t for me. Too many things happened.” Stefanos rubbed his nose. “What about you? You were some unemployed, post-hippie pot dealer when I met you. And I seem to remember you turning me on to some high-octane flake in the bathroom at a Scream concert one night back in, hell, when was it?”

“Eighty-six. That’s right. I was all of those things. Directionless, I guess, is the best word to describe who I was. Then I met Lisa while I was cleaning myself up. We had Jimmy… Shit, man, everything was different after that. I never even had the slightest desire to get fucked up ever again, from the day he came to us. It’s like, he was born and I was re born, that make sense? Everything changed.” A tightness entered Karras’s face.

“Don’t talk about it, Dimitri,” said Stefanos. “You don’t have to, okay?”

Karras nodded. “Okay. I know where that goes, and it’s never good. Thanks.”

They sat there for another hour. Stefanos had another beer and a shot of Grand-Dad to keep the beer company. Karras, who knew too well the rituals involved in getting high, had been noticing Stefanos romance the alcohol. He watched him kill his beer and knew he would automatically signal Mai for another.

“Hold up,” said Karras, putting a hand on Stefanos’s bicep. “Don’t order another beer.”

“What are you talking about, man? I’ve got another hour and a half before I meet Alicia.”

“Another hour and a half, you’re gonna have a load on. You want to meet her like that?”

Stefanos thought of the last night he’d been with Alicia. How he’d been too drunk to talk to her. How he’d been too drunk to get an erection, even with her next to him, naked in the bed.

“You got a better suggestion?”

“I’ve got my group; it’s getting ready to start.” The group had always been hermetic by agreement, and for a moment he wondered how the others would take to the idea of a stranger’s joining them. He said, “Why don’t you come with me?”

“You’re not trying to get me into one of those ten-step things, are you? Because, listen, I like to drink. I know who I am, and I’m not looking to make any changes.”

“No, it’s not that. I just want you to meet my friends. Anyway, what’re you, gonna sit on that stool and listen to Lobo for the next hour and a half?”

“I believe this is Bread.”

“Whatever. Come with me, man.”

“All right.” Stefanos reached for his wallet. “Let’s go.”

By the time Karras and Stefanos walked into the common room of the church at 23rd and P, the group had already convened in the center of the room. Tonight there were two additional men in the circle: an older man in a wheelchair and a young man with similar features seated in a folding chair beside him.

“Hey, everybody,” said Karras, his voice echoing in the hall.

“Dimitri,” said Stephanie Maroulis, her eyes flashing on his. “We’ve got company tonight.”

“I see,” said Karras, and as he approached the group and got a closer look at the man in the wheelchair, he knew.