George Pelecanos - Shame the Devil

“Yes, but -”

“But, what?”

The reverend looked up at Farrow with bloodshot eyes. “What if I was wrong?”

Farrow laughed. His laughter echoed in the church and then it was erased by the deafening explosion of the. 38. The reverend’s hair lifted briefly from his scalp and fragments of his brain sprayed out across the altar. He fell back; his head made a flat, hollow sound as it hit the wooden floor. A widening pool of blood spread behind it.

Farrow stood over the reverend and shot him again in the side of the face. He walked from the church.

Farrow drove a half mile down Old Church Road in the opposite direction of the interstate until he reached Lee Toomey’s house at the edge of the woods. Toomey was loading some cable wire into his utility truck as Farrow pulled the Ranger into the yard. Toomey’s eyes clouded when he saw that it was Farrow behind the wheel. He noticed the light yellow gloves on Farrow’s hands as Farrow stepped out of the truck and crossed the yard.

“Lee.”

“Frank. Thought you left town.”

“I didn’t. Where’s that family of yours?”

“Martin’s playin’ that TV game of his. My wife and daughter are in the kitchen, I’d expect.”

“Let’s walk into those woods a bit.”

Toomey spit tobacco juice to the side. “Why would we need to do that?”

“We won’t be but a minute. C’mon.”

They went in through a trail and then off the trail until they were out of the house’s sight line. Toomey leaned against the trunk of a pine and regarded Farrow as he lit a cigarette.

Farrow let the Kool dangle from his mouth. He pulled the. 38 and tossed it to Toomey. Toomey caught it and stared back at Farrow.

“I just used that on the Reverend Bob, back in the church. Blew the top of his head off, right up there on the altar. That’s a real efficient weapon you gave me, Lee.”

“Thought I heard a shot,” said Toomey slowly, not taking his eyes off Farrow’s.

“What you need to do now,” said Farrow, “is get over there with some cleaning supplies. I wouldn’t wait for the blood to get too dried in. Scrub that altar down real good and drive the reverend out to that nature preserve we talked about. I was you, I’d bury him up there. Ground’ll be hard, but not too hard. You can thank this mild winter for that. Then I’d throw your gun in the bay, seeing as how it’s got your prints all over it.”

“You,” said Toomey.

Farrow chuckled. “You know, for a moment there I saw the old Toomey in your eyes. Now, that was one bad-ass boy. Getting the Jesus into you, though, it really tripped you up. You and I both know how soft you are now. You’d never make any kind of play on me.”

“That’s right, Frank. I never would.”

Farrow dragged on his smoke. “But just to make sure, I ought to let you know that I’m not going to be far away. I’ve got a little business to take care of up in Washington, D.C., probably keep me in this part of the country for the next couple of weeks. If I even get an idea that you’ve been talking to the law about me, Lee, I want you to remember that I’m just an hour and a half away. I can easily get down here and make a visit to that beautiful family of yours. Or I could pay someone else to do the same. And I’d never forget. Do you understand?”

Toomey felt his blood ticking and his head grow hot. He hadn’t had this feeling for a long while, but it was a familiar feeling, nonetheless. He wanted to kill Farrow right now. He could kill him right now.

Toomey said, “I understand, Frank.”

“Good. You’ll be okay if you move fast and leave nothing behind. The reverend leaving town, well, it happens. Folks’ll just figure he was throwing it to one of the parishioner’s wives. Anyway, you bury him deep enough and they’ll never find him.”

“I’ll do it.”

Farrow looked at Toomey. “See you around, Lee.”

Farrow dragged on his cigarette, dropped it on a bed of pine needles, and crushed it beneath his boot. He walked out of the woods and straight to the truck. Toomey stayed behind, the gun in one hand, the other picking at his beard.

Later that night, when Toomey had finished his task, he phoned Manuel Ruiz at the garage outside D.C. “Manny?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Toomey, bro.”

“Lee, what’s up?”

“Frank Farrow’s heading back to D.C.,” said Toomey. “We need to talk.”

Two o’clo,” said Maria Juarez. “My time, right, Mitri?”

“Yeah, Maria,” said Dimitri Karras, checking his watch. “Go ahead and let it roll.”

Maria slipped the tape that Karras had bought her into the boom box and turned up the volume. Karras had picked it up at an international record store near the old Kilamanjaro club the night before. He had asked for something danceable and Latin, and the clerk had assured him that this one moved.

A Spanish female vocal with Tito Puente’s band behind it came from the box. Maria met James Posten in the middle of the kitchen, and the two of them began to dance, James doing his idea of a chacha. Darnell, from where he stood over the sink, turned his head and smiled. He looked over at Karras, leaning on the expediter’s station, and nodded one time.

“Ole, baby!” said James. His eye shadow was on the maroon side of the rainbow this afternoon.

“Like this, Jame,” said Maria, taking two steps in, retreating two steps, and twisting her hips on the dip.

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” said James, following her lead, twirling the spatula like a baton.

“You doin’ it, Jame,” said Maria.

“Tell the truth,” said James, “and shame the devil.”

Karras studied Maria’s face. She had shown up that morning with her right eye blood gorged and swollen close to shut. She had a truly beautiful spirit; anger had welled up in him immediately when he had walked in that morning and seen her face. He was glad he had picked this day to give her a gift.

Anna Wang entered the kitchen, a cigarette dangling from her lips, a tray of butter patties in her hands. She joined Maria and James momentarily on her way to the refrigerator, where she stowed the covered butter in the rear.

“Nice work today, Karras,” said Anna on her way out the door.

“She wants somethin’,” said James, still dancing. “You could bet it.”

“Just giving the man a compliment, J. P.,” said Anna.

Karras said, “Thanks.”

A half hour later they had begun to shut down the kitchen. James switched the radio to R amp;B as Maria covered the components of the cold station with plastic wrap. Ramon hurried in with a bus tray and dropped it off on the edge of Darnell’s sink. He stepped on Darnell’s foot deliberately, and Darnell grabbed his hand, pressing his thumb down on the crook of Ramon’s thumb. Ramon pulled his hand away and stood there rubbing it, a crooked smile on his face.

“Ah, here we go, y’all,” said James as the Army Reserve commercial came on the radio at its usual time. James turned it up as the announcer’s voice rose with the build of the music.

Karras, Darnell, Maria, James, and Ramon stopped working. At the same moment they all raucously sang, “Be… all that you can be!”

James and Maria doubled over in laughter, their hands on each other’s shoulders. Darnell gave Ramon skin.

Karras smiled ear to ear. His face felt odd, and then he knew why. He had forgotten what it felt like to smile with that kind of abandon. It had been a long time.

“How’s that flounder?” said Darnell, sliding onto a stool next to Karras at the bar.

“Good – what’d you, brush it with butter?”

“Yeah, and squeezed some lemon on it, too. Wrapped it up in foil and baked it in the oven. That’s the way you need to be cookin’ fish. Simple like that. Course, I would have spiced it some. Phil doesn’t want anybody thinkin’ we’re turnin’ this place into a soul-food joint, nothin’ like that.”