George Pelecanos - Shame the Devil

“I always know where she is. I drop her at the Fort Totten station at seven-forty-five sharp every morning, and then she goes off to work. And I pick her up at five-forty-five, the same time, same place, every evening. She’s a stylist at a shop over in Greenbelt.”

“What shop?”

“You’re gonna have to find that out for yourself.”

“I’m going to talk to her, Mr. Mitchell.”

“Go ahead. She’ll tell you the same thing I have. She doesn’t exactly remember.”

“Right.” Stefanos walked for the door, turned. “By the way. You talked about families. Randy Weston’s got a kid brother, not a bad kid but on the edge. And Weston’s got a mother, too, works a government job downtown. She’s trying real hard to keep it together, I’d expect. There’s all sorts of families trying to make it out here. I just thought you’d like to know.”

“You see yourself out?”

“I got it. Thanks for your time.”

Driving south on New Hampshire, Stefanos remembered something Anna Wang had said about the Chinese guys she’d known. He crossed the District Line and took the Kennedy Street cutoff heading west.

Stefanos walked into the order area of Hunan Delite and went to the lazy Susan below the teardrop holes cut into the Plexiglas. He listened to the new Usher single coming from the tinny speakers mounted in the lobby while he waited to catch Jerry Sun’s eye. Sun came forward, and Stefanos placed his license against the glass.

“Stefanos,” said Sun. “I remember. What can I do for you?”

“Do you sell steak and cheese?”

“Very funny. C’mon, man, I got things to do.”

“I need to talk to you. I’ll make it fast.”

Sun made a head motion. Stefanos walked back out the door and around the building. By the time he got there, Sun was leaning against the Dumpster, cleaning his eyeglasses on his shirt.

“Jerry.”

“Nick!”

“Okay, okay. Listen, here’s the thing: I know this Chinese girl, friend of mine named Anna, waitresses in this place I bartend for.”

“She sounds real nice. But I’ve got a girlfriend, Stefanos.”

“I don’t think she’d dig you anyway. She doesn’t date Chinese guys. Says they’re more interested in their cars than their women.”

Sun smiled a little and shrugged.

“So I was thinking,” said Stefanos, “about how you noticed the pipes on my sled.”

“So what?”

“What about that red Torino you saw speeding away from the murder scene? You notice anything more than what you gave me the first time?”

“Need help, huh?”

“I’m a Mopar man. I don’t know a thing about Fords. You know what they say: You drive a Dodge, you drive in style; drive a Ford, you’ll walk a mile.”

Sun rolled his eyes. “What you want to know?”

“Anything.”

“Okay,” said Sun. “It was called the Twister Special when it came out. The factory put a decal on the side so you knew; it was supposed to look like a tornado or something, ran from the front to the rear quarter panels. It was a very fast car. The stock engine was a four twenty-nine, SCJ.”

Stefanos smiled like David Janssen and scribbled in his notebook. “Goddamn, Jerry. Anything else?”

“Ford only made ninety of that particular car. I’d call that a very limited edition. A car like that, it shouldn’t be so hard to find.”

“Keep going.”

“I only saw it go by quick, but from what I saw the car was in perfect condition. Like it had been garaged. Or restored.”

Stefanos looked at Sun with admiration. “Why didn’t you tell me the first time around?”

“You didn’t ask. Smart guy like you, I was wondering when you were going to get around to it.”

“That car you saw. You know whose car that was, Jerry?”

“No idea. I’m serious about that, too.”

“Tags?”

“Like I told you before. No tags.”

“I guess Anna was right about you guys.”

“Yeah, I been jacking off to Motor Trend since I was nine years old.”

“Doin’ your own viscosity tests, huh?”

“I gotta run, Stefanos.”

“Okay. Say, I’m kinda hungry. How is the steak and cheese here, Jerry?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it. Tastes like dog shit, you want to know the truth.”

Sun turned and walked back toward the rear kitchen entrance.

“Hey, thanks,” said Stefanos. Sun waved over his shoulder and went through the door.

On Kennedy, Stefanos dropped a quarter and a dime into the pay phone slot. He lit a cigarette, got Elaine’s assistant, waited for Elaine to get on the line.

“Nick, what’s going on?”

“I talked to Terrence Mitchell. It’s not that he doesn’t remember if Randy and his daughter went out the night of the murder. He does remember, but he won’t testify to it. He’d rather get that drug dealer out of his daughter’s life than get him off. He told me straight up that he’d lie.”

“Nice. That means we’re -”

“Fucked. It also means Randy Weston’s innocent. I know that now. And the car thing? The Torino’s real. I got a line on it from Jerry Sun, the guy who runs the Chinese joint down here in the neighborhood. The car’s a special model, Elaine. We should be able to track it down, despite the fact that it was out there without tags that night.”

“Give me the details. I’ll get our people to run it through the system.”

Stefanos read off the information Sun had given him.

“This could be what breaks this,” said Elaine. “Nice work.”

“Thanks. In the meantime, I can check with some mechanics. Ford restorationists, specialists. Car like that, they’d remember it.”

“Hold on a second, Nick.”

Stefanos dragged on his Camel. He double-dragged and watched his smoke dissipate in the wind.

“All right,” said Elaine, “I’m back. Was looking for my address book… Here it is. Marcus has this friend, Dimitri knows him, too, works on old Continentals exclusively. Genuine tough guy, a Truck Turner type, has a garage over in the Brookland area. I’ve got his number right here.”

“What’s his name?”

“Al Adamson,” said Elaine. “Say Marcus hooked you up.”

“There goes Strickland,” said Marcus Clay. “Gonna go right in on Shaq, challenge his wide ass.”

“Man is fearless,” said Dimitri Karras.

The crowd at the MCI Center cheered as Rod Strickland sunk the layup. Karras and Clay slapped each other five.

“Rod,” said Karras with admiration. “Best point guard in the East.”

“Might be the best guard in the NBA, you ask me. The man sees the entire floor. He can dish without telegraphing, and he can take it to the hole at will. And what I really like is, he’s got the fire. The rest of the Wizards had that fire, we’d hear the fat lady sing again, you can believe that.”

“Webber can do it.”

“When he wants to,” said Clay, “C. Webb can do it all. That young man’s got more natural ability than I’ve seen on anyone in a long while. But look right there.”

Webber had dropped away from the rest of the defense and was walking backward, slowly, toward the half-court line.

“He’s always lookin’ to leak out for that fast break,” said Clay, “when he should be crashing those boards.”

“You can’t blame that on Webber entirely. That’s a coaching thing right there.”

Karras clapped at a Calbert Cheaney jumper that made the nylon dance. His elbow knocked Clay’s, causing him to spill beer on his chin.

“Hey, watch it, man.”

“Sorry.”

“You just spilled about two dollars’ worth of my five-dollar beer.”

“Yeah, good thing you and I never did drink too much. We’d go broke in this place.”