George Pelecanos - Shame the Devil

One night he and Charles had a couple of drinks and Charles got loose with his tongue. He began to tell Wilson about the pizza parlor where he had been working for some time. How the place was more or less a front for a large gaming operation, numbers and book and the like. How the man who co-owned the joint, Carl Lewin, was his own bagman. How Lewin made May’s the last stop on his run, the same day, same time, every week.

Wilson thought of the money, then thought of his old acquaintances from Lewisburg, Farrow and Otis. Tough guys, professionals, who made it their specialty to take off other criminals. He had the idea that he could contact Farrow and set this thing up. Get Manuel and Jaime, who had gone into the chop business at a garage in Silver Spring, involved as well. He talked himself into it, and then he talked Charles into it, too. Convinced Charles that this was ill-gotten money anyway, it would just be going from one set of dirty hands to another. His employer would never, ever know. And no one would get hurt.

After the bloodbath in the kitchen, Wilson did not go to the law and confess his involvement. The atmosphere was lynch-mob heavy in town in the weeks following the murders, and Wilson was… well, Wilson was scared. Much as he had loved Charles, he couldn’t bring Charles back. He didn’t want to go to prison again, and if he did go, Farrow would find a way to reach him on the inside. No, there wasn’t any kind of good that could come out of going to the law. That’s what he thought at the time. And then he went to the meetings, thinking that hearing the stories of the others might ease his pain. There, he became friends with the victims’ relatives, and their pain became his. He hadn’t figured on that. It was like there was a nest of angry spiders now, all the time, crawling around in his head.

Now Farrow wanted him to set up the cop in the wheelchair, and maybe his sons.

Wilson approached the lights of the strip shopping centers along the highway side of La Plata. He cracked the window to let in some air. It felt kind of stuffy in the car, and there was a tightness in his chest.

He knew he was a coward. It was because of his cowardice that things had come this far.

Once you were in with Farrow and Otis, you were in with them for good. He could follow them or kill them or run. Those were his choices.

He prayed that when the time came, the Lord would let him be a man.

On Monday morning, Nick Stefanos leaned out of the open window of his Dodge at the P. G. Plaza Metro station and snapped photographs of Erika Mitchell meeting her new boyfriend in the parking lot beside his idling Acura. Stefanos steadied the long lens of his Pentax as he shot. He caught Erika and her boyfriend embracing and he got one of them kissing and another of Erika getting into his car.

Stefanos dropped the roll of film at a shop on Georgia Avenue and smoked a cigarette in his car as he looked over the list Al Adamson had given him, checking the addresses against the detail map he kept in the Dodge. He pulled off the curb and drove over to Hyattsville, to a garage off Queens Chapel Road.

C. Lewis, the seasoned-leaning-to-elderly owner of the shop, had no knowledge of the red Torino, mentioning only that it was “one beautiful car.” He added that there had been fewer than a hundred manufactured of that particular model, so locating it shouldn’t prove to be all that difficult. Stefanos thanked him, and Lewis said, “Say hi to Al.”

Stefanos drove back into Northwest, to a garage named Strange Auto near 14th and Arkansas. Go-go music was pumping from the open bay as Stefanos approached.

The owner, Anthony Strange, informed Stefanos that “the only thing I’ll touch here is Mustangs. Torino ain’t nothin’ but an overgrown Maverick, and I ain’t even gonna tell you what I think of them.” His mechanic, a very young man with a black knit cap pulled low on his forehead, laughed and turned up the Back Yard CD he had coming from the box.

Out on the sidewalk, Stefanos looked at the next name on his list. The place was just up over the District line. He wasn’t far from there now.

Thomas Wilson was standing in the back of the garage, talking to Manuel and Jaime, when the bell rang from the front of the bay.

“That would be them,” said Wilson.

“Yes,” said Manuel.

Jaime Gutierrez dropped his cigarette to the concrete and ground it under his boot as Manuel Ruiz went to the bay door. He hit a red button beside the door; the door lifted, and a Ford Ranger rolled into the garage. Manuel lowered the door as Frank Farrow parked the pickup beside a two-tone Falcon.

Farrow and Roman Otis stepped out of the pickup. Otis stretched his long frame and followed Farrow to where Wilson and Gutierrez stood. Manuel met the group, and Farrow shook his hand.

“Damn,” said Otis, rolling his head so that his neck muscles relaxed. “Tall man like me can’t take a long journey in a truck that size, for real. Got used to the size of that Mark you hooked me up with, Man-you-el.”

“I am pleased that you like it.”

“Goddamn right I like it. That’s a beautiful car.”

“What’ve you got for me?” said Farrow.

“Is over here,” said Manuel, and they followed him as he led the way. Farrow looked at the red Mustang with the Formula tires with raised white lettering and the black scoop on the hood.

“A Mach One?”

“Yes,” said Manuel. “Nineteen seventy-three, three fifty-one automatic. Original white interior. Beautiful.”

“It’s red.”

“That’s right.”

“Does it run?”

“It is very straight.”

Jaime nodded in agreement and lit another cigarette.

Farrow ran his finger along the waxed surface of the hood. “You have clean tags for it, amigo?”

“Yes.”

“Put them on. And get rid of that Ranger any way you see fit. It’s on the hot sheet by now.”

“Okay, Frank,” said Manuel. “You can sit in the offi while we put on the tags, if you wish.”

“You said ‘offi,’” said Otis, showing his gold tooth. “But you meant ‘office,’ right?”

Manuel smiled thinly.

“Come on with us, T. W.,” said Farrow.

Wilson said, “Right.”

The office was small, and many of the papers on its cluttered desk were smudged with grease. Otis had a seat on a wooden slat-back chair and put his feet up on the desk. Farrow sat on the edge of the desk and put fire to a Kool.

“So, T. W. Any progress on finding Detective Jonas?”

“Not yet.”

Farrow looked at Otis. “Gimme that phone book over there, Roman. The D.C. edition.”

Otis handed him the directory that was on the desk. Farrow flipped through the pages, found the one he was looking for, and folded the book open so that Wilson could see it.

“Here’s Jonas, right here,” said Farrow. “On Hamlin Street. Now give me that detail map over there, Roman.”

Otis did it, and Farrow turned to the page representing Northeast.

“You said Jonas lived in Brookland, right, T. W.? Well, here’s Hamlin Street, smack in the middle of the Brookland neighborhood, right here.” Farrow dropped the detail map back on the desk. “Funny how easy it was to find Jonas. I walked into a Seven-Eleven this morning and got the information out of a book just like this in a minute flat. You know, he was in the phone book all the time.”

“I didn’t think to look in the directory, Frank,” said Wilson, trying to put some levity in his voice. “I mean, who would have thought -”

“You didn’t think. Or maybe you were just trying to avoid more trouble.” Farrow stood and walked over to Wilson. Wilson seemed to shrink before him. “I know you don’t like conflict, T. W. But when I ask you to do something, I expect it to be done.”