George Pelecanos - Shame the Devil

“I can get from my chair to my walker. I can get in and out of the bathroom, and I can cook. So don’t tell me I can’t.”

Dee lowered her voice. “But the boys aren’t going to want to go.”

“Tell them that aunt of yours wants to see them. The one been in that nursing home for ten years? Tell them she’s dying and she wants to say good bye.”

“But Aunt Carla’s not dying. She’s gonna outlive us all.”

“Tell them anything you want to, then,” said Jonas, staring out the window at the street. “Whatever you tell them, I want y’all out of here by tonight.”

Frank Farrow racked the receiver. He walked around the corner of D.J.’s and saw the campus cop car parked behind the ’Stang. He crossed the street with his head down, staring at his feet. He heard a siren coming from somewhere behind him, and as he walked the siren grew louder.

As he approached the Mustang, he looked briefly at the cop, sitting behind the wheel of the car, one foot out on the street. The cop was young, nothing more than a boy. There was fear on the cop’s face, and something close to panic. He couldn’t even meet Farrow’s eyes.

The siren grew louder.

“Goddamnit all,” muttered Farrow.

He reached the Mach 1 and got behind the wheel.

“Put your seat belt on, Roman.”

Otis nodded. The metal-to-metal seat belt connection was made with a soft click. Farrow pulled the shifter back to D and hit the gas.

The Mach 1 left rubber on the street, fishtailed on 22nd, and then straightened, clipping the door of a black Camry parked at the curb. They passed Christopher Jonas and his friends, who were walking out of the carryout on the corner and staring at the speeding car.

“We got Johnny Law at twelve o’clock high,” said Otis. “That’s a real one, too.”

“I see him.”

Farrow turned sharp left on G, pumped the brakes, and then punched the gas to bring them out of the skid. The D.C. cop followed, the overhead lights spinning, the siren on full.

“Watch it, man,” said Otis, as a female student ran across the street into their path. Then they were nearing the girl and almost on her.

Otis said, “Frank.”

Otis leaned over and pushed the wheel in a counterclockwise direction. The Mustang swerved around the girl. For a second Otis saw her stretched-back, gray-as-death face.

“Where?” said Farrow.

“Left on Twentieth,” said Otis.

Farrow cut it hard. They sideswiped a parked Amigo before getting back on course. The cop car made the turn fifty yards behind them.

“Right on K,” said Otis.

“That the next street?”

“The next big one, yeah.”

A car jumped the curb to avoid collision ahead. Farrow speed-threaded his way around another.

“All right, Roman, here we go.”

“You got a red light up there, Frank.”

“I see it.”

“You plannin’ on blowin’ it off,” said Otis, “you might want to think about landin’ on your horn.”

Farrow goosed the accelerator as Otis’s fingernails dented the white bucket seat. Otis saw a flash of spinning green metal, heard horns as they dusted the stoplight. He turned his head and looked through the back window. The cop car had been slowed by the cross traffic. Farrow hooked a right onto K, kept it at sixty as he made the next three greens.

“Take New York Avenue straight out of town,” said Otis. “Then Fifty down to Three-o-one south. We get lucky enough, we might just make it out of here.”

Farrow screwed a Kool between his lips and pushed the lighter into the dash.

“I had to pump the hell out of those brakes back there,” said Farrow.

“We can check it out later. Just keep drivin’.”

“We got made,” said Farrow with a frown. “Why do you suppose that is?”

“Have to ask Man-you-el the next time we see him.” Otis smiled. “Guess you was wrong about that po-lice presence, Frank.”

Farrow pulled the lighter from the dash and lit his cigarette. The menthol felt good hitting his lungs.

Christopher Jonas walked through the front door of the house on Hamlin, saw his father sitting in the living room with tears in his eyes. Christopher had only seen his father cry once, on the day his mother, Christopher’s grandmother, had passed away.

“What’s wrong?” said Christopher, dropping his day pack by the door.

“You all right, son?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Come here.”

Christopher went up the foyer steps to the living room and hugged his father. It was awkward, bending down like that, but he didn’t break away. His father held him tight and didn’t seem to want to let go. He finally did release him and Christopher stood.

“Everything okay, Dad?”

“Yes.” William Jonas wiped tears from his face. “Go on back to your mother’s bedroom, now. Your brother’s back there with her. She wants to talk to the both of you, hear?”

“Sure you don’t want me to stay with you for a while?”

“Go on, boy. Do as I say.”

Jonas watched his son, tall as a weed, disappear into the hall. He turned the chair and wheeled himself to the couch, where he found the phone and dialed the police. He considered the man’s threats as he listened to the phone ring on the other end. He cut the connection before the call was answered and tossed the phone back on the couch.

Thomas Wilson took Route 4 east of the Beltway, through the old town of Upper Marlboro and onto a long asphalt road that dipped down and ended at a small industrial park set back along a creek that drained into the Patuxant River. He drove his Intrepid past squat, one-story garages and storage facilities, and then past a large green Dumpster, turning into a very narrow alley set between two sets of warehouses. The alley ran for a hundred yards and opened to a deep parking area and another set of warehouses that bordered the wooded area fronting the creek. Wilson parked beside his uncle Lindo’s flat-bed, wood-railed truck. He used his key and entered an unmarked warehouse set in the middle of the strip.

Lindo was heavy in the middle and wore red suspenders over a navy blue shirt. He had a neat gray mustache and kept his gray hair closely trimmed. Lindo looked up from the paperwork he was doing at his particleboard desk as Wilson entered. The room was bright with dozens of fluorescent lights mounted in its drop ceiling.

“Been waitin’ on you,” said Lindo. “You asked for two hours today, and I agreed. But what you took was more like three.”

“I apologize, Uncle L. Somethin’ came up.”

“Well, we best get goin’ before we get behind. Got to make the park run before we do our run in the District.”

Lindo got free rent in the warehouse in exchange for once-a-week hauls for the industrial park’s tenants. Wilson didn’t know for sure why his uncle needed the warehouse – three thousand square feet of space, housing a bathroom and an old, beat-up desk – but he suspected that having it made Lindo feel like a businessman rather than just the junkman that he was.

“The tenants been complainin’?”

Lindo reached behind him and lowered the volume on his box. Lindo liked that old-time, street corner-harmony jive from when he was comin’ up in the fifties and early sixties.

“Naw, the tenants are all right. That fellow owns that carpet warehouse, down past the alleyway? He came over earlier, asked when we was gonna haul those remnants of his. But I expect he was havin’ a slow day and really only came up here for some company. He had a look at all this empty space and told me we ought to hold a card game here on Friday nights. Said we’d never get caught, as nary a soul comes into this industrial park weekend nights. Said we could do it right, too. Have a bar, music, a couple of good-lookin’ women to dress it all up. A real after-hours thing. I didn’t know if he was serious or not, so I had to tell him that I gave up gambling, liquor, and women over twenty years ago.”