George Pelecanos - Shame the Devil

She laughed at his hyperbole as she looked into his unsteady eyes. “You’re not gonna get too drunk tonight, are you, Nick?”

“Not if you don’t let me.”

She pulled her black shirt over her head and tossed it aside.

“That’s a start,” said Stefanos. He kissed her, running his hand down her bare arm. “Your skin is soft. You smell good, too. I ever tell you that?” He smiled.

“Why so happy?” she said.

“I can’t explain it. Adrenalin. I had a good day today. What happened today wouldn’t be good to someone else, but it was for me. And now there’s you.”

They embraced. The room was warm, and they stripped naked. Stefanos put a Stan Getz on the platter. He came back and held her, and they joked and talked. They made it on the couch and they woke in the morning in each other’s arms.

Nick Stefanos handed a stack of photographs to Terrence Mitchell. Stefanos sat in the morning light that streamed through the front window of Mitchell’s house and looked at the passing traffic out on Chillum Road. He looked at a squirrel running up the trunk of a dogwood tree. He didn’t want to look at Mitchell.

When Mitchell was done he straightened the stack as he would a deck of cards, straightened it again as he struggled with what he had just seen. His shoulders sagged, and he leaned back into the couch.

“Who is that with Erika?” asked Mitchell.

“A drug dealer by the name of Sean Forjay,” said Stefanos. “Your daughter’s seeing him regularly.”

Mitchell looked away. “Are they tight?”

“After you drop her off at Fort Totten, he picks her up at the P. G. Plaza station every morning and returns her there early in the evening.”

“So Erika has no job.”

“I don’t know that, Mr. Mitchell.”

“But she has been lying to me.”

“I would say so, yes.”

“This world,” muttered Mitchell. He stood, went to the window, and stared out into his front yard, the fence that surrounded it, its barbed-wire cap. With his back to Stefanos he said, “You can’t stop it from reaching you. You can try, but it doesn’t work.”

“Mr. Mitchell -”

“Isn’t that right.”

“I suppose it is.”

Mitchell touched his hand to the glass. “I know you think I’m some kind of stiff. But there was a time… Let me tell you, I knew how to have fun. The house parties we’d have in the basements, with those blue lights, dancing with the young ladies to the Motown sound. The concerts at the Howard, back in the early sixties? You could check out six bands for a buck-fifty, man. Hell, I saw James Brown and the Flames at the Howard when J. B. was the boss for real. Yeah, I knew how to have fun. And the city was alive.

“But the city changed. And then my wife left me, and it was just Erika and me. So I moved us out here… to this. A brown patch of grass and a pile of bricks under the power lines. I wanted to protect her, see? But I couldn’t protect her, Stefanos. You can’t stop it from reaching you. No, you can’t.”

“This is the world we’ve got,” said Stefanos.

Mitchell continued to stare through the window for another minute and then he stood straight. “Go ahead and give me the rest of it. I know there’s more.”

“Okay. Here’s what I think. Forjay is the top dog down around First and Kennedy. Randy Weston and Donnel Lawton were small-change dealers compared to him, but he still wanted them out. He also wanted Erika, who was tight with Weston, all to himself. He figured out a way to get everything he wanted at once.”

“What puts Forjay at the crime scene?”

“A tricked-out red Torino was spotted leaving the crime scene just after gunshots were heard around the time of death. I found that Torino last night, parked in Forjay’s garage.”

“So Forjay framed up Weston.”

“Yeah. He got ahold of the key to Weston’s apartment. It would have been easy for him to plant the gun. An anonymous call tipped the police to the whereabouts of the murder weapon. They made the arrest.”

Mitchell nodded slowly as he put it together. Stefanos didn’t feel the need to go the rest of the way: that it was Erika who had the key to Weston’s crib. That Erika, most likely, had made the anonymous call.

Mitchell said, “What’s going to happen to my little girl?”

“I don’t know,” said Stefanos. “But I still need you to alibi Randy Weston.”

Mitchell turned, his eyes rimmed red. “Randy Weston could not have killed Donnel Lawton. He was here in this living room when that boy was killed.”

“You’ll testify to that?”

“Yes.” Mitchell looked down at Stefanos. “What you said to me the other day, about me bein’ no better than those criminals out there… You were wrong.”

“I know it. The truth is, I knew it then.”

“You try to keep Erika out of this,” said Mitchell.

“I’m going to meet with Weston’s defense counsel this afternoon.” Stefanos stood and shook Mitchell’s hand. “I’ll do the best I can.”

“You’re a cheap date,” said Elaine Clay, watching Stefanos chew his food.

“Look at this,” he said, excitedly pointing the knife at his plate. “Chopped steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, tossed salad, and biscuits. The whole thing was, what, four and change?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How’s yours?”

“A little bland, to tell you the truth.”

“The food is good, but you have to spice it up yourself. They don’t salt it on account of all the potential heart attacks in this place. They keep the A-1 and soy sauce behind the register. You have to ask for it when you pass through.”

“You’re the Scholl’s expert, huh?”

“I’ve been coming here my whole life. Well, not here. My grandfather used to take me to the old Scholl’s at Vermont and K.”

Stefanos looked around the cafeteria, filled with old folks, working stiffs, and bus tourists, and a diligent multiethnic staff. Religious sayings and Christian icons hung on the walls. He nodded to an ancient geezer with a flowing gray beard, reading a newspaper with the aid of a magnifying glass.

“See that guy? He eats here the same time every day.”

“That’s great, Nick. Can we get back to the case?”

“You’re just upset because there’s no lawyers in this place.” “Yeah, I’m really feeling naked around all these common folk.” Elaine had a bite of chicken a la king and laid down her fork. “So Terrence Mitchell is definitely going to testify.”

“That’s right. You going to get Sean Forjay charged with the murder?”

“It’s not my job to get anybody charged with murder, you know that. I’ll feed the information you dug up to the D.A.’s office as a courtesy. Other than that, when Weston gets acquitted, I’m out.”

“The cops should have nailed this one to begin with.”

“They made what they thought was an easy and clean arrest. There’s too many unsolved homicides out there for them to overcomplicate the ones that fall into their laps solved.”

Stefanos swallowed a mouthful of mashed potatoes. “Sean Forjay’s gonna walk, isn’t he?”

“The car proves nothing. The murder weapon had no prints. There are no witnesses. From where I sit, I don’t think they even have enough to charge him.”

“Unless they put Erika Mitchell on the stand.”

“They’re not going to know a thing about Erika Mitchell. I need Terrence Mitchell’s testimony. If he gets angry or fearful for his daughter and decides not to testify, Randy Weston goes to prison. I’m not going to jeopardize Weston’s acquittal for some vague concept of justice.”

“What’s justice got to do with any of this?”

“Nothing. You need to get past all that. If you want justice -”