George Pelecanos - Shame the Devil

“I won’t forget it,” said Stefanos. “When is it going down?”

Karras looked down at the cracked concrete. “Tomorrow night.”

“Look at me, man.”

“It’s set for tomorrow night.”

“Where?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“You’ll call me?”

“Okay, Nick.” Karras nodded. “If that’s what you want. Yes.”

Karras and Stefanos shook hands. Stefanos buttoned his shirt to the neck and watched Karras walk to his faded navy blue BMW, parked along the curb.

“Liar,” said Stefanos, who had seen the hesitation in Karras’s eyes.

It wasn’t going down tomorrow night. It was going down tonight.

Thomas Wilson worked the day quietly with his uncle Lindo. He listened to Lindo talk about a woman he’d met at church and he listened to Lindo’s Frankie Lymon tapes on the cheap cassette player in the dash of his shitbox truck. He listened and tried to answer when Lindo asked him questions, but other than those short responses he didn’t say much.

Time crawled that day, but when quitting time came it seemed to have come too quick.

Wilson had gotten out of his coveralls in the warehouse bathroom and he went to the particle-board desk where his uncle sat, wearing spectacles and organizing the day’s tickets. His uncle had swept the warehouse like he did at the end of every week, whether it needed it or not, and specks of dust swirled in the air. A dying fluorescent tube flickered in the drop ceiling above the desk, its light flashing on the warehouse floor.

“I can fix that for you before I go,” said Wilson, looking up at the light.

“Got a box of replacement lamps coming in next week,” said Lindo. He looked closely at his nephew. “You seem troubled today, Thomas. Somethin’ you want to talk to me about?”

“No, sir.” Wilson buried his hands in the pockets of his slacks. “Everything’s fine.”

“Go on, then, son. Have a good weekend. Rest up, ’cause come Monday we have a busy week.”

“Okay, Uncle L. Thank you for everything, hear?”

Lindo glanced up at Wilson. “Go on, boy. Don’t be so serious all the time. Go out and have yourself a little fun.”

As he drove home, Wilson’s guilt deepened over using his uncle’s warehouse that night. His uncle took pride in that place, even if it wasn’t much more than a cheap desk and some cinder-block walls. Wilson stopped in a surplus store in Lanham and bought a half dozen blue plastic tarps.

He passed the turnoff for his house and kept north on Georgia Avenue, turned left onto Quackenbos, made another left, and parked the Intrepid in an alley alongside a church. He stepped onto the grounds of Fort Stevens Park.

He and Charles had played here as children. He walked into a dry moat, then climbed a steep hill and jumped down alongside one of two cannons that remained in the park. A tattered American flag hung at half-mast nearby and made rippling shadows at his feet. He could picture Charles as a child, running with an imaginary rifle cradled in his arms, diving and rolling down those hills. He could hear Charlie’s gleeful laugh.

Charles, thought Wilson, I won’t let you down.

But a block from his house his stomach betrayed him, and Wilson pulled over to the side of the road, where he opened his car door and vomited his lunch onto the street.

Dimitri Karras got up off the bed at around six o’clock. He had been lying there on his back for a couple of hours. He was oddly calm.

He found Bernie Walters’s Colt. 45 and a box of shells in the bottom of his dresser, wrapped in an old pillowcase. He ejected the magazine into his palm. He loaded seven rounds into the magazine, testing the tension of the spring on the last round. He pushed the magazine into the butt of the gun and slipped the. 45 into its leather holster. He dropped the rig onto the bed and phoned Thomas Wilson.

They discussed the specifics of the plan. When they were done, Karras said, “Pick me up at eight.”

Wilson said, “Right.”

Nick Stefanos phoned Dan Boyle at William Jonas’s house and got Jonas first. He exchanged a few words with Jonas and asked to speak to Boyle.

“You going to be there all night?” asked Stefanos.

“Yeah,” said Boyle. “Why, what’s up?”

“I might need to speak with you.”

“Something going on?”

“Sit tight,” said Stefanos. “I’ll let you know.”

Thomas Wilson sat at a small desk in the foyer of his house on Underwood. He broke the cylinder of his five-shot. 38 Special and thumbed shells into its chambers. He spun the cylinder and wrist-snapped it shut. The snub-nosed revolver with the narrow checkered butt and the worn-down bluing felt small in his hand. He held the gun under the desk lamp and noticed that his hand was shaking. He concentrated and tried to make his hand stop shaking, but he could not.

He laid the gun down on the desk and pulled the phone toward him. He dialed Dimitri Karras.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” he said when Karras answered the call.

“You can,” said Karras. “See you at eight.”

Wilson listened to the dial tone. He dialed Bernie Walters’s home number. Bernie’s recorded voice came through the speaker and then there was a long beeping sound.

“Hey, Bern… Thomas here. I guess you got a couple more days of that Jeremiah Johnson thing you’re doin’ down there in God’s country. I’m just callin’ to say hello again. Was thinkin’ maybe I’d drive down tomorrow morning and surprise you. Take you up on that offer you been makin’ to me these last couple of years. Be a good chance for the two of us to talk, buddy. ’Cause we need to talk, see? Anyway… listen, if I don’t happen to make it down there, man… I just wanted to tell you… I wanted to say that you been a good friend. I’m sorry for everything, but I’m fixin’ to try and make it right. You been a good friend, Bern. You, uh…”

Wilson found himself stumbling on his words. He said good bye to Bernie and cut the line.

“You all packed?” said Farrow.

“Ready,” said Otis.

“I got a meet point from Wilson. Says we’d get lost if we tried to find it directly. Behind a closed gas station near the industrial park.”

Otis nodded. “Here you go, Frank. This is you.”

He handed Farrow one of the two. 45s he had copped on Sepul-veda, back in L.A. Farrow hefted the gun and checked the action.

“Where’s your cousin?”

“Booker? He didn’t come home last night and I ain’t seen him all day.”

Otis didn’t want Frank getting angry over Gus’s little accident. Once they got on the road and headed back west, Frank would never know.

“Just as well,” said Farrow. “Leave some money on the table for him. That’ll be good enough.”

Otis pulled his hair back off his shoulders and banded it. He holstered his. 45 into his waist rig and put on a ventless, checked wool sport jacket over his clean white shirt. He looked in the living-room mirror and smiled, admiring his gold tooth, the cut of his jacket, his hair. The look.

He left money on the table – a fifty-dollar bill on top of ten ones, so Frank wouldn’t get suspicious. Wasn’t any point in leaving too much for a corpse lying in the woods, even if the dead man was your kin.

“You ready?” said Farrow as he walked back into the room.

“Yeah,” said Otis. “Let’s go.”

Dimitri Karras was waiting on the corner of 15th and U as Thomas Wilson pulled the Intrepid to the curb at eight o’clock. Karras settled in the passenger bucket and fastened his seat belt. “You finalized it with Farrow and Otis?” said Karras.

Wilson nodded. He drove east.

They crossed the city. They rode the Beltway for fifteen miles and exited at Route 4. Wilson slowed as they drove through old Upper Marlboro.