The Turnaround

by George Pelecanos

  On the word processor, Baker typed an unsigned letter that he transcribed from one that had been handwritten, showing editing marks and words in the margins. He then typed in a name and printed it on an envelope he fed through the bubble-jet machine.

  Marijuana smoke hung heavy in the room. Cody and Deon laughed easily as Cody boasted about his prowess on the video basketball court. Baker didn’t mind that their heads were up. They were easier to manage when they were high.

  “Repeat what I told y’all about the code,” said Baker.

  “The Xbox codes?” Cody didn’t turn his head away from the screen, his fingers working the controller.

  “The code to get back into the apartment,” said Baker patiently. “How I told you boys to knock a certain way.”

  “We got keys,” said Cody. “Why we need to knock on the door, too?”

  “What if someone takes your keys? Or the police come back with you? This way, I’m gonna know it’s y’all.”

  “Knock knock pause knock,” said Deon.

  “Right,” said Baker. “You two ready to tip out?”

  “Hold up,” said Cody Kruger, using body language to make his players do his bidding onscreen. “I’m about to slam this sucker.”

  “You had a dream that you did,” said Deon.

  “Your game is fluke, son.”

  “You can play later,” said Baker. “We got work to do.”

  ALEX PAPPAS had a photograph framed and hung in the kitchen, showing his father, John Pappas, standing over the grill at the coffee shop, his apron on, a spatula in his hand, a joyous smile on his face. The grill was covered with rows of thawing hamburger patties, which he was precooking. He did this daily in preparation for the lunch rush.

  “Why is he smiling?” Johnny Pappas, Alex’s older son, would ask when he was a kid. “He’s just cooking burgers! It’s not like he won a million bucks or something.”

  “You don’t get it,” Alex would reply.

  The photo was a way of keeping his father alive to the grandsons who never knew him. Alex had mounted it beside the refrigerator so they’d see it often.

  “Hey, Pop,” said Johnny Pappas, entering the kitchen. “Hold that for me, will ya?”

  Alex had just put a block of kasseri cheese inside the side-by-side, and he had yet to close the door. He kept it open while his son reached across him and removed a plastic bottle of cran-raspberry juice. Johnny swigged directly from the bottle.

  “You’re drinkin it like an animal,” said Alex.

  “I don’t want to have to wash a glass.”

  “When’s the last time you washed anything around here?”

  “True that,” said Johnny.

  Johnny replaced the bottle, his shaggy hair brushing Alex’s face, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Alex closed the refrigerator door and joined Vicki, who was seated at the kitchen table, several take-out menus spread before her. They were going to order food, but Alex had put out some cheese, kalamata olives, and crackers for a predinner snack. Johnny joined them at the table.

  A prime-time game show was playing on a small television set on the counter. The Pappases had a nice rec room with a big-screen TV, but mostly Alex and Vicki sat in the kitchen at night, watching the thirteen-inch. The kitchen had been the central room of the house since the boys were babies.

  “How’d we do today?” said Johnny.

  “I took in two, three million,” said Alex.

  “That all?”

  “We did fine.”

  “Dad, I been thinking . . .”

  “What I tell you about thinking?”

  “I was thinking we’d add some specials to the menu. Change the offering a little bit.”

  “Ah, here we go.”

  “You can’t compete with the Paneras of the world. I mean, if you’re trying to go head-to-head with them in sandwiches, you’re going to lose.”

  “It’s not that kinda place. I got a grill and a colds station. I don’t have a big kitchen.”

  “You don’t need any more room or equipment. I can make gourmet soups on one gas burner. Maybe sauté some soft-shells when they’re in season. For breakfast we can offer huevos rancheros, and sides like apple sausages. Slice up some fresh avocados as a garnish.”

  “I get it. You might know how to prepare all the fancy stuff, but you’re not there all the time. Who’s gonna do it? And what if it doesn’t move?”

  “Darlene would love to learn new sandwiches and recipes. Don’t you think she gets bored with the same-old, too?”

  “She’s there to work, not to get excited.”

  “If we try it and it doesn’t fly, then we go back to what we were doing. I’m not telling you to throw the old menu away. I’m saying, let’s do something different. Bring in a whole new kind of customer.”

  Alex grunted and folded his arms.

  Johnny had earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing and had recently graduated from a local culinary institute. For a while he had been an apprentice chef in a new-cuisine restaurant near George Washington University. Now he worked with his father at the coffee shop during the breakfast and lunch rushes, which was frequently an oil-and-water situation for both of them. Vicki, who thought her son needed the day-to-day experience of running a business, had suggested the trial arrangement.

  “I saw a nice chalkboard with a hand-painted frame at a store today,” said Johnny. “I think we should buy it. I can put it up over the wall phone, write the day’s specials on it.”

  “For God’s sake.”

  “Let me try, Dad. One new soup, one new sandwich. Let’s just see if it goes.”

  “Avrio?”

  “Tomorrow, yeah.”

  “Okay. But how about this for a change? You come to work on time.”

  Johnny smiled.

  “You dining with us tonight, honey?” said Vicki, her drugstore-bought reading glasses perched on her nose.

  “Depends on what you guys are having,” said Johnny.

  “Ee-neh ah-paw-soy,” said Alex, making a head movement toward Johnny. It meant that his son was to the manor born.

  “I just don’t want any of that chain crap.”

  “You think I do?” said Alex.

  “How about El Rancho?” said Vicki.

  “El Roacho,” said Johnny.

  “I don’t want Mex,” said Alex. “My stomach . . .”

  “Mie Wah?” said Vicki.

  “Me Wallet,” said Alex.

  “Don’t be so cheap, Dad.”

  “It’s not that. I just don’t want Chinese.”

  “Cancún Especial?”

  “Can’t Cook Especial,” said Alex.

  “He said he didn’t want Mexican,” offered Johnny.

  “Well, we have to eat something,” said Vicki.

  “Let’s just get a Ledo’s pizza,” said Alex, the decision they had been moving toward all along.

  “I’ll cut a salad,” said Vicki. “Call it in, Alex, okay?”

  “If Johnny picks it up.”

  “I’m gone.”

  They watched him go, a tall, thin, good-looking young man of twenty-five in tight jeans and a leather jacket that looked a size too small.

  “What is that look he’s got?” said Alex. “Like, metrosexual, somethin?”

  “Stop it.”

  “I’m asking.”

  “He’s a hip young guy, is all,” said Vicki, who subscribed to many magazines that could be purchased in the supermarket checkout aisles. “He looks like one of those guys in that band, the Strokes.”

  Alex caught her eye. “I got somethin you can stroke.”

  “Oh, please, Alex.”

  “I’m sayin, it’s been a while.”

  “Must you?”

  “A guy can dream.”

  “Call the pizza in, honey.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  He went to the phone and ordered a large pie with anchovies and mushrooms. Vicki, aligning her lettuce, cucumbers, onions, and carrots near the cutting board, spok
e to him as he hung up the phone.

  “Honey?”

  “What.”

  “We’ve got to do something about the building.”

  “Okay.”

  Alex and Vicki owned a 1,700-square-foot brick structure, formerly a Pepco utility substation, off Piney Branch Road in Takoma Park. It had been zoned for commercial use and for the past five years had been leased by an Iranian who used it as a carpeting and flooring showroom. When the man’s operation had gone the way of the corded phone, he had vacated the premises. Vicki was worried about the cash flow, but Alex was not. She maintained their books, did their taxes, and managed their investments. Alex had a talent for running a business but was uninterested in the mechanics of money.

  “I’m gonna find a tenant,” said Alex.

  “You’ve been saying that since the Iranian moved out. Six months now.”

  “The building’s paid for.”

  “We still pay property taxes on it.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m just pointing it out, Alex.”

  “Just don’t go stomping your little foot over there. You hear me, Thumper?”

  Vicki smirked, her eyes on the cutting board as she halved a head of iceberg lettuce.

  She was on the short side, with a nice figure on her still, a little belly, but that was all right. Her hair, dyed black, was cut in the Friends style that the Aniston girl had made famous but was now way out of date. Even Alex knew that. But on his wife it looked good. He still got excited when he watched her walking toward the bed at night. The way she turned her back shyly when she removed her bra.

  Vicki had aged several years in the one since Gus had been killed, but the new lines on her face were not an issue with Alex. Grief had moved the clock forward on him, too. He knew that he and Vicki were going to be together until the end. With everything they had been through, having survived it, there wasn’t any question of that.

  He met her when she was just out of high school, a trainee in the accounting department in the machinists’ union building, at 1300 Connecticut. The most fun-loving girls in the south Dupont area, and the nicest, worked in the machinist offices. Alex was in his early twenties, a young businessman, the owner of the lunch counter, a good catch. She was a daily morning customer, small coffee, milk and sugar, with a Danish. Her last name was Mimaros. She was Greek American, Orthodox, a koukla, and nice to Darlene and the rest of the help. She didn’t seem to mind his eye. He took her out to dinner, and she was respectful of the waitress. Had she not been, it would have been a deal breaker for Alex. He married her within a year.

  “What do you think?” said Vicki.

  “About?”

  “About Johnny, boo-faw.”

  “Johnny’s got big ideas.”

  “He’s excited. He’s just trying to help.”

  “I said he could try out a thing or two, didn’t I?”

  “In your own way. Yes, you did.”

  “He bugs me, that kid.”

  Alex waited for Vicki’s quiet reminder that was also an admonishment: He’s not Gus. But Vicki went on shredding her lettuce and commented no further.

  Alex went back to the phone and lifted it off its base. “I’m gonna call my mom.”

  He moved to the living room and had a seat in his favorite chair. He dialed his mother, who now lived out in Leisure World. He tried to phone her every night and visited her twice a week, though she often reminded him that she was not lonely. Calliope Pappas had not been involved with a man since the death of her husband, but she had many friends. Alex’s brother, Matthew, an attorney in northern California, called infrequently and visited occasionally on holidays, so Alex’s mother, now coming up on eighty, was the last connecting thread to his childhood. He often said that he had stayed in the Washington area for her. Secretly he felt that he needed his mother more than she needed him.

  “Hi, Mom. It’s Alex.”

  “I know it, honey. Don’t you think I recognize your voice by now?”

  After they said good-bye, Alex returned to the kitchen, replaced the phone, and went to the refrigerator for another slice of cheese. He looked at the photo on the wall, his old man in his apron at the magazi, flipping burgers, a look of true joy on his face. Alex had his good days at the store. He’d had some laughs with the customers and the help. But he’d never felt the way his father looked in that photograph. It occurred to him that in thirty-some years on the job, he had never experienced that kind of unbridled happiness himself.

  Ten

  HOW’D THAT dude get that job?” said Raymond Monroe.

  “He was a comedian before this,” said Kendall Robertson.

  “He’s never made me laugh,” said Monroe. “Not once.”

  “Me, neither,” said Marcus Robertson.

  They were in Kendall’s row house on Quebec Place, eating carryout, watching that popular nighttime game show with the bald-headed host, had the trumpet-player hipster patch beneath his lower lip.

  “I’d like to know where you apply for that job,” said Monroe. “ ’Cause I know I could do it better than him.”

  “You ever see a black game show host?”

  “Didn’t Arsenio host one?”

  “He’s not funny, either.”

  “I could be the first. Break that game show host color line. I’m sayin, if Mr. Clean can do it, I can, too. Because this man is, like, talentless. Is that a word?”

  “I think so.”

  “You wanna know how he got that job? Luck. Like, four-leaf-clover, bust-the-casino kinda luck. I mean, this dude must have a golden horseshoe lodged up in his —”

  “Raymond!”

  Marcus laughed. “He’s lucky.”

  “That’s what I’m sayin, Peanut.”

  Monroe had given the boy the nickname because of his stature and the funny shape of his shaved head. Marcus didn’t mind when he called him that. He liked Mr. Raymond, and when he gave Marcus the name, it was a sign that Mr. Raymond liked him, too.

  “What are we watching this for?” said Kendall.

  “You’re right,” said Monroe. “I don’t know why they call it a game if there’s no skill to it. It’s all about greed.”

  Monroe got up from the kitchen table and turned off the television set.

  “That was easy,” said Kendall.

  “Ought to do it more often,” said Monroe. “C’mon, little man, let’s have a look at your bike.”

  “He needs to do his math,” said Kendall.

  “I will, Mom.”

  “You promise your mother you’re gonna do your homework later?” said Monroe.

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  Kendall gave Monroe an approving glance as he crossed the room with the boy. They went out the back door, down wood stairs to a cracked sidewalk bordered by two small patches of dirt, weeds, and a little grass, and entered a small detached garage next to the alley.

  Kendall had bought the house for fifty thousand and change ten years back, and now it was worth several hundred thousand dollars. She had endured the drug dealing, break-ins, and violent crime in the neighborhood, and though the problems had not been completely eradicated, her vision of a Park View transformed was beginning to take hold.

  Many of the homes on her street had been turned over to new-generation ownership and were being reconditioned. Though she had made no major improvements, Kendall kept her place in clean good shape. Monroe handled the basic maintenance, which was often no more than throwing a fresh coat of paint on a wall, drilling new screw holes for those that had been stripped, caulking the bathtub and shower stall, and replacing broken windows, a skill his father had taught him and James when they were boys.

  Monroe had also organized the garage. His parents had not had one in Heathrow, and it was a luxury for him. He had screws, nuts, bolts, washers, and nails in clear film canisters, labeled by Sharpies on tape, aligned on a wooden shelf. Motor oil, transmission fluid, brake fluid, rags, cleaning supplies, windshield washer
fluid, and antifreeze were lined up in a row against one cinder-block wall. He had brought his toolbox down here and took it back to his mother’s as needed. He supposed he was slowly moving in.

  “I don’t know how the tire got flat,” said Marcus, as Monroe upended his bike, a Dyno 2000 with rear pegs, and set it on its saddle and bars.

  “You ran over something, I expect. Go get me those tire levers off the shelf.” When Marcus did not move, Monroe said, “Those blue things, thick plastic, a few inches long. Got hooks on the end.”

  Raymond showed the boy how to insert the thick end of the tire lever between the tire and the rim, and how to hook it onto the spoke. He instructed him to use the second lever the same way, hooking it two spokes down. By working it around in this fashion, the tire could be removed from the rim.

  “Now run your hand real careful inside that tire. You’re gonna find a bit of glass or a sharp twig, something like that in there. Whatever it was punctured that tube.”

  “It was this,” said Marcus, holding a small triangle of forest green glass carefully between his fingers.

  Monroe gave the new inner tube a couple of pumps of air and fitted it into the empty tire. He pulled the valve through the hole in the rim and seated one side of the tire into the rim’s edge. He turned the bike around and used his thumbs and muscle to fit the other side. He completed the replacement by inflating the tire to its suggested pressure. All the while he talked to the boy, describing the process with simple language.

  Marcus watched him as he worked. He noticed the veins jump on the back of Mr. Raymond’s hands and how they stood out like wire on his forearms. The tight way he wore his knit watch cap cocked a little sideways on his head. His thin, neat mustache. Marcus was going to grow one just like it someday.

  “You should be good now,” said Monroe.

  “Can I ride it down to the Avenue and back?”

  “It’s too dark. I’m worried about the cars seein you. But you can walk with me to the market if you want. I noticed your mother needed some milk.”