Shame the Devil dq-4

by George Pelecanos

  TWO

  Frank Farrow parked behind an LTD on a residential street named Tennyson, near Oregon Avenue at the edge of Rock Creek Park. To their right a long stand of trees bordered a huge old folks’ home, and across the street to their left stood a row of identical split-level houses.

  Farrow got out of the Ford, eye-scoping the houses on his left as he went quickly to the LTD and found its key under the driver’s-side mat. He popped the LTD’s trunk, went back to the Ford, and leaned into the open window.

  “I’ll get Richard and put him in the trunk. Clean the interior out and follow with the bag. Dump your guns in the trunk, too, and we’ll split.”

  “Any curtain action from those houses?”

  “None that I could see. Come on.”

  They drove through the park, cruised by upper-class houses with Jags and Mercedes parked in their driveways, and passed over the Maryland line into Silver Spring. Otis found HUR, the station he had discovered in his motel room, on the dial.

  “You are,” sang Otis, “my starship; come take me out tonight…”

  Farrow took East West Highway across Georgia Avenue and made a sharp left down a street of cinder-block garages set beside the railroad tracks. They parked in front of an unmarked bay between Rossi Automotive and a place called Hanagan’s Auto Body. Farrow gave the horn two sharp blasts; the bay door rose, and Frank drove the LTD through.

  The garage was cool, clean, and dimly lit. A Hispanic in a blue workshirt with the name “Manuel” stitched above the breast pocket dropped a hose to the smooth concrete and walked over to the LTD. Another Spanish, Jaime, rubbed his hands on a ruby shop rag and eyed the men inside the car.

  “Where’s our gear?” said Farrow to Manuel.

  “In the offi.”

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

  Manuel nodded and smiled thinly, careful to mask any displeasure at the remark. He had straight black hair and slanted eyes, making him look like a brown-skinned Asian. The other one, Jaime, had bony, unmemorable features, except for a line of tattooed teardrops dripping from his right eye.

  Farrow said, “Bring our stuff here.”

  Manuel returned with two large packs and dropped them at the feet of Farrow and Otis, who had gotten out of the car. Farrow and Otis removed their gloves and tossed them on the concrete. Farrow had retrieved the duffel bag from the trunk, leaving the lid open.

  “You listen to the news, amigo?” said Farrow.

  “Is on the radio already,” said Manuel. “You have trouble, eh?”

  “My brother’s dead,” said Farrow, noticing a nerve twitch in Jaime’s cheek. “He’s in the trunk of the LTD.”

  “What you goin’ to do about that?” said Manuel.

  “I’m not going to do anything,” said Farrow. “You are.” Farrow picked up his pack and the duffel bag and went into the office. Otis hoisted his pack and did the same.

  Farrow changed his clothes quickly – plain work pants, a lightweight short-sleeved shirt, and oilskin shoes. While Otis changed, Farrow took his shaving gear to the office bathroom, placed his Swiss Army knife, his Norelco electric, and a glass tub of black Meltonian Shoe Cream on a steel shelf welded below the mirror. He used the knife’s scissors to cut off the bulk of his mustache, then shaved his upper lip clean with the razor. He dipped his fingers in the shoe cream and massaged it into his hair until his hair was no longer gray. He looked five years younger – at least. He found a pair of nonprescription black-rimmed glasses in his shaving kit, put them on, and looked in the mirror: Now he was a different man.

  Back in the office, Otis had changed into a brown-on-beige monochromatic shirt-and-slacks arrangement with matching brown weave shoes. He had tied his hair back tightly in a ponytail and wore wire-rimmed shades that darkened in the light.

  Otis smiled when Farrow walked back into the room. “Lookin’ all Clark Kent on me now.”

  “You take your share?”

  “I took it.” Otis picked up his pack. “Too bad about that pizza boy. I know he would have talked when it got hot. Shame, though, we had to do him like we did.”

  “We did have to. Come on.”

  “Okay, amigo,” said Farrow as he and Otis reentered the garage. “Come on over here.”

  Jaime ground a live butt under his boot and followed Manuel to where the hard men stood. Farrow chin-nodded in the direction of two cars parked in the back of the garage.

  “That us?” said Farrow.

  “Yes,” said Manuel. “The Taurus is yours.”

  “I ask for a shitwagon?” said Farrow.

  “You asked for something that would not attract attention,” said Manuel. “The body is rough, I admit. I did not touch the metal.”

  “Does it run?”

  “It will run, yes. It’s a SHO. I took the identifying bumper off. It looks quiet, like an old man’s car. But it is very quick. Redline it if you wish.”

  “How about mine?” said Otis, looking at the two-tone brown-and-beige ’79 Mark V parked beside the Taurus.

  “The Bill Blass model,” said Manuel, a glint in his eye. “What you asked for. Under the hood is -”

  “I ain’t never gonna look under the hood, Man-you-el, you know that. Will it take me across country?”

  “Were it not for the ocean, it would take you around the world.”

  “What about the sounds? You put that unit in I was tellin’ you about?”

  “Yes. You load the disks in the trunk.”

  Otis said, “Always wanted me a box like that, too.”

  Farrow reached into the duffel bag and tossed a thick stack of bills to Manuel. “Count it with your fingers,” said Farrow. “Go ahead.”

  Manuel went through the money.

  Farrow looked at Jaime and said, “Now you.”

  Jaime shrugged, took the money from Manuel, licked his thumb and forefinger elaborately, and counted the bills.

  Farrow said, “It’s what we agreed upon, no?”

  Manuel regarded Farrow and nodded slowly.

  “Give it here,” said Farrow, and when Jaime handed him the money he said, “I’ll just keep this stack as a souvenir. It’s got your fingerprints on it – in case there’s any question of who was involved in what.”

  “We’ll keep it on file,” said Otis, “just like the FBI.”

  “But let me make this clear,” said Farrow, “in case you get the feeling you want to unburden your conscience.”

  “You don’ haf to worry,” said Manuel.

  “Let him make it clear,” said Otis.

  “Well, we all know the code. I mean, we all came up the same way. But to remind you… You and Jaime, you ever feel the need to talk, I want you to remember something -”

  “Let me tell this part, Frank,” said Otis.

  “Go ahead.”

  “You talk,” said Otis, “we’re just gonna have to go ahead and fuck up your families. Comprende? ”

  “Is no problem,” said Manuel, shaking his head, his eyes closed solemnly.

  “Didn’t think it would be,” said Otis.

  Farrow tossed a new stack of money to Manuel. “That’s yours to keep. Count it.”

  “I trust you,” said Manuel, and Otis laughed.

  “The keys under the mats?” said Farrow.

  Manuel nodded. Farrow and Otis began to walk away.

  “What would you have us do with the man in the trunk?” Manuel asked.

  Farrow turned. “You keep old car batteries here, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do this: Drop a battery on his mouth until his teeth are busted out.”

  “Now wait -”

  “Pour battery acid on his face and fingers. Cut his head and his limbs off, and bury his pieces in different spots. Bury the guns and the gloves as well.”

  “But… he is your brother. ”

  Farrow did not reply. He and Otis walked to the cars.

  “That fingerprints-on-the-money thing,” said Otis.
“That was pretty slick.”

  “They’re scared enough to believe it.”

  “I think you put the fear into ’em for real,” said Otis. “So where you gonna be?”

  “Remember Lee Toomey?”

  “Sure. He settled in this state, didn’t he? Down on the Eastern Shore?”

  “Right. He hooked me up with a straight gig.”

  “Straight, huh.”

  “For a while. You?”

  “You need me, you can get me through my sister Cissy, out in Cali.”

  “She still in the L.A. phone book?”

  “You know it.”

  Otis clapped Farrow on the arm, shook his hand as he would another black man’s.

  “All right, Frank.”

  Farrow said, “All right.”

  Manuel had opened the bay door and was waving them on. Farrow drove the SHO out first, and Otis followed in the Mark V.

  Manuel Ruiz closed the door and walked toward Jaime, who stood by the LTD’s open trunk. Jaime Gutierrez was staring into the trunk while trying to put fire to a cigarette. His hand shook, and it was difficult to touch the flame to the tip.

  Manuel put his thumb to his fingers and crossed himself. He went to the far corner of the garage, where a couple of old batteries were resting on wooden pallets. He lifted one of the batteries and carried it back to the LTD.

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  JANUARY 1998

  THREE

  Nick Stefanos tucked a black denim shirt into jeans and had a seat on the edge of his bed. He leaned forward to tie his shoes and felt a rush of dizziness. Cool sweat broke upon his forehead. He sat up and waited for the feeling to pass. In an hour or so he’d be fine.

  Stefanos shaved with a cup of coffee in front of him and the last Jawbox booming from his Polk speakers back in the bedroom. “Iodine,” the CD’s soul-tinged rocker, had just kicked in. He rubbed his cheek, downed a last swig of coffee, and gargled a capful of breath wash. In his bedroom he grabbed an envelope and a shrink-wrapped CD off his dresser.

  Stefanos snagged his brown leather jacket off a peg by the door, turned up his collar, locked the apartment, and left the house. He picked up the morning Post from his landlord’s front lawn and got under the wheel of his white-over-red Coronet 500, parked at the curb. He turned over the engine and drove a couple of miles out of Shepherd Park to the Takoma Metro station, where he caught a downtown train.

  He found a seat on the right side of the car. Seasoned Red Line riders knew to go there, as the morning sun blew blinding rays through the left windows of the southbound cars, causing a sickening, furnace brand of heat. “Doors closing,” said a recorded female voice, and Stefanos couldn’t help but smile. It always sounded like “George Clinton” to him.

  The train got rolling as Stefanos pulled the Metro section from the Post and scanned its front page. One of the section’s rotating columnists had written yet another piece on the ongoing dismantlement of Home Rule.

  Quietly, and with surprisingly little resistance, the Feds had taken over the nation’s capital. Congress had appointed a control board and a city manager, a white female Texan who would oversee a town whose black residents made up more than 80 percent of the population. A former military general had been put in charge of the public school system, with little positive effect. Under his “leadership,” public schools had opened seven weeks late the previous fall due to long-neglected repairs. D.C. residents continued to pay taxes but had no meaningful voting representation in the House or the Senate, and the elected city council had been stripped of its power. The mayor was now in charge of little more than parades.

  Meanwhile, fat-cat politicians from Virginia and North Carolina, and suburbanites who made their living in town but paid no commuter taxes, ridiculed the District of Columbia relentlessly. Stefanos, a lifelong Washingtonian, was fully aware of the problems. Like most residents, though, he didn’t care to hear about them from leeches, tourists, and self-serving Southerners.

  Stefanos read an article below the fold that detailed the state of the Metropolitan Police Department. The former chief of police had resigned under allegations of mismanagement and corruption; his roommate, a lieutenant on the force, had been accused of shaking down closeted homosexuals outside Southeast’s bathhouse strip. The Homicide division, with more than sixteen hundred unsolved cases and a less than 40 percent closure rate, was under particular fire. Some Homicide detectives had recently been caught overinflating the hours on their time cards. Murders occurring in the city’s poorest neighborhoods were lazily investigated at best. An apparent serial killer was loose in the Park View section of town. And the most emblematic, high-profile case of the decade remained unsolved: the slaughter at the pizza parlor called May’s, dating back to the summer of 1995.

  The mention of May’s triggered a pulse in Stefano’s blood. In the 1980s, when Stefanos was still taking cocaine with his whiskey in after-hours establishments, he had spent many late nights being served by Steve Maroulis, the house bartender at May’s. And he had crossed paths with Dimitri Karras, the father of the child killed by the speeding getaway car, on several occasions over the past twenty-two years. That Stefanos knew two victims of the same crime was not surprising. Stefanos, Maroulis, and Karras were all of Greek descent, and though spread out now, the Greek community in D.C. had a shared history.

  Stefanos looked out the window at a trash-strewn field bordering the old Woodie’s warehouse off North Capitol. Graffiti outlaw Cool “Disco” Dan, a D.C. legend, had tagged the loading dock. Below the moniker, someone had spray-painted a tombstone, on which was written, “Larry Willis, RIP,” and below that, his eulogy: “Heaven for a G.”

  The Red Line train entered a tunnel. Stefanos folded the newspaper, preparing for his stop.

  Stefanos stepped off the Judiciary Square station escalator and walked over to the Superior Court building at 5th and Indiana. He passed through a metal detector, navigated halls crowded with youths, their parents, uniformed cops, sheriffs, and private and court-appointed attorneys, and went down to the large cafeteria on the bottom floor.

  He bought a cup of coffee, sugared and creamed it to cut the taste, and walked across a red carpet to a table close to the front entrance, where he had a seat in a chair upholstered in red vinyl.

  A voice from a loudspeaker mounted on the wall announced, “Herbert Deuterman, please report with your client at this time to courtroom two-thirteen…”

  Nearby, a middle-aged white attorney wearing rumpled, mismatched clothes talked his idea of black to a few of his bored black coworkers seated at the same table. He described a defendant who had accused him of being a racist, and then said, “If this homey knew me the way y’all know me, he’d’ve known that the only color that matters to me is green. I put it to this boy point-blank straight.”

  As the attorney laughed, a woman seated at the table said, “So, you gonna cut a deal with his lawyer?”

  “I’m gonna cut one every which way but loose. You can believe that.”

  “Long as you don’t have to break a sweat, right Mr. Watkins?”

  “Sugar, I’m gonna do as little as possible, and a little bit less than that.”

  A kid sitting at the table to the right of Stefanos listened as his lawyer described the plea-out he was about to make “upstairs” on his client’s behalf, and how “Judge Levy definitely does not want to send another young man into an already overcrowded system, and she won’t, if she sees that your heart is in the right place.”

  Stefanos looked at the kid, still in his teens: skinny, sloppily dressed, and slumped in his chair. Today was his court date, and no one had even instructed him to tuck in his shirt. “And try to get that scowl off your face,” said the tired young attorney, “when you go before the judge. You can do that for a minute, can’t you? Speak clearly and show remorse, understand?”

  “I hear you,” said the kid. “Can I go get me one of them sodas now?”

  “Go ahead.”

  The young m
an glanced over at Stefanos and gave him a hard look before rising out of his seat to walk, deep-dip style, toward the cafeteria line.

  Stefanos had choked down half his coffee by the time Elaine Clay entered the cafeteria. Clay was a Fifth Streeter, one of the court-appointed attorneys available to defendants under the Criminal Justice Act. In her middle years, with the legs to wear the skirt she wore today, she was tall and big boned, with a handsome, smooth chocolate face. Even before she had begun throwing work his way, Stefanos had heard of her rep from the cops who frequented the Spot, the bar where he worked part-time. Most cops derided the CJA attorneys – they were the enemy who undid police arrests. But over the years the strength and consistency of Elaine Clay’s performance had elicited a kind of muttered-under-the-breath respect from the cops. It had been one of the Spot’s regulars, in fact, homicide detective Dan Boyle, who had put Clay and Stefanos together the first time.

  Stefanos stood as Elaine approached the table.

  “Nick,” she said.

  “Counselor.”

  They shook hands. Elaine had a seat, dropping a worn leather bag at her side.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Here you go.” Stefanos placed an envelope into her hand. “I think I got what you were looking for.”

  She studied the photographs from the envelope. “You got a night and a day shot.”

  “Yeah. The day shot shows that the bulb of the street lamp’s been broken out. The night shot shows what you can see on that corner without the light – nothing. Newton Place dead-ends at the western border of the Old Soldiers’ Home property there, and there isn’t any light over that fence, either. There’s no way that cop saw your client dealing weed out of that car.”

  “The arrest was six months ago. You took these pictures, what, last week?”

  “Eight days ago. I know, it doesn’t prove the light was out the night those cops arrested him last summer. It doesn’t disprove it, either.”

  “The prosecutor will argue relevance – that a busted street lamp from a week ago has no relevance to a crime that occurred six months ago. And the judge will sustain it.”