“Yeah, okay. Can I borrow twenty dollars?”
They watched another five minutes of game. Tracy Murray hit two free throws to further the Wizards’ lead.
“The shots at the line are gonna win this game,” said Clay. “The Lakers have made half of theirs. We made damn near all of ours. It’s like I’m always telling Marcus Jr.: fundamentals.”
“How’s M. J. doin’, man?”
“Good. Made the honor roll at Wilson. You’ll see him at my birthday thing. You are coming, right?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Course, M. J. would have liked to have made the game tonight. Wanted to check out Kobe.”
“He’ll see him – the kid’s got a long career ahead of him.”
“He’s got, what, four points this evening? The way he’s playin’ tonight, I’d say the young emperor has no clothes.”
“The Lakers are a year away in every department. Look at their talent. Van Exel, Horry. Eddie Jones is bad. And Kobe Bryant is only gonna get better.”
“Anyway, I told M. J. that I had to save the Lakers game for my boy Dimitri. ’Cause I know how much you like the Lakers.” Clay side-glanced Karras. “Goin’ all the way back to Gail Goodrich, when you modeled your game after his.”
“Aw, shit, now you’re gonna start that again. I told you a hundred times, my game was always closer to Walt Frazier’s.”
“Well, you used to wear those Clydes of his, anyway.”
“And I could drive the paint like him, too.”
Clay and Karras laughed and shook hands. Clay squeezed Karras’s shoulder.
“It’s good to see you, man,” said Clay.
“Good to see you, too.”
“You look different. Happier or something. Am I wrong?”
“No, you’re right. My new job has helped. And so has time.”
“You still seeing the bartender’s wife?”
“Once a week for now. That’s helped as well.”
“What about Lisa?”
“I called her late the other night… I don’t know why. It was a mistake. Nothing’s changed. Nothing’s going to change.” Karras finished his warm beer and put the plastic cup down on the concrete. “I know now that there’s two kinds of people in this world: those who’ve lost a child and those who haven’t. I’ll never be whole again, Marcus. I’ve accepted that.”
“But you got to keep trying.”
“I am.” Karras wiped his mouth dry with a napkin. “Speaking of work, I’ve got this friend down at the Spot, dishwasher named Darnell. Smart guy, a good cook, and a really good worker. I think he’s a good candidate to open his own small business. He’s not looking for a bar, just the food side of things.”
“I’ll talk to him, that’s what you want.”
“He lacks confidence, I think.”
“When the time’s right, then. Maybe you could come in with him, make it less painful for him. Be a good way for you to ease back on into the company, too. Clarence was just sayin’ the other day how we could use your people skills again.”
“Like I said, Marcus. I need a little time.”
O’Neal fought three defenders under the bucket and came up for a monster dunk. The hometown crowd had to applaud his effort.
“Now there’s a guy whose game has come around,” said Karras.
“You’re not lyin’. Shaq is the real Raging Bull.”
Karras looked over at his friend. Marcus had put on a few pounds, but it was natural weight gain and he kept it hard. His closely cropped Afro was salted with gray, and there were gray flecks in his thick black mustache.
“You still playin’?” said Karras.
“Still got that once-a-week thing over at the Alice Deal gym. My knees are gonna betray me one of these days, I know. And I can’t run the court with those young boys anymore. But I’m doin’ all right for an old man, I guess.”
“You’ll never give it up. You’re the original ball freak, man.”
Clay pointed his finger at Karras. “What about you? Goddamn, Dimitri! Was a time when you would not leave the blacktop. You even used to drag me to those ABA games back when D.C. had a team in the seventies.”
Karras smiled. “The Capitols.”
“Yeah, we’d have to go down to the old Washington Coliseum to see ’em play, too. What a dump that was.”
“Hey, we saw some good ball. They had Rick Barry for a while, right? And we got to see the Doctor when he was young and playin’ for the Squires, don’t forget that.”
“What was that team had all those crazy boys on it? The Spirits of St. Louis, right?”
“Marvin Bad Boy Barnes.”
“Hey, Mitri,” said Clay, “remember that backup center the Spirits had, big, Lurch-lookin’ mug, had a clown’s face, like? They used to put him into the game just to inflict pain.”
“I don’t remember his name. But yeah, it’s hard to forget a man that ugly.” Karras squinted. “Hey, check out that cheerleader, Marcus. The Asian girl, back row center.”
“Yeah, she is fine. But look at you, all gray and shit, staring at some twenty-year-old girl.”
“I was just commenting on her beauty, is all.”
“I know what you was doin’,” said Clay. “Booty monger like you.”
TWENTY-ONE
Nick Stefanos stood on the platform of the Fort Totten Metro station at seven-forty-five in the morning, blowing into his hands to warm them against the cold. He looked out into the parking lot at the blue Volvo pulling into the Kiss and Ride lane. He knew Terrence Mitchell would be right on time – he was that kind of man. Erika Mitchell stepped out of the passenger side, shut the door behind her, and walked across the lot.
Stefanos leaned against the side of a wind shelter as Erika emerged onto the platform. Her skin was dark, and she wore bright red lipstick on her ample mouth. She was a big-legged girl with big, straightened hair.
The lights at the edge of the platform blinked as the Green Line train approached. Erika boarded the train, and Stefanos took his time walking into the same car. She took the first seat by the doors; he had a seat three rows behind her.
“George Clinton,” said the recorded voice as the doors closed.
Stefanos settled in for the ride. Greenbelt was four stops away, and the trip would take a little while. But Erika got out of her seat two stops shy of Greenbelt and exited the car at the Prince George’s Plaza station. Stefanos followed her down to the parking lot and hung back at the newspaper racks as a chromed-up, ice-green Acura pulled alongside her.
The driver stopped the car so that it blocked traffic. He got out, walked over to Erika, and put his hands gently on her shoulders. He was tall and lean, midtwenties, wearing wide-leg jeans and a Nautica shirt with an unbuttoned thigh-length leather over the shirt. He wore his hair in a blown-out, seventies-style Afro. Erika and the tall man kissed, and then she got into the shotgun seat of his ride. The driver pulled away.
In the time that Randy Weston had been held on the murder charge, Erika Mitchell had found a new man. Or maybe he had been there all along. Even a control freak like Terrence Mitchell, thought Stefanos, couldn’t stop a young man and woman from getting together. He wondered if Erika Mitchell even had a job.
Stefanos checked his watch. He returned to the station and caught a train back to Fort Totten.
Stefanos fired up his Dodge and drove east, down Michigan Avenue and along the north-south railroad tracks of Brookland. He parked on the street, found the bay with the green door that he was looking for, and rang the bell. The door opened. A man stood in the frame, wiping his hands on a pink shop rag.
“Al Adamson?”
“That’s right.”
“Nick Stefanos. I phoned yesterday, remember? Marcus Clay sent me.”
Adamson’s biceps filled out the sleeves of his coveralls, and his upper body strained the fabric at his chest. He was shaved bald with a full beard and wore small rimless glasses. His face was deeply lined. Stefanos put him in his early fifties.
“Come on in,” said Adamson.
Stefanos followed him into the bay. A drop light hung over the open hood of a triple-black Mark III. Adamson went right to the car, grabbed a wrench off a cloth laid out across the top of the front quarter panel, and got to work.
“You can talk to me while I do this,” said Adamson. “I got to get this water pump out and replaced by noon.”
“Like I said, Marcus put me onto you. Well, Elaine, really. I do investigative work for her, down at the courthouse.”
“I called Marcus after you called me. He said you were all right. Said you gave Dimitri Karras a job.”
“Yeah, he’s doing well.”
“Damn shame about his son.” Adamson stopped working for a moment. “I lost my kid brother to violence back in nineteen seventy-six. You never forget, not really.” Adamson loosened a bolt. “Karras still wearin’ those Hawaiian shirts?”
“Not that I know of.”
Adamson chuckled to himself.
Stefanos said, “I’m looking for the name of a specialty Ford mechanic. Someone who might work on a Torino from the early seventies. One of those Twisters they had, limited edition.”
Adamson looked up. Light flashed off the lenses of his glasses. “I don’t recall that car.”
“Like I say, limited. Real limited. Fast car, but stock. Maybe a restoration job.”
“Restoration, huh? There’s a few guys I can turn you on to. Guys I’ve run into over the years. You’re lookin’ for D.C. boys, right?”
“Inside the Beltway ought to do it.”
Adamson backed up and stood. “Be right back.”
Stefanos smoked a cigarette, waiting for Adamson to return. He crushed the smoke under his shoe as Adamson came back into the bay. Adamson stared at the butt flattened on the concrete.
“I tell you you could do that in here?”
“No.”
Adamson glared at Stefanos. Stefanos picked up the butt and dropped it in the pocket of his work shirt.
“Here you go, man,” said Adamson. He handed a slip of note-paper to Stefanos. “Had to transpose that out of my Rolodex.”
Stefanos read off the names. Adamson’s handwriting was like a doctor’s – nearly illegible. “Clewis?” he said.
“Supposed to be C. Lewis. As in Charlie. Has a shop over in Hyattsville.”
“Okay. And what’s this? Manul Rulz and -”
“Manuel Ruiz and Jaime Gutierrez. Two mechanics up in Silver Spring, right over the District line. They specialize in Ford restorations.”
“Okay. I think I can figure this out.”
Stefanos uncovered a stick of gum from its foil wrapper and began to put the gum in his mouth.
“I tell you you could do that?” said Adamson.
“What?”
Adamson half grinned. “Just kidding you, man.”
“I knew that.” Stefanos relaxed his shoulders. “Say, I’m no Ford expert, but I remember when Lincoln-Mercury was putting out some really strange models. Didn’t there used to be a Cartier-edition Lincoln, way back?”
“Yeah, had the Landau roof with the opera window cutout. New York Cartier gauges on the dash, too.”
“And there was this other model they had, two-tone job, came out in the late seventies -”
“The Mark Five Bill Blass.” Adamson smiled. “All the brothers who thought they were stylin’ had to have that one.”
“Well, I’ll let you get back to it.”
“Yeah, I better.”
Stefanos looked Adamson over. “You know, you don’t mind my sayin’ so, the shape you’re in, you could put the fear of God into Mike Tyson. You ever do any kickboxing, anything like that?”
Adamson adjusted his glasses. “Never had to.”
“Right. Thanks a million, hear?”
Adamson nodded and got back under the hood of the Mark.
At five-thirty in the evening, Stefanos sat behind the wheel of his Dodge in the parking lot of the Prince George’s Plaza metro station, waiting for the tall man in the Acura to drop Erika Mitchell off. A couple of minutes later, the car arrived. Stefanos wrote down the Virginia plate numbers as he watched the man and Erika in silhouette through the Acura’s back window.
The Acura pulled out of the lot. Stefanos put the Dodge in gear and followed.
The driver of the Acura took East West Highway to Riggs to New Hampshire, cutting off on Kennedy. Stefanos stayed back a quarter mile. The Acura drifted off Kennedy and went up First Place, pulling over to the curb in front of a row house there. Stefanos parked his Dodge a half block south.
Two young men came from the row house and walked to the Acura as the driver let down his window. One of the young men handed something to the driver. Darkness had fallen now, and Stefanos could not see what had transpired. The young men stood around talking to the driver, and then the driver pulled the car off the curb and rolled north. Stefanos followed.
As he followed, Stefanos considered what he had just seen. A young black man who did not appear to have worked that day was driving a thirty-thousand-dollar car. He briefly met with two other young black men, who passed him something through his window.
If the young driver had been white and living in Potomac or Ward 3, Stefanos might have come to a different conclusion, or no conclusion at all. After all, you could drive by Churchill High School or St. Alban’s in the middle of the day and see a parking lot filled with Acuras and BMWs.
But this wasn’t Ward 3, and Stefanos had to make the leap: Erika Mitchell had a history of going with young men who flirted with the drug trade. Now she was hooked up with the driver of the Acura, most likely also a drug dealer.
Stefanos pushed a tape of the Getaway People, a mix of old-school funk and Beck-style hiptronics, into the deck. “Does My Colour Scare You?” came forward, and he turned it up.
The Acura cut up Blair Road and went north along the west side of the railroad tracks. It turned left on Rittenhouse. Stefanos waited, hung a left onto a residential street of modest, proudly maintained homes, watched the glow of the Acura’s taillights flare as the driver braked. The Acura swung right into a driveway.
Stefanos drove slowly down the block, checking the addresses. He neared the spot where the Acura had turned, and he cut the Dodge to the curb. He got out of the car and walked down the sidewalk.
The driver of the Acura was stepping out of his car as Stefanos approached the house, a small, clapboard, single-family home. The Acura was parked in front of a detached, locked-down garage.
Stefanos kept walking. He was reading the address and making a mental note of it when he bumped into a man.
“Fuck you think you doin’?” said the young man, low slung with a stoved-in nose. He made a sweeping motion with his hands.
“Sorry,” said Stefanos. “I wasn’t watching -”
“Gotdamn right you sorry. You about the sorriest motherfucker I seen all day.”
Stefanos walked around the man and kept on, glancing back over his shoulder. The young man was standing there studying him, giving him the requisite hard look. The driver of the Acura stood by his car. He had heard the exchange and was studying Stefanos now, too.
Stefanos quickened his step. He made a right on 2nd, another right on Sheridan, and circled the block. He got into his Coronet, U-turned it, and gave it gas.
He stopped at Blair Liquors up the road. He bought a can of Budweiser and a pint of Old Crow. He sat in the car and had a deep drink from the bottle. He drank some more. He opened the can of beer and lit a cigarette. He was breathing normally now, and he headed for home.
TWENTY-TWO
On Saturday morning, Dimitri Karras drove his faded navy blue BMW down into Maryland’s St. Mary’s County, following Bernie Walters’s pickup all the way. They stopped for coffee, then stopped again for ammunition and bait, and made one last stop at a drive-through liquor store, where Karras watched the clerk pass a case of beer through the window of Walters’s truck. Pulling out of the lot, Karras saw a puf
f of smoke come from the driver’s side of the F-150 as Walters lit a cigarette.
They drove down Route 5 and then 242, through the towns of Clements and Dynard and onto back roads skirting the western shore of Clements Bay, an offshoot of the lower Potomac. A hard dirt road led them through woods to a clearing opening to two hundred feet of brackish creek. Walters parked the truck next to his pop-up trailer, and Karras pulled in beside him. Walters had a beer in his hand as Karras met him by the truck.
“Care for one?” said Walters, holding up the can.
“No, thanks, I’m good.” Karras zipped up his coat.
“A little cold,” said Walters, who wore only a down vest over a denim shirt, blue jeans, and his Orioles cap. He shaded his eyes from the sun and studied the clear sky. “But not bad.”
Karras looked around the property. “Nice, Bern.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty fine. When the weather breaks and these trees fill out, you’re really alone back here. Which is how I like it. I don’t even have a phone line.”
“You’re gonna stay down here all week without a phone?”
“What do I need it for? And if I do need to make a call, I’ll just drive up the road to town.”
“What are you going to eat?”
“I’ve got a generator, but I cook with propane and I rarely use the electricity.” Walters nodded at the Jiffy John set back from the trailer. “I put that in for my guests. Me, I just pee in the grass and shit in the woods.”
“That’s mighty natural, pardner. But you won’t think I’m a pussy if I use the toilet, will ya?”
“Do anything you like, Dimitri. I won’t think a thing.”
Walters killed his beer and tossed the empty into a box filled with empties that was lying in the bed of his truck. He grabbed a fresh beer from the cab.
“Feel like takin’ a walk in the woods?” said Walters.
“Sure. Maybe we could do that thing we talked about.”
“Okay. Shotgun or handgun? I got both.”
“Handgun.”
“Be right back,” said Walters, heading for the trailer.
Bernie Walters emerged from the trailer with a day pack slung over his shoulder. He got the box of rounds he had purchased from out of the pickup and put that and some of the empty beer cans, plus one unopened can, into the pack.
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