Under a shoe box filled with trinkets from my youth, in the bottom of the dresser drawer, lay the envelope that held the few memories I had chosen to hold on to through the years. I placed the white card into the envelope, behind the photograph of me and Billy Goodrich sitting high on the fire escape in New Orleans. I slipped the envelope back under the shoe box and closed the drawer. My cat walked slowly into the room and settled at my feet.
Reading Group Guide
NICK’S TRIP
A novel by
GEORGE PELECANOS
George Pelecanos responds to questions from his readers
Have you always had an interest in writing?
Yes. I would say that before I was into books, I was mainly a movie freak, and music—all popular culture. But I came to writing relatively late in life after being influenced and turned on to books by a professor of mine at the University of Maryland. But all my earlier pop culture influences make their way into my books.
Do you remember your first story that you wrote, and where you buried it so it won’t see the light of day?
That’s a good one. Actually, I do. The first thing I wrote was a novel when I was ten years old. It was a war novel. It was called The Two Wars of Lieutenant Jeremy. And, you know, it was a long book. I illustrated it and all that. I didn’t bury it; it was lost. The only thing I have left is one sheet of reviews that I wrote myself. And that’s what remains of that. I didn’t try to write a second book for another twenty years.
You have written eight novels set in and around Washington, D.C. Apart from the fact that you live in the D.C. area, what do you find so intriguing about D.C. that you are inclined to set all of your novels there?
When I started out, I didn’t feel as if Washington, D.C., had been fully represented in literature. And by that I mean the real, living, working-class side of the city. The cliché is that Washington is a transient town of people who blow in and out every four years with the new administration. But the reality is that people have lived in Washington for generations and their lives are worth examining, I think. I didn’t have a specific plan in the beginning, but the way it’s worked out, I’ve pretty much covered the century in Washington, going back to the 1930s and the societal changes that have occurred there.
Your novels have been said to be very “streetwise.” What kind of research do you do in order to write stories that capture the real pulse of the city?
Well, the main thing is, I’ve lived there for my whole life, which is forty-two years. And I continue to live in a very mixed working-class neighborhood. So this is not an archaeological thing for me; rather it’s more a case of me being out on the street and listening and talking with my neighbors. Now there are things that I do. I have sources. I ride with the police at night frequently, and I know private detectives in Washington who can get me an audience with, for example, prostitutes and people like that who are out at night and see more than the cops do. And it’s also a case of my personal history—where I’ve worked in kitchens, bars, warehouses, and sales floors. I have gotten a wealth of material like that.
Did you have any writers that inspired you when you were younger? Did they lead you to the crime genre?
Yes. The earliest were the masters, like Chandler and Hammett. And then the major influences on me were the pulp writers of the 1950s and early ’60s, like David Goodis, Charles Willeford, and Chester Himes. Later I was influenced by writers who began to turn the hard-boiled crime novels on their heads. People like James Crumley, Kem Nunn, and Newton Thornburg. Another influence for me was outside the realm of books; it was in the punk rock arena, which was very strong in Washington in the 1980s. And I started to think that if these guys that had no formal musical training could pick up these guitars and make this outstanding, meaningful music, then I, who had no formal training as a writer, could maybe try to do the same thing with a pen.
What do you think of the Robert Parker “Spenser” series?
I’ve read most of them. I think they’re fantastic. He, along with Elmore Leonard, brought something entirely fresh to the crime novel back in the 1970s. So I would say that both of those guys got me “amped.”
Which of your books did you enjoy the most?
I think I have the fondest place in my heart for a book I wrote called The Big Blowdown. It was the story of immigrants in Washington, D.C., from the years 1933 to 1959. By extension it was the story of my family. Or to put it another way, it was a hard Valentine to my people. But the books that I’ve written since, I think, have technically improved as I’ve matured personally and my worldview has broadened. And so I’m very happy with this set of novels that people call the “D.C. Quartet.” I know that this new book, Shame the Devil, has seemed to move people in an entirely different way than my books have done before. And I’m happy about that.
Many protagonists are often modeled on the author himself. Are you Nick Stefanos?
I was in the first book. It’s no secret that the character of Stefanos is autobiographical. However, as his life darkened, mine grew better. And so the Stefanos of later books is a much different character than I am now. I would say that two things put me on that positive track, and in effect saved me, and those things are my family and my writing.
Questions and topics for discussion
1. George Pelecanos is known for his use of very specific details in his writing—car makes and models, radio station call letters, street names. What are some examples of this, and why do you think he does it? If you aren’t familiar with the geography, how does this affect your sense of the place and environment?
2. What are some of the bands and songs Nick listens to, and why do you think Pelecanos chose to include them? Were they from bands or singers you recognized, or were they new to you? Do you think they helped to evoke a particular feeling or era?
3. “Billy Goodrich was the picture of Young Turk affluence, D.C. style. In the driver’s seat of his white Maxima, with his somber, subtly plaided Britches suit, suspenders, thinly striped shirt with spread collar, maroon-and-gold retro tie, and forty-dollar haircut, he oozed mindless ambition. Billy threw a glance in the direction of the passenger seat, where I was tapping the side of my index finger against the window.”
How does this description color your perception of who Billy Goodrich is, and of his relationship to Nick? Why do you think Pelecanos chose to describe him this way?
4. Do you think the title Nick’s Trip has more than one interpretation? If so, how do you interpret it?
5. Pelecanos has been compared to classic noir writers like Jim Thompson, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain. If you’re familiar with those authors, what are some elements of plotting and characterization that they share? Do you think Pelecanos diverges from their classic tradition? In what ways?
6. What is the significance of work in this novel? What are some of the jobs that characters hold, and how do they help you understand or perceive those characters? Do you think there are moments when Nick and Billy are separated by their relationship to work?
7. Although Washington, D.C., is the setting, politics and politicians play no role in Nick’s Trip, nor in any of George Pelecanos’s other novels. Why do you think he chooses to write about the other side of the nation’s capital?
8. Imagine that you’ve just been hired as casting director for the film adaptation of Nick’s Trip. Who should play Nick? Billy? Boyle?
9. Reread the final lines of the novel. What do you think Pelecanos is telling us about Nick, and about what might lie ahead for him?
… and the next Nick Stefanos novel
Nick Stefanos returns in Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go. Following is a brief excerpt from the novel’s opening pages.
ONE
LIKE MOST OF the trouble that’s happened in my life or that I’ve caused to happen, the trouble that happened that night started with a drink. Nobody forced my hand; I poured it myself, two fingers of bourbon into a heavy, beveled shot glass. There were many mor
e after that, more bourbons and more bottles of beer, too many more to count. But it was that first one that led me down to the river that night, where they killed a boy named Calvin Jeter.
This one started at the Spot, on 8th and G in Southeast, where I tended bar three or four shifts a week. It had been a hot day, hazy and soup-hot, like most midsummer days in D.C. The compressor on our ancient air conditioner had gone down after the lunch rush, and though most of our regulars had tried to drink their way through it, the heat had won out. So by ten o’clock it was just me behind the stick, lording over a row of empty bar stools, with Ramon in the cellar and Darnell in the kitchen, cleaning up. I phoned Phil Saylor, the owner of the establishment, and with his okay shut the place down.
Ramon came up the wooden stairs carrying three cases of beer, his head just clearing the top carton. He was smiling stupidly—he had just smoked a joint in the cellar—but the smile was stretched tight, and it looked as if he were about to bust a nut. Ramon in his cowboy boots stood five two and weighed in at 129, so seventy-two beers was pushing it. He dropped the cases at my feet and stood before me, wiping the sweat off his forehead with a red bandanna. I thanked him and tipped him out.
For the next fifteen minutes, I rotated the beer into the cooler, making sure to leave some cold ones on the top, while I listened to Ramon and Darnell cut on each other back in the kitchen. Through the reach-through, I could see Ramon gut-punching the tall and razorish Darnell, Darnell taking it and loving it and laughing the whole time. Then there were loud air kisses from Ramon, and Darnell saying, “Later, amigo,” and Ramon motoring out of the kitchen, through the bar area, toward the door.
I finished with the beer and wiped down the bar and rinsed out the green netting and put the ashtrays in the soak sink, leaving one out, and then I washed up and changed into shorts and a T-shirt and high-top sneakers. Darnell shut off the light in the kitchen and came out as I tightened the laces on my Chucks.
“Whas’up, Nick?”
“’Bout done.”
“Any business today?”
“Yeah. The catfish went pretty good.”
“Used a little Old Bay. Think anybody noticed?”
“Uh-uh.”
Darnell pushed his leather kufi back off his sweat-beaded forehead. “You headin’ uptown? Thought maybe I’d catch a ride.”
“Not yet. I’m gonna call Lyla, see what she’s doing.”
“All right, then. Let me get on out of here.”
On the nights we closed together, this was our routine. Darnell knew I would stick around, usually alone, and have a drink; he’d always try and get me out of there before I did. A stretch in Lorton had straightened him all the way out, though no one mistook his clean lifestyle for the lifestyle of a pushover, least of all me; I had seen what he could do with a knife. Darnell went out the door. I locked it behind him.
Back in the main room, I counterclockwised the rheostat. The lamps dimmed, leaving the room washed in blue neon light from the Schlitz logo centered over the bar. I found WDCU on the house stereo and notched up the volume on the hard bop. I lit a cigarette, hit it, and fitted it in the V of the last remaining ashtray. Then I pulled a nearly full bottle of Old Grand-Dad off the call shelf, poured a shot, and had a taste. I opened a cold bottle of Bud, drank off an inch or two of that, and placed the bottle next to the shot. My shoulders unstiffened, and everything began to soften and flow down.
I looked around the room: a long, railed mahogany bar, mottled and pocked; several conical lamps spaced above, my own smoke swirling in the low-watt light; a rack behind the lamps, where pilsner and rocks and up glasses hung suspended, dripping water on the bar; some bar stools, a few high-backed, the rest not; a couple of vinyl-cushioned booths; a pair of well-used speakers mounted on either side of the wall, minus the grills; and some “artwork,” a Redskins poster furnished by the local beer distributor (1989’s schedule—we had never bothered to take it down) and a framed print of the Declaration of Independence, the signatures of our forefathers joined in various places by the drunken signatures of several of our regulars. My own signature was scrawled somewhere on there, too.
I finished my bourbon and poured another as I dialed Lyla’s number. Next to the phone was a photograph, taped to the yellowed wall, of a uniformed Phil Saylor, circa his brief stint as a cop on the Metropolitan Police force. I looked at his round face while listening to Lyla’s answering machine. I hung the receiver in its cradle without leaving a message.
The next round went down smoothly and more quickly than the first. During that one, I tried phoning my old buddy Johnny McGinnes, who had gone from electronics sales to mattresses and now to major appliances, but the chipper guy who answered the call—“Goode’s White Goods. My name is Donny. How may I help you?”—told me that McGinnes had left for the evening. I told him to tell McGinnes that his friend Nick had called, and he said, “Sure will,” adding, “and if you’re ever in need of a major appliance, the name is Donny.” I hung up before he could pry his name in again, then dialed Lyla’s number. Still no answer.
So I had another round, slopping bourbon off the side of the glass as I poured. Cracking a beer I had buried earlier in the ice bin, I went to the stereo and cranked up the volume: a honking session from some quintet, really wild shit, the Dexedrined drummer all over the map. By the time the set was over, I had finished my shot. Then I decided to leave; the Spot had grown hellishly hot, and I had sweat right into my clothes. Besides, my buzz was too good now, way too good to waste alone. I killed the lights and set the alarm, locked the front door, and stepped out onto 8th with a beer in my hand.
I walked by an athletic-shoe store, closed and protected by a riot gate. I passed an alley fringely lit at the head by a nearby streetlamp. I heard voices in its depths, where an ember flared, then faded. Just past the alley sat Athena’s, the last women’s club in my part of town. Behind its windowless brick walls came the steady throb of bass. I pushed open the door and stepped inside.
I heard my name called out over a Donna Summer tune and the general noise of the place. I edged myself around a couple of women on the dance floor and stepped up to the bar. Stella, the stocky, black-haired tender, had poured me a shot when she saw me come through the front door. I thanked her and put my hand around the glass and knocked it back all at once. Someone kissed me on the back of my neck and laughed.
I found Mattie, my transplanted Brooklyn friend, by the pool table in a smoky corner of the room. We shot our usual game of eight ball, and I lost a five. Then I bought us a round of beers and played another game, with the same result. Mattie had the whole table mapped out before her first stroke, while I was a power shooter who never played for shape. Some nights I won, anyway—but not that night.
I went back to the bar and settled my tab and left too much for Stella. In the bar mirror, I saw my reflection, bright-eyed and ugly and streaked with sweat. Near the register hung a framed photograph of Jackie Kahn, former Athena’s bartender and the mother of my child, a boy named Kent, now nine months old. I said something loudly to Stella then, my voice sounding garbled and harsh. She began to smile but then abruptly stopped, looking in my eyes. I pushed away from the bar and made it out the front door, to the fresh air and the street.
I unlocked the Spot’s front door, deactivated the alarm by punching in a four-digit number on a grid, and went back behind the bar. I cracked a cold beer and drank deeply. Then I poured Old Grand-Dad to the lip of a shot glass and bent over, putting my lips directly to the whiskey, drinking off an inch of it without touching the glass. I shook a Camel filter out of my pack and lit it. The phone began to ring. I let it ring, and walked down toward the stereo, stumbling on a rubber mat along the way. I found a tape by Lungfish, a raging guitar-based band out of Baltimore, and slid that in the deck. I hit the play button and gave it some bass.
Black.
I sat on a stool at the bar, tried to strike a match. A cigarette had burned down, dead-cold in the ashtray. I lit a fresh one, tosse
d the match toward the ashtray, missed. I reached for my shot glass and saw the half-filled bottle of Grand-Dad in the middle of a cluster of empty beer bottles. I tasted whiskey. The tape had ended. There was not a sound in the bar.
Black.
I stepped off the curb outside the Spot. A whooping alarm screamed in the night. Stella walked by me, said, “Nicky, Nicky,” went through the open front door of the Spot, reset the alarm. She asked for and took my keys, then locked the front door. A few women had spilled out of Athena’s onto the sidewalk. Stella returned, held my keys out, then drew them back as I reached for them.
“Come on, Nicky. Come on and sleep it off in the back.”
“I’m all right. Gimme my keys.”
“Forget it.”
“Gimme my keys. I can sleep in my car. What the fuck, Stella, it’s ninety degrees out here. You think I’m gonna freeze? Gimme my fuckin’ keys.”
Stella tossed me the keys. I tried to catch them, but there was an open beer in one of my hands and the bottle of Grand-Dad in the other. I went to one knee to pick my keys up off the street. I looked up, tried to thank Stella. She had already walked away.
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