Shame the Devil

SIXTEEN

Dimitri Karras opened his eyes. He stared up at the bedroom ceiling and unballed his fists. He’d been trying to nap, but he’d flashed on Jimmy and knew then that he’d never get to sleep. Other people were startled into insomnia by thoughts of their own mortality. With Karras it was always the image of his little boy.

He got out of bed and went to get something to drink.

His apartment on U Street, near 15th, was sparsely furnished with his old Trauma Arms living-room furniture, moved from the rec room of his house in upper Northwest. From that house he’d also taken his clothing, his books and records, and his stereo. Nothing else. He’d left Lisa with everything the two of them had accumulated in the course of their marriage and found himself this apartment a year after Jimmy’s death.

That he and Lisa wouldn’t make it was almost predictable. He’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t blame her for what happened, though he couldn’t stop thinking that if she’d kept up with Jimmy that day, stayed by his side… That was the problem; he couldn’t stop himself from thinking. And vocalizing those thoughts in the many horrible, unreasonable arguments that followed.

Blame and guilt, said Lisa’s shrink, the one who always seemed to take Lisa’s side. Blame and guilt would kill their marriage if they let it. They let it, almost from the start. It wasn’t long before the two of them were done.

When he moved to the apartment he thought it would be better, being away from Lisa, and especially being away from their house, where memories laughed at him in every room. But it wasn’t much better in the apartment. It was only more quiet. So quiet sometimes that he’d catch himself speaking out loud. He’d check himself then because he knew that this kind of quiet could drive him mad.

Karras stood at the sink drinking water. He watched a roach crawl over the backsplash of the countertop and disappear. Jimmy would have called it a “woach.” Just about everything he’d see or hear reminded him of Jimmy when he let it. Jimmy in death was a scream that was always in Karras’s head.

Karras paced the apartment. He found himself sitting on the edge of his bed.

Sometimes he’d be sitting in his bedroom like this in the old house, and he’d hear Jimmy fall, and he’d hear him begin to sob. Jimmy would call, “Daddy!”and Karras would say, “I’m in the bedroom, son,” and Jimmy would come in and run into his arms. Karras would hold him, rub his back, and kiss his head. Karras could still smell Jimmy’s scalp, the peculiar mix of sweat and Johnson’s shampoo.

Karras looked at the open entrance to his bedroom. He stared at the space, but there was nothing, no one, there. After a while he looked away and saw his reflection in the dresser mirror. He noticed that he had been crying, and he wiped the tears from his face.

The meeting was tonight. He’d be with his friends. He’d lie down with Stephanie later on. Things would be much better tonight.

But that was a few hours away. He decided to take a shower and change his clothes. Maybe he’d go down to the Spot, sit at the bar, find someone to talk to. Kill some time.

Nick Stefanos was sitting at the bar of the Spot, having a bottle of beer when Karras stepped down off the landing. Karras slid onto the stool to Stefanos’s right.

“Hey, Dimitri.”

“Nick. What, you’re hanging out here on your night off?”

“I’m never off. I worked this afternoon, something I’m doing for Elaine. I’m meeting my friend Alicia tonight, but I had a few hours to kill first. What about you?”

“I’ve got my group later on. I had some time to kill as well.”

“Dimitri,” said Mai, stepping up behind the bar in her Marine Corps T-shirt.

“Mai. Give me a ginger ale, please. From the bottle, not the gun.”

Mai had an Abba CD playing on the house system. It bothered Stefanos that groups like Abba and the Carpenters were considered hip now. Stefanos figured that anything that blew the first time around still blew, period. Retro appreciation was nothing more than blind nostalgia.

“Hey, Mai,” said Stefanos, “give us a break with this ‘Dancing Queen’ bullshit, huh?”

Mai set a glass of ginger ale on a bev nap in front of Karras. “My shift, Nicky, my music.”

She drifted away as Karras looked down the bar. A couple of neighborhood guys were arguing about what the Wizards “needed,” and a plainclothes cop from the Prostitution and Perversions division sat alone, sipping a red cocktail.

“She’s right, Nick. She ought to be able to play what she wants when she’s behind the bar. Besides, none of the customers seem to mind.”

“Helen Keller would notice more than those guys,” said Stefanos.

“In the kitchen it’s the same way. Everybody arguing over what’s coming out of the boom box. What they did back there was, each person got their own time slot to listen to whatever they want.”

“Yeah, I know. Maria gets her half hour right after the rush.”

“The thing is, what I noticed, the Spanish station she likes plays one song during that period and the rest is news. So she gets ripped off.”

“Sounds like you been thinking about work a lot, Dimitri.”

“I just noticed it, is all.”

Stefanos signaled Mai for another beer. She served it, and he lit a cigarette.

“Phil tells me you’re catching on,” said Stefanos. “I know from the shifts you and I have pulled together, the food’s coming out pretty fast.”

“Thanks,” said Karras. “And thanks for hooking me up. It’s been good for me, man.”

“Yeah, this place gets under your skin.”

Karras looked through the reach-through at the end of the bar. Ramon was in the kitchen, trying out a spin-kick on Darnell. Darnell stepped away from it and laughed.

“Me and Darnell,” said Karras, “we had a talk. It wasn’t any big thing. I get the feeling we’re going to get along all right.”

“You’re doing a good job. He’s not the type to hold a grudge. It’s like I told you, he’s a man.”

“That guy could do more if someone took him under their wing. He could open his own little place if someone showed him how.”

“No one’s ever taken that much interest in him, I guess.”

Karras watched Stefanos close his eyes lovingly as he took a long swallow of beer.

“I met Dan Boyle today,” said Karras.

“Uh-huh. He was curious about you. You know, twenty-four and seven a cop and all that.”

“He says his uncle was boyhood friends with my father.”

“Yeah. He claims his uncle used to drink coffee in my grandfather’s lunch counter, too, when his uncle was walking a beat. My papou never mentioned him, but it makes sense, I guess.”

“Strange guy, Boyle.”

“Not really. He’s not too hard to figure out.”

“You know him pretty well?”

Stefanos hit his cigarette. “Me and Boyle have a history together.”

Karras looked into his glass. “He knew about my son.”

“Not surprising. He’s Homicide.”

“Maybe he knows what’s happening. The progress, I mean, with the investigation.”

“Don’t think about it. Getting on the wrong side of Boyle can hurt you. But so can being his friend. My advice is to keep your distance.” Stefanos crushed out his cigarette. “Just stay away.”

“Maybe you can ask him what’s going on for me.”

“Sure. I’ll ask him.”

Karras thought of the passage of time, looking Stefanos over. “I remember the first time I met you. You were a kid. A stock boy at that place on Connecticut.”

“Nutty Nathan’s.”

“How’d you get from there to here?”

“You want the condensed version of twenty-two years?” Stefanos flicked ash off his smoke. “I got married, moved up through the ranks at Nathan’s, and became a ‘retail executive.’ Then I got divorced and blew up my career when I stumbled into investigative work. I walked into this bar one day, and here I am.”

“You’re just working for the Fifth Streeters now?”

“Not anyone but Elaine. The private cop business wasn’t for me. Too many things happened.” Stefanos rubbed his nose. “What about you? You were some unemployed, post-hippie pot dealer when I met you. And I seem to remember you turning me on to some high-octane flake in the bathroom at a Scream concert one night back in, hell, when was it?”

“Eighty-six. That’s right. I was all of those things. Directionless, I guess, is the best word to describe who I was. Then I met Lisa while I was cleaning myself up. We had Jimmy… Shit, man, everything was different after that. I never even had the slightest desire to get fucked up ever again, from the day he came to us. It’s like, he was born and I was re born, that make sense? Everything changed.” A tightness entered Karras’s face.

“Don’t talk about it, Dimitri,” said Stefanos. “You don’t have to, okay?”

Karras nodded. “Okay. I know where that goes, and it’s never good. Thanks.”

They sat there for another hour. Stefanos had another beer and a shot of Grand-Dad to keep the beer company. Karras, who knew too well the rituals involved in getting high, had been noticing Stefanos romance the alcohol. He watched him kill his beer and knew he would automatically signal Mai for another.

“Hold up,” said Karras, putting a hand on Stefanos’s bicep. “Don’t order another beer.”

“What are you talking about, man? I’ve got another hour and a half before I meet Alicia.”

“Another hour and a half, you’re gonna have a load on. You want to meet her like that?”

Stefanos thought of the last night he’d been with Alicia. How he’d been too drunk to talk to her. How he’d been too drunk to get an erection, even with her next to him, naked in the bed.

“You got a better suggestion?”

“I’ve got my group; it’s getting ready to start.” The group had always been hermetic by agreement, and for a moment he wondered how the others would take to the idea of a stranger’s joining them. He said, “Why don’t you come with me?”

“You’re not trying to get me into one of those ten-step things, are you? Because, listen, I like to drink. I know who I am, and I’m not looking to make any changes.”

“No, it’s not that. I just want you to meet my friends. Anyway, what’re you, gonna sit on that stool and listen to Lobo for the next hour and a half?”

“I believe this is Bread.”

“Whatever. Come with me, man.”

“All right.” Stefanos reached for his wallet. “Let’s go.”

By the time Karras and Stefanos walked into the common room of the church at 23rd and P, the group had already convened in the center of the room. Tonight there were two additional men in the circle: an older man in a wheelchair and a young man with similar features seated in a folding chair beside him.

“Hey, everybody,” said Karras, his voice echoing in the hall.

“Dimitri,” said Stephanie Maroulis, her eyes flashing on his. “We’ve got company tonight.”

“I see,” said Karras, and as he approached the group and got a closer look at the man in the wheelchair, he knew.

“Bill Jonas.” Jonas extended his hand and Karras shook it. “And this is my son Christopher.”

“Dimitri Karras.” He nodded at the young man.

“Nice to finally meet you,” said William Jonas.

“And you,” said Karras. “Well, good, I’m glad you broke the ice by coming here, because I brought someone tonight, too. Meet my friend Nick Stefanos.”

Stefanos went around the group, shaking hands. Jonas, the homicide cop crippled by the May’s shooters, told Stefanos his friend Dan Boyle had mentioned his name before, and Stefanos nodded politely.

“You’re a private cop,” said Jonas, “right?”

“That’s right,” said Stefanos, who immediately went to the urn to draw himself a cup of coffee. He felt eyes on his back, or maybe it was his imagination.

“Hey, Ernst,” said Bernie Walters, the father of the slain waiter, as an old guy with gray hair-clumps growing from his face entered the room from a side door.

“Everything all right?” said Ernst.

“Yeah,” said Thomas Wilson, the pizza chef’s friend, “we’re okay, Ernie. You can go ahead and stand guard next to the collection box upstairs, or whatever it is you do. Us straights gonna be all right tonight down here. Got us a couple of lawmen sitting in.”

Stefanos had a seat, studied Wilson as he spoke.

“We’ll let ourselves out, Ernst,” said Walters.

“Unplug the coffee urn before you go,” said Ernst.

“Make a deal with you,” said Wilson. “We’ll unplug it if you clean it for a change.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Ernst, shaking his head. “You guys.”

“Maybe I better get going,” said Stefanos to Karras.

“It’s okay,” said Karras. “Stay.”

They watched Ernst leave. Then there was a silence as they looked to Jonas, expecting him to start things off. But it was his son who spoke first.

“I came home late this afternoon,” said Christopher Jonas, “and found my father sitting in the living room, thinking. He told me he’d like to drop in on this meeting tonight, but he wasn’t sure if you’d want him here. I know from talking to my father these last couple of years how all of you have been in his thoughts. I hope you welcome him tonight.”

“We’re all happy to see you,” said Stephanie Maroulis without hesitation. “We all appreciate your sacrifice, and everything you did.”

“That’s a fact,” said Bernie Walters.

Thomas Wilson nodded his head, looking at the floor.

“Thank you,” said William Jonas. “I was thinkin’, if you all don’t have any objection… I was thinking we’d start off tonight with a prayer.”

“I’d sure like that,” said Walters, his eyes going to Karras. “Any objections?”

Karras didn’t mind, any more than he’d mind using a Ouija board for grins or having his palm read at a party. If it made the rest of them happy, it was okay by him.

Stephanie mouthed the words “thank you,” and Karras smiled.

They joined hands, all of them, in the circle, and bowed their heads. William Jonas began to pray: “Father in heaven, thank you for the gift of friendship we are receiving here tonight. And for our many blessings…”

Karras closed his eyes, gripping the hands of the ones to the right and left of him. It was crazy; for a moment, he thought he felt his son’s touch.