Shame the Devil

THIRTY-SEVEN

This will be the last day of my life.

It was the first thought that came to Thomas Wilson when he woke on Friday morning. He turned onto his side in the bed and shut his eyes. His stomach flipped, and he thought he could be sick.

Please don’t let me be a coward, God. Please.

The phone rang, and Wilson reached across the bed and picked it up.

“Thomas, it’s Nick Stefanos.”

“Nick.”

“I was with Dimitri on Wednesday night. I know you told him everything. I know what you guys are planning to do.”

Wilson had promised Dimitri that from here on in he’d keep his mouth shut. He did want Stefanos’s help. He welcomed it. But he wouldn’t betray Dimitri, not again.

“There is no plan,” said Wilson.

“Bullshit,” said Stefanos. “You guys have got something happening and you think you can pull it off yourselves. I told Dimitri and I’m telling you: You try this thing and you will die. You understand me, Thomas?”

“I gotta run,” said Wilson. “My uncle’s waitin’ on me, man, and I got to get myself into work.”

“You still have my card?”

“I got it.”

“You call me, Thomas. You give me a call, hear?”

“I hear you, Nick.”

“Thomas -”

Wilson killed the connection and sat up on the edge of his bed. He stood and dressed for work.

Friday’s lunch, like every Friday lunch, was the most hectic two hours of the week at the Spot. Dimitri Karras, Maria Juarez, and James Posten had little time for idle conversation as they struggled to stay ahead of the orders flowing into the kitchen. Nick Stefanos and Anna Wang were in the weeds in the dining and bar area from noon to two. Ramon and Darnell had both broken full body sweat by the time the rush was through.

At two o’clock, Maria put her Tito Puente tape into the box. James grabbed his spatula, and he and Maria began to dance. Karras walked over to Darnell, who was wiping down his slick arms with a rag, his backside against the sink.

“How’d that catfish go today?” said Darnell.

“Went good, buddy. Looked good, too. In fact, I called eighty-six on it to Anna even though we had one order left. That one’s for me.”

“You earned it, Dimitri. Nice work today.”

“Thanks.” Karras drew a card from his wallet. “Here you go, man. This is the number for that friend I been telling you about. Marcus wants to hook up with you, show you how easy it can be to do this thing, if that’s what you want to do. Got all sorts of options he wants to lay out for you, Darnell. Says he’d like to meet with you next week.”

“That’s cool. But I thought you were gonna come with me.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Karras, smiling sadly at Darnell. “If you still want me to.”

“Damn right I want you to, Dimitri.”

“Then I’ll be there,” said Karras, and he shook Darnell’s hand.

Karras hugged Maria and James and thanked them for the good job they had done that day. He untied his apron, dropped it in the laundry hamper by the door, and left without another word. He sat at a deuce and ate the catfish special, avoiding conversation with Stefanos, and when he was done he told Anna and Ramon to have a good weekend, said good bye to Stefanos, and left the bar.

Stefanos caught up with him out on 8th.

“Dimitri!”

Karras turned. Stefanos walked to him in his shirtsleeves and met him by the alley. He put a hand on Karras’s arm.

“Where you off to, man?” said Stefanos.

Karras shrugged. “Goin’ home.”

“Don’t just walk out of here without telling me, Dimitri.”

“Telling you what?”

“When and where. I’ve got a right to know.”

Karras looked around the street. He waited for a man to pass them on the sidewalk. When the man was out of earshot, Karras found Stefanos’s eyes.

“Listen,” said Karras. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, Nick. You hooking me up with this job, it put me back in the world. I’m almost at that place where I can see myself having some kind of normal life. But there’s one thing left to do, and you can’t be a part of that. You’re out of it, Nick. It’s not your affair. So forget it.”

“I won’t forget it,” said Stefanos. “When is it going down?”

Karras looked down at the cracked concrete. “Tomorrow night.”

“Look at me, man.”

“It’s set for tomorrow night.”

“Where?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“You’ll call me?”

“Okay, Nick.” Karras nodded. “If that’s what you want. Yes.”

Karras and Stefanos shook hands. Stefanos buttoned his shirt to the neck and watched Karras walk to his faded navy blue BMW, parked along the curb.

“Liar,” said Stefanos, who had seen the hesitation in Karras’s eyes.

It wasn’t going down tomorrow night. It was going down tonight.

Thomas Wilson worked the day quietly with his uncle Lindo. He listened to Lindo talk about a woman he’d met at church and he listened to Lindo’s Frankie Lymon tapes on the cheap cassette player in the dash of his shitbox truck. He listened and tried to answer when Lindo asked him questions, but other than those short responses he didn’t say much.

Time crawled that day, but when quitting time came it seemed to have come too quick.

Wilson had gotten out of his coveralls in the warehouse bathroom and he went to the particle-board desk where his uncle sat, wearing spectacles and organizing the day’s tickets. His uncle had swept the warehouse like he did at the end of every week, whether it needed it or not, and specks of dust swirled in the air. A dying fluorescent tube flickered in the drop ceiling above the desk, its light flashing on the warehouse floor.

“I can fix that for you before I go,” said Wilson, looking up at the light.

“Got a box of replacement lamps coming in next week,” said Lindo. He looked closely at his nephew. “You seem troubled today, Thomas. Somethin’ you want to talk to me about?”

“No, sir.” Wilson buried his hands in the pockets of his slacks. “Everything’s fine.”

“Go on, then, son. Have a good weekend. Rest up, ’cause come Monday we have a busy week.”

“Okay, Uncle L. Thank you for everything, hear?”

Lindo glanced up at Wilson. “Go on, boy. Don’t be so serious all the time. Go out and have yourself a little fun.”

As he drove home, Wilson’s guilt deepened over using his uncle’s warehouse that night. His uncle took pride in that place, even if it wasn’t much more than a cheap desk and some cinder-block walls. Wilson stopped in a surplus store in Lanham and bought a half dozen blue plastic tarps.

He passed the turnoff for his house and kept north on Georgia Avenue, turned left onto Quackenbos, made another left, and parked the Intrepid in an alley alongside a church. He stepped onto the grounds of Fort Stevens Park.

He and Charles had played here as children. He walked into a dry moat, then climbed a steep hill and jumped down alongside one of two cannons that remained in the park. A tattered American flag hung at half-mast nearby and made rippling shadows at his feet. He could picture Charles as a child, running with an imaginary rifle cradled in his arms, diving and rolling down those hills. He could hear Charlie’s gleeful laugh.

Charles, thought Wilson, I won’t let you down.

But a block from his house his stomach betrayed him, and Wilson pulled over to the side of the road, where he opened his car door and vomited his lunch onto the street.

Dimitri Karras got up off the bed at around six o’clock. He had been lying there on his back for a couple of hours. He was oddly calm.

He found Bernie Walters’s Colt. 45 and a box of shells in the bottom of his dresser, wrapped in an old pillowcase. He ejected the magazine into his palm. He loaded seven rounds into the magazine, testing the tension of the spring on the last round. He pushed the magazine into the butt of the gun and slipped the. 45 into its leather holster. He dropped the rig onto the bed and phoned Thomas Wilson.

They discussed the specifics of the plan. When they were done, Karras said, “Pick me up at eight.”

Wilson said, “Right.”

Nick Stefanos phoned Dan Boyle at William Jonas’s house and got Jonas first. He exchanged a few words with Jonas and asked to speak to Boyle.

“You going to be there all night?” asked Stefanos.

“Yeah,” said Boyle. “Why, what’s up?”

“I might need to speak with you.”

“Something going on?”

“Sit tight,” said Stefanos. “I’ll let you know.”

Thomas Wilson sat at a small desk in the foyer of his house on Underwood. He broke the cylinder of his five-shot. 38 Special and thumbed shells into its chambers. He spun the cylinder and wrist-snapped it shut. The snub-nosed revolver with the narrow checkered butt and the worn-down bluing felt small in his hand. He held the gun under the desk lamp and noticed that his hand was shaking. He concentrated and tried to make his hand stop shaking, but he could not.

He laid the gun down on the desk and pulled the phone toward him. He dialed Dimitri Karras.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” he said when Karras answered the call.

“You can,” said Karras. “See you at eight.”

Wilson listened to the dial tone. He dialed Bernie Walters’s home number. Bernie’s recorded voice came through the speaker and then there was a long beeping sound.

“Hey, Bern… Thomas here. I guess you got a couple more days of that Jeremiah Johnson thing you’re doin’ down there in God’s country. I’m just callin’ to say hello again. Was thinkin’ maybe I’d drive down tomorrow morning and surprise you. Take you up on that offer you been makin’ to me these last couple of years. Be a good chance for the two of us to talk, buddy. ’Cause we need to talk, see? Anyway… listen, if I don’t happen to make it down there, man… I just wanted to tell you… I wanted to say that you been a good friend. I’m sorry for everything, but I’m fixin’ to try and make it right. You been a good friend, Bern. You, uh…”

Wilson found himself stumbling on his words. He said good bye to Bernie and cut the line.

“You all packed?” said Farrow.

“Ready,” said Otis.

“I got a meet point from Wilson. Says we’d get lost if we tried to find it directly. Behind a closed gas station near the industrial park.”

Otis nodded. “Here you go, Frank. This is you.”

He handed Farrow one of the two. 45s he had copped on Sepul-veda, back in L.A. Farrow hefted the gun and checked the action.

“Where’s your cousin?”

“Booker? He didn’t come home last night and I ain’t seen him all day.”

Otis didn’t want Frank getting angry over Gus’s little accident. Once they got on the road and headed back west, Frank would never know.

“Just as well,” said Farrow. “Leave some money on the table for him. That’ll be good enough.”

Otis pulled his hair back off his shoulders and banded it. He holstered his. 45 into his waist rig and put on a ventless, checked wool sport jacket over his clean white shirt. He looked in the living-room mirror and smiled, admiring his gold tooth, the cut of his jacket, his hair. The look.

He left money on the table – a fifty-dollar bill on top of ten ones, so Frank wouldn’t get suspicious. Wasn’t any point in leaving too much for a corpse lying in the woods, even if the dead man was your kin.

“You ready?” said Farrow as he walked back into the room.

“Yeah,” said Otis. “Let’s go.”

Dimitri Karras was waiting on the corner of 15th and U as Thomas Wilson pulled the Intrepid to the curb at eight o’clock. Karras settled in the passenger bucket and fastened his seat belt. “You finalized it with Farrow and Otis?” said Karras.

Wilson nodded. He drove east.

They crossed the city. They rode the Beltway for fifteen miles and exited at Route 4. Wilson slowed as they drove through old Upper Marlboro.

“Run through it again,” said Karras.

“I’m meeting them behind a Texaco that’s been out of business a couple of years. We’ll be passin’ it in a mile or so. After I get you settled, I’ll leave my car there and come in with them.” Wilson swallowed. “Afterwards, we’ll clean the warehouse, drive them back, and dump ’em behind the station. Get back into my car and split.”

“It’s simple. I like that.”

“Yeah, it’s simple. ’Cept the killin’ part.”

“You shouldn’t have any problem with that. Just try to remember what they did to your friend.”

Wilson’s face was grim and strained in the glow of the dash lights. “Only God should do what we’re plannin’ to do tonight.”

“You’re scared,” said Karras, “that’s all. Don’t cloud this up with talk about God.”

“Yes, I’m scared. I don’t want to die.”

“Neither do I.”

“You don’t have to worry,” said Wilson. “I’m gonna go through with this. But don’t you tell me not to think of God or whether this is right or wrong. If I live through this, I plan to beg forgiveness every day for the wrong I’ve done. Knowing it’s wrong is what separates me from Farrow and Otis.” Wilson looked across the bucket. “What separates you?”

“Nothing. I hope to be just like them. I hope to kill them the way they killed my son.”

Wilson spoke quietly. “You’ve lost your faith, I know. But if you make it tonight, believe me, you’re gonna need to have something to help make you right. I was you, I’d look to God. Promise me you’ll try.”

“All right, Thomas,” said Karras, staring straight ahead. “I promise that I’ll try.”

The road darkened as they went past the town. Wilson pointed to a boarded-up gas station with a pay phone out front. Then there was more dark road and signage for an industrial park. Wilson turned right, took the asphalt road that went along rows of squat red-brick warehouses starkly lit by spots.

Wilson drove straight to the back of the deserted park. He made a tight turn at a green Dumpster and went through the long narrow alley to the wide parking lot that ended at another set of identical red-brick structures. He parked in the middle of the strip, cut the engine, and removed the tarps from the trunk.

“What’re those for?” asked Karras.

“Gonna try to keep my uncle’s place clean. We’ll roll ’em up in these when we’re done.”

Karras waited while Wilson opened the warehouse door and hit the lights. The two of them stepped inside. Fluorescents flooded the space with an artificial glow. A single ceiling lamp flashed over a cheap desk.

Karras looked at the desk. “Doesn’t this place have a phone?”

“My uncle uses a cell.”

Wilson and Karras unfolded the blue plastic tarps and spread them out on the concrete floor. The warehouse was cold, and their labored breath was visible in the light.

“I better get goin’,” said Wilson when they were done. “They’ll be there pretty soon.”

“Go ahead.”

“Remember: You’re the man who made me the key. You’re looking for a payoff before they do the job. Don’t complicate it more than that.”

“I won’t.”

“Shoot Farrow quick.”

“All I want is to look in his eyes.”

“Don’t waste no time, Dimitri. Shoot him quick, hear? I’ll take care of Otis.”

“All right.” Karras shook Wilson’s hand. “You all set?”

Wilson nodded. He turned and walked out the door. Karras heard the Intrepid drive away.

It was suddenly quiet. Karras stood on the blue tarp in the center of the warehouse and listened to the low, steady buzz of the fluorescent lights.

“You got the directions?” said Farrow.

“Got ’em,” said Otis.

They walked across the yard to their cars.

“Smells like something died out here,” said Farrow.

“Well, we are in the woods.”

“Be glad to get back to civilization.”

“I heard that, ” said Otis, dropping behind the wheel of his Mark V. Otis put the car in drive. He hit the CD player, rotated the disks to Slow Jams, Volume 2.

“Oh, zoooom,” sang Otis, “I’d like to fly away…”

Otis turned onto the two-lane. Farrow followed in the Mach 1.

Thomas Wilson sat in the idling Intrepid behind the Texaco station. He turned off the heater. He could smell his own sweat coming through his clothes.

He looked at his watch. Farrow and Otis would be way up 301 by now. Another half hour, they’d be pulling into the lot.

He’d been all chest out when he was with Dimitri, talking about how he was going to “go through with this,” saying it strong, like there wasn’t any kind of doubt in his mind. But now that he was alone, the fear had slithered back in. Truth was, if he was to pull a gun right now, it would slip right out of his hands.

And then there were Farrow and Otis. They had that way of theirs that made him feel small and weak, even back in Lewisburg, when they pretended to be his friend. Otis sometimes referred to him as his boy. Errand boy was more like it. He never was one of them, and they had always let him know it, too.

The. 38 dug into the small of his back. He shifted in the bucket.

He and Karras needed help. There wasn’t any sense in denying it anymore. Maybe Karras was strong and crazy enough to pull it off on his end. But Wilson knew he couldn’t do it. He’d be punked out like he’d always been punked out. He’d get the both of them killed.

Wilson was out of the car and walking around the side of the gas station. He was walking to the pay phone, telling himself that this was not another betrayal, that he wasn’t being a coward, that he was trying to help his friend. He was talking to himself, sweating and shivering in the cold, when he dropped the coins and dialed, and he was still muttering something when the phone rang on the other end and the line went live.

“Hello.”

“It’s Thomas Wilson.”

“Thomas -”

“Ain’t got no time to bullshit, Nick. I need your help.”

Jonas handed the phone to Dan Boyle. “It’s Stefanos again. For you.”

Boyle put the phone to his ear and listened intently. Jonas watched his face as Boyle nodded and spoke excitedly.

Boyle said, “See you then,” and handed Jonas a dead phone.

“What’s up?” said Jonas.

“I’m goin’ out.”

Boyle went back to the guest bedroom, grabbed a pair of gloves from his overnight bag and shoved them in the pockets of his khakis. He unzipped a canvas gym bag, drew his Python, and checked the load. He holstered the Python, reached into the bag, and withdrew his throw-down, a. 380 double-action Beretta with a thirteen-shot magazine. He examined the magazine, slapped it back into the butt, and dropped the gun in the side pocket of his Harris tweed. He looked over his shoulder, then went back into the gym bag and extracted a Baggie holding confiscated snow-seals of powdered cocaine. He slipped the Baggie into the other pocket of his jacket and walked back out to the living room with the holstered Python in his hand.

“You gonna tell me what’s goin’ on?” said Jonas.

“When I get back. You got your piece?”

“It’s in the drawer over there.”

“Get it,” said Boyle, lifting his wrinkled raincoat off a chair. “Until you hear from me, you keep it in your lap.”

The two-tone Continental and the red Mach 1 pulled into the back lot of the Texaco station. The Mustang skidded on gravel as it came to a stop. Otis killed the engine on the Mark V, stepped out, and walked to the Intrepid. Wilson opened his door.

“T. W.,” said Otis.

“Roman.” His mouth spasmed as he tried to smile.

“Come on, man. We’ll go in Farrow’s short.”

Farrow rolled his window down as they neared the car. “These brakes are shot again,” said Farrow. “If you just push the pedal in, you get nothing. You got to pump the hell out of these things to bring it to a stop.”

“Booker put the fluid in,” said Otis. “I seen him do it.”

“I’m tellin’ you, Roman, they’re fucked.”

“Let me drive over to the joint, man, so I can see my own self.”

“Suit yourself.”

Farrow did not greet Wilson as he stepped out of the car. Wilson climbed into the backseat, and Farrow went around to the passenger side. Otis got under the wheel and put the car in gear.

“Where to, T. W.?”

“Pull out,” said Wilson, “and make a right onto the road.”

Otis tested the brakes both ways as they hit the asphalt. He pumped the pedal and managed to bring the Mustang to a stop.

“You’re right, Frank. These brakes are fucked. Have to use the Mark when we do the job for real.”

Farrow looked over his shoulder to the backseat. “What’s wrong with your face, T. W.? How’d you get marked?”

“Got stole in the face in a bar,” said Wilson.

“Let yourself get stole, huh?” said Otis. “Imagine that. You look a little tight, too.”

“Got a minor problem, is all it is.”

“What’s that?”

“The inside man, the one who got me the key? He thought about it and now he wants an extra grand.”

“He’s already been paid,” said Farrow.

“I told him as much,” said Wilson, noticing a catch in his voice, wondering if they noticed it, too.

“And what happened?”

“Couldn’t talk him out of it,” said Wilson.

“I guess I need to talk to him myself,” said Farrow.

“You’re going to,” said Wilson as they neared the industrial park sign. “He’s waitin’ on us at the warehouse right now.”