The Sweet Forever

  Stefanos returned ten minutes later with a tray of three tiny cups and saucers, the cane hooked over his forearm. They didn’t rise to assist him.

  He placed the tray on a small end table by the couch. They helped themselves as Stefanos took his cup and saucer and settled in the recliner.

  Clay looked in his painted ceramic cup, small as a doll’s set. The cup was half filled with something thick and black as tar. He took a sip of bitter caffeine.

  “What brings you here today?” said Stefanos, looking toward the sunlight coming through the porch windows.

  “Wanted to drop this by,” said Karras, leaning forward and pressing a folded bill in Stefanos’s big hand. “I owe your grandson some money. Good excuse to come by and see how you were doin’. I was visiting my mother today, and I thought of you.”

  “Where’s Eleni, Gate of Heaven?”

  “She and my father both.”

  “Uh. Me, I’m gonna be in Brentwood, with all my friends.” Stefanos slipped the bill into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt. “What is this, so I can tell Niko, in case he calls.”

  “Hundred dollars.”

  “C-note, huh?” Stefanos grinned. “What’d he do to earn it?”

  “Followed someone for me and Marcus.”

  “Him and that bufo friend of his, McGinnes, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Goddamn joker.” Stefanos turned his head. “You see Niko, or just talk to him on the phone?”

  “I saw him the other night.”

  And I fed his nose with some high-octane flake.

  “How’d he look to you?”

  Wired. All twisted up inside.

  Karras said, “He looked good.”

  “He ain’t happy,” said Stefanos. “He married this Amerikanitha, she’s always pushin’ him to work harder, climb the ladder, get more serious, like that. I raised him, you know; he’s like my son. He is my son. I’m worried about him.”

  “Gotta find his own way,” said Karras.

  “Young people today, they’re so set on makin’ chrimata, like the money is the whole point. It ain’t the money. It’s the journey, katalavenis?”

  “Sure, I understand.”

  “It’s enjoying what you do, every goddamn day.” Stefanos drank some of his Turkish coffee. “Aaah. Anyway, what you up to, re?”

  “I work for Marcus here.”

  “O Mavros?”

  “Ne.”

  “What kinda work you do, Clay?”

  “Own a few record stores, Mr. Stefanos.”

  “Call me Nick.”

  “Okay. Nick.”

  “Bravo. Good to own your own business, eh?”

  “Yes, it is. Little nerve rackin’ when payroll comes due every week. But, yeah, it’s good.”

  “Had my own place on Fourteenth and S.”

  “I know the place. Nick’s Grill.”

  “Right!”

  “You and me had a good talk one day, when I was a kid.”

  “Hope I treated you okay.”

  “You did.”

  Stefanos smiled crookedly. “Yeah, nothin’ like havin’ your own place. ’Specially from where I came from, just a stone hut in the mountains, to having a store of my own. Just to put my key in the door, to my place, every day… it was somethin’.”

  “You make it sound easy,” said Clay.

  “Not always.” Stefanos frowned. “There was this one time, these men came and tried to shake me down in my own grill. Your father was there, Thimitri; this must have been, I don’t know, nineteen forty-nine. Goddamn, almost forty years ago. O patera sou, and Costa, and a man named Lou DiGeordano. And this big mavros named Six, bouncer I had at the time. I remember the way I felt, that these men were going to take away a piece of my business, something that I had built up with my own hands and sweat.”

  Clay looked at the old man. “How’d you handle it, Nick?”

  We slaughtered them like animals in the back of the store. We killed them with machetes and pistolas and cut them into pieces.

  Stefanos placed his cup and saucer on the end table. “We convinced them to leave us alone.” He looked in the direction of Clay. “It was important to send them a message. You know what I’m talkin’ about, Clay. You got a business yourself.”

  “Yes,” said Clay.

  Karras drained his coffee. “We better get goin’, Nick.”

  “Hokay, boy. Appreciate you lookin’ out for Niko.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Nice seeing you,” said Clay, taking the old man’s hand. “We’ll find our way out.”

  “Good meetin’ you, Clay. Thimitri.”

  They left him there on the porch, staring at the blurred images on the television screen. He listened for the door and their footsteps going down the iron stairs to the alley.

  Nick Stefanos closed his eyes. He smiled slowly at the pictures running through his head: blond women in flowered dresses, men in pinstriped suits and felt hats, a crisp white apron, a cold bottle of Ballantine ale, a shiny Buick Roadmaster, red and black chips and face cards spread on green felt, bacon sizzling on a hot grill, a ceiling of stars over Meridian Hill Park, warm breezes drifting off the water at Hains Point… wide, clean streets, running through a city of promise forever gone.

  “I’m trippin’, man,” said Clay. “ ’Bout ready to bite down on my tongue.”

  “That Turkish coffee,” said Karras, taking the hill down 16th alongside the park, once called Meridian Hill, now named Malcolm X.

  “Guess that’s why they only serve you half of a half a cup.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Drink enough of that, you wouldn’t need that powder of yours to get up.”

  “I’d probably still need it,” said Karras, speaking softly. “It likes me too much, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do,” said Clay. “Never did take to that drug myself. I tried it a couple of times, but I figured something made you feel that good just had to be wrong. And I was right. I mean, look at the things it makes people do. Now, smokin’ herb was all about gettin’ together, sharing. With cocaine, you go to a party these days, everybody’s always disappearin, duckin’ off, so preoccupied with their next jolt they can’t even relax around their own friends. That is if they still have friends.”

  Karras felt Clay’s stare. “You talkin’ about you and me, Marcus?”

  “No. You and me are always gonna be friends, I expect. But I been watchin’ you go down this road for a long time. Wastin’ money your mother saved her whole life. It’s hard for me to see it…. Anyway, you’re a grown man. You know you’re gonna have to give it up someday. The thing I wonder is, do you ever think about how you usin’ that shit affects the world around you? How every time you cop a gram you feed the dragon that’s makin’ kids kill other kids all over this city?”

  “I have thought about it. And I’m not proud of myself.”

  Clay leaned toward Karras. “You know the worst thing, Dimitri? You been lyin’ to me, man. It’s what that drug makes you do. And you never did lie to me before.”

  Karras nodded. “I know what I’ve got to do. Only thing I can promise you is I’m gonna try.”

  They drove down a quiet and nearly empty U Street. Karras parked the 325 in front of the store. Clay stayed in his seat, staring through the windshield.

  “You comin’?” said Karras.

  “Yeah. Can’t get that old man out of my mind is all.” Clay cocked his head. “What he said about those men shakin’ him down in his own store, it hit me deep. Made me think about back when I was first gettin’ started. How much I wanted this business I got. How I been layin’ down lately, lettin’ it get away from me. Made me think real hard about tonight, too. How Tyrell Cleveland and them think they’re gonna come into my place and tell me what to do.”

  “What are you sayin’?”

  “Not gonna let that happen. And you, me, and Clarence could use a little help.”

  “Help from who?”

  “A
l Adamson,” said Clay. “Remember him?”

  Al Adamson had his head under the hood of a ’63 Lincoln when the phone rang in his garage. He moved the drop light, wiped his hands on a rag, and picked up the phone.

  “Yeah…. Marcus, how you doin’, man?”

  Adamson listened until Clay had finished speaking. He said, “I’ll be there. You want me to bring anything?… You sure?… Okay, I’ll see you then.”

  Adamson took a shower, changed into dark clothing, and went back down to his garage. He’d only seen Marcus Clay a couple of times since Vietnam. Once on the street in 1982, and with that trouble they’d had during the Bicentennial weekend, back in ’76. Al Adamson’s brother, Rasheed, had worked in Marcus’s first record store over at Dupont Circle. When Rasheed saw tragedy at the hands of some hard mothafuckers up from the South, Marcus had stood by Al to see that Rasheed had been avenged. Al didn’t have to see Marcus that often for their bond to hold; Marcus knew that whenever he needed him, Al would be there.

  Al Adamson found his sheathed Ka-Bar knife in the bottom drawer of his tool cabinet. He put the sheath in a kind of holster he had rigged to hang under his armpit and fitted it so the handle of the knife sat fairly flush against his chest. He put on a black sport jacket over his black fishnet T-shirt and shifted his shoulders. Later, in his bedroom’s full-length mirror, he admired the jacket’s drape. He pulled on the laces of his oilskin shoes and tied them tight.

  Marcus had said no guns. He hadn’t said nothin’ about knives.

  Marcus Clay stared out the window at the gathering darkness on U. Cootch had finished his paperwork and gone home. Clay and Karras were locked inside the store. Karras stood on a ladder taping a big Janet Jackson poster, given to him by an A&M rep, to the wall.

  The phone by the cashier’s stand rang.

  “I got it,” said Clay, going to the counter and lifting the receiver. He put his hand over the mouthpiece and said to Karras, “It’s that McGinnes guy.”

  Karras climbed down from the ladder and walked across the room.

  Clay said, “You can talk to me. Speak up, man, I can’t hear you.”

  “That’s ’cause I’m in a bar,” said McGinnes, who stood at the pay phone of La Fortresse, holding a full tumbler of scotch. Nick Stefanos, half in the bag, leaned against the wall, a glass of bourbon in his hand, a burning Camel lodged between his fingers.

  “Give me what you got,” said Clay.

  “We followed your boy. Here’s the address.”

  Clay wrote it down. “Who’d he go to see?”

  McGinnes described the men they had seen, the cars, the scale on the table, the gun beneath the towel.

  “Good work,” said Clay.

  “You hire the best,” said McGinnes, “you get the best. Wanna talk to Nick?”

  Clay said to Karras, “You got anything you want to say to Stefanos?”

  “Tell him to go visit his grandfather,” said Karras.

  “He says for Stefanos to go see his grandfather. He’s gonna have to anyway, ’cause that’s where we dropped the hundred. And he should.”

  “Thought maybe you’d sweeten the hundred,” said McGinnes, “all the extra info we got.”

  “You want more,” said Clay, “you gotta give me some more.”

  “Okay,” said McGinnes. “How about this. Your muscle cop, he met someone first before he met with those dealers. Black guy, handsome, with a mustache. They drove together to the house. I thought I recognized him, so I called the store, had a salesman go back through my tickets. Turned out I sold this guy a TV set, nice Mitsubishi, a couple of months ago. Guy by the name of Kevin Murphy. Yeah, Murphy. No, I’m not mistaken. Like I’m always tellin’ Nick, I never forget a customer—hey, you there? Hello?”

  “What happened?” said Stefanos.

  “He hung up on me. How’s that for gratitude?”

  “Prob’ly just got cut off. Anyway, we got the money, right?”

  “Yeah, it’s over at your papa’s.”

  “Papou’s.”

  “Whatever. Have a drink with me before you go. Got to get down when you’re at La Furpiece.”

  “I’m already drunk.”

  “Just one more, Greek.”

  “Okay,” said Nick Stefanos. “One more.”

  “What’s wrong with you, Marcus?”

  “Hold on,” said Clay. “Need to make one more call.”

  Clay misdialed, cursed, and dialed again.

  “Clarence Tate.”

  “Clarence, it’s Marcus.”

  “Marcus, I’m on my way down.”

  “Fine. But I called for Denice. She in?”

  “Right here.”

  “Put her on.”

  Clay tapped a pencil on the counter. “Denice? I’m fine. Listen, I got a question for you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “The other night, when that cop Tutt was in the street talkin’ to you and Rogers and Monroe, did you happen to see Tutt’s partner, Kevin Murphy?”

  “Yes,” said Denice. “He was in the market for most of it, but he came out after. Kind of calmed everyone down. He was real nice—”

  “Why you didn’t tell me this before, Neecie?”

  “You didn’t ask. Why you gettin’ so upset, Marcus?”

  “Never mind that. Thanks. That’s all, I guess… all I need to know.”

  Clay cradled the receiver. He looked at Karras.

  “Call Donna,” said Clay.

  “She’s probably not back from work.”

  “Then leave a message on her machine. Tell her not to let anyone into that apartment of hers, no matter who it is.”

  “Anyone?” said Karras, who saw something shadow Clay’s face.

  “That’s right. Not even cops.”

  “So this is about Tutt,” said Karras.

  “Not just Tutt.” Clay looked down at the floor and shook his head. “Murphy.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Kevin Murphy stood on the open-air third-floor stairwell of Donna Morgan’s apartment building, looking at the north-south traffic on Georgia Avenue, stroking his mustache. He checked his watch: She’d be here any minute now if she was coming straight from work. When he raised his head, he saw an early model rust-pocked red RX-7 roll across the parking lot and swing into a space in front of Donna’s unit.

  Murphy leaned back against the bricks. He watched Donna lock her car and move up onto the sidewalk, stepping light, nice pins coming out of a short black skirt, black stockings matching the black of her rock-star hair. Not a bad-looking woman. Sure, the odometer had turned on her long ago—no one except a blind man would ever call her a girl again—but she was fine in a scarred-leather, tough-running-to-hard kind of way. He was going to have to come up on her real sudden now, and maybe, if he was lucky, this tough girl might not freak.

  Murphy started down the stairs of the unit like he belonged there, chin up, giving her a friendly smile, neither flirty nor threatening, getting close enough to smell her now as she stepped up onto her landing. She had her keys in her fist, holding one of them point out, returning his smile cordially as she made her way around him to her apartment door, number 21.

  Murphy glanced out to the lot and caught hold of Donna’s arm as she passed. He pressed a finger into the pressure spot behind her elbow joint, not enough to give her great pain but enough to let her know he could. He placed his other hand across her mouth.

  She bucked beneath him as he pushed her toward her door.

  “Don’t panic, Donna,” he said softly, his lips close to her ear. “Let’s just get inside.”

  She nodded. He pulled his finger away from the nerves bundled at her elbow and saw the muscles of her face relax. He kept his palm sealed over her mouth, watching her key hand, making sure she didn’t try to take out one of his eyes.

  She fumbled with the keys.

  “Quick,” said Murphy. “I’m not playin’.”

  A moment later they were in the apartment, and Murphy closed the door behind him. Don
na flattened herself against the foyer wall.

  Murphy reached into his jacket.

  “No,” said Donna.

  Murphy produced his badge and held it in front of her face. “I’m a police officer. Here to help you, Donna. You and Eddie.”

  Donna blinked rapidly. “Where’s Eddie?”

  “Never mind that. Where’s the money?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Don’t let’s waste too much time on this, Donna. I need to see the money, right now.”

  Donna was frozen to the wall. She wanted to move. She didn’t want to show fear. But she couldn’t move.

  “Donna!” yelled Murphy, her name echoing in the apartment.

  His voice moved her off the wall. Murphy followed her through the living room. Donna saw the red light blinking on her answering machine as she passed. She stopped at her open bedroom door, felt a quiver in her knees.

  Don’t go in there with him. Don’t. Anybody can buy a phony badge—

  Murphy put the flat of his hand to her shoulders, gently moved her through the doorway. In the bedroom, Donna turned to face him.

  “The money,” he said.

  Donna found the pillowcase in her closet and handed it to Murphy. He placed it on Donna’s bed and reached inside. He pulled out a stack of bills held together by a rubber band, counted it, pulled another stack, counted that one. He studied Donna, tears breaking from her eyes and rolling down her face.

  “What, you think I’m stealin’ your dreams?”

  Donna shook her head. “It’s not that. I’m thinking of Eddie.”

  “Good. Who you should be thinkin’ of. Now, he’s alive. But the ones who took him, they really put it to him. And you know what? He never did give up your name. Led those boys right off your trail.” Murphy thought of Wanda, lying flat on their bed. “You find someone who loves you that much, keeps lovin’ you in the face of all that pain, you oughtta hold onto him, understand?”

  “Eddie did that?” said Donna.

  “Yeah,” said Murphy, dropping the two stacks of banded bills to the bed.

  “I… I want him back.”

  “Gonna bring him back, Donna.” Murphy pointed his chin toward the money. “There’s five thousand there. You and Eddie need to take it and leave town. Everything’s about to blow up, hear? And the ones he took off, they won’t forget.”