A Spanish female vocal with Tito Puente’s band behind it came from the box. Maria met James Posten in the middle of the kitchen, and the two of them began to dance, James doing his idea of a chacha. Darnell, from where he stood over the sink, turned his head and smiled. He looked over at Karras, leaning on the expediter’s station, and nodded one time.
“Olé, baby!” said James. His eye shadow was on the maroon side of the rainbow this afternoon.
“Like this, Jame,” said Maria, taking two steps in, retreating two steps, and twisting her hips on the dip.
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” said James, following her lead, twirling the spatula like a baton.
“You doin’ it, Jame,” said Maria.
“Tell the truth,” said James, “and shame the devil.”
Karras studied Maria’s face. She had shown up that morning with her right eye blood gorged and swollen close to shut. She had a truly beautiful spirit; anger had welled up in him immediately when he had walked in that morning and seen her face. He was glad he had picked this day to give her a gift.
Anna Wang entered the kitchen, a cigarette dangling from her lips, a tray of butter patties in her hands. She joined Maria and James momentarily on her way to the refrigerator, where she stowed the covered butter in the rear.
“Nice work today, Karras,” said Anna on her way out the door.
“She wants somethin’,” said James, still dancing. “You could bet it.”
“Just giving the man a compliment, J. P.,” said Anna.
Karras said, “Thanks.”
A half hour later they had begun to shut down the kitchen. James switched the radio to R&B as Maria covered the components of the cold station with plastic wrap. Ramon hurried in with a bus tray and dropped it off on the edge of Darnell’s sink. He stepped on Darnell’s foot deliberately, and Darnell grabbed his hand, pressing his thumb down on the crook of Ramon’s thumb. Ramon pulled his hand away and stood there rubbing it, a crooked smile on his face.
“Ah, here we go, y’all,” said James as the Army Reserve commercial came on the radio at its usual time. James turned it up as the announcer’s voice rose with the build of the music.
Karras, Darnell, Maria, James, and Ramon stopped working. At the same moment they all raucously sang, “Be… all that you can be!”
James and Maria doubled over in laughter, their hands on each other’s shoulders. Darnell gave Ramon skin.
Karras smiled ear to ear. His face felt odd, and then he knew why. He had forgotten what it felt like to smile with that kind of abandon. It had been a long time.
“How’s that flounder?” said Darnell, sliding onto a stool next to Karras at the bar.
“Good — what’d you, brush it with butter?”
“Yeah, and squeezed some lemon on it, too. Wrapped it up in foil and baked it in the oven. That’s the way you need to be cookin’ fish. Simple like that. Course, I would have spiced it some. Phil doesn’t want anybody thinkin’ we’re turnin’ this place into a soul-food joint, nothin’ like that.”
“It’s good just like this,” said Karras.
“Thanks, baby,” said Darnell to Mai, who had placed a glass of juice in front of him. “What’re we listenin’ to, anyway?”
“The Bee Gees,” said Mai, shooting a finger to the ceiling and cocking her hip, her breasts jiggling beneath her Semper Fi T.
“Sounds like someone’s pullin’ hard on that singer’s berries.”
“My shift,” said Mai, stepping away.
“Say, Dimitri,” said Darnell, “I been lookin’ at your tickets as I was walking by. You get a medium burger on the ticket, I noticed you call it out medium rare to James.”
“That’s right. I figured out early, James always overcooks his burgers by one level, no matter what. So I adjust on the call rather than waste time arguing with him.”
“You trickin’ him, huh? I should of thought of that my own self. Me and him used to have some serious fights when I was doin’ the expediting. The man was just thick that way.”
“I used to manage all the employees in my friend’s record stores,” said Karras. “Over the years I picked up some experience with diplomacy.”
“So much to learn about runnin’ a business.”
“You could do it, Darnell. You’re smart. And you’ve got a work ethic like I’ve never seen.”
“That’s for other people, man.”
“It’s for anybody who’s got what you’ve got, and a will. Look, my friend I told you about, the record store guy? He makes a living now setting people like you up.”
“Dishwashers?”
“African Americans looking to open up small businesses in the city. I’m meeting him tonight at the Wizards game. I’m gonna talk to him about you.”
“Look here, Dimitri, square business: I know my limits. It’s just not for me.”
“All right, Darnell. But you know I’m gonna talk to you about it again.”
Darnell drank down his juice and used the napkin to wipe sweat off his face. The bell over the front door jingled, and Roberto Juarez entered the bar. He stayed up on the landing as always and waited. Karras nudged Darnell.
“I see him,” said Darnell under his breath.
Karras looked through the reach-through at the end of the stick. James had his hands on Maria’s shoulders, and he was close to her face, giving her a serious talk. She nodded her head and kissed James on the cheek.
James emerged from the kitchen, his fox-head stole worn over a clean outfit, his amber-stone walking stick in his hand. He stepped around Maria’s husband on the landing, who smiled and said something to James in Spanish. Karras couldn’t understand the words, but he knew from the tone that Maria’s husband had called James some variety of faggot. James kept walking and left the bar.
Ramon stood by the stairwell to the basement, leaning against the frame, picking at his cuticle with a penknife, watching.
“Hard life,” said Darnell as Maria came from the kitchen in her cheap coat, meeting her husband with her head down and following him out the door.
“Yes it is,” said Karras.
“That was real kind of you, buying her that tape.”
“It made her happy for a little while, I guess.”
Darnell got off the stool and stood, stretching his long frame. “Well, let me get back to my dishes.”
“Nick coming in today?”
“He’s working one of his cases. I expect I’ll see him tonight.”
Nick Stefanos sat in the living room of Terrence Mitchell’s house, off Sargent Road in the Chillum district of Prince George’s County. Mitchell lived on a treeless street of clean ramblers near power lines strung between steel towers set on rolling hills of brown grass. Many of the homes around Mitchell’s had barred storm doors, but Mitchell’s was along the lines of a fortress: It featured a high chain-link fence crowned by double-rowed barbed wire, a padlocked gate protecting the driveway, and a No Trespassing notice as big as a stop sign on the fence. In the driveway sat an immaculate late-model blue Volvo sedan.
The interior of Mitchell’s house was no less cold. Certificates from the Metropolitan Police Department and the U.S. Army hung on the walls. A photograph of a young Mitchell in his blues and a photograph of a younger Mitchell in army fatigues, surrounded by his buddies in Vietnam, showed him with the same stoic, humorless face.
Soon after the interview began, Stefanos’s first impression at seeing the home’s security setup was confirmed. Mitchell, the ex-soldier, ex-cop, was some sort of paranoid. He never smiled once during their meeting. It couldn’t have been any kind of fun for his daughter, Erika Mitchell, to live under his roof.
“So let me get this straight,” said Stefanos. “You don’t remember if your daughter went out with Randy Weston on the night of the murder.”
“That’s right.”
“Randy tells his attorney that you gave him a lecture the night he picked her up for the movies. Randy had gotten her home past her curf
ew the last two times he’d taken her out. Randy says you went into one of those ‘three strikes you’re out’ things with him.”
“I could’ve, yes. But I don’t remember what night it was.”
“You being a cop and all, I thought you’d remember the exact night.”
Terrence Mitchell was a broad-chested man with a thick mustache, dark skin, and a full head of hair, not yet gray. He might even have been a handsome man when he smiled. He almost smiled at Stefanos then — but didn’t.
“I don’t remember what night it was.”
Stefanos swallowed spit. He was thirsty, but Mitchell had not even offered him a glass of water when he’d entered the house.
“You like television, isn’t that right, Mr. Mitchell?”
“What’s that?”
Stefanos nodded at the large-screen television set in a bookshelf across the room. “Randy Weston says you watch a lot of television. Loud.”
Mitchell blinked his eyes slowly to indicate that he was bored. “I lost some of my hearing on the job, Stefanose.”
“It’s Stefanos. The reason I mentioned the loud part is, Randy couldn’t help but remember that you were watching Home Improvement while you were giving him that lecture. I mean, the laugh track was blaring in his ear. Home Improvement runs on Tuesday night; Donnel Lawton was murdered on a Tuesday night.”
“That show runs every Tuesday night. It doesn’t prove I was watching it, or lecturing Weston, on that particular Tuesday night.”
Stefanos made a nonsense note on his pad. Of course it didn’t prove that Mitchell talked to him that Tuesday night. It didn’t prove shit. He was trying anything now. If Mitchell or his daughter weren’t going to cooperate, then Elaine Clay had no case.
“Let me ask you something.” Stefanos looked up and held Mitchell’s eyes. “If Randy Weston were not a drug dealer who was dating your daughter, would your memory improve?”
“He is a drug dealer, Stefanos. I was a street cop in D.C. for many years.” Mitchell looked Stefanos over. “A real cop. I saw firsthand what people like that do, to individuals, mothers, fathers… to families. When my wife left me, I made a solemn promise to protect my little girl. The truth is, I don’t really care if that boy goes to jail.”
“Even if he’s innocent?”
“He’s not innocent.”
“But if you knew he was with your daughter at the time of the murder —”
“I’d deny it. And I’d deny this conversation. Cops lie all the time on the stand to get a conviction, you know that. I’ve done it before. If it means getting that boy away from Erika, I’d lie again.”
Stefanos shut his notebook. “So what makes you different than the ones out there, breaking the law?”
Mitchell’s eyes narrowed. “Say that again?”
Stefanos didn’t repeat it. He stood from his chair. “Do you know where your daughter is so I can contact her?”
“I always know where she is. I drop her at the Fort Totten station at seven-forty-five sharp every morning, and then she goes off to work. And I pick her up at five-forty-five, the same time, same place, every evening. She’s a stylist at a shop over in Greenbelt.”
“What shop?”
“You’re gonna have to find that out for yourself.”
“I’m going to talk to her, Mr. Mitchell.”
“Go ahead. She’ll tell you the same thing I have. She doesn’t exactly remember.”
“Right.” Stefanos walked for the door, turned. “By the way. You talked about families. Randy Weston’s got a kid brother, not a bad kid but on the edge. And Weston’s got a mother, too, works a government job downtown. She’s trying real hard to keep it together, I’d expect. There’s all sorts of families trying to make it out here. I just thought you’d like to know.”
“You see yourself out?”
“I got it. Thanks for your time.”
Driving south on New Hampshire, Stefanos remembered something Anna Wang had said about the Chinese guys she’d known. He crossed the District Line and took the Kennedy Street cutoff heading west.
TWENTY
STEFANOS WALKED INTO the order area of Hunan Delite and went to the lazy Susan below the teardrop holes cut into the Plexiglas. He listened to the new Usher single coming from the tinny speakers mounted in the lobby while he waited to catch Jerry Sun’s eye. Sun came forward, and Stefanos placed his license against the glass.
“Stefanos,” said Sun. “I remember. What can I do for you?”
“Do you sell steak and cheese?”
“Very funny. C’mon, man, I got things to do.”
“I need to talk to you. I’ll make it fast.”
Sun made a head motion. Stefanos walked back out the door and around the building. By the time he got there, Sun was leaning against the Dumpster, cleaning his eyeglasses on his shirt.
“Jerry.”
“Nick!”
“Okay, okay. Listen, here’s the thing: I know this Chinese girl, friend of mine named Anna, waitresses in this place I bartend for.”
“She sounds real nice. But I’ve got a girlfriend, Stefanos.”
“I don’t think she’d dig you anyway. She doesn’t date Chinese guys. Says they’re more interested in their cars than their women.”
Sun smiled a little and shrugged.
“So I was thinking,” said Stefanos, “about how you noticed the pipes on my sled.”
“So what?”
“What about that red Torino you saw speeding away from the murder scene? You notice anything more than what you gave me the first time?”
“Need help, huh?”
“I’m a Mopar man. I don’t know a thing about Fords. You know what they say: You drive a Dodge, you drive in style; drive a Ford, you’ll walk a mile.”
Sun rolled his eyes. “What you want to know?”
“Anything.”
“Okay,” said Sun. “It was called the Twister Special when it came out. The factory put a decal on the side so you knew; it was supposed to look like a tornado or something, ran from the front to the rear quarter panels. It was a very fast car. The stock engine was a four twenty-nine, SCJ.”
Stefanos smiled like David Janssen and scribbled in his notebook. “Goddamn, Jerry. Anything else?”
“Ford only made ninety of that particular car. I’d call that a very limited edition. A car like that, it shouldn’t be so hard to find.”
“Keep going.”
“I only saw it go by quick, but from what I saw the car was in perfect condition. Like it had been garaged. Or restored.”
Stefanos looked at Sun with admiration. “Why didn’t you tell me the first time around?”
“You didn’t ask. Smart guy like you, I was wondering when you were going to get around to it.”
“That car you saw. You know whose car that was, Jerry?”
“No idea. I’m serious about that, too.”
“Tags?”
“Like I told you before. No tags.”
“I guess Anna was right about you guys.”
“Yeah, I been jacking off to Motor Trend since I was nine years old.”
“Doin’ your own viscosity tests, huh?”
“I gotta run, Stefanos.”
“Okay. Say, I’m kinda hungry. How is the steak and cheese here, Jerry?”
“I wouldn’t recommend it. Tastes like dog shit, you want to know the truth.”
Sun turned and walked back toward the rear kitchen entrance.
“Hey, thanks,” said Stefanos. Sun waved over his shoulder and went through the door.
On Kennedy, Stefanos dropped a quarter and a dime into the pay phone slot. He lit a cigarette, got Elaine’s assistant, waited for Elaine to get on the line.
“Nick, what’s going on?”
“I talked to Terrence Mitchell. It’s not that he doesn’t remember if Randy and his daughter went out the night of the murder. He does remember, but he won’t testify to it. He’d rather get that drug dealer out of his daughter’s life than get him of
f. He told me straight up that he’d lie.”
“Nice. That means we’re —”
“Fucked. It also means Randy Weston’s innocent. I know that now. And the car thing? The Torino’s real. I got a line on it from Jerry Sun, the guy who runs the Chinese joint down here in the neighborhood. The car’s a special model, Elaine. We should be able to track it down, despite the fact that it was out there without tags that night.”
“Give me the details. I’ll get our people to run it through the system.”
Stefanos read off the information Sun had given him.
“This could be what breaks this,” said Elaine. “Nice work.”
“Thanks. In the meantime, I can check with some mechanics. Ford restorationists, specialists. Car like that, they’d remember it.”
“Hold on a second, Nick.”
Stefanos dragged on his Camel. He double-dragged and watched his smoke dissipate in the wind.
“All right,” said Elaine, “I’m back. Was looking for my address book.… Here it is. Marcus has this friend, Dimitri knows him, too, works on old Continentals exclusively. Genuine tough guy, a Truck Turner type, has a garage over in the Brookland area. I’ve got his number right here.”
“What’s his name?”
“Al Adamson,” said Elaine. “Say Marcus hooked you up.”
“There goes Strickland,” said Marcus Clay. “Gonna go right in on Shaq, challenge his wide ass.”
“Man is fearless,” said Dimitri Karras.
The crowd at the MCI Center cheered as Rod Strickland sunk the layup. Karras and Clay slapped each other five.
“Rod,” said Karras with admiration. “Best point guard in the East.”
“Might be the best guard in the NBA, you ask me. The man sees the entire floor. He can dish without telegraphing, and he can take it to the hole at will. And what I really like is, he’s got the fire. The rest of the Wizards had that fire, we’d hear the fat lady sing again, you can believe that.”
“Webber can do it.”
“When he wants to,” said Clay, “C. Webb can do it all. That young man’s got more natural ability than I’ve seen on anyone in a long while. But look right there.”