Shame the Devil

  Stefanos had choked down half his coffee by the time Elaine Clay entered the cafeteria. Clay was a Fifth Streeter, one of the court-appointed attorneys available to defendants under the Criminal Justice Act. In her middle years, with the legs to wear the skirt she wore today, she was tall and big boned, with a handsome, smooth chocolate face. Even before she had begun throwing work his way, Stefanos had heard of her rep from the cops who frequented the Spot, the bar where he worked part-time. Most cops derided the CJA attorneys — they were the enemy who undid police arrests. But over the years the strength and consistency of Elaine Clay’s performance had elicited a kind of muttered-under-the-breath respect from the cops. It had been one of the Spot’s regulars, in fact, homicide detective Dan Boyle, who had put Clay and Stefanos together the first time.

  Stefanos stood as Elaine approached the table.

  “Nick,” she said.

  “Counselor.”

  They shook hands. Elaine had a seat, dropping a worn leather bag at her side.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Here you go.” Stefanos placed an envelope into her hand. “I think I got what you were looking for.”

  She studied the photographs from the envelope. “You got a night and a day shot.”

  “Yeah. The day shot shows that the bulb of the street lamp’s been broken out. The night shot shows what you can see on that corner without the light — nothing. Newton Place dead-ends at the western border of the Old Soldiers’ Home property there, and there isn’t any light over that fence, either. There’s no way that cop saw your client dealing weed out of that car.”

  “The arrest was six months ago. You took these pictures, what, last week?”

  “Eight days ago. I know, it doesn’t prove the light was out the night those cops arrested him last summer. It doesn’t disprove it, either.”

  “The prosecutor will argue relevance — that a busted street lamp from a week ago has no relevance to a crime that occurred six months ago. And the judge will sustain it.”

  “Yeah, but I figure it’ll put, whaddaya call it, the seed of doubt into the jury’s mind.”

  “Seed of doubt? You’re getting fancy on me now, Nick.”

  “Sorry. But if the prosecutor can’t prove without a doubt that someone saw the kid dealing —”

  “They caught him with a Baggie of herb in the Maxima.”

  “Where was the buyer?”

  “By then the alleged buyer had beat it on foot.”

  “That’s possession, not possession with intent to distribute.”

  “That’s my case. Which is why I’m going to use these photos — they’re the only thing I’ve got. I get this reduced to a simple possession charge, they throw the jury trial out. Under the new District law, crimes carrying penalties of less than six months go before the judge without a jury.”

  “The kid’ll walk, then.”

  “It depends on who I draw behind the bench and what their temperature’s like that day. But most likely my client will get a tongue-lashing and community service.”

  Stefanos lit a smoke, side-exhaled, and tossed the match into the Styrofoam cup. In accepting these assignments from Elaine Clay, he’d known all along what his role would be. Still, it was hard to feel clean about his part in this daily cycle. He wondered how Elaine did this, every single day.

  She pulled a manila folder from her bag and dropped it on the table. “I’ve got something else for you, Nick, if you want it.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m defending a kid named Randy Weston on a murder charge. The trial’s coming up in a couple of weeks.”

  “So?”

  “Weston’s a known low-level dealer with priors. On the day of the murder, he was seen arguing with another dealer, Donnel Lawton, who’d been encroaching on Weston’s turf. Lawton was shot to death that night at First and Kennedy with a Beretta ninety-two. An anonymous informant made Weston as the triggerman. And when the police searched his place they found a Beretta nine. The markings from the slug that killed Lawton matched the gun.”

  “An anonymous informant?”

  “A woman. It was enough to get a warrant.”

  Stefanos tapped ash off his smoke. “Sounds open-and-shut to me.”

  “Weston’s got an alibi. He was with his girlfriend that night. She’s not cooperating, but I believe him. He doesn’t look like a killer. It’s his eyes — and after a while, you just know.”

  “Does it make a difference to you if he’s guilty or innocent?”

  “No. I defend them all the same way, Nick. I thought it might make a difference to you.”

  Stefanos hit his smoke. “What else makes you think Weston’s telling the truth? Besides, you know, his eyes.”

  “Around the time of the murder, a kid who works in one of those neighborhood Chinese grease pits, place called Hunan Delite, says he was closing up his parents’ shop, heard shots and tires screeching on the road, then saw an old vehicle speeding past on Kennedy.”

  “What kind of an old vehicle?”

  Elaine peered inside the folder. “A red Tempo, I think. No, here it is… a red Ford Torino.”

  “What’s Weston drive?”

  “A Legend.”

  “Color?”

  “Red.”

  “Even if you find the driver of the Torino, and even if he has something to do with the crime, the prosecutors will bring up the sameness of color in court.”

  “You’re talking about two cars with over twenty years’ difference in terms of style.”

  “Maybe.” Stefanos looked around the cafeteria. “But I’m not interested.”

  “You’re interested. I can see it —”

  “In my eyes?”

  “Thought you might want to pick this one up, see what you can do with it.”

  “I told you the first time you hired me —”

  “I know. You no longer get involved in, how did you put it, ‘murder gigs or other kinds of violent shit.’”

  “I said that?”

  “Something like it.”

  Stefanos dragged on the filter of his Camel. “Get that big Indian you use. Nobody fucks with that guy.”

  “He’s busy on another case.”

  “What about Joey A.?”

  “Joe A.’s tied up, too.” Elaine pushed the folder across the table until it touched Stefanos’s hand. “Look, I need your help, Nick. I’ve got another one of these files in my office. Take this one with you, okay?”

  “I don’t think so.” Stefanos moved his hand and dropped his cigarette into the half inch of coffee left in the cup.

  “Right. Let’s put that aside for now, then, and shift gears.”

  “What, you’ve got something else?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I mentioned that I was working with you to my husband last night. Marcus said he thought you might know his friend Dimitri Karras. You remember Dimitri, don’t you?”

  “Sure. I haven’t seen him for over ten years. But I was just thinking about him on the way over here. The Post ran their quarterly Pizza Parlor Murders piece in this morning’s paper.”

  “Dimitri’s been in a real bad way.”

  Stefanos nodded, drew a fresh cigarette from the pack, tamped it on the table. He rolled the cigarette between his fingers.

  “There can’t be anything worse than to lose a child, Nick.”

  “Wasn’t he with your husband in those record stores?”

  “Yes. Marcus cashed out ten years ago, went back to school and got his M.B.A. In the meantime, Dimitri met his future wife, Lisa, in rehab. Dimitri and Lisa got married and had a child straight away. Marcus and a friend named Clarence Tate created a retail consulting business designed to help African American startups and brought Dimitri in as a partner, despite the fact that Dimitri’s —”

  “Greek Like Me?”

  “Dimitri was always good with people, so that didn’t seem to matter all that much when all was said and done.”
Elaine spread her hands out on the table. “But when Jimmy was killed, he pretty much fell apart. After a year or so, Marcus and Clarence couldn’t carry him anymore. And Dimitri didn’t want them to. It just didn’t work out.”

  “What about Karras and his wife?” “They didn’t make it. She’s still at their old house, pretty much a shut-in. He’s living in an apartment on U at Fifteenth, still making do on what’s left of his inheritance.”

  “Marcus feels guilty.”

  “Yes. He feels like, if Dimitri can get himself into a work environment — get around people again, every day — he can start that healing process he needs. It would be like, you know, placing him with some kind of family.”

  Stefanos cleared his throat and slid the unlit cigarette back in its pack. “I’ll ask around. If I hear of any job openings around town I’ll let you know.”

  “I was thinking of that place you work.”

  “The Spot? Elaine, you ever seen the place? It’s just a shitty little bar in Southeast.”

  “They serve food, don’t they?”

  “Yeah, we serve food. In fact, we just hired a couple more people for the kitchen. The owner expanded the menu. He’s trying to beef up the lunch business.”

  “Well, there you go. Dimitri could do kitchen work part-time. Wash dishes, anything. With you there, he wouldn’t be walking into a nest of strangers. Marcus was thinking —”

  “Marcus?”

  “Okay, it would be a personal favor for me, too. Look, I didn’t think you’d mind if I asked.”

  “I don’t mind.” Stefanos stood. “Like I said, I’ll ask around, Elaine. How’s that?”

  “Thanks, Nicky.” She wrote down a phone number, tore off a piece of paper, and handed it to Stefanos.

  Stefanos reached into the side pocket of his leather, pulled out a CD, and put it in front of Elaine. “Here you go.”

  Elaine’s face brightened. “What’s this?”

  “Live Evil. It just got reissued on domestic disc. I knew you were an electric Miles freak, so…”

  “You know, I’d always see the Japanese pressing of this in the stores, but I never wanted to spring for it.”

  “I heard a couple of tracks at the listening station. Some of the pieces were recorded right here at the old Cellar Door in 1970. Johnny McLaughlin on guitar, Michael Henderson on bass — it’s a boss band. It doesn’t cut Agharta, but it’s pretty hot.”

  “Nick, that was so sweet.”

  Stefanos winced. “A woman shouldn’t ever call a guy sweet, Counselor. It’s like calling him dickless or something.”

  “But it was sweet.”

  “Yeah, okay, it was sweet.” Stefanos shuffled his feet.

  “You all right? You’re looking a little run-down.”

  “I’m fine. Listen, I’ll talk to you later, hear?”

  “Soon.”

  They smiled at each other, and Stefanos turned to go. She watched him walk from the cafeteria and disappear into the crowd gathered at the entrance.

  “Who was that?” said the young attorney at the table to her left.

  Elaine turned to face the man who’d been a CJA attorney for less than a year. “Nick Stefanos. An investigator I use.”

  “From his appearance, I’d say that guy’s been around the block a few times.”

  “I suspect he has.”

  “He looks like some kind of ghost.”

  More like a street angel, she thought, as the voice from the loudspeaker called the young attorney’s name.

  “That’s me,” he said. “Show time.”

  “Don’t forget your client,” said Elaine.

  “There he is. He’s coming now.”

  Elaine looked at the kid, thought immediately of her own son, Marcus Jr., now sixteen years old. The kid’s shirt was out and his boots were unlaced. M. J. had begged her to buy him that same brand of boots this Christmas past.

  “You might want to tell him to tuck in his shirt,” said Elaine. “Lace up those Timbies, too. He’s liable to trip on his way up to the bench.”

  “Timbies?”

  “His boots.”

  The attorney stood from his chair and collected his papers. “That Stefanos guy,” he said. “You mind if I borrow him sometime?”

  Elaine shook her head. “Sorry.”

  “He does good work, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, he does good work. But he’s mine.”

  FOUR

  THE GROUP GATHERED once a week in the basement of a Presbyterian church at 23rd and P. A social worker with the police department had set up the support sessions originally and assigned the group a freelance shrink, who, after three weeks, was politely asked to leave. Two and a half years had passed, and the group continued to meet.

  Ernst, the church’s live-in custodian, stood near the group, seated in a disjointed circle in the middle of the common room. “Please,” said Ernst. “Pull the plug on that coffee urn when you’re done.”

  “We’ll take care of it, Ernst,” said Bernie Walters.

  “Ya, sure,” said Ernst, giving them a fangy smile. Clumps of gray hair grew from several large moles on his face. He was older than dirt, and it seemed an effort for him to lift his hand to wave before he walked from the room.

  When he left, Thomas Wilson said, “Where’s Ernst from, with that accent of his? Anybody ever figure that out?”

  “Latvia,” said Dimitri Karras.

  “Where the hell is that?”

  “He’s a good old bird,” said Walters, who at fifty was the senior member of the group and its unofficial leader. “Anyway… where were we?”

  They started, as they always did, by getting reacquainted. They talked about the things that had happened at their jobs, what they’d done on the weekend, the trades the Skins needed to make to win next season, celebrity deaths, favorite television shows, the latest high-profile trial.

  After a while they refreshed their coffee cups and came back and took their seats. Bernie Walters lit a cigarette.

  “Funny how you’re the only one of us that smokes,” said Stephanie Maroulis.

  “You know us veterans,” said Walters, snapping shut the hinged lid of his lighter. “Marlboro reds and Zippos. We never go anywhere without ’em.”

  “Vanity Fair did a piece on the Zippo lighter,” offered Karras, “and its place in American society relative to Vietnam.”

  “Here it comes,” said Thomas Wilson. “‘Relative to Vietnam.’ Now the professor’s gonna explain to us unwashed types what it all means.”

  Karras had been, among other things, an American lit instructor in his past life. He had mistakenly mentioned it to Wilson and Walters one night over beers at the Brew Hause.

  “Give it a rest, guys,” said Stephanie, trying to head off the inevitable.

  But Karras said, “I could bring in the magazine for you, Thomas. If you didn’t want to take the time to read it you could just, I don’t know, look at all the pretty models and dream.”

  “Look at ’em and yawn, you mean. I’ve seen those gray girls you’re talking about. Clothes look like they been draped over a wire hanger and shit. Naw, you can keep your Caucasian junkies, Dimitri. And anyway, you know I prefer women with a little back on ’em.”

  “Yeah, but what do they think of you?”

  Karras smirked at the glimmer in Wilson’s eyes. Wilson liked to try and shock the group — play their idea of the street spade if he could get away with it. Karras didn’t let him get away with it.

  Walters pushed up the bill on his faded Orioles cap — just the bird, no script — and scratched his graying beard. He was barrel-chested gone heavy, but he carried the weight on a broad back.

  “So what’d the article say, Dimitri?” said Walters.

  “It talked about how the soldiers used to have all these sayings engraved on their lighters.‘Born to Die,’ like that. How the GIs were very attached to those lighters.”

  “I used mine,” said Walters, “to burn villages. I must have torched at least
a dozen like that. You could set a really good fire to those straw roofs they had. That article say anything about that?”

  “It did say something, now that you mention it.”

  “Course they do know a lot about Vietnam — in New York.”

  “I mentioned your smoking,” said Stephanie, “because, I don’t know, usually in these kinds of groups it seems like everybody smokes. Right, Dimitri? It’s unusual that it’s only you who lights up, Bernie.”

  “Yeah, that’s true.” Karras thought of his old rehab group, where he had met Lisa. “I was never a smoker myself. But I used to come out of my old group wanting to just throw my stinking clothes away.”

  “The reason I thought of it,” said Stephanie, “was that my husband was in GA for a while. You know, Gamblers Anonymous. I ever tell you guys that? Steve used to come home and say that everyone there smoked but him.”

  Karras shifted in his seat. This part — the first mention of the spouse, or the best friend, or the son — invariably made him uncomfortable. And Stephanie seemed to be the one who always kicked it off.

  “What’d Steve like?” said Walters. “The ponies?”

  “He liked any kind of action,” said Stephanie, “and May’s was a place where you could always place a bet. Numbers, the over-under, horses… Steve liked it all.”

  “So what sent him into GA?” said Wilson. “Must have been one special time where he hit the bottom, right? Always is.”

  Stephanie pushed a strand of her shoulder-length chestnut hair behind her ear. Karras liked to watch her do that; she was not a small woman, but her movements were graceful. And she had nice hands.

  “It was this one weekend over the holidays. Must have been the Christmas of ninety-three. Steve had lost a bundle on the weekend NFL play-off games, and then a couple hundred more on some college basketball game that same day. We had a family get-together that night, Steve’s mother was there — this was the year before she passed away — and Steve got a little looped on whiskey. Steve did like his Crown Royal.”

  Wilson chuckled. “Charlie used to tell me, ‘We got this bartender, every night after he closes down the place, he dims the lights and pours himself a drink — only one — out of this pretty-ass bottle he keeps up on the top shelf.”