Dimitri Karras stared straight ahead at the items on the night-stand: the photograph of Steve and Stephanie, an old Panasonic clock radio, his Swiss Army watch, a small stack of pocket change, Stephanie’s hoop earrings. The red LED numerals changed to 2:31 on the clock. He’d been lying there, not at all tired, for the last two hours. Stephanie had fallen asleep long ago, the sound of her deep breathing filling the room. There was that other sound, too, always there at night in Karras’s head.
When Karras was a boy, he was playing by himself one summer day in the alley behind his mother’s house on Davenport. It was a still, hot day, quiet but for the drone of Mr. Scordato’s window unit next door and the occasional call of cicadas passing through the trees.
Karras had been bouncing a basketball in the alley, distracted all afternoon by a vaguely putrid smell, the source of which he could not find. And then he saw the robin, lying beneath the apple tree that grew in the small square of backyard by the alley’s edge. He found a small fallen branch, stripped it of its leaves, and went to the bird.
The smell got stronger as he approached. It was the awful smell of spoiled things, and he choked down a gag. As he reached the fallen bird and got down on his haunches, he could hear a sound, like the faraway crunch of soldiers marching on gravel, rhythmic, continuous, relentless. He leaned forward, slid the stick under the robin, and turned it on its side. Hundreds of writhing maggots were devouring the decaying bird. The sound he had heard was the sound of their feast.
Karras opened his eyes. For the past two and a half years, he had been paralyzed and haunted by grief. Staring at the photograph of a smiling Steve Maroulis, Karras wondered if Stephanie was haunted, too. If she ever pictured Steve in his coffin the way he pictured his son, lying in the dark beneath the ground in that small wooden box.
At night, when he could not sleep, Karras would see Jimmy in his coffin, rotted away and covered in maggots. And Karras would hear that steady marching sound coming from every corner of the room. He could shake the pictures from his head but not the sound. Never the sound.
“God, stop,” whispered Karras, blinking tears from his eyes. It was strange, hearing his own voice speak those words in a pleading way. Invoking the name of God, this was a ridiculous thing for him to do, nothing more than a reaction, really, a habit unbroken from a churchgoing youth. Because he didn’t believe in God, any kind of God, anymore.
Bernie Walters claimed that to live without God was to live without hope. And why, said Bernie, would anyone want to live in a world without hope?
Well, God was Bernie’s crutch, not his. Karras had his own reason for staying alive. Since Jimmy’s death, the feeling had never weakened. In fact, it grew stronger every day.
EIGHT
NICK STEFANOS CAUGHT an uptown Red Line car and picked up his Dodge in Takoma Park. He slipped Lungfish’s Pass and Stow into the tape deck and headed back south via North Capitol. The band locked into a killer groove on “Terminal Crush” as Stefanos drove the Coronet 500 alongside the black iron fence of Rock Creek Cemetery.
At a stoplight just below Florida Avenue, he saw a woman pull a butcher’s knife from the trunk of her parked car and wave it wildly at a laughing man. A dozen ugly people in varying stages of decay stood outside a corner liquor store, huffing smokes and drinking from brown paper bags. Behind them, taped to the store windows, colorful posters depicted beautiful black models promoting malt liquor and menthol cigarettes. A guy with matted dreads walked toward Stefanos’s driver’s-side window, one hand slipped into a bulged jacket pocket. Stefanos locked his door.
The Capitol loomed dead ahead, crowning the street. On this particular winter day, the press and public were fixated on the alleged extramarital affairs of the sitting president and giving odds on his possible impeachment. It was the media event of the decade, the subject of sarcastic lunch conversations all across town. But few talked about the real crime of this city, not anymore: American children were undernourished, criminally undereducated, and living in a viper’s nest of drugs, violence, and despair within a mile of the Capitol dome. It should have been a national disgrace. But hunger and poverty had never been tabloid sexy. Beyond the occasional obligatory lip service, the truth was that no one in a position of power cared.
The man with the matted hair tapped on Stefanos’s window just as the light turned green. Stefanos gave the Dodge gas.
Nick Stefanos drove into Southeast and found a space on 8th Street. He walked toward the marine barracks, passing a real estate office, a women’s bar named Athena’s, an alley, and an athletic-shoe store fronted by a riot gate. He came to the Spot, a windowless, low-slung cinder-block structure in the middle of the strip. He pushed on the scarred green door and walked inside.
Hanging conical lamps and the light from a blue neon Schlitz logo colored the room. Stefanos hung his leather on a coat tree by the door and stepped off the landing into the bar area.
Ramon, the long-time busboy, was coming up from the cellar with two cases of beer cradled in his arms. Wisps of reefer smoke swirled behind him, the smell of it deep in his clothing. He was a little leering guy who wore a red bandanna on his head and scarred suede cowboy boots on his size-seven feet. Ramon stayed high throughout his shifts.
“Hey, amigo,” said Stefanos, flicking Ramon’s ear as he motored by.
“Ow. Chit, man.”
“Did that hurt?”
“Maricón,” said Ramon, showing capped teeth with his smile. “You lucky I got my hands full.”
“Yeah, sure. Better get those Buds in the cooler, though. Before you kick my ass, I mean.”
“I already got it all done. This beer is the last of it. The mixers, the liquor, the bev naps… everything’s all set up.”
“Thanks. I’ll get you later.”
Stefanos went toward the kitchen, passing the reach-through at the side of the bar. He could hear the radio, set on WPGC and playing the new Puff Daddy single, and the raised voices of Phil, James, and Darnell. Maria would be in there, too, making the salad special, quietly working on the presentation of the plates. Stefanos walked in under the bright fluorescents, stepping onto the thick rubber mats that covered the tile floor.
It was a small kitchen to begin with, way too small for what it had become. A stainless-steel prep table stood at the entrance, topped by dual steel shelves. The top shelf was lipped; live tickets were fitted into the lip in the order in which they came in. Beyond the prep table were two workstations, each capped by a steel refrigerator. The dishwashing station was located along the back wall of the room. On the shelf over the grill sat an Amana commercial microwave with a door that never closed on the first attempt. Over the sandwich bar sat the most important and most fought over component of any restaurant kitchen: the house boom box. Beside it, a Rudy Ray Moore poster, now gray with grease, had been taped to the wall.
Maria Juarez worked the cold end of the menu and James Posten, the grill man, worked hots. Their stations were on opposite walls, so that Maria and James’s backs were to each other while they worked lunch.
Darnell, the bar’s career dishwasher, had previously handled the lunch business himself, preparing the one daily special and placing orders on the reach-through, from which the day tender or the waitress would retrieve and serve them. In those couple of hours, Ramon would bus the trays in and wash dishes when he was able. But when the owner of the place, a smallish bespectacled man named Phil Saylor, had decided to expand the menu, he had hired Maria and James and made Darnell the expediter — the person who called out the orders, garnished the plates, and moved the lunches onto the reach-through. Since Ramon would be occupied out in the dining room with the extra table turnover, Phil had suggested they hire a new dishwasher, but Darnell, who had been washing dishes at the Spot since serving out an armed-robbery sentence at Lorton years earlier, wouldn’t hear of it. He took a small raise and told Phil he’d get to the dishes after the lunch rush was through. The popularity of the new menu had surprised everyone, though — it
was previously assumed that the Spot’s regulars would not care to consume any substance that required chewing — and the three-hat arrangement with Darnell wasn’t exactly working out as planned. Since the new system had been put in place, there was often high confusion in the kitchen during the rush, and the dining room had run out of plates and silver more than once.
“A little late, aren’t you?” said Phil Saylor with halfhearted force, noticing Stefanos by the door. It was about as tough as the mellow Saylor got with his employees.
“I had an appointment,” said Stefanos, his eyes staying on Saylor’s, letting him know with his overly serious look that the appointment had to do with his “other” life. Saylor was an ex-cop, which explained the high percentage of plainclothesmen and uniforms among the Spot’s clientele. Phil was retired, but the profession had never entirely left his blood. Invoking his investigative gigs was a cheap way for Stefanos to reach Saylor, but it worked.
“Try to make it on time,” mumbled Saylor.
“I will.”
“Nick,” said James Posten, who sported a fox-head fur stole draped over his uniform shirt. “How you doin’, man?”
James wore eye shadow and carried a walking stick with an amber stone glued in its head. He went six-four, two eighty, and most of it was hard.
“James.”
“Ni,” said Maria Juarez. Her reddish lipstick clashed with the rinse in her shoulder-length hair. She was on the short and curvy side, with the worn, aging-before-her-time look of many working-class immigrant women across the city. When she smiled her lovely smile, the hard life and age lines on her face seemed to fall away.
“Hey, baby.”
“Check this out,” she said, pulling a locket away from her chest and opening it up for Stefanos to see. He went to her, looked at the photograph of her gorgeous five-year-old daughter, Rosita, cut to fit the locket’s oval shape.
“She’s beautiful,” said Stefanos, noticing the patch of discol-oration on Maria’s temple.
“She doing good in school,” said Maria. “The teacher say she smart.”
“How could she not be,” said Stefanos, “with a mother like you?”
“Ah, Ni!” she said, making a wave of her hand, then wiping her hands dry on her apron as she returned, blushing, to her salads.
Darnell removed his leather kufi and wiped sweat from his forehead. The knife scar running across his neck was pink against his deep brown skin. “You got business in here, Nick? ’Cause we’re trying to prepare for lunch.”
“Just, you know, stopped in to brighten everyone’s day.”
“Yeah, well we gotta get this place set up, man.”
“What’re the specials?”
“Chef’s salad,” said Maria.
“Got a nice grilled chicken breast today,” said James, raising his spatula in the air, affecting the manner of a school-taught chef. “Marinated it overnight in teriyaki, some herbs and shit. I’m not lyin’, man, that bird is so tender you could fuck it — excuse me, Maria.”
“Is okay,” said Maria.
“Wouldn’t want to lie about that,” said Stefanos.
“Tell the truth,” said James, “and shame the devil.”
“Thought you were gone,” said Darnell, trying to get around Stefanos.
“I’m goin’,” said Stefanos, shaking Darnell’s hand as he passed, then putting pressure on the fleshy, tender spot between Darnell’s thumb and forefinger.
Darnell smiled, caught a grip on Stefanos’s other hand, pushed down so that it bent unnaturally forward at the wrist. They stood toe-to-toe, grunting, until Stefanos yanked his hand free.
“All right, man,” said Darnell, clapping Stefanos on the shoulder.
Stefanos said, “All right.”
“You guys through playing?” said Saylor.
“Yeah,” said Stefanos.
“So what are you still standing here for?”
“I was wondering, Phil,” said Stefanos. “Could I have a word with you, out in the bar?”
“So how well do you know this guy?” said Saylor.
Stefanos folded a dry bar rag into a neat rectangle, tucked it behind the belt line of his jeans so it rested against his hip. “Old family friend.”
“How old?”
“His old man worked for my grandfather in the forties, when my grandfather had his grill over on Fourteenth and S.”
“Okay, but how well do you know him?”
“I’ve run into him a couple of times in the last twenty years.”
“Uh-huh.” Saylor scratched his chin. “If his father worked for your granddaddy, then he must be pretty old.”
“I’d say he’s cruising up on fifty.”
“He must be a real go-getter. Fifty years old and he wants to work in the kitchen of a joint like this.”
“I don’t even know if he does want to work here. A mutual friend of ours suggested it. You remember the Pizza Parlor Murders a couple of years back?”
“I remember it. So what?”
“Dimitri Karras’s son was the kid who got run down by the getaway car.”
“Christ.”
“Yeah. This guy’s no loser. The bottom fell out on him, is what it is. He’s trying to put it together, and I thought we could help.” Stefanos locked eyes with Saylor. “Look, Phil, the setup we got right now isn’t exactly working out. Darnell hasn’t caught a grip on the expediter position, and Ramon can’t bus tables and wash the load of dishes we got with the business we’re doing. Put Darnell back at the sink and bring Karras in to expedite for two hours a day. He’s not desperate for money, so it’s not a case of how much you pay him. It would do the guy good to just go somewhere every day. Get into the flow of normal life again, you know?”
Saylor pushed his glasses up on his nose. “You think he can do it? I mean, I feel sorry for the guy about his kid and all that, but I don’t want to bring someone with emotional problems in here who’s gonna screw up my business.”
“Karras was some kind of college instructor if I remember right. And he used to run a multistore retail operation. So I gotta think he can handle this.”
“Yeah, but does he have any restaurant experience?”
“He’s a Greek, Phil.”
“Good point. Okay, talk to him. See for yourself if you think he’ll work out. I’m gonna leave it up to you. But I’m only gonna pay ten bucks an hour for two hours a day’s worth of work. A free lunch goes with it, and a beer if he’d like. That’s it, you hear me?”
“Thanks. You’ll talk to Darnell?”
“Yeah, I’ll do that. In the meantime, let me outta here before we open. You know I get too nervous when this place heats up.”
Phil Saylor patted the John Riggins poster hung over the bar, then stopped to look at the framed Declaration of Independence print hanging by the service station. He smirked, reading the signatures of the Spot’s regulars scrawled in childlike, drunken script alongside the signatures of America’s forefathers.
“Hey, here’s yours,” said Saylor. “‘Nicholas J. Stefanos.’ I like that curlicue thing you did after your last name. And Boyle’s name, you can barely read it. Jesus, you guys must have been drunk that night.”
“I don’t remember, to tell you the truth. But at least we had the sense to use the same color pen.”
“Comedians,” said Saylor. He was shaking his head as he headed for the door.
Melvin Jeffers raised his up-glass and said, “Another one of these, Nick. And give that Barry a little volume, will you? ’Cause you know this here is my favorite cut.”
Stefanos kicked the house stereo up a notch. He poured rail gin and a hair of dry vermouth into a shaker filled with ice, and strained the mixture into a clean glass. He walked the drink down to the last stool, where Melvin was in place, seated by the service bar. He set Melvin’s martini on a bev nap.
“Here you go, Mel.”
Melvin was the Spot’s singer; every dive like this had one. He was the musical director during lunch ??
? he arrived daily at noon and left promptly at two P.M. — and in this two-hour period he continuously sang along softly to the tapes, many of which he brought in himself. Melvin Jeffers was a small, neat man with an erect bearing. He wore clean traditional clothing and kept a close-cut Afro. He wrapped his hand around the stem of the up-glass, closed his eyes, and went into his best Barry White.
“‘I don’t want to see no panties,’” chanted Melvin solemnly. “‘And take off that brassiere, my dear.’”
Stefanos hash-marked Melvin’s check.
“Another Manhattan,” said the man everyone called Happy, seated in the middle of the bar, staring straight ahead. A filterless cigarette, its untapped ash hanging like a wrinkled gray dick, burned down close to his yellowed fingers.
Happy’s suit was aqua blue. His shirt and tie were kelp green. Happy wore clothes refused by the Salvation Army.
Stefanos made Happy his drink, which was not, strictly speaking, a Manhattan. Happy liked the sophisticated sound of the name but not the sweet vermouth which crowded the bourbon. Stefanos dropped a maraschino cherry in the glass, served the drink, and said, “Here you go, Happy.”
“You put any liquor in it this time?” said Happy, talking from one side of his mouth.
“No. We’re trying to cut back on our overhead.”
Happy didn’t laugh. No one had ever seen him even crack a smile.
Stefanos marked Happy’s check.
“Ordering,” said Anna Wang, the lunch waitress who had come on as a college student and stayed three years past graduation.
Stefanos went down to the service station, where Anna was taking a hit off his cigarette. She pulled the Camel from her mouth, smoke curling up into her nostrils. She wedged the cigarette back in the V of the ashtray.