Mai put her head in the space, slapped a ticket on the wood, picked up her order, and carried it away. Karras took the ticket and put it in the back of the line on the lipped shelf.
“Another special,” said Karras, reading the ticket. “Darnell, your meat loaf’s really moving today. Looks good, too. I know what I’m having for lunch.”
“Don’t get your heart set on it for lunch.” Darnell stood over the soak sink, his back turned to the rest of the kitchen. “How many you think we served?”
Karras checked the hash marks on a pad he kept by his side. “Fifteen by my count.”
“I only cut sixteen out of that piece.”
Ramon came through the door with a bus tray. As he went by, Karras said, “Ramon, when you go back out to the floor, tell Mai and Anna: eighty-five on the meat loaf.”
“One mo?”
“Right.”
“Dimitri,” said James. “These burgers gonna be up in a minute. You can call out your colds.”
“Thanks, James. All right, Maria. I need a cold cut, everything, no onions. A tuna on rye, plain. And a Maria’s salad.”
Maria laughed. “Jame, the salad moving!”
“I know it, senorita. Good thing you put your name on that one, because it is your masterpiece.”
Anna Wang walked in, put a ticket in front of Karras. “Food’s coming out great, everybody.”
“Thanks, baby,” said James. “But I know you didn’t come in here to shower us with compliments.”
“Well, I was wondering about the order for my eight-top.”
“You can just get your hot little self back on out there, too.”
“All right, I’m gone.” Anna buzzed out of the kitchen.
“Hit me, Dimitri,” said James. “I’m all caught up.”
Karras gave James the new hots, repeated the order, studied his tickets, rearranged them according to cooking times. James crowded the grill with meat, then went to the radio and turned it up.
“Luther Vandross,” said James. “Sing it, my brother.” James sang the chorus of the song in baritone. Maria looked at him and cracked up. The two of them laughed, hugged each other briefly, then split apart and went back to their stations.
“Jame likes Luther,” explained Maria to Karras with a smile. There was a blue mark under her right eye.
“Luther is serious,” said James, transferring the burger order onto plates. “I remember listenin’ to him when he sang for that group Change, didn’t even have his name on the cover of the album, and I can remember thinkin’, who the fuck is this?”
“You ready, Maria?” said Karras.
“Go ahe, Mitri.”
He recited her colds. He didn’t repeat the order because by now he knew that you never had to tell Maria twice.
Darnell turned his head halfway around, watched Karras work. Karras was doing a good job, and for a moment Darnell thought he’d tell him. But the moment passed, and Darnell went back to his dishes and the sink.
Karras sat at the bar, eating the last of the meat loaf with a side mound of garlic mashed potatoes with gravy pooled in its center. Darnell made a nice meat loaf, not too dry, with just enough onion in it to give it taste.
Karras liked this time of the afternoon. He had done a good job at lunch today, and that was something in itself. He’d prepared his own food after the rush while Maria listened to her half hour on the Spanish station, wrapping her salads away for the night. Then he’d brought his food out to the bar and eaten it quietly, his personal reward. This had been a good day.
A beefy guy in a tweed jacket sat two stools down to Karras’s right, nursing a shot of something along with a beer. Karras only knew him as the Irish homicide cop who frequented the Spot. Down the bar sat Happy, staring straight ahead, and beyond Happy sat a couple of GS-10s, arguing over sports trivia while splitting their second pitcher of draft. Mai was behind the stick, her arms folded, a cigarette in one of her thick hands, listening intently to the Carpenters mix she had going on the box.
Karras considered today’s lunch. It had gone well. His first few days on the job had been pretty rough; there were a couple of times, when he was in way over his head and the tickets were flowing into the kitchen in bunches, that he thought of just bolting. He’d heard restaurant people talk about being “in the weeds,” and that’s how it felt. You couldn’t see your way out, and the next step was panic.
But it had worked out. And every day he grew more confident and got better at his job. He had begun to figure it out: the rhythm, the personalities, the way James and Maria interacted, knowing when James could take a hot call, watching his body language signal overload and knowing when to pull back and wait. Working the kitchen was a kind of challenge, and he was beginning to beat it. And there was the other thing, too. During the lunch rush he could only think of the task at hand. For two hours every day, he could forget.
“You mind?” said the Irish cop.
Karras looked over. The cop was putting a match to a cigarette. “No, go ahead.”
Darnell came from the kitchen and had a seat next to Karras at the bar. He removed his leather kufi and wiped his face with a bar napkin. Mai drifted over and Darnell said, “Mix me up one of your specials, Mai.”
“You got it,” said Mai.
“So, Dimitri,” said Darnell, “how’s that meat loaf?”
“Beautiful,” said Karras. “I was afraid I wasn’t gonna get it, the way it was moving.”
“The heel’s the best part anyway, you ask me.”
Mai served Darnell a mixture of pineapple and orange juice. He thanked her and had a long sip.
“How long have you been cooking?” said Karras.
“I started back when I was doin’ this little stretch at Lorton. I guess Nick’s already told you about that. I got a job in the kitchen as a dishwasher. This guy that had been cooking for years there kind of took me under his wing.”
“You’re good at it.”
“Yeah, I can put a meal together, I guess. Thing is, Phil doesn’t let me stretch out too much here. Wants to keep this a meat-and-potatoes, middle-of-the-road, bar-food kind of place. I’d like to do a whole lot more.”
Karras pushed his empty plate to the side. “Listen, Darnell…”
“You don’t have to say nothin’, man. You’re doin’ a good job. Things have been running smoother since you got here, and I’m happy about that. I just wasn’t suited for that position, that’s all.”
“You were trying to do too much, is what it was. I can’t take too much credit, either. I’ve had a lot of help. James and Maria have been great.”
“Yes, those two sure can do it. ’Specially Maria. She can sense when that food’s coming off the grill, like she’s seein’ behind her back.”
Karras drummed his fingers on the bar. “Let me ask you something about Maria.”
“Go ahead.”
“I’ve noticed marks on her face —”
“Her husband. He drinks at night and sometimes he drinks too much. When he does, he beats her.”
“Can’t we do anything?”
“Nick asked her if she wanted us to report the guy. She said no. I think she’s afraid. Afraid for herself but mainly for that beautiful girl of hers. So there it is. Everybody’s got their own little world of problems they got to deal with, man. We’re all out here just doin’ the best we can.”
Darnell swallowed the rest of his juice and got up off the stool.
“Thanks, Darnell.”
“Let me get on out of here and back to those dishes.”
Darnell headed toward the kitchen.
“What’s up, Darnell?” said the cop.
“Officer Boyle.” Darnell didn’t stop or turn his head.
When Darnell had entered the kitchen, the cop leaned over, extended his hand, and said, “Dan Boyle.”
“Dimitri Karras.”
They shook hands.
“Yeah, Nick told me your name. I said to him, Now we got two Greeks in this joint.”
“Uh-huh.”
Karras hoped that would end the conversation. There were certain kinds of drinkers who had a sleepy kind of cruelty in their eyes. Boyle had that look — and he was a detective in the bad bargain. Along with everything else, Karras had lost his faith in cops.
Boyle said, “You know, when I asked Nick who the new guy was and he told me your name, it rang a bell. It wasn’t just that your name had been in the papers a few times these last couple of years.”
“Yeah?” So this Boyle character knew about the murder of his son.
“Yeah, it was something else.”
“What was it?” asked Karras tiredly. “You figure it out?”
“Well, it turns out it was your last name I was picking up on. I have this uncle, Jimmy Boyle, was a beat cop in this town and then a homicide detective later on. I’m going back to the forties, understand? Anyway, I can remember, even as a kid, my uncle talking about this friend of his he grew up with, back when the poor immigrants lived in Chinatown. I don’t know the story, but my uncle claims this guy had something to do with him getting his gold shield. Pete Karras was his name. He died before I was born, so I never met him or anything like that. But around my uncle it was always Pete Karras this and Pete Karras that.”
“Pete Karras was my father.”
“Christ,” said Boyle, “wait till I tell my uncle.”
“He’s alive, huh?”
“Yeah, he’s alive. Boy, I had a feeling, too.”
Boyle finished his shot with a quick toss. Karras noticed the butt of Boyle’s revolver beneath his jacket as he threw his head back to drain his beer. Boyle took a last drag off his smoke, crushed the cherry in the ashtray, stood up, and left a heap of ones on the bar.
Boyle went over to Karras and squeezed his shoulder. He leaned in close. Karras could smell the whiskey and nicotine on his breath.
“Nice meeting you,” said Boyle. “My sympathy for the loss of your son.”
Karras nodded but said nothing. Boyle left the bar.
FOURTEEN
NICK STEFANOS PARKED his Dodge between the customized Lexus and a black Maxima in the Kennedy Street lot beside Hunan Delite, where Jerry Sun, the partial witness in the Donnel Lawton case, was employed.
Today Stefanos wore his version of a uniform: blue Dickies pants, a blue shirt, and a charcoal waistcoat. He carried a cell phone that he had rigged to an oversize case.
The blue shirt and pants, the phone that looked like a pack set — he wasn’t impersonating a cop, exactly. But he looked enough like the species to give pause to the people he was hoping to talk to on the street.
Stefanos pushed open the door of Hunan Delite. Lunch was over, and there was only one customer, an obese woman in tights and a sweatshirt, in the lobby. She leaned her back on a red eat-in counter and avoided eye contact with Stefanos.
The place smelled of fried food and grease. A speaker mounted in the lobby was set on PGC. Callers to the station were giving their shout-outs to friends, family, and lovers.
Stefanos went to the lazy Susan contraption set in the Plexiglas wall. An old Asian woman came forward and stood before him, spoke through several teardrop cutouts in the glass.
“What you have?” she asked.
Stefanos opened his billfold. Inside was his investigator’s license, a photo ID that simply said “Investigator,” white letters against a red background, barred across the top. He placed the open billfold flat against the glass and spoke into the cutout teardrops.
“I want to speak to Jerry Sun. Could you get him, please?”
The woman left without a word. Stefanos heard a foreign tongue in a raised voice. He waited. A clean-cut young man in a black turtleneck came to the glass. It looked like the same young man Stefanos had seen the night he had driven by.
“Yes?”
“Jerry Sun?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m an investigator working on the Donnel Lawton case.”
“I’ve already talked to the detectives, two times.”
“I have a few more questions, if you don’t mind.”
Jerry Sun looked over his shoulder, then back at Stefanos. “Go around the store and meet me behind.”
“See you there.”
The obese woman studied Stefanos as he walked out the door. Jerry Sun stood against the brick wall beside the rear entrance to the kitchen. As Stefanos approached, he noticed the tail of a rat disappear beneath a nearby Dumpster.
“Nick Stefanos.”
Stefanos offered his hand. Sun took it tentatively.
“Make it, quick, okay? I’ve got to get back inside.”
“You run this place?”
“With my mother.”
A couple of young men passed by on the sidewalk. One of them yelled, “Hey, Jerry-San, whassup?” His friend laughed.
Jerry smiled tightly and half-waved back.
Stefanos said, “You get that much?”
“Sure, all the time. Customers ordering in a Chinese accent. People who make fun of my mother.”
“But you stay.”
Sun shrugged. “I’m the oldest son of six children. It was my responsibility to stay. This place has put three of my siblings through college.”
“Not you?”
“The birth order decided my fate. It was just an accident. But I accept it.” Sun lost his frown. “Don’t get me wrong; it’s not so bad. There are people who mock us, but there are plenty of nice people down here. I grew up in Montgomery County. But in some ways I’ve grown up with a lot of these neighborhood people, too.”
“Known many who’ve died?”
“Yes.”
“Donnel Lawton?”
Sun touched the right stem of his rimless glasses. “I knew him by sight, yes.”
“How about the guy who was accused of killing him?”
“Randy Weston? I knew him as well.”
“Better than Lawton?”
“We played together, right where we are standing, a couple of times when we were children. He showed me how to put a spiral on a football, something my father would not have known. But that was a long time ago. We didn’t speak as adults except when he was giving me a food order or I was taking it. He showed me respect, nothing more.”
“Was Weston in the life?”
“I’ve heard that both Weston and Donnel Lawton sold drugs. But if they did, it was minor. Neither of them was the kingpin down here, this much I know. Listen, I’ve already told this to the police.”
“I’m not the police. I’m working for the lawyer defending Randy Weston.”
“I don’t mind cooperating, but I’ve told the police everything I know.”
“All right, I’ll try not to drag this out. A couple of quick questions here…” Stefanos opened the loose-leaf pad on which he kept his notes. “You told the police you heard gunshots the night of the Lawton murder. That was at what time?”
“Just after nine-thirty at night.”
“How do you know it was nine-thirty?”
“Just after nine-thirty. Because we close then, and I had just locked the door.”
“You recognized the sounds as gunshots?”
“Two gunshots, yes. And I know what that popping sound is.”
“When you heard the shots, were you in the lobby or behind the Plexiglas?”
“In the lobby, sweeping up.”
“So you could see clearly through the front window.”
“Yes.”
“Let’s see.… After the gunshots, you say you heard rubber laid on the street, then saw a red Ford Torino blow by.”
“That’s right.”
“The boxy version from the sixties or the more rounded version from the early seventies?”
“Rounded.”
“Color?”
“Red.” Stefanos saw a light in Sun’s eyes. “Like I already told the real cops.”
“What about tags?”
“No tags.”
“You mean you couldn’t
make out the state?”
“I mean the car had no tags on it. That much I could see.”
“Okay. I’m not gonna keep you, Jerry.” Stefanos handed Sun his card. “Mind if I call you if I think of something I missed?”
“Sure.” Sun’s eyes lit with amusement once again. “Just call information and ask for Hunan Delite.”
Stefanos grinned. “This city’s probably only got, what, a hundred or so of those in the phone book?”
“Yeah, it took a long time for my family to come up with the name.”
“You spelled ‘Delight’ wrong. You aware of that?”
“You’re very funny.”
“I’m trying.”
“The thing is, we barely sell any Chinese food. Some fried fish, and then the rest is steak and cheese. ‘Steak and cheese everything,’ that’s what I hear all day.”
“Thanks for your help,” said Stefanos.
“That your Dodge parked next to my Lexus?” said Sun.
“Yeah.”
“Those pipes. You put them on yourself?”
“They’re Borlas. I bought ’em through Hot Rod and had them installed.”
“Nice.”
“Take care, Jerry.”
Sun waved and walked away.
Stefanos walked across the street to the Brightwood Market and stopped the least threatening looking young man he could find. He identified himself as an investigator and asked the man if he had been acquainted with either Donnel Lawton or Randy Weston. The young man shook his head. He asked him if he had heard anything on the street or had any knowledge at all about the murder. The man walked off without a word.
Stefanos had spoken loudly in hopes of getting a blind response to the names from the other men who stood around outside the market. He heard an obscenity muttered and looked around: A couple of the men stared at him with smirking eyes. He asked them as a group if any of them had known Donnel Lawton or Randy Weston. They ignored him completely.
In the year he had worked for Elaine Clay as an investigator, he had been threatened several times in a benign way, slapped across the face by a woman on the doorstep of her row house, and chased down the street by a clubfooted drunk wielding a butcher knife. There had been no serious incidents. This was as much due to luck as it was to the precautions he had taken in his manner and dress.
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