Shame the Devil

by George Pelecanos

  Wilson’s face was grim and strained in the glow of the dash lights. “Only God should do what we’re plannin’ to do tonight.”

  “You’re scared,” said Karras, “that’s all. Don’t cloud this up with talk about God.”

  “Yes, I’m scared. I don’t want to die.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “You don’t have to worry,” said Wilson. “I’m gonna go through with this. But don’t you tell me not to think of God or whether this is right or wrong. If I live through this, I plan to beg forgiveness every day for the wrong I’ve done. Knowing it’s wrong is what separates me from Farrow and Otis.” Wilson looked across the bucket. “What separates you?”

  “Nothing. I hope to be just like them. I hope to kill them the way they killed my son.”

  Wilson spoke quietly. “You’ve lost your faith, I know. But if you make it tonight, believe me, you’re gonna need to have something to help make you right. I was you, I’d look to God. Promise me you’ll try.”

  “All right, Thomas,” said Karras, staring straight ahead. “I promise that I’ll try.”

  The road darkened as they went past the town. Wilson pointed to a boarded-up gas station with a pay phone out front. Then there was more dark road and signage for an industrial park. Wilson turned right, took the asphalt road that went along rows of squat red-brick warehouses starkly lit by spots.

  Wilson drove straight to the back of the deserted park. He made a tight turn at a green Dumpster and went through the long narrow alley to the wide parking lot that ended at another set of identical red-brick structures. He parked in the middle of the strip, cut the engine, and removed the tarps from the trunk.

  “What’re those for?” asked Karras.

  “Gonna try to keep my uncle’s place clean. We’ll roll ’em up in these when we’re done.”

  Karras waited while Wilson opened the warehouse door and hit the lights. The two of them stepped inside. Fluorescents flooded the space with an artificial glow. A single ceiling lamp flashed over a cheap desk.

  Karras looked at the desk. “Doesn’t this place have a phone?”

  “My uncle uses a cell.”

  Wilson and Karras unfolded the blue plastic tarps and spread them out on the concrete floor. The warehouse was cold, and their labored breath was visible in the light.

  “I better get goin’,” said Wilson when they were done. “They’ll be there pretty soon.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Remember: You’re the man who made me the key. You’re looking for a payoff before they do the job. Don’t complicate it more than that.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Shoot Farrow quick.”

  “All I want is to look in his eyes.”

  “Don’t waste no time, Dimitri. Shoot him quick, hear? I’ll take care of Otis.”

  “All right.” Karras shook Wilson’s hand. “You all set?”

  Wilson nodded. He turned and walked out the door. Karras heard the Intrepid drive away.

  It was suddenly quiet. Karras stood on the blue tarp in the center of the warehouse and listened to the low, steady buzz of the fluorescent lights.

  “You got the directions?” said Farrow.

  “Got ’em,” said Otis.

  They walked across the yard to their cars.

  “Smells like something died out here,” said Farrow.

  “Well, we are in the woods.”

  “Be glad to get back to civilization.”

  “I heard that,” said Otis, dropping behind the wheel of his Mark V. Otis put the car in drive. He hit the CD player, rotated the disks to Slow Jams, Volume 2.

  “Oh, zoooom,” sang Otis, “I’d like to fly away….”

  Otis turned onto the two-lane. Farrow followed in the Mach 1.

  Thomas Wilson sat in the idling Intrepid behind the Texaco station. He turned off the heater. He could smell his own sweat coming through his clothes.

  He looked at his watch. Farrow and Otis would be way up 301 by now. Another half hour, they’d be pulling into the lot.

  He’d been all chest out when he was with Dimitri, talking about how he was going to “go through with this,” saying it strong, like there wasn’t any kind of doubt in his mind. But now that he was alone, the fear had slithered back in. Truth was, if he was to pull a gun right now, it would slip right out of his hands.

  And then there were Farrow and Otis. They had that way of theirs that made him feel small and weak, even back in Lewisburg, when they pretended to be his friend. Otis sometimes referred to him as his boy. Errand boy was more like it. He never was one of them, and they had always let him know it, too.

  The .38 dug into the small of his back. He shifted in the bucket.

  He and Karras needed help. There wasn’t any sense in denying it anymore. Maybe Karras was strong and crazy enough to pull it off on his end. But Wilson knew he couldn’t do it. He’d be punked out like he’d always been punked out. He’d get the both of them killed.

  Wilson was out of the car and walking around the side of the gas station. He was walking to the pay phone, telling himself that this was not another betrayal, that he wasn’t being a coward, that he was trying to help his friend. He was talking to himself, sweating and shivering in the cold, when he dropped the coins and dialed, and he was still muttering something when the phone rang on the other end and the line went live.

  “Hello.”

  “It’s Thomas Wilson.”

  “Thomas —”

  “Ain’t got no time to bullshit, Nick. I need your help.”

  Jonas handed the phone to Dan Boyle. “It’s Stefanos again. For you.”

  Boyle put the phone to his ear and listened intently. Jonas watched his face as Boyle nodded and spoke excitedly.

  Boyle said, “See you then,” and handed Jonas a dead phone.

  “What’s up?” said Jonas.

  “I’m goin’ out.”

  Boyle went back to the guest bedroom, grabbed a pair of gloves from his overnight bag and shoved them in the pockets of his khakis. He unzipped a canvas gym bag, drew his Python, and checked the load. He holstered the Python, reached into the bag, and withdrew his throw-down, a .380 double-action Beretta with a thirteen-shot magazine. He examined the magazine, slapped it back into the butt, and dropped the gun in the side pocket of his Harris tweed. He looked over his shoulder, then went back into the gym bag and extracted a Baggie holding confiscated snow-seals of powdered cocaine. He slipped the Baggie into the other pocket of his jacket and walked back out to the living room with the holstered Python in his hand.

  “You gonna tell me what’s goin’ on?” said Jonas.

  “When I get back. You got your piece?”

  “It’s in the drawer over there.”

  “Get it,” said Boyle, lifting his wrinkled raincoat off a chair. “Until you hear from me, you keep it in your lap.”

  The two-tone Continental and the red Mach 1 pulled into the back lot of the Texaco station. The Mustang skidded on gravel as it came to a stop. Otis killed the engine on the Mark V, stepped out, and walked to the Intrepid. Wilson opened his door.

  “T. W.,” said Otis.

  “Roman.” His mouth spasmed as he tried to smile.

  “Come on, man. We’ll go in Farrow’s short.”

  Farrow rolled his window down as they neared the car. “These brakes are shot again,” said Farrow. “If you just push the pedal in, you get nothing. You got to pump the hell out of these things to bring it to a stop.”

  “Booker put the fluid in,” said Otis. “I seen him do it.”

  “I’m tellin’ you, Roman, they’re fucked.”

  “Let me drive over to the joint, man, so I can see my own self.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Farrow did not greet Wilson as he stepped out of the car. Wilson climbed into the backseat, and Farrow went around to the passenger side. Otis got under the wheel and put the car in gear.

  “Where to, T. W.?”

  “Pull out,” said Wils
on, “and make a right onto the road.”

  Otis tested the brakes both ways as they hit the asphalt. He pumped the pedal and managed to bring the Mustang to a stop.

  “You’re right, Frank. These brakes are fucked. Have to use the Mark when we do the job for real.”

  Farrow looked over his shoulder to the backseat. “What’s wrong with your face, T. W.? How’d you get marked?”

  “Got stole in the face in a bar,” said Wilson.

  “Let yourself get stole, huh?” said Otis. “Imagine that. You look a little tight, too.”

  “Got a minor problem, is all it is.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The inside man, the one who got me the key? He thought about it and now he wants an extra grand.”

  “He’s already been paid,” said Farrow.

  “I told him as much,” said Wilson, noticing a catch in his voice, wondering if they noticed it, too.

  “And what happened?”

  “Couldn’t talk him out of it,” said Wilson.

  “I guess I need to talk to him myself,” said Farrow.

  “You’re going to,” said Wilson as they neared the industrial park sign. “He’s waitin’ on us at the warehouse right now.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  COME ON,” SAID Boyle.

  Nick Stefanos used his foot to tap on the high beams. The car ahead of them cleared out of the Beltway’s left lane.

  “That’s right, buddy,” said Stefanos. “Get out of the way.”

  “Can’t you make this piece of shit move?”

  Stefanos floored the accelerator. Boyle grabbed the armrest as the Coronet surged forward from a flood of gas. Stefanos swerved into the middle lane, passed an import on the right, got back into the left, and kept the pedal nailed to the floor.

  “How long?” said Boyle.

  “Fifteen minutes, I’d say.”

  Boyle reached into his pocket and brought out the .380. “Take this.”

  “I’m done with that,” said Stefanos. “I told you once before.”

  Boyle dropped the Berreta back in his pocket. He shook a smoke out of his hardpack for himself and rustled the deck in the direction of Stefanos.

  Stefanos put a cigarette between his lips and pushed in the lighter on the dash.

  “Describe all the players to me,” said Boyle. “I don’t want to shoot the wrong guy.”

  The lighter popped out of the dash. Stefanos lit his smoke and handed the lighter to Boyle.

  “Looks like you done fucked up again, T. W.,” said Otis. “You should’ve been more firm with that key man. Ain’t you learned yet about these inside jobs?”

  Otis turned into the industrial park and drove along the red-brick buildings.

  “Man’s taking a risk,” said Thomas Wilson. “He just wants a little extra.”

  “I’ll just have to explain it to him,” said Farrow. “If he pushes it, he’s gonna get hurt.”

  “Hope he takes it better than that other inside man T. W. had,” said Otis.

  “The pizza chef?” said Farrow.

  Otis and Farrow exchanged a glance. Wilson saw the eye contact and thought he saw a brief smile crease Otis’s face. They were fuckin’ with him, he knew. Trying to keep him weak. Wilson’s blood jumped at Otis’s smile. But the feeling he had was not familiar. It was not a feeling of fear.

  “You talkin’ about Charles?” said Wilson.

  “Whatever his name was,” said Otis. “He didn’t take it in a very masculine way when he saw what we had to do. The bartender, that light-steppin’ waiter… shoot, man, you can believe that those two were afraid to die. But even that sissy waiter took it like a man compared to your pizza chef. You remember the way he begged us, Frank?”

  Farrow nodded. “He cried like a girl.”

  “Screamed like one, too,” said Otis.

  Wilson felt tears come to his eyes.

  Lord, give me strength to kill these men.

  “Charles was a man,” said Wilson, surprised at the force in his own voice.

  Otis’s eyes smiled in the rearview. “Listen to T. W., Frank. Gettin’ all ma-cho on us now.”

  Wilson swallowed hard. “Make a left into that alley, where that Dumpster is.”

  Otis made the turn and drove slowly between the buildings. The brick walls were very close to the sides of the car.

  “Damn, this is a tight squeeze,” said Otis.

  “Thought you liked tight things,” said Farrow.

  “You know I do,” said Otis, smiling in the mirror, giving his gold tooth a lick.

  The Mustang came out of the alley and then there was the wide-open lot and the strip of warehouses fronting the creek.

  “Park in the middle,” said Wilson, “by that door right there.”

  Otis pumped the brakes. The Mach 1 came to a stop.

  Dimitri Karras heard the rumble of a muscle car as it cleared the alley. He drew his .45, pulled back on the receiver, and jacked a round into the chamber. He slipped the automatic barrel-down into the holster, behind the belt line of his jeans and against the small of his back.

  He reached behind him, drew the .45, and replaced it once again.

  Karras heard car doors slam and voices as the men approached. He thought of Bernie. He tried to recall Bernie’s advice from that day in the woods. He couldn’t remember what Bernie had said.

  He was cold. He hadn’t worn a coat so that he would not fumble the gun. His teeth were chattering, and his hands had grown numb. He tried to raise spit and he could not.

  He looked around the empty warehouse and backed up so that he was near the cheap desk. He heard the key turn in the lock and he backed up another step. The door swung open, and Karras stood still.

  Farrow, Otis, and Wilson stepped out of the Mustang. Wilson watched Otis twirl the car keys on his finger and drop them in the pocket of his slacks. Otis examined his ID bracelet in the light of the spot lamps hung on the exterior of the warehouse walls.

  “What’s the key man’s name?” said Farrow.

  “Dimitri,” said Wilson. It was meaningless to lie about it now.

  Farrow drew his .45 from his belt line and chambered a round. He looked at Otis and Otis did the same. They holstered their guns and walked toward the warehouse door.

  Wilson looked over his shoulder to the alley before putting the key to the lock. He guessed it wasn’t any use in stalling. Stefanos wasn’t going to make it. Wilson had waited too long to call for his help. Just another fuckup in a lifetime full of them.

  “Need help with that, T. W.?” said Otis.

  Roman, always with that thing to his voice. Wilson turned the key roughly and opened the door. He went in first. Farrow and Otis followed.

  Frank Farrow saw a gray-haired man without a coat, standing by a desk in the back of the warehouse. A defective fluorescent light set above the desk flashed continuously across the man’s face. The warehouse was bathed in fluorescence, and the insect sound of the lights filled the room.

  Farrow, Otis, and Wilson moved forward. They walked onto a series of blue plastic tarps that had been spread out on the concrete floor. Farrow looked into the man’s strange eyes as they approached him. There was something familiar about the eyes.

  This is not a card game that’s happening here tonight, thought Farrow. This is something else.

  Wilson fanned off to the left of Otis. A looked passed between Farrow and Otis and they stopped walking.

  “Who are you?” said Farrow to the gray-haired man.

  “Dimitri Karras.”

  Farrow shifted his weight. “That supposed to mean something to me?”

  “Jimmy Karras was my son.”

  Farrow spread his hands. “So?”

  As Farrow’s coat opened, Karras saw the butt of Farrow’s gun holstered at his waistline.

  No one spoke. Their breath was heavy and visible in the buzzing light.

  “What is this?” said Otis, looking from Karras to Wilson, who stood facing him now on his left. “Y ’a
ll lookin’ to take us off?”

  “It’s not a robbery, Roman.” Farrow looked down at the tarp beneath his feet. “It’s a slaughter.”

  “That’s right,” said Karras. “Like you slaughtered those people in the pizza parlor. Like you slaughtered my son.”

  Farrow nodded slowly. “That boy in the road. That’s what this is about.”

  Karras drew the .45 from behind his back. Wilson drew the .38.

  Farrow and Otis did not move their hands. Otis turned his head and saw the revolver in Wilson’s hand. He’d shoot the white man with the blank eyes first. He knew that Wilson would never have the courage to use the gun.

  Karras raised his gun and pointed it at Farrow’s face. Bernie’s voice entered his head.

  Always aim for the body.

  Karras lowered the barrel of the gun.

  “Kill him, Dimitri,” said Wilson.

  Karras watched Farrow move a step to the right.

  Lead that body a little if it’s moving.

  “Your son,” said Farrow very quietly. “That was an accident.”

  “It’s all an accident,” said Karras.

  “Kill him!” screamed Wilson.

  Otis looked over at Wilson and laughed. The revolver was shaking wildly in Wilson’s hand.

  Farrow looked into Karras’s eyes, the light winking on his face. Now he knew what had seemed familiar to him. It was as if Farrow were looking at his own eyes in the mirror. There was nothing in the man’s eyes, nothing at all.

  Karras stared back.

  And keep firing your weapon until you’ve accomplished what you set out to do.

  “I guess they got us, Roman,” said Farrow.

  “Yeah,” said Otis. “Guess we oughtta just go ahead and surrender.” Otis raised his arms over his head. He rotated his right hand at the wrist as if he was waving good bye. The ID bracelet dropped beneath the cuff of his shirt.

  His right hand flashed down to his waist.

  Wilson squeezed the trigger of the .38.

  The slug blew through Otis’s armpit and punched out of his back. The force of it spun him around. He drew his .45 and fired. Wilson felt his cheekbone rip away. He fell back screaming, still firing his weapon, as he took a second bullet in the groin.