“I was saving the stool for you.”
“I bet it wasn’t easy.”
“You don’t know the half of it. I’ve been beating them off.”
“That must have made them happy.”
“Not like that, silly.”
Stefanos had a seat, lit a cigarette for himself, lit Alicia’s. The bartender placed a bottle of Bud in front of him. Stefanos chin-motioned the call rack, and the bartender returned with a shot of Old Grand-Dad.
“Ah,” said Stefanos, sipping the bourbon and lifting his bottle. He tapped Alicia’s and drank.
She said, “Hey.”
He rubbed her back and gave her another kiss.
“What’s up tonight?” he said.
“I was gonna go over to Arlington. Kevin Johnson’s at Iota, and Dana Cerick’s new band is the opening act. Plus, we just put out the seven-inch on this band that’s playing a couple of sets at Galaxy Hut. I should drop by and see how they’re doing. Wanna go?”
“Johnson’s cool. But I think I’ll pass on the Wilson Boulevard crawl.”
“Afraid to go into Virginia?”
“Yes.”
Stefanos had another round while Alicia nursed her beer. The booze was working, and he liked the feel of her next to him. He didn’t want her to go. But Alicia and a partner ran a small record label in town, and much of her work was done at night.
“I gotta run,” she said.
“Meet me at my place later?”
“Want me to?”
“Damn straight.”
She kissed him and said, “Bye.”
He watched her go toward the door. She had a spring in her step, and strangers were smiling at her as she passed. Stefanos felt lucky as hell.
Stefanos downed his third shot and took his beer bottle with him to the pay phone in the back of the house. Robert Plant was coming back in after the glorious Page solo on “Ten Years Gone,” and Stefanos sang along. Some college guys playing a drinking game at a table smirked at him – an old-school guy with a load on, singing a seventies number – as he passed. He found the note Elaine Clay had handed him, dropped thirty cents in the slot, and punched some numbers into the grid.
He got an answering machine that simply said, “Leave a message.”
After the tone Stefanos said, “Hey, Dimitri. Dimitri Karras. I hope I’ve got the right number. This is Nick Stefanos. I don’t know if you remember me. Your father used to work for my papou down on Fourteenth Street back in the forties. You and me met a couple of times. My papou had you talk to me once when he thought I was getting off the track. Back in, like, seventy-six. Like I said, you might not remember. Anyway, I was talking to Elaine Clay today, and she said you might be interested in some part-time work. Well, it happens we’ve got an opening down at this little bar I work in, down in Southeast? Place called the Spot. On Eighth Street, about a block from the marine barracks. I was thinkin’, I’m working a shift tomorrow, why don’t you stop by after lunch and we could talk. I’ll show you around, introduce you to the crew, like that… If you’re interested, I mean. If not, no sweat. I mean, it’s up to you. Well, here’s my phone number, too, if you want to talk…”
Stefanos left his number and hung up the phone.
“Shit,” he said, realizing then that he was half lit, wondering what kind of cockeyed message he had just left on the machine.
He went back to the stick and settled his tab. He bought a go-beer from the tender, slipped the bottle in the inside pocket of his leather, and left the bar.
Stefanos ignitioned his car and turned on the radio while he looked in the ashtray for the tail end of a joint he had placed there a few nights back. There was a news brief on the radio: A local middleweight contender who had been in and out of trouble with the law over the years had been gunned down in the lobby of the cancer institute of the Washington Hospital Center, where he had been receiving treatment for a malignant tumor. The assassin had stood over him and emptied his gun into him after he had fallen. Five bystanders were injured by wild shots. The boxer was dead.
Stefanos had seen Simon Brown fight the boxer at the Pikesville Armory in Baltimore County when the boxer was coming up through the ranks. The boxer had taken himself out in the fifth round with an alleged broken hand. Even with that loss, the middleweight had been talked about then as a fighter with a future.
“A murder in a hospital, where people be goin’ to get well,” said the announcer. “Look, I’ll say it again for y’all who haven’t been listening. Black-on-black violence is wrong. We are killing our own people. This madness has got to stop. Don’t smoke the brothers. Peace.”
Stefanos found the joint, fired it up. He took in what was left of it and dropped the roach out the window. He opened his beer, took a swig, and placed the bottle between his legs. He pushed a Steve Wynn into the tape deck and pulled out of his spot.
Stefanos drove east on U, cut up 15th to Irving, and took that east, passing the hospital where the boxer had been killed. He liked to drive the city at night when he had a buzz, and he had one now. He found himself on North Capitol, and he took it north for a couple of miles, cutting a left onto Kennedy Street before the New Hampshire Avenue turnoff.
He knew all along he’d come here tonight. He turned the volume down on the deck and cruised slowly down the dark street.
He passed boxy apartment buildings, barber shops, braid parlors, hair and nail salons, a variety store, a Laundromat, a CVS chain pharmacy, two bars, a barbecue joint, and several houses of worship, including a storefront iglesia and the Faith Mission Temple, whose parking lot was fenced and topped by concertina wire. He passed the Brightwood Market, which seemed to be the center of the neighborhood; several young and not-so- young men stood outside, their shoulders hunched, their hands deep in their parkas and Starter coats. A couple of men were boxing playfully, feinting and dodging under a dim street lamp.
One of the men outside the market yelled something at Stefanos as he drove by. Stefanos went along.
He pulled over past the 1st Street intersection, in front of the Hunan Delite, a place that advertised “Fried Chicken, Fried Fish, Chinese, Steak and Cheese.” The carryout was the last of several businesses on that particular hundred-block of Kennedy. A Lexus with custom wheels and spoiler sat parked in the six-space side lot.
Through the plate glass window Stefanos could see a kind of lobby and a wall-to-wall Plexiglas shield that separated, and protected, the employees from the clientele. A revolving Plexiglas tray, like a commercial lazy Susan, had been screwed into the middle of the shield. The tray took money in and was large enough to put food orders out. There was a printed menu posted above the shield that was normally lit but had been turned off. A young Asian guy, clean-cut in a turtleneck and slacks, swept the lobby behind a locked front door.
In his rearview, Stefanos saw a couple of the men from outside the Brightwood Market walking down the sidewalk toward his car.
Stefanos no longer worked at night. He wouldn’t even think of getting out of his car here after dark. It wasn’t paranoia. It was real.
He drove west.
Nick Stefanos parked on Colorado at 14th and walked around the corner to Slim’s, a small jazz club run by Ethiopians. Live music hit him as he went through the door into the nearly packed house. He wove around tables of middle-class, middle-aged blacks and one interracial couple. There was one empty deuce, and he took it, his back to the wall. He shook out a cigarette from his deck of Camels and put fire to tobacco. He dragged deeply as the waitress set a shot of Beam Black and a cold bottle of beer down in front of him.
“Thanks, Cissy.”
She was tall and lovely, with clear reddish-brown skin. “You want to run a tab tonight, Nick?”
“I better.”
Applause filled the room. The leader of the quartet, Marlon Jordon, took a small bow, his trumpet in both hands. The band had a hot rhythm section, and Jordon could blow. They launched into “Two Bass Hit” as Stefanos downed his shot. Heads were bobbing. Some of the patrons were keeping time with their feet, their palms slapping
