“Manny?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Toomey, bro.”
“Lee, what’s up?”
“Frank Farrow’s heading back to D.C.,” said Toomey. “We need to talk.”
NINETEEN
Two o’clo,” said Maria Juarez. “My time, right, Mitri?”
“Yeah, Maria,” said Dimitri Karras, checking his watch. “Go ahead and let it roll.”
Maria slipped the tape that Karras had bought her into the boom box and turned up the volume. Karras had picked it up at an international record store near the old Kilamanjaro club the night before. He had asked for something danceable and Latin, and the clerk had assured him that this one moved.
A Spanish female vocal with Tito Puente’s band behind it came from the box. Maria met James Posten in the middle of the kitchen, and the two of them began to dance, James doing his idea of a chacha. Darnell, from where he stood over the sink, turned his head and smiled. He looked over at Karras, leaning on the expediter’s station, and nodded one time.
“Ole, baby!” said James. His eye shadow was on the maroon side of the rainbow this afternoon.
“Like this, Jame,” said Maria, taking two steps in, retreating two steps, and twisting her hips on the dip.
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” said James, following her lead, twirling the spatula like a baton.
“You doin’ it, Jame,” said Maria.
“Tell the truth,” said James, “and shame the devil.”
Karras studied Maria’s face. She had shown up that morning with her right eye blood gorged and swollen close to shut. She had a truly beautiful spirit; anger had welled up in him immediately when he had walked in that morning and seen her face. He was glad he had picked this day to give her a gift.
Anna Wang entered the kitchen, a cigarette dangling from her lips, a tray of butter patties in her hands. She joined Maria and James momentarily on her way to the refrigerator, where she stowed the covered butter in the rear.
“Nice work today, Karras,” said Anna on her way out the door.
“She wants somethin’,” said James, still dancing. “You could bet it.”
“Just giving the man a compliment, J. P.,” said Anna.
Karras said, “Thanks.”
A half hour later they had begun to shut down the kitchen. James switched the radio to R amp;B as Maria covered the components of the cold station with plastic wrap. Ramon hurried in with a bus tray and dropped it off on the edge of Darnell’s sink. He stepped on Darnell’s foot deliberately, and Darnell grabbed his hand, pressing his thumb down on the crook of Ramon’s thumb. Ramon pulled his hand away and stood there rubbing it, a crooked smile on his face.
“Ah, here we go, y’all,” said James as the Army Reserve commercial came on the radio at its usual time. James turned it up as the announcer’s voice rose with the build of the music.
Karras, Darnell, Maria, James, and Ramon stopped working. At the same moment they all raucously sang, “Be… all that you can be!”
James and Maria doubled over in laughter, their hands on each other’s shoulders. Darnell gave Ramon skin.
Karras smiled ear to ear. His face felt odd, and then he knew why. He had forgotten what it felt like to smile with that kind of abandon. It had been a long time.
“How’s that flounder?” said Darnell, sliding onto a stool next to Karras at the bar.
“Good – what’d you, brush it with butter?”
“Yeah, and squeezed some lemon on it, too. Wrapped it up in foil and baked it in the oven. That’s the way you need to be cookin’ fish. Simple like that. Course, I would have spiced it some. Phil doesn’t want anybody thinkin’ we’re turnin’ this place into a soul-food joint, nothin’ like that.”
“It’s good just like this,” said Karras.
“Thanks, baby,” said Darnell to Mai, who had placed a glass of juice in front of him. “What’re we listenin’ to, anyway?”
“The Bee Gees,” said Mai, shooting a finger to the ceiling and cocking her hip, her breasts jiggling beneath her Semper Fi T.
“Sounds like someone’s pullin’ hard on that singer’s berries.”
“My shift,” said Mai, stepping away.
“Say, Dimitri,” said Darnell, “I been lookin’ at your tickets as I was walking by. You get a medium burger on the ticket, I noticed you call it out medium rare to James.”
“That’s right. I figured out early, James always overcooks his burgers by one level, no matter what. So I adjust on the call rather than waste time arguing with him.”
“You trickin’ him, huh? I should of thought of that my own self. Me and him used to have some serious fights when I was doin’ the expediting. The man was just thick that way.”
“I used to manage all the employees in my friend’s record stores,” said Karras. “Over the years I picked up some experience with diplomacy.”
“So much to learn about runnin’ a business.”
“You could do it, Darnell. You’re smart. And you’ve got a work ethic like I’ve never seen.”
“That’s for other people, man.”
“It’s for anybody who’s got what you’ve got, and a will. Look, my friend I told you about, the record store guy? He makes a living now setting people like you up.”
“Dishwashers?”
“African Americans looking to open up small businesses in the city. I’m meeting him tonight at the Wizards game. I’m gonna talk to him about you.”
“Look here, Dimitri, square business: I know my limits. It’s just not for me.”
“All right, Darnell. But you know I’m gonna talk to you about it again.”
Darnell drank down his juice and used the napkin to wipe sweat off his face. The bell over the front door jingled, and Roberto Juarez entered the bar. He stayed up on the landing as always and waited. Karras nudged Darnell.
“I see him,” said Darnell under his breath.
Karras looked through the reach-through at the end of the stick. James had his hands on Maria’s shoulders, and he was close to her face, giving her a serious talk. She nodded her head and kissed James on the cheek.
James emerged from the kitchen, his fox-head stole worn over a clean outfit, his amber-stone walking stick in his hand. He stepped around Maria’s husband on the landing, who smiled and said something to James in Spanish. Karras couldn’t understand the words, but he knew from the tone that Maria’s husband had called James some variety of faggot. James kept walking and left the bar.
Ramon stood by the stairwell to the basement, leaning against the frame, picking at his cuticle with a penknife, watching.
“Hard life,” said Darnell as Maria came from the kitchen in her cheap coat, meeting her husband with her head down and following him out the door.
“Yes it is,” said Karras.
“That was real kind of you, buying her that tape.”
“It made her happy for a little while, I guess.”
Darnell got off the stool and stood, stretching his long frame. “Well, let me get back to my dishes.”
“Nick coming in today?”
“He’s working one of his cases. I expect I’ll see him tonight.”
Nick Stefanos sat in the living room of Terrence Mitchell’s house, off Sargent Road in the Chillum district of Prince George’s County. Mitchell lived on a treeless street of clean ramblers near power lines strung between steel
