“One more thing,” said Stefanos. “Did Erika have a key to your brother’s crib?”
“Sure, man. She was hangin’ at that joint, goin’ in and out all the time while he was workin.’”
Stefanos thanked Weston and next dialed Jerry Sun at Hunan Delite. He asked him a question and got another quick response. Stefanos thanked Sun, cut the line, and dropped another set of coins in the slot.
“Elaine,” said Stefanos. “Glad I caught you in. I’m running out of change here.”
“You know I never get out of here before seven or eight. What’s up?”
“I’m close to breaking the Weston case.”
“Talk about it, Nick.”
“Got a question for you first. You run those plate numbers I gave you the other day?”
“I have it right here.”
Elaine read the name of the ice green Acura’s owner to Stefanos. He wasn’t happy, but there was the satisfaction of having done a job and done it well.
“You still there?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“Tomorrow. I’m going to let you buy me lunch. Say, one o’clock? I’ll meet you at Scholl’s.”
“I’ll be there. Look, Nick, have everything ready for me then. No more secrets, okay? The trial starts in a couple of days.”
“Right. See you at Scholl’s.”
Stefanos got back in his car. He swung the Dodge out of the lot, went a couple of blocks, turned off Blair onto Rittenhouse, and parked halfway down the street.
He pulled a full-size black Maglite from his glove box and stepped out of the car. He was breaking his own rule about working outside at night. This wasn’t necessary; he was nearly sure he had the answers now. He told himself this as he walked down the sidewalk toward Sean Forjay’s house.
The green Acura was not in the driveway. There was a light on in the house, but the light meant nothing. Stefanos looked around quickly and stepped past the empty gravel driveway to the locked-down garage. Along the top of the garage doors was a series of small rectangular windows. Stefanos got a log from a nearby stack of wood and set the log on its end. He balanced himself atop the log, pushed the rubber button on the shaft of the metal flashlight, and engaged the bulb. He pointed the light through one of the rectangular windows. He knew what he’d find.
The red Torino was parked in the garage.
Stefanos was grabbed from behind and thrown to the ground.
He rolled and came up standing, the flashlight still in his hand. He had landed wrong on his neck, and for a moment he fought dizziness. He squinted to make out the young man standing before him in a crouch. It was the low-slung young man he had bumped into, the one with the stoved-in nose.
“Hold up a minute, man,” said Stefanos.
The young man smiled. He charged Stefanos, his head down. Stefanos swung the Maglite up, connecting it to the young man’s jaw. He heard a crack and breaking glass, saw the young man leave his feet, his eyes fluttering up in the last flash of light.
Stefanos turned and ran, the head of the Maglite gone, its cracked shaft still in his grip. His feet grazed the sidewalk as he booked. He thought of the days he had run from the cops as a child and beaten them, thought of the first time he had won a fight, and he laughed.
He reached his car. He was still laughing as he turned onto Blair Road and gave the Dodge gas.
Nick Stefanos poured three fingers of Grand-Dad into a rocks glass and took it and a cold beer out to his living room, where he had lit a fire. He stood before the fireplace, listening to a Circus Lupus LP called Super Genius. The cut was “Breaking Point”; the rhythm section kicked, and the guitars made it rock. Stefanos drank deeply of the bourbon and set the glass on the mantel. He looked down at his fingers playing air guitar below his waist and he smiled.
Alicia Weisman arrived a little while later. He kissed her on the lips as she removed her coat. She went to walk away, and he drew her back to him and kissed her again.
“What’s up with you?” she said, not unhappily.
“Nothing. Can we just stay in tonight?”
“Damn straight. Let me get a drink.”
“Bring another beer for me, too. Okay?”
Stefanos built the fire up and got down to his T-shirt. Alicia played Soda Pop* Rip Off, by Slant 6, and Stefanos played 13-Point Program to Destroy America, by Nation of Ulysses. He called it “the greatest punk-rock record of all time.”
She laughed at his hyperbole as she looked into his unsteady eyes. “You’re not gonna get too drunk tonight, are you, Nick?”
“Not if you don’t let me.”
She pulled her black shirt over her head and tossed it aside.
“That’s a start,” said Stefanos. He kissed her, running his hand down her bare arm. “Your skin is soft. You smell good, too. I ever tell you that?” He smiled.
“Why so happy?” she said.
“I can’t explain it. Adrenalin. I had a good day today. What happened today wouldn’t be good to someone else, but it was for me. And now there’s you.”
They embraced. The room was warm, and they stripped naked. Stefanos put a Stan Getz on the platter. He came back and held her, and they joked and talked. They made it on the couch and they woke in the morning in each other’s arms.
THIRTY
Nick Stefanos handed a stack of photographs to Terrence Mitchell. Stefanos sat in the morning light that streamed through the front window of Mitchell’s house and looked at the passing traffic out on Chillum Road. He looked at a squirrel running up the trunk of a dogwood tree. He didn’t want to look at Mitchell.
When Mitchell was done he straightened the stack as he would a deck of cards, straightened it again as he struggled with what he had just seen. His shoulders sagged, and he leaned back into the couch.
“Who is that with Erika?” asked Mitchell.
“A drug dealer by the name of Sean Forjay,” said Stefanos. “Your daughter’s seeing him regularly.”
Mitchell looked away. “Are they tight?”
“After you drop her off at Fort Totten, he picks her up at the P. G. Plaza station every morning and returns her there early in the evening.”
“So Erika has no job.”
“I don’t know that, Mr. Mitchell.”
“But she has been lying to me.”
“I would say so, yes.”
“This world,” muttered Mitchell. He stood, went to the window, and stared out into his front yard, the fence that surrounded it, its barbed-wire cap. With his back to Stefanos he said, “You can’t stop it from reaching you. You can try, but it doesn’t work.”
“Mr. Mitchell -”
“Isn’t that right.”
“I suppose it is.”
Mitchell touched his hand to the glass. “I know you think I’m some kind of stiff. But there was a time… Let me tell you, I knew how to have fun. The house parties we’d have in the basements, with those blue lights, dancing with the young ladies to the Motown sound. The concerts at the Howard, back in the early sixties? You could check out six bands for a buck-fifty, man. Hell, I saw James Brown and the Flames at the Howard when J. B. was the boss for real. Yeah, I knew how to have fun. And the city was alive.
