Otis recited a brief and meaningless prayer. He had known Booker’s mother, and she would have liked him to say a few words over her son.
“So long, cuz,” said Otis. “You done gone and talked yourself to death. Now these animals out here gonna do you like you been doin’ them.”
He went back to the car.
Out on 301, Lavonicus fiddled with the radio dial.
“Want you to take care of my sister now, Gus, you hear?”
“I will.”
“Ain’t gonna lose that temper of yours with her, are you?”
“I’d never raise a hand to Cissy, Roman. You know that.”
Lavonicus lit on a song and saw Otis smile.
“You like this one?” said Lavonicus.
“ ‘Love Won’t Let Me Wait,’ ” said Otis, “by Major Harris. That’s a bad motherfucker right there.”
Nick Stefanos locked the front door of the Spot from the inside and went back around the bar. He rotated a few cold beers out of the cooler, stocked a couple of cases of warm in the bottom, and put the cold bottles back on top. He took a bottle of Bud that he had buried in the ice chest and popped the cap.
“Thought you weren’t going to drink tonight,” said Alicia Weisman, who sat at the bar.
“I said that?”
“After how you felt this morning, remember?”
“Just gonna have one to take the edge off,” said Stefanos with a tired wink. He tilted the bottle to his lips.
Alicia watched him. “Want to see some music? Nashville Pussy’s playing at the Cat.”
“The only pussy I want to see is right here in front of me.”
“You silver-tongued devil.”
“I make the language of seduction an art.” The phone on the wall rang. “Excuse me.”
Stefanos picked up the receiver. It was Boyle on the other end of the line.
“How’s it going?”
“We’re sittin’ here watching that show set in the emergency room. The doctors got personal problems and I give a fuck.”
“Anything?”
“Not a word. Bill feels better me bein’ here and all, but if we don’t hear anything by the weekend, I’m gone. He misses his family, and my old lady’s complaining I’m not around. What’s up with you?”
“Not much,” said Stefanos.
“All right. Keep in touch.”
Stefanos went back and stood in front of Alicia.
“So,” she said. “What do you think? Do you want to go out?”
“Let’s just go back to my crib, okay? I might be getting a call there.”
“You working on something?”
“I just need to be near my phone.”
Stefanos lifted his beer bottle and Alicia took it gently from his hands. She set it down on the bar.
“You don’t need that,” she said. “Right?”
He did need it. He loved her but, God, he needed it. It was stronger than her or anyone else.
“Right,” he said, pushing the bottle away with the back of his hand.
She leaned over the bar and kissed him on the lips.
Thomas Wilson ordered a cognac at the bar of an African club up on Georgia and Missouri, near the old Ibex. Wilson couldn’t pronounce the name of the place, but he liked it all right. Once you listened to their music for a while, it got way under your skin, too. Those Africans talked real loud, standing around the bar. Sometimes you couldn’t tell if they were arguing with each other or just being friends. But they pretty much left him alone.
Way he looked now, cut in the face and with a fucked-up eye, wasn’t no one gonna try to talk to him, anyway.
Yeah, Dimitri had really worked him over. Afterward, even with the pain, it was funny how different he’d felt. Not good, exactly, or happy. More like clean.
Now that he’d done it, he wished Bernie had been there as well. He looked forward to seeing Bernie again. He wanted to tell him like he’d told Dimitri, and take it from Bernie like he’d taken it from Dimitri, if that’s how it had to be. He wanted to feel clean with Bernie, and with Stephanie, too.
First he’d have to do this thing with Dimitri. Step up and be a man for Dimitri and Bernie and Stephanie. And for Charles. He could do that. He felt that he could.
Someone bumped him from behind. Wilson looked over his shoulder, not hard or anything like that, but in a curious way. The man who had bumped him started shouting something at him in a foreign tongue. Wilson ignored him, but the man kept shouting. One of the man’s friends came over, and he could hear them laughing behind his back.
Wilson fired down his cognac. He got off his stool and left money on the bar. He was careful not to look at anyone as he walked from the club.
Dimitri Karras drove north on Connecticut Avenue, downshifting at the start of a long grade. The old BMW had lost its juice; Jap cars and domestics passed him on either side. The Beamer’s paint job had faded and its engine was weak, but he’d decided to hang onto it. Cars meant nothing to him anymore. The only time he’d get stoked by a ride was when he’d see a restored Karmann Ghia on the street. It reminded him of his old Ghia, that decade, those times. Yeah, the seventies had been a glorious ride.
Karras turned off Connecticut and parked along the curb.
He’d had a quiet day at work. Nick Stefanos had asked him a couple of questions and he’d answered him shortly or not at all. He didn’t like to be unkind to Stefanos, but Stefanos was out. He was sorry he had talked so freely with him the night before. He shouldn’t have gotten so drunk.
He got out of his car and took the sidewalk back to Connecticut. He walked to an apartment house on the corner, stood at the glass doors, waved to the woman at the desk, and was buzzed in.
After work, he’d met Thomas Wilson at his place. Thomas had told him the plan. It was a very simple plan and as good as any plan, he supposed. If he kept his nerve, and Thomas kept his nerve, it could work.
He took the elevator up to the sixth floor and walked down a carpeted hall. He knocked on a door and he heard muffled steps.
Stephanie Maroulis opened the door.
“Dimitri.”
“It is me. Why so surprised?”
“It’s not Tuesday,” she said.
“I know it,” said Karras.
They looked into each other’s eyes.
“You’re breaking our arrangement,” she said. “You do this and everything changes.”
“I’m ready for it to change,” he said.
Stephanie stepped aside. He walked through the open door.
THIRTY-SEVEN
This will be the last day of my life.
It was the first thought that came to Thomas Wilson when he woke on Friday morning. He turned onto his side in the bed and shut his eyes. His stomach flipped, and he thought he could be sick.
Please don’t let me be a coward, God. Please.
The phone rang, and Wilson reached across the bed and picked it up.
“Thomas, it’s Nick Stefanos.”
“Nick.”
