“I was with Dimitri on Wednesday night. I know you told him everything. I know what you guys are planning to do.”
Wilson had promised Dimitri that from here on in he’d keep his mouth shut. He did want Stefanos’s help. He welcomed it. But he wouldn’t betray Dimitri, not again.
“There is no plan,” said Wilson.
“Bullshit,” said Stefanos. “You guys have got something happening and you think you can pull it off yourselves. I told Dimitri and I’m telling you: You try this thing and you will die. You understand me, Thomas?”
“I gotta run,” said Wilson. “My uncle’s waitin’ on me, man, and I got to get myself into work.”
“You still have my card?”
“I got it.”
“You call me, Thomas. You give me a call, hear?”
“I hear you, Nick.”
“Thomas -”
Wilson killed the connection and sat up on the edge of his bed. He stood and dressed for work.
Friday’s lunch, like every Friday lunch, was the most hectic two hours of the week at the Spot. Dimitri Karras, Maria Juarez, and James Posten had little time for idle conversation as they struggled to stay ahead of the orders flowing into the kitchen. Nick Stefanos and Anna Wang were in the weeds in the dining and bar area from noon to two. Ramon and Darnell had both broken full body sweat by the time the rush was through.
At two o’clock, Maria put her Tito Puente tape into the box. James grabbed his spatula, and he and Maria began to dance. Karras walked over to Darnell, who was wiping down his slick arms with a rag, his backside against the sink.
“How’d that catfish go today?” said Darnell.
“Went good, buddy. Looked good, too. In fact, I called eighty-six on it to Anna even though we had one order left. That one’s for me.”
“You earned it, Dimitri. Nice work today.”
“Thanks.” Karras drew a card from his wallet. “Here you go, man. This is the number for that friend I been telling you about. Marcus wants to hook up with you, show you how easy it can be to do this thing, if that’s what you want to do. Got all sorts of options he wants to lay out for you, Darnell. Says he’d like to meet with you next week.”
“That’s cool. But I thought you were gonna come with me.”
“Yeah, sure,” said Karras, smiling sadly at Darnell. “If you still want me to.”
“Damn right I want you to, Dimitri.”
“Then I’ll be there,” said Karras, and he shook Darnell’s hand.
Karras hugged Maria and James and thanked them for the good job they had done that day. He untied his apron, dropped it in the laundry hamper by the door, and left without another word. He sat at a deuce and ate the catfish special, avoiding conversation with Stefanos, and when he was done he told Anna and Ramon to have a good weekend, said good bye to Stefanos, and left the bar.
Stefanos caught up with him out on 8th.
“Dimitri!”
Karras turned. Stefanos walked to him in his shirtsleeves and met him by the alley. He put a hand on Karras’s arm.
“Where you off to, man?” said Stefanos.
Karras shrugged. “Goin’ home.”
“Don’t just walk out of here without telling me, Dimitri.”
“Telling you what?”
“When and where. I’ve got a right to know.”
Karras looked around the street. He waited for a man to pass them on the sidewalk. When the man was out of earshot, Karras found Stefanos’s eyes.
“Listen,” said Karras. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, Nick. You hooking me up with this job, it put me back in the world. I’m almost at that place where I can see myself having some kind of normal life. But there’s one thing left to do, and you can’t be a part of that. You’re out of it, Nick. It’s not your affair. So forget it.”
“I won’t forget it,” said Stefanos. “When is it going down?”
Karras looked down at the cracked concrete. “Tomorrow night.”
“Look at me, man.”
“It’s set for tomorrow night.”
“Where?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“You’ll call me?”
“Okay, Nick.” Karras nodded. “If that’s what you want. Yes.”
Karras and Stefanos shook hands. Stefanos buttoned his shirt to the neck and watched Karras walk to his faded navy blue BMW, parked along the curb.
“Liar,” said Stefanos, who had seen the hesitation in Karras’s eyes.
It wasn’t going down tomorrow night. It was going down tonight.
Thomas Wilson worked the day quietly with his uncle Lindo. He listened to Lindo talk about a woman he’d met at church and he listened to Lindo’s Frankie Lymon tapes on the cheap cassette player in the dash of his shitbox truck. He listened and tried to answer when Lindo asked him questions, but other than those short responses he didn’t say much.
Time crawled that day, but when quitting time came it seemed to have come too quick.
Wilson had gotten out of his coveralls in the warehouse bathroom and he went to the particle-board desk where his uncle sat, wearing spectacles and organizing the day’s tickets. His uncle had swept the warehouse like he did at the end of every week, whether it needed it or not, and specks of dust swirled in the air. A dying fluorescent tube flickered in the drop ceiling above the desk, its light flashing on the warehouse floor.
“I can fix that for you before I go,” said Wilson, looking up at the light.
“Got a box of replacement lamps coming in next week,” said Lindo. He looked closely at his nephew. “You seem troubled today, Thomas. Somethin’ you want to talk to me about?”
“No, sir.” Wilson buried his hands in the pockets of his slacks. “Everything’s fine.”
“Go on, then, son. Have a good weekend. Rest up, ’cause come Monday we have a busy week.”
“Okay, Uncle L. Thank you for everything, hear?”
Lindo glanced up at Wilson. “Go on, boy. Don’t be so serious all the time. Go out and have yourself a little fun.”
As he drove home, Wilson’s guilt deepened over using his uncle’s warehouse that night. His uncle took pride in that place, even if it wasn’t much more than a cheap desk and some cinder-block walls. Wilson stopped in a surplus store in Lanham and bought a half dozen blue plastic tarps.
He passed the turnoff for his house and kept north on Georgia Avenue, turned left onto Quackenbos, made another left, and parked the Intrepid in an alley alongside a church. He stepped onto the grounds of Fort Stevens Park.
He and Charles had played here as children. He walked into a dry moat, then climbed a steep hill and jumped down alongside one of two cannons that remained in the park. A tattered American flag hung at half-mast nearby and made rippling shadows at his feet. He could picture Charles as a child, running with an imaginary rifle cradled in his arms, diving and rolling down those hills. He could hear Charlie’s gleeful laugh.
Charles, thought Wilson, I won’t let you down.
But a block from his house his stomach betrayed him, and Wilson pulled over to the side of the road, where he opened his car door and vomited his lunch onto the street.
Dimitri Karras got up off the bed at around six o’clock. He had been lying there on his back for a couple of hours. He was oddly calm.
He found Bernie Walters’s Colt. 45 and a box of shells in the bottom of his dresser, wrapped in an old pillowcase. He ejected the magazine into his palm. He loaded seven rounds into the magazine, testing the tension of the spring on the last round. He pushed the magazine into the butt of the gun and slipped the. 45 into its leather
