THEY sat in a booth, its seats covered in red vinyl, along the window of the Three-Star on Kennedy Street. Quinn had a cheeseburger with mustard and fried onions only, and a side of fries. Strange ate eggs over easy, grilled half smokes, and hash browns, his usual meal.
Sitting across from them was Nick Stefanos. He had the half smokes and hash browns like Strange, but took his eggs scrambled with feta cheese. Both of them had scattered Texas Pete hot sauce liberally atop the dish.
“I remember this place,” said Stefanos. “My grandfather knew old man Georgelakos. They went to the same church, St. Sophia. And they were in the same business.”
“Your grandfather had a lunch counter?”
“Nick’s.”
“Fourteenth and S, in Shaw. I can picture the sign out front.”
“Right. He used to run up here from time to time. ‘I’ll be right back;
“That’s his son,” said Strange, pointing behind the counter to Billy Georgelakos, wide of girth and broad of chest, nearly bald, working with a Bic pen wedged behind his ear. “My father worked here, too. He was the grill man in this place.”
“Small town,” said Stefanos, smiling pleasantly at Strange.
Stefanos wore a black summer sweater over a white T-shirt, simple 505 jeans, and black oilskin shoes. He kept his hair short and distressed. His face was flecked with scars, white crescents and tiny white lines on olive skin. He wasn’t handsome or ugly; his looks would have been unremarkable except for his eyes, which some would have called intense. His height and build were medium, and he kept his stomach reasonably flat for his age. Strange put him in his early forties. He looked as if he had lived a life. Strange could almost see this one as a younger, reckless man. He sensed that Stefanos had been about good times in his youth, and wondered if drugs were his thing today, and if not, what had replaced them. Maybe it was the adrenaline jolt from the job, or something else. Elaine Clay had said that he had his problems with drink.
“Elaine told me you had a wire on the gang situation in Southeast.”
“I’ve been working RICO cases and the Corey Graves thing for a long time. You just naturally pick up a ton of information, and misinformation, when you’re canvassing those streets.”
“Like any cop,” said Quinn.
“Exactly,” said Stefanos, looking Quinn over.
“I interviewed Kevin Willis down in Leavenworth recently,” said Strange. “Willis was an enforcer with Granville Oliver before he went over to Corey Graves.”
“Be careful with Willis. Kid talks so much, you lose track of what he’s sayin’. He’s charming, but he’s got those long teeth, if you know what I mean.”
“I got bit, too.” Strange told Stefanos about being burgled, and the phone call, and its relation to the Willis tapes.
“So he talked about hot wits in pending cases,” said Stefanos. “That’s where the obstruction could come in.”
“I know it.
“You fucked up.”
“Thanks for all your support,” said Strange, a dry tone entering his voice. But he liked Stefanos’s candor.
Billy Georgelakos’s longtime waitress, Ella, came to the table with a pot of coffee and refilled their cups with a shaking hand. Stefanos thanked her as she poured, tapping unconsciously on the hardpack of Marlboro reds set on the table beside his plate.
“Tell me what you know about Horace McKinley,” said Strange.
“Yuma Mob,” said Stefanos. “You remember that Cary Grant movie
“Was there a horse in it?” said Quinn.
“If they were gonna remake that movie,” said Stefanos, “they’d put Horace McKinley in the title role. He’s got that rep. Been hard-busted a few times, but nothing seems to stick.”
“Why’s that?” said Strange.
“Could be he has good attorneys; could be no one can get any wits to post. Could be he’s connected in others ways, too.”
“As in, some kind of law with juice has the finger on him.”
“I can’t say.” Stefanos pointed his fork at Strange. “You don’t know too much, huh?”
“I know some. My wife, Janine, she works for me. She dug up plenty of good information since yesterday. But I’m trying to piece all the players together down there. You know I’m working the Granville Oliver trial.”
“For Ray Ives.”
“Uh-huh. So keep in mind that everything I’m looking for, it’s got to go back to Granville.”
“Most things do in that part of the world. Granville was the king for a good while down there, and he went deep into the community. Take McKinley. He got put on and brought up by Granville when Horace wasn’t much more than a fat kid.”
“That would mean McKinley knew Phil Wood, too.”
“Phillip Wood,” said Stefanos. “As in the cat who’s flipping on Granville as we speak.”
“The same.”
Stefanos closed his eyes as he took in a forkful of half smoke and chewed. “
“My father’s signature,” said Strange. “Keep talking about McKinley.”
“What I hear, Horace is standing tall with Phil Wood. He figures that Granville is gonna get the needle or life without parole, so there’s no upside with him. McKinley runs Yuma, but his loyalty’s with Phil. Like I say, this is only what I hear.”
“That would explain his intimidation,” said Strange.
“It could explain it,” said Stefanos. “You’d have to go deeper than you been going to find out for sure.”
“How do you know all this?” said Quinn.
“I keep my ears open all the time. Stand by the pay phones and talk into a dead receiver, shop in those neighborhood markets for nothing. Ride the Green Line once in a while and listen. Young men down there talk about the day-to-day rumors of gang business every day, the way other young men talk about sports.”
“That’s your secret? Take the Green Line train and keep your ears open?”
“My main secret? My snitches. I can ride the Metro all I want, but without informants I wouldn’t have shit. I hand out a lot of twenty-dollar bills, Terry.”
Stefanos returned his attention to his plate.
“What about Dewayne Durham?” said Quinn.
They waited for Stefanos to swallow another mouthful of food. He started to speak, then raised one finger to hold them off and finished his meal. He pushed the plate away from him and centered his coffee cup where the plate had been.
“What was the question?”
“Dewayne Durham.”
“Yeah, Dewayne. Runs the Six Hundred Crew. Same kind of business, marijuana sales mostly. The two gangs work different strips. I hear they even work out of abandoned houses, one on Yuma and one on Atlantic, and stare at each other across the same alley. Once in a while they cross paths and shots get fired.”
