Shame the Devil by George P. Pelecanos Read Free Book Online

past.
    “You might want to tell him to tuck in his shirt,” said Elaine. “Lace up those Timbies, too. He’s liable to trip on his way
     up to the bench.”
    “Timbies?”
    “His boots.”
    The attorney stood from his chair and collected his papers. “That Stefanos guy,” he said. “You mind if I borrow him sometime?”
    Elaine shook her head. “Sorry.”
    “He does good work, doesn’t he?”
    “Yes, he does good work. But he’s mine.”

FOUR
    THE GROUP GATHERED once a week in the basement of a Presbyterian church at 23rd and P. A social worker with the police department had set up
     the support sessions originally and assigned the group a freelance shrink, who, after three weeks, was politely asked to leave.
     Two and a half years had passed, and the group continued to meet.
    Ernst, the church’s live-in custodian, stood near the group, seated in a disjointed circle in the middle of the common room.
     “Please,” said Ernst. “Pull the plug on that coffee urn when you’re done.”
    “We’ll take care of it, Ernst,” said Bernie Walters.
    “Ya, sure,” said Ernst, giving them a fangy smile. Clumps of gray hair grew from several large moles on his face. He was older
     than dirt, and it seemed an effort for him to lift his hand to wave before he walked from the room.
    When he left, Thomas Wilson said, “Where’s Ernst from, with that accent of his? Anybody ever figure that out?”
    “Latvia,” said Dimitri Karras.
    “Where the hell is that?”
    “He’s a good old bird,” said Walters, who at fifty was the senior member of the group and its unofficial leader. “Anyway…
     where were we?”
    They started, as they always did, by getting reacquainted. They talked about the things that had happened at their jobs, what
     they’d done on the weekend, the trades the Skins needed to make to win next season, celebrity deaths, favorite television
     shows, the latest high-profile trial.
    After a while they refreshed their coffee cups and came back and took their seats. Bernie Walters lit a cigarette.
    “Funny how you’re the only one of us that smokes,” said Stephanie Maroulis.
    “You know us veterans,” said Walters, snapping shut the hinged lid of his lighter. “Marlboro reds and Zippos. We never go
     anywhere without ’em.”
    “
Vanity Fair
did a piece on the Zippo lighter,” offered Karras, “and its place in American society relative to Vietnam.”
    “Here it comes,” said Thomas Wilson. “‘Relative to Vietnam.’ Now the professor’s gonna explain to us unwashed types what it
     all means.”
    Karras had been, among other things, an American lit instructor in his past life. He had mistakenly mentioned it to Wilson
     and Walters one night over beers at the Brew Hause.
    “Give it a rest, guys,” said Stephanie, trying to head off the inevitable.
    But Karras said, “I could bring in the magazine for you, Thomas. If you didn’t want to take the time to read it you could
     just, I don’t know, look at all the pretty models and dream.”
    “Look at ’em and yawn, you mean. I’ve seen those gray girls you’re talking about. Clothes look like they been draped over
     a wire hanger and shit. Naw, you can keep your Caucasian junkies, Dimitri. And anyway, you know I prefer women with a little
     back on ’em.”
    “Yeah, but what do they think of you?”
    Karras smirked at the glimmer in Wilson’s eyes. Wilson liked to try and shock the group — play their idea of the street spade
     if he could get away with it. Karras didn’t let him get away with it.
    Walters pushed up the bill on his faded Orioles cap — just the bird, no script — and scratched his graying beard. He was barrel-chested
     gone heavy, but he carried the weight on a broad back.
    “So what’d the article say, Dimitri?” said Walters.
    “It talked about how the soldiers used to have all these sayings engraved on their lighters.‘Born to Die,’ like that. How
     the GIs were very attached to those