Free Shame the Devil by George P. Pelecanos Page A

Steve and I had one day as good as that one. Most people never even get that.”
    “I couldn’t,” said Karras, his voice trailing off, and she’d hugged him then, the way she was hugging him now.
    She stroked his chest. Karras had a decent build for a man in his late forties. Not like Steve, who’d always been on the heavy
     side. She used to call Steve “the Bear,” because he felt as big as one, sleeping next to her. She liked to be with a man who
     had some weight on him. Karras had a handsome face, a straight back, and a flat stomach. Even at his age, he was the kind
     women noticed, and wondered about, on the street. But Karras was always sad. He didn’t have Steve’s smile, the kind that said
     he appreciated the moment and the people he was sharing it with. No, Karras wasn’t Steve. But she was getting used to having
     him around.
    Stephanie closed her eyes.
    She enjoyed going to bed with Karras after the meetings and sleeping with him once a week. She needed the companionship, and
     she needed the sex. Their being together, it helped Dimitri, if only for the night, and she knew it helped her.
    If she could have talked to Steve right then, she’d explain their relationship to him like that. And she believed he’d be
     happy for her, pleased that she was slowly finding her way out of the dark places she’d visited after his death.
    She fell to sleep, knowing Steve would understand.
    Thomas Wilson had a slow drink at the Hummingbird on Georgia Avenue and got into his Dodge Intrepid, parked out front. He
     turned the ignition, hit the preset button, brought up WHUR. Quiet Storm: Every city in the country with a sizable black population
     had the format now, but the original had been created on HUR. And here was Gladys Knight, singing “Where Peaceful Waters Flow.”
     You couldn’t get much more beautiful than that.
    Wilson headed over to Underwood, where he lived alone in the small brick he’d grown up in. Momma had died suddenly when he
     was away, back in the ’80s. His uncle Lindo, who owned the hauling business, claimed it was from a broken heart.
    None of the women in the bar had looked at him tonight. Seemed they never did. He wasn’t yet forty, but he looked ten years
     older, and he felt far away from what was hip and new. He favored the music that he had come up with. He dressed like 1989.
     He still wore his hair in that same tired fade.
    The truth was, he didn’t have the spirit to mack the women anymore. With Bernie, it was easy to claim all that bullshit about
     how he, Wilson, “operated” up around the way, loved to “play in the nappy dugout” and every other tired thing you could think
     of. Boasting aside, after Charles had been killed there wasn’t much fun in it anymore for real. He shared with many men the
     secret opinion that half the fun in hitting pussy was in talking about it afterward with your boys. Charles was his main boy
     going back forever. So it wasn’t no surprise that Wilson’s urge to slay the freaks had died with Charles.
    The glow from the dash threw greenish light on the gray leather seats of the immaculate car. He cleaned the Dodge and had
     it detailed regularly at the brushless place near the Maryland line.
    It was a beautiful car. He was always unhappy.
    The meetings were good. The meetings helped. As the session day neared he looked forward to seeing these people who had become
     his friends. He liked hearing their stories, and going back and forth with Karras, and the idea that his personality — always
     up and funny in front of them — drove the group toward some kind of better place. That his being there with them made a positive
     difference in their ruined lives.
    But after the sessions, he couldn’t help feeling down. For various reasons, real or imagined, they all shared feelings of
     guilt. Wilson took solace in the belief that God and Father Time would take care of the rest of them. But he knew he’d never
     be healed himself. No, this