Shame the Devil Read Online Free PDF

“That was pretty slick.”
    “They’re scared enough to believe it.”
    “I think you put the fear into ’em for real,” said Otis. “So where you gonna be?”
    “Remember Lee Toomey?”
    “Sure. He settled in this state, didn’t he? Down on the Eastern Shore?”
    “Right. He hooked me up with a straight gig.”
    “Straight, huh.”
    “For a while. You?”
    “You need me, you can get me through my sister Cissy, out in Cali.”
    “She still in the L.A. phone book?”
    “You know it.”
    Otis clapped Farrow on the arm, shook his hand as he would another black man’s.
    “All right, Frank.”
    Farrow said, “All right.”
    Manuel had opened the bay door and was waving them on. Farrow drove the SHO out first, and Otis followed in the Mark V.
    Manuel Ruiz closed the door and walked toward Jaime, who stood by the LTD’s open trunk. Jaime Gutierrez was staring into the
     trunk while trying to put fire to a cigarette. His hand shook, and it was difficult to touch the flame to the tip.
    Manuel put his thumb to his fingers and crossed himself. He went to the far corner of the garage, where a couple of old batteries
     were resting on wooden pallets. He lifted one of the batteries and carried it back to the LTD.

WASHINGTON, D.C.
    JANUARY 1998

THREE
    NICK STEFANOS TUCKED a black denim shirt into jeans and had a seat on the edge of his bed. He leaned forward to tie his shoes and felt a rush
     of dizziness. Cool sweat broke upon his forehead. He sat up and waited for the feeling to pass. In an hour or so he’d be fine.
    Stefanos shaved with a cup of coffee in front of him and the last Jawbox booming from his Polk speakers back in the bedroom.
     “Iodine,” the CD’s soul-tinged rocker, had just kicked in. He rubbed his cheek, downed a last swig of coffee, and gargled
     a capful of breath wash. In his bedroom he grabbed an envelope and a shrink-wrapped CD off his dresser.
    Stefanos snagged his brown leather jacket off a peg by the door, turned up his collar, locked the apartment, and left the
     house. He picked up the morning
Post
from his landlord’s front lawn and got under the wheel of his white-over-red Coronet 500, parked at the curb. He turned over
     the engine and drove a couple of miles out of Shepherd Park to the Takoma Metro station, where he caught a downtown train.
    He found a seat on the right side of the car. Seasoned Red Line riders knew to go there, as the morning sun blew blinding
     rays through the left windows of the southbound cars, causing a sickening, furnace brand of heat. “Doors closing,” said a
     recorded female voice, and Stefanos couldn’t help but smile. It always sounded like “George Clinton” to him.
    The train got rolling as Stefanos pulled the Metro section from the
Post
and scanned its front page. One of the section’s rotating columnists had written yet another piece on the ongoing dismantlement
     of Home Rule.
    Quietly, and with surprisingly little resistance, the Feds had taken over the nation’s capital. Congress had appointed a control
     board and a city manager, a white female Texan who would oversee a town whose black residents made up more than 80 percent
     of the population. A former military general had been put in charge of the public school system, with little positive effect.
     Under his “leadership,” public schools had opened seven weeks late the previous fall due to long-neglected repairs. D.C. residents
     continued to pay taxes but had no meaningful voting representation in the House or the Senate, and the elected city council
     had been stripped of its power. The mayor was now in charge of little more than parades.
    Meanwhile, fat-cat politicians from Virginia and North Carolina, and suburbanites who made their living in town but paid no
     commuter taxes, ridiculed the District of Columbia relentlessly. Stefanos, a lifelong Washingtonian, was fully aware of the
     problems. Like most residents, though, he didn’t care to hear about them from leeches,