He shook off the thought. Every murder was a tragedy to someone, after all.
DEREK STRANGE LAY in his bed, listening to a scratching sound. The wind was moving the branches and leaves of the tree outside his window. A dog was making noise out there, too. Had to be the Broadnaxes’ shepherd, barking in the alley that ran behind the house. That’s all it was. A tree he climbed regular and a dog who always licked his outstretched hand.
Dennis was still out with his friends. Their parents had returned from the movie and gone to bed.
Derek felt his blood pulsing hard inside him. He wanted Dennis to come back home. He wanted him under the same roof as his mother and father. It was safe here when they were all together in this house.
He got up, went to Dennis’s bed, and slipped underneath the sheets and blanket. His brother wouldn’t mind that he’d switched. Derek smiled, smelling Dennis in the bed, knowing then that he could rest. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.
As he slept, shadows crept across the wall.
PART 2. Spring 1968
EIGHT
COMING OUT OF Sunday school at St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral, a boy heard a slow, carefully enunciated voice echoing from outdoor speakers. The voice was commanding and somehow welcoming. The boy walked down the front steps of his church and headed in the direction of the voice.
Around him, fathers were gathering their wives and children. Men were laughing with one another and smoking after-service cigarettes. The day was pleasantly cool. The smell of tobacco smoke and the scent of dogwood and magnolia blossoms were in the air.
The boy neared a big man with a friendly, wide-open face, scarred on one cheek, who was on the sidewalk talking to another aging Greek. The big man smiled at the eleven-year-old boy, who had curly brown hair and wore a blue blazer with an attendance pin fixed to its lapel.
“You ready, Niko?”
“Not yet, Papou. Soon.”
“Where you goin’?”
“Gonna see what’s goin’ on over there. I’ll be right back.”
“Okay, boy. Meet me at the karo.”
The big man watched his grandson cross Garfield, go down a set of concrete steps, and disappear into the grounds of the National Cathedral.
The boy followed the voice and walked through a lawn landscaped with azaleas and other shrubs, finally reaching the edge of a huge crowd. He made his way into the middle of the crowd, which was mostly white, but a different kind of white than he and his grandfather and friends. His grandfather called these people Amerikani, or sometimes simply aspri. They were facing the loudspeakers that had been placed outside the cathedral and they were listening to that voice, sounded like a black man, which was coming from somewhere inside the stone walls. From the look of concentration on their faces, the boy could tell that what was being said was important.
“… we are not coming to Washington to engage in any histrionic action, nor are we coming to tear up Washington…”
The boy turned to the man beside him and tugged on his suit jacket.
“Excuse me,” said the boy. “Who is that?”
“Dr. King,” said the man, who did not take his eyes from the loudspeakers as he answered.
“… I don’t like to predict violence, but if nothing is done between now and June to raise ghetto hope, I feel this summer will not only be as bad, but worse than last year.”
Some of the men in the crowd looked at their wives as this was said. These same men and women then glanced at their children.
Soon the boy grew bored, as he did not understand the meaning of Dr. King’s words. He walked from the cathedral grounds back toward the property where his own church and people stood. His grandfather was leaning against his gold ’63 Buick Wildcat, parked on Garfield. He flicked the last of his cigarette onto the street and opened the passenger door for the boy. Then he got under the wheel of his car and turned the ignition.
“You went to hear the mavros, eh?” said the grandfather, pulling away from the curb.
“I heard a little,” said the boy. “Is he good?”
“Good?” The grandfather shrugged. “What the hell do I know? I think he believes what he’s sayin’. Anyway, he’s stirring things up, that’s for sure.”
The boy reached for the radio switch. “Where we goin’?”
“To see Kirio Georgelakos, over on Kennedy Street. He ran out of tomatoes. I told him we’d drop some by.”
The boy, whose name was Nick Stefanos, fiddled with the dial of the radio, stopping it at 1390. He found a rock-and-roll song he liked on WEAM and upped the volume. He began to sing along.
“What the hell?” said the grandfather, also named Nick Stefanos, with a gruff voice. But he was not annoyed. In fact, he was amused. He looked across the bench and gave the boy a crooked smile.
BIG NICK STEFANOS parked his Wildcat in the alley behind a fastback Mustang, got a crate of tomatoes out of his trunk, and called through the screen door of the Three-Star before he and his grandson walked inside. He dropped the crate in the small storage room before going through a doorway leading to the dishwashing area behind the counter.
“Niko,” said Mike Georgelakos, holding a spatula, leaning over the grill, his bald dome framed by patches of gray.
“I put the tomatoes in the back.”
“Thanks, boss.”
“Tipota.”
Nick and his grandson went around the counter, nodding at Billy, Mike’s son, who was working colds. Billy, a younger, taller, hairier version of his father, wore an apron and kept a ballpoint pen lodged behind his ear. Over by the urns, a thin waitress pulled down on a black handle and drew a stream of coffee into a cup. The two Nicks found seats on empty stools.
All the booths and half the counter seats were taken. Mike Georgelakos opened for a few hours on Sundays to catch an after-church flurry that occurred between noon and one o’clock. Many of the customers wore dresses and suits. Gospel music came from the radio set on the AM station that normally played rhythm and blues.
A black cop and a white cop, both in uniform, sat at the counter having breakfast. Before them were cups of coffee and plates of eggs, potatoes, grilled onions, and half smokes. Occasionally they said a few quiet words to each other, but mostly they worked on their food. A couple of teenage boys sitting in a booth with their mother stared boldly at the backs of the police officers, studying their size and the service revolvers holstered on their hips.