Shame the Devil by George P. Pelecanos

fixated on the
     alleged extramarital affairs of the sitting president and giving odds on his possible impeachment. It was the media event
     of the decade, the subject of sarcastic lunch conversations all across town. But few talked about the real crime of this city,
     not anymore: American children were undernourished, criminally undereducated, and living in a viper’s nest of drugs, violence,
     and despair within a mile of the Capitol dome. It should have been a national disgrace. But hunger and poverty had never been
     tabloid sexy. Beyond the occasional obligatory lip service, the truth was that no one in a position of power cared.
    The man with the matted hair tapped on Stefanos’s window just as the light turned green. Stefanos gave the Dodge gas.
    Nick Stefanos drove into Southeast and found a space on 8th Street. He walked toward the marine barracks, passing a real estate
     office, a women’s bar named Athena’s, an alley, and an athletic-shoe store fronted by a riot gate. He came to the Spot, a
     windowless, low-slung cinder-block structure in the middle of the strip. He pushed on the scarred green door and walked inside.
    Hanging conical lamps and the light from a blue neon Schlitz logo colored the room. Stefanos hung his leather on a coat tree
     by the door and stepped off the landing into the bar area.
    Ramon, the long-time busboy, was coming up from the cellar with two cases of beer cradled in his arms. Wisps of reefer smoke
     swirled behind him, the smell of it deep in his clothing. He was a little leering guy who wore a red bandanna on his head
     and scarred suede cowboy boots on his size-seven feet. Ramon stayed high throughout his shifts.
    “Hey, amigo,” said Stefanos, flicking Ramon’s ear as he motored by.
    “Ow. Chit, man.”
    “Did that hurt?”
    “
Maricón,
” said Ramon, showing capped teeth with his smile. “You lucky I got my hands full.”
    “Yeah, sure. Better get those Buds in the cooler, though.
Before
you kick my ass, I mean.”
    “I already got it all done. This beer is the last of it. The mixers, the liquor, the bev naps… everything’s all set up.”
    “Thanks. I’ll get you later.”
    Stefanos went toward the kitchen, passing the reach-through at the side of the bar. He could hear the radio, set on WPGC and
     playing the new Puff Daddy single, and the raised voices of Phil, James, and Darnell. Maria would be in there, too, making
     the salad special, quietly working on the presentation of the plates. Stefanos walked in under the bright fluorescents, stepping
     onto the thick rubber mats that covered the tile floor.
    It was a small kitchen to begin with, way too small for what it had become. A stainless-steel prep table stood at the entrance,
     topped by dual steel shelves. The top shelf was lipped; live tickets were fitted into the lip in the order in which they came
     in. Beyond the prep table were two workstations, each capped by a steel refrigerator. The dishwashing station was located
     along the back wall of the room. On the shelf over the grill sat an Amana commercial microwave with a door that never closed
     on the first attempt. Over the sandwich bar sat the most important and most fought over component of any restaurant kitchen:
     the house boom box. Beside it, a Rudy Ray Moore poster, now gray with grease, had been taped to the wall.
    Maria Juarez worked the cold end of the menu and James Posten, the grill man, worked hots. Their stations were on opposite
     walls, so that Maria and James’s backs were to each other while they worked lunch.
    Darnell, the bar’s career dishwasher, had previously handled the lunch business himself, preparing the one daily special and
     placing orders on the reach-through, from which the day tender or the waitress would retrieve and serve them. In those couple
     of hours, Ramon would bus the trays in and wash dishes when he was able. But when the owner of the place, a smallish bespectacled
     man named Phil Saylor, had decided to