King Suckerman

by George Pelecanos

  Eleni Karras had said that Stefanos’s grill stood on the corner of S. It was there, marked by a rusted blue oblong sign encircled by mostly broken lightbulbs. The sign, in red lettering, read “Nick’s.” Karras parked his Ghia out front and walked into the restaurant.

  Nick’s was a run-down lunch and beer house with eight stools lined up against a counter. Behind the counter were a grill, sandwich board, soda fountain, two huge coffee urns, and a couple of coolers holding sodas, ice cream, and bottles of beer. Apparently there had once been some booths built in against the wall—you could still see the outlines where they had been removed—but they had been replaced by a narrow bracketed Formica counter where customers could stand while they put away their food and drink. Where the counter ended, an unplugged pinball machine was pushed against the wall. Beyond the pinball machine, just before an entrance to a back room, stood a jukebox. A black man holding a sixteen-ounce can of beer leaned against the jukebox, studying the selections. An Ohio Players number came from the juke.

  Karras had a seat on a stool cushioned in a red color so faded it had gone to pink. A crisscross of duct tape kept the plastic on the stool from tearing any further.

  “Nick,” said a uniformed woman with a deeply creased walnut brown complexion. She was on the other side of the counter, leaning on it, smoking a cigarette and holding an unopened pack of Viceroys in her free hand. She did not approach Karras or even look in his eyes.

  Two other black men with graying hair sat at the counter drinking from cans of Schlitz. Both of them had cigarettes going, too.

  “Can’t really bring myself to vote for a man from Georgia,” said the man closest to Karras.

  “What,” said the other. “You gonna vote for that big block of nothin’, Mr. Gerald Ford? Least that peanut farmer gonna bring somethin’ new to the party.”

  “Ain’t none of ’em gonna bring nothin’ new,” said the first man. “Anyway, I can’t trust a man who smiles like that all the time.”

  The woman behind the counter stepped into her flat-heeled shoes and walked over to a set of swinging louvered doors that led to the kitchen. “Nick,” she said over the top of the doors. “Got a customer out here.”

  “You too busy to serve him, baby?” said the first man, nudging his partner.

  “On my break,” said the woman. “If you had a job, you’d know what that was.”

  The men laughed. The woman returned to her spot, dragged deeply off her cigarette.

  Karras pretended to study a grease-filmed Manne’s Potato Chip sign—“Yeah, Manne!”—on the wall directly in front of him. That sign must have been hung there on the opening day.

  A medium-sized man who had once been a big man pushed through the swinging doors. His chest sagged now and his shoulders slumped, and he walked with a slow, rolling gait. But his hands and wrists gave away his former size. There were a couple of Band-Aids on his fingers and smudges of dried blood on his yellowed apron. He saw Karras and smiled.

  “Thimitri Karras, eh?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Yasou, re!”

  “Mr. Stefanos?”

  “Nick. Tha’s me.”

  Nick Stefanos shook Karras’s hand. The hand was leather, and he still had a grip.

  “Lemme look at you, boy.” Stefanos stood back, smoothed back an errant gray strand of hair from an otherwise bald dome. His face was as loose and fleshy as an old dog’s, flecked with age spots, with a faded pink scar on the right cheek.

  “So how do I look?”

  “Like your mother.”

  “That’s what they tell me.”

  “You’re a handsome boy, though, don’ get me wrong. Just like your old man.”

  “Thanks.”

  Stefanos turned his head toward the kitchen. “Hey, Costaki!” he yelled. “Ella tho, re!”

  A short, low-slung Greek with a wild head of gray hair and a thick, graying mustache burst through the doors. He was holding a carving knife tightly in his fist. His other hand was slick with grease and bits of meat.

  “What the hell you want, Niko, I’m cuttin’ up a little lamb!”

  “C’mon over here, Costa. Say hello to Thimitri Karras, o yos tou Pete Karras.”

  Costa issued a lopsided grin, wiped his hand off on his apron, extended the hand to Karras. “Miazi ti mitera tou,” he said to Stefanos.

  “That’s what they tell me,” said Karras.

  Costa said, “So what can I get you, Karras? On the house!”

  “Nothing, thanks. I just ate.”

  “Got a nice meatloaf—”

  “I ate, thanks.”

  “Where you eat, huh?”

  “Had a sub up at Eddie Leonard’s.”

  “Eddie Leonard’s,” said Costa with disgust. “Might as well eat dog shit.”

  “He said he don’t want nothin’, Costa,” said Stefanos.

  “I’ll have something, Costa,” said the man closest to Karras. “Make me up a fish sandwich to go, will ya?”

  “Anything on it?”

  “Just hot sauce.”

  “I got some nice summer tomatoes, Nick jus’ sliced ’em up this morning—”

  “Just hot sauce, man. You gettin’ deaf in your old age?”

  “Hokay, vre mavroskilo. Comin’ right up.”

  “Sopa, re,” said Stefanos.

  The men at the counter looked at each other and grinned.

  Karras watched the interplay between the two Greeks. Costa had just called the man a black dog, and Nick had told Costa to shut his mouth. They must have been doing the same dance down here for about a hundred years.

  “Go make the man’s sandwich,” said Stefanos.

  “I’m goin,” said Costa, who looked as if he had just sucked on a lemon.

  “What,” said Stefanos. “You got a problem?”

  “Me?” said Costa. “I don’t give a damn nothing.” Costa went back toward the kitchen, turned back his head. “You take it easy, young fella.”

  “Yeah,” said Karras. “You, too.”

  Karras tented his fingers on the counter. An electric fan in a high corner of the room blew dust and smoke around the place but did little to dispel the heat. The restaurant was kind of dark, too; a couple of high lights had gone out and had not been replaced. Well, that made sense. Which one of these old birds was gonna get up on a ladder to change a bulb?

  “Thanks for comin’ down.”

  “Tipota,” said Karras with a shrug. He wanted to be outside, under a clear sky, breathing clean air.

  “It is something,” said Stefanos. “Young man like you, nice day like this, you wanna be doin’ somethin’ else, I know.”

  “You helped my family out plenty. So I’m here. Like I said, it’s nothing.”

  Stefanos rested his forearm on the counter, leaned forward. “O patera sou, he was some kind of man. I don’t just mean about him bein’ a war hero. No sir, I don’t just mean that. I mean about other things, too. He never even knew the kind of man he was.”

  “I don’t remember him,” said Karras.

  “Tha’s why I’m tellin’ you, so you know.”

  “Okay.”

  “Hokay.” There was an awkward silence as Stefanos moved his face around with a thick hand. “It’s tough between a father and a son. Someday you gonna find out yourself.”

  “Mom said you wanted to talk,” said Karras. “Something about your grandson.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I’m gonna get to now.” Stefanos looked away. “His name is Nick, jus’ like me. I raised him myself. It don’t matter the nuts and bolts of it, either, that’s just the fact. I’m his father, and he’s my kid.”

  “All right.”

  “But I’m an old man. The world’s changed, and I don’t understand it so good anymore. It’s hard enough trying to talk to a son, but when you’re that far apart…”

  “Is he in trouble?”

  Stefanos spread his hands. “What the hell I know, huh? He comes home every night, his eyes are all red, he’s ac
tin’ funny…. I’m thinkin’, maybe he’s smoking that marijuana like all the kids are smoking it today. Maybe, what the hell I know, he’s on all kinds of drugs.”

  It was Karras’s turn to look away. He tried to think of something smart to say, decided to go ahead and say something, opened his mouth to speak.

  “Nick—”

  “Mia stigmi,” said Stefanos, holding up one finger. “I’m not finished. Nick’s got this job, see? He’s a stock boy in some store uptown, unloads trucks, stacks televisions, carries air conditioners up and down stairs, like that. Works with a bunch of wise guys, I met ’em once, I figure they’re all on some kind of drugs in that store, too, the way they act. But it’s okay, it’s good to have a job, it teaches you things about life. And it keeps the boy off the streets. Now he tells me he’s leavin’. After July Fourth, gonna go down south and drive around with this friend of his he’s been hangin’ out with since high school. I ask him, ‘When you gonna be back, huh?’ and he’s tellin’ me, ‘I don’t know, Papou, gonna have an adventure and figure that out later on.’ An adventure. Sounds like he’s headed for trouble to me. Got a job, gonna start college in the fall, now he’s gonna give it all up and get in a car and go on and have an adventure. Now, he’s a good boy, and I’m not gonna tell you he’s not. But I don’t know, Thimitri, you gotta tell me the truth: am I trelos, worried about him like this?”

  Karras looked at the confusion in the old man’s eyes. “No, Nick, you’re not crazy.”

  “I was wonderin’, that’s all. I don’t know anybody I can trust to talk to who’s close to the boy’s age. I thought of you. You’re a little bit older, you gotta have some more sense.”

  “It’s okay, Nick. I’m glad you called.”

  “You’ll go see the boy? Set him straight?”

  Set him straight. Now a guy who deals weed to high school kids is gonna set another kid straight.

  Karras said, “Sure.”

  Stefanos breathed out slowly. “Bravo, re. Efcharisto.”

  “Parakalo.” Karras rubbed his hands together. “Where’s Nick work, anyway?”

  “Place called Nutty Nathan’s, on Connecticut up there near Albemarle. Nutty Nathan’s, funny name for a store, eh?”

  “I know the place. Used to be the old Sun Radio.”

  “That’s right.”

  “He on today?”

  “Yessir.”

  “I’ll go up there this afternoon,” said Karras. “See if I can talk with him then.”

  Stefanos clapped Karras on the arm, then went to serve the two men at the counter another round of beers. The men were discussing a basketball player named Craig “Big Sky” Shelton, who had come out of Dunbar in ’75. Except to light another cigarette and move it back and forth to her lips, the woman who worked for Stefanos had not moved an inch.

  Stefanos walked back, his feet padding along a rubber mat. Karras watched him wince as he bent forward, leaning his arm back on the counter.

  “This work must be gettin’ kinda rough on you,” said Karras.

  “Not so rough,” said Stefanos, smiling with his eyes. “Anyway, what the hell else I’m gonna do, eh?”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess. Well, I know. This is my place here. I been serving these same people here for forty years.” Stefanos lowered his voice. “Listen, you wanna hear somethin’? When they burned down this block, my place was the only one they left alone. Not even a rock through my window, katalavenis? People know me here, and I know them. All I’m tellin’ you is, I belong here.”

  “Maybe so. Just be nice for you relax a little, that’s all I was sayin’.”

  “Ahhh,” said Stefanos. “What the hell I’m gonna relax for, huh?”

  “I just thought—”

  “I work,” said Stefanos. “That’s what a man does.”

  Karras got off his stool. He shook Stefanos’s hand.

  “Yasou, Thimitri.”

  “Yasou, Nick.”

  “You talk to my boy, hokay?”

  “I will.”

  Dimitri Karras walked around the jukebox player, who leaned against the wall counter now and appeared to be sleeping on his feet. Karras turned his head back, saw Nick Stefanos moving slowly, one hip higher than the other, toward the louvered doors.

  “What about that psari, Costa!?” yelled Stefanos.

  “It’s workiiin’!” yelled Costa, his voice echoing off the pressed tin ceiling of the store.

  Karras passed beneath a Blatz Beer clock with a smudged glass face centered above the door. The time was off by several hours, and the clock’s second hand had stopped. Karras opened the door and walked out to the street.

  SIXTEEN

  Nutty Nathan’s stood on the west side of Connecticut just south of Albemarle Street, a few doors up from a Hot Shoppes that served as the centerpiece of a small commercial strip bordering the neighborhoods of Van Ness and Forest Heights. Across the street was the broadcast house of a local television station, WMAL, and a block north of that was a small piano bar named La Fortresse, revered by D.C.’s serious drinkers for its generous liquor-to-mixer-ratio.

  Karras parked in a lot on the side of the building. Getting out of his car, he noticed a medium-sized man with muttonchop sideburns and a Fu Manchu mustache standing by the Dempsey Dumpster at the back of the lot, smoking a joint with one hand and holding a sixteen-ounce can of Colt 45 in the other. The man wore a loud gold sport coat and a matching gold patterned tie, and made no effort to conceal the malt liquor or the pot. He caught Karras’s eye, wiggled his eyebrows, raised the can in a salute.

  Karras walked around the building to the front of the store. He looked in the wide window where several air conditioners blew streamers against the glass. He went inside.

  An Ichabod Crane look-alike sat on a console and watched a row of televisions, all tuned to the same station. He turned his head and glanced at Karras at the sound of the door’s bell. The man was dead pale and had a frightening smile and wore a large wooden crucifix over his gold patterned tie and green shirt. His jacket was the same shade of gold as that of the man in the lot.

  “Welcome to Nutty Nathan’s,” said the man. A tag clipped to his jacket read, “Hi, my name is Lloyd Danker.”

  “Hi.”

  “Something special for you today, sir?”

  “Special? No, I don’t think so. I’m looking for Nick Stefanos.”

  The man’s smile went away. “Try the Sound Explosion. All the way in the back.”

  Karras walked past the bank of TVs, most of which appeared to be Sonys, that year’s hot number. Yul Brynner’s image—Brynner, with hair!—appeared on all the sets in a two-shot with a bored-looking Robert Mitchum. It was difficult to tell if Mitchum was asleep or awake. This was the one about Pancho Villa, though Karras couldn’t remember its name, and Charlie Bronson was in it, too. It was Yul Brynner Week on Money Movie Seven, and MAL had been running Brynner pictures every day.

  Karras went down a long aisle that split the store. Signage and accent striping gave him the impression that everything around him, including the merchandise, was either gold or red. He felt like he was peaking in a gold-and-red-tinted trip. To the right of the center aisle were major and small appliances, and to the left were televisions and stack-and-sell ACs. The ACs blew brightly colored tongues of streamers at him as he passed. He had gotten the message out on the sidewalk—it was midsummer, and these guys had air conditioners to sell. Overkill seemed to be the intention at Nutty Nathan’s

  The aisle ended at a hastily arranged group of metal desks separated by cushioned dividers. An Arab-looking gentleman—his nose was large, his complexion rather dark—sat in a chair with his feet up on one of the desks. He appeared to be sleeping with a smile on his face. He opened his blood red eyes halfway, but only for a moment, and nodded at Karras slowly, very slowly, before closing them and issuing a deep and contented sigh.

  Karras walked into a darkened area of the store housing cheap compacts and components, where a
banner reading “Sound Explosion” hung. He heard “Any Major Dude Will Tell You” coming from a room separated from the rest of the stereo equipment by sliding glass doors. One of the doors was open, and Karras stepped inside.

  A short wide-shouldered guy with his hair pulled back and banded in a ponytail stood in front of a receiver nodding his head to the music. The music sounded clear and bass-heavy; you could hear the pluck of the strings against the fret. In the darkness, the blue and orange display lights made the equipment look sexy and sleek. A row of floor speakers arranged in ascending height fanned out and seemed to embrace the ponytailed dude wearing a gold jacket.

  The guy turned around, noticed Karras. “Hey.”

  “Hey.

  “What’s happenin’, man?” Like the didn’t-give-a-fuck cat out in the lot, this one obviously recognized Karras as a fellow stoner.

  “Nothin’ much.”

  Karras went forward, shook the guy’s hand. His name tag said, “Hi, my name is Jeff Fisher.” His jacket was soiled and smelled of cigarettes and weed. A coat-of-arms patch had been sewn on the breast pocket, an embroidery displaying a microwave oven, stereo system, and television set. His gold tie featured the same design; the tie looked as if it doubled on occasion as Fisher’s napkin.

  “My name’s Dimitri Karras. I’m a friend of the Stefanos family. Is Nick working today?”

  “He’s downstairs in the stockroom on his break,” said Fisher, whose mouth turned up in an ingratiating two-bong grin. This Fisher dude was higher than Neil Armstrong. A half-smoked cigarette was lodged firmly behind his right ear. “I’ll get him if you’d like.”

  “That would be good.”

  “Wanna hear something first?”

  Karras shrugged. “Okay.”

  Fisher lifted the dust cover of the working turntable, took the needle off of Pretzel Logic, slipped a cassette tape into a nearby deck. He went to a master switching box, pushed in a black button, then returned to a tall Marantz receiver and started punching buttons and twisting treble and bass dials mounted below the radio band. He moved quickly, excitedly, like every audiophilic pothead Karras had ever known.