01 The Big Blowdown

by George Pelecanos

  Not today. Not in this tiny hole, with someone running by, shooting down at me. Shooting down at me like some kind of animal. Not in this hole. Not today.

  Karras pushed off with his legs, lifted the machine gun into his arms, cradled it. He sprung from the foxhole and landed on his feet, landed as softly as if he had jumped into water. He breathed deeply as the rain cooled his face.

  They were there, running toward him now, four of them, less than thirty yards away. The crazy screaming bastards were charging, fire flashing from the muzzles of their guns. Karras heard himself hum as his finger locked on the trigger. Puffs of white moved across a perfect azure sky as gulls glided down through the smoke and ejecting shells of the weapon dancing wildly in his arms.

  The men before him jerked and fell. Their uniforms ripped open where red flowers bloomed on their khaki-mustard chests.

  THREE

  * * *

  Washington, D.C.

  1946

  Chapter 8

  Peter Karras woke to the gnawing sound of “Baby Snooks” on WTOP coming from the radio on his nightstand. He reached over and turned the damned thing off, adjusting his eyes to the fading light of the room. Had he been sleeping all afternoon? And if he had, well, why the hell not? He draped a forearm over his eyes, and began to drift back off. Then he remembered: the fights. Me and Joe’ve got tickets to the fights. Archie Moore, no less. He swung himself up, sat on the edge of the bed, and rubbed his eyes.

  In the bathroom, Karras took a long leak, then lathered some Barbasol on his shadow and shaved. He could hear Eleni’s off-key voice coming from the kitchen, singing along to a Perry Como record—“Dig You Later (A Hubba, Hubba, Hubba)”—that she had bought over the weekend at Super Drugs on 13th and H. At least it wasn’t the new Vaughn Monroe, a record she had brought home the same day. Karras had had it up to there with Monroe.

  He showered, and when he came out Eleni was singing the Como all over again. Karras could smell her cooking now, a chicken roasted in a pan of manestra. He was going to have to disappoint her about dinner. He had a busy night ahead of him, and she’d have to understand.

  Karras looked in the mirror as he ran a little Vitalis through his dirty-blond hair, combing it back. Twenty-four years old, and already a little gray in the temples. Like his old man, who was nothing but gray now with a yew’s white moustache. Anyway, it didn’t stop Karras from getting the looks as he walked down the street. If he had grown up in a different place, and if not for the prominent black mole near his mouth, he maybe even could have been a movie star. He was that kind of handsome, he knew. And not the loverboy, loved-boy, Tyrone Power kind of handsome. More like John Hodiak. Yeah, like a blue-eyed Hodiak. He always liked that guy.

  Karras put on a powder-blue shirt, and with it a blue serge suit with pleated trousers. He found a maroon tie decorated with gold diamonds outlined in blue, the blue the same shade as the suit. He laced on a pair of cordovan wingtip brogues, fresh out of the box from the Hahn’s at 14th and Park Road, and checked himself out in the door mirror: sharp, and ready to go.

  Karras went out to the kitchen and came up behind Eleni, who stood over the stove, stirring the orzo in the pan. She wore a print housedress, her brown hair down and fluffed about her shoulders. Her plump, swollen ankles pushed out on the strap of her sandals. Karras put his arms around her waist, felt her relax.

  “How’s it going, sweetheart?” he said. He bent forward and kissed the raised pink birthmark on the side of Eleni’s neck, brushing his lips on the two or three hairs which grew from it, tangled in a clump.

  “It’s goin’ good now,” she said, shifting her thick body beneath his fingers.

  “You better be careful, listening to that Como all day. You might fall in love with him.”

  “I’ve got enough to keep me busy right here with you.”

  “Don’t forget it.” Karras rubbed a hand across her belly. “You feelin’ okay?”

  “I threw up a little this morning. But I’m all right.”

  “Good. It’s going to be fine.”

  “I know it.” She moved the wooden spoon around in the manestra. “We’re gonna have a good dinner tonight, Pete.”

  “It’s going to have to wait till I get back,” he said, and as he did she stiffened beneath his grip. She did not turn around.

  “Why, Pete? Why can’t you eat something before the fights?”

  “Me and Joe got to go see somebody first. Business, is all it is.”

  “Business,” she said, with a toss of her hair.

  He brought his hand up to her right breast, rubbed it slowly until her nipple hardened beneath the cloth. He pushed himself into the small of her back.

  “Pete,” she said, “I want to you to stay.” He caught a side glimpse of her frown, but the edge had left her voice.

  “Save it for me, sweetheart. Keep it all warm for me till I get home.” He kissed her on the side of her mouth, tasted the grease from the chicken. He rubbed the grease off with the back of his hand.

  Karras walked to the door, lifted a deck of Luckies and a book of matches from an end table that stood there, slipped them into the inside pocket of his jacket. He took his black topcoat off the rack and shook himself into it.

  “Wait a second, Pete,” said Eleni from the open kitchen. She was spooning some manestra into a black pot.

  “Aw, no, I’m not goin’ anywhere with that. I’m not walkin’ down the street in my best suit, carrying a katsarola.”

  “It’s for your mother. I told her you’d run it by.”

  “All right, damnit. Give it to me.”

  “What’re you gettin’ so sore about?”

  “Nothin’. Just give me the pot.”

  Eleni crossed the room, put the pot in his arms. She gave him another kiss.

  “Try and get home early,” she said.

  “I will.”

  She opened the door for him. He stepped out into the hall.

  They lived on 6th, up from H, in the same apartment house where Perry Angelos had grown up. Perry’s folks still had the same place, and Perry and his wife had a two-bedroom one floor down. Peter Karras didn’t mind living in the same neighborhood where he had been raised. It made Eleni a little uncomfortable sometimes, when the hookers and the runners and the bookies flooded into Chinatown after hours every night. But Karras liked the action, and he liked the noise. It was what he was used to, all he knew. Year round, he slept with the window cracked open; the street sounds down on H were his lullaby.

  Perry’s door was open as Karras headed down the stairs. Perry stood leaning in the frame, reading the Times-Herald. The sound of a baby crying reached into the hall from behind him. Karras took the landing to where Perry stood, and put the pot down on the tiles.

  “Perry.”

  “Hey, Pete! What d’ya know?” Perry smiled, his large ears jacking up with the action. He had begun to lose his hair on top, and his work schedule and the new baby had left heavy baggage beneath his eyes.

  Karras nodded at the newspaper in Perry’s hand. “Anything good?”

  “Just readin’ the funny pages before I get back to work. ‘Gasoline Alley.’ Can you believe it, Pete? Skeezix has a kid! We must be gettin’ old, buddy.”

  Karras shuffled his feet. “Still working for your old man?”

  “Pullin’ double shifts down at the coffeehouse. Just until I can get enough for my own place. I’ve got my way of running things and he’s got his. It’s gonna be better when I get out on my own.”

  “Put all that stuff they taught you in college to good use.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Helen walked up behind Perry, jiggling their baby girl in her arms. The baby continued to cry, reaching blindly for her mother’s breast. Karras noticed that Helen had gotten her figure back in just two months. She was all made up, too, her bottle-blonde hair falling down across her face on one side. Helen, still doing that Veronica Lake number a couple of years too late. Well, she probably didn’t know the
Lake look was long gone. Helen didn’t get out much anymore.

  “Hello, Pete.” Her red lips parted in a smile.

  “Helen. How’s Evthokia?”

  “Keeping me busy.” She looked him over. “Where you off to, all spiffed up?”

  “Me and Joe got tickets to the fights.”

  “The Moore fight?” said Perry.

  “Yeah.”

  “Damn,” said Perry.

  “Want to go?” said Karras. “We could probably get you a ticket outside Turner’s.

  “No. I gotta work.” Perry tapped the newspaper excitedly. “Dick McCann says that you’re not gonna be able to tell Moore and Parks apart, on account of they’re both gonna be wearing purple trunks, and they’re both the same shade of brown.”

  “McCann’s an idiot,” said Karras. “Don’t take everything in that newspaper for gospel, Perry.”

  Helen chuckled and rolled her eyes. Karras felt a stab of guilt at making Perry look like a sap in front of his wife.

  “I gotta feed this baby,” said Helen. “Enjoy yourself, Pete. Stay out of trouble.” She undid the first few buttons on her blouse, gazing back once at Karras as she drifted. His eyes took in the round tops of her breasts, the sight of them bringing back the memory of the rest of her. He knew better, but he couldn’t look away.

  “Yeah, Pete,” said Perry, not catching a thing. “Have a good time.”

  “Don’t work too hard, chum,” said Karras. He picked the pot up off the floor and headed down the stairs.

  Out on the street, Karras tried to look as smooth as possible for a guy carrying a big black pot of food. On H, a couple of seagulls hovered above his head, followed him all the way. Seagulls, in the middle of the city, it always surprised him to see it, until he thought of the rivers, and the nearby bay. But the sight of gulls in the city always made him stop, just the same.

  At 606, Karras took the steps up to his parents’ apartment. The door was open, and he pushed his way in. The place was dark, as it always was, and smelled of incense and garlic. His Murphy bed was up, a table pushed against it, but his old dresser was in place, probably still packed with his old clothes. Dimitri Karras sat in his white T-shirt at his normal spot at the eating table, a bottle of mastica in front of him, a cigarette burning in the tray. His mother stood in the kitchen stirring something over the stove.

  “Pos eise, pethi mou?” said his mother.

  “I’m okay. Ma,” said Karras, as he walked into the kitchen and put the pot in the sink. “I brought some kota and manestra from Eleni.”

  “Hokay, boy,” she said.

  He kissed her on the cheek. “You look good. Ma.”

  “Ah,” she said, with a flip of her hand.

  “Where you goin’,” Dimitri said, “all pretty like that. You gotta date?”

  Karras looked over at his father, who was staring straight ahead, chuckling at his joke. His eyes were glassy, and his tonicky hair had fallen down about his face. Drunk, and the sun had not yet fallen.

  “I’m goin’ to the Archie Moore fight. Pop.”

  “Archie Moore. Thas’ one strong nigger.” Dimitri coughed, wiped at his moustache with his hand. “Yiorgia, when we gonna have a fayito?”

  “It’s coming, Dimitri. I’m heating it up.”

  Karras looked at his mother, her graying hair braided and pinned up behind her head. She was on the heavy side, built for work, with thick, calloused hands, and a weak brown moustache across her simian upper lip. But when she brushed her hair out at night, let it fall behind her back, her green eyes shining and relaxed at the end of the day, Karras thought she was as beautiful as any woman he had ever seen.

  He’d do anything to protect her. Once, before the war, when some American boys on the corner were making fun of her, calling her a “wop” and a “white nigger” as she walked down H carrying groceries, something had gone black inside him. He had called Joe Recevo, and the two of them had waited across the street from the poolroom where the American boys had gone inside, and when the Americans came out they followed them to an alley, and he and Joe had beaten the hell out of all three, busted them good and bloody with a baseball bat and a pipe. He could take care of things like that on the outside. The only thing he couldn’t do was protect her from the old man, in here.

  “Yiorgia, the food!” said Dimitri.

  “It’s comin’, Pop!” said Karras.

  “I wasn’t talkin’ to you,” mumbled Dimitri. “Big Marine, now he’s gonna tell me what’s what.”

  “Siopi,” whispered Georgia to her son.

  All right, Ma, I’ll shut my mouth. Just let me get the hell on out of here.

  “I gotta go,” Karras said to both of them. “I’m gonna be late.”

  “Fight’s not till later,” said Dimitri. “What, you gotta go meet the Italos?”

  “Yeah, me and Joe have to do a little business.”

  “What kinda business?” said Dimitri. “Shakedown business? Like some kinda goddamn gangster? Huh?”

  “I gotta go,” said Karras.

  “When you gon’ get a real job?” said Dimitri,

  “See ya. Ma,” said Karras, and he kissed her again on the cheek.

  “Adio, Panayoti. Have fun.”

  Dimitri stood up from his chair, walked unsteadily but quickly across the room. “What, you don’t have t’answer your old man? Big Marine, don’t have to answer his old man no more.” Dimitri reached Peter Karras, shoved him in the chest with the flat of his palm. “Huh?” He shoved once more. “Huh?”

  Karras did not step back. “I gotta go. Pop.”

  “You too good to talk to me now? In your gangster suit?”

  “Dimitri—” said Georgia.

  “Shutup!” Some spit flew from Dimitri Karras’s mouth.

  “Relax, Pop.”

  “I’m gonna relax when I wanna relax! You’re not gon’ tell me nothin!”

  Dimitri raised his open hand, brought it down towards Peter’s face. Peter grabbed his father’s wrist, twisted, pushed away. Dimitri lost his balance and fell heavily to the hardwood floor. He stayed there on his side, looking up at this son, his watery brown eyes a mixture of hurt and anger and shame. Karras looked away.

  “Fiya apo tho!” his mother screamed, gasping for air through her sobs.

  Karras did as his mother asked, and walked from the apartment. On the stairs, he heard the door close softly behind him. He went out of the building, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. He looked back up at his parents’ apartment, and saw the curtain move from his mother’s bedroom window.

  Karras found a phone in a Chinatown restaurant, dialed Joe Recevo. He lighted a cigarette and drew on it while he waited for someone to pick up.

  “Hello.”

  “Joe, it’s Pete.”

  “Hey, Greek, been waitin’ by the phone.”

  “Here I am.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothin’,” said Karras. “I’m just anxious to get out, that’s all.”

  “Where you at, I’ll pick you up.”

  “I’m gonna grab a little dinner first. Why don’t you swing by Nick Stefanos’s grill, say in about an hour.”

  “Fourteenth and S, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hell, what are you, in Chinatown? That’s a long way on foot. I’ll pick you up now, we’ll drive over.”

  “That’s all right, Joe,” said Karras. “It’s nice out, not too cold. I think I’m gonna walk.”

  Karras cradled the receiver, stepped out of the restaurant, buttoned his topcoat as he headed west, pigeons fluttering at his feet. The sun had gone down behind the buildings, leaving long shadows in the golden cast of dusk. He closed his eyes, breathed in the city smells, tried to let things slow down. It was better now, alone out here, walking on the streets.

  Chapter 9

  Peter Karras had broken a sweat beneath his topcoat by the time he reached 14th. He turned north, going by Pete Frank’s restaurant, a place called the Sun Dial, at R. Fran
k—Frangis was his name before he Americanized it—was a large Greek from Comosta, a mountain village outside Sparta proper. Karras could see Frank’s wife Alice, a stylish woman in her early forties, behind the counter as he passed. He nodded, and caught a smile in return.

  Nick Stefanos’s grill stood one block up, on the corner of S. An oblong sign hung above the door, blue with red lettering encircled by white bulbs, lit now in the growing darkness like a theatre marquee. NICK’S was all it said. Karras pushed on the door and stepped inside.

  Nick’s was a plain eat house with eight backless stools up against the lunch counter and three wood-benched booths along the wall. Behind the counter ran a grill and sandwich board arrangement with a soda fountain, coffee urn, and ice cream cooler to the side. A full kitchen sat to the back, and beyond that lay a warehouse area with a private head and a bolted door that led to the alley.

  Karras removed his topcoat, hung it on one of the trees that adjoined the booths, and had a seat on a swivel stool cushioned in red, the cushion veined in black. He took his smokes with him.

  “Yasou Panayoti!” said Nick Stefanos, walking down to Karras behind the counter, rubbing his hands on a stained apron.

  “Yasou Niko.”

  Karras took Stefanos’s hand, leathery and large as a boy’s first mitt, and shook it. Stefanos was big for a Greek, barrel-chested and broad, with a wide open face to go with his size.

  “What’re ya gonna have?” said Stefanos.

  “What’s the dinner special?”

  “We got a nice little lamb. Costa cooked it this afternoon.”

  “I don’t think so. Make it a plate of franks and beans.”

  “Anything to drink? How ‘bout a bottle of beer?”

  “Just a Co-cola,” said Karras.

  Stefanos turned his head toward the slotted hinged doors that led to the kitchen. “Costa,” he yelled, “a plate of franks and beans out here! Grigora!”