01 The Big Blowdown

by George Pelecanos

  “Beautiful,” said Recevo. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I’m tellin’ you, Pete, that ass of hers has a life of its own.”

  “Nice girl,” said Karras.

  “Yeah, she’s nice. But I’m talkin’ about her ass. I could live down there, pal, change my address. Slip a napkin under my chin and just dig right on in—”

  “Nice girl. Where’s her date?”

  “The gentleman had a ‘previous engagement,’ he said. Bowed out real graceful. He’ll get his chance another night. But not tonight. Law of the jungle, buddy.” Recevo tapped the ash off his cigarette. “How’d you make out with Lizabeth Scott?”

  “You think she looked like Lizabeth Scott?”

  “Damn right.”

  “I liked her. But I tried to reel it in too quick. I let her get away from me.”

  “There’ll be others.”

  “I know it.” Karras pointed to a small brunette on the dance floor, cutting it with a thin fellow in a brown suit. “I got my eye on that one right there.”

  “Forget it,” said Recevo. “She’s been with that joker all night, both of them smilin’ like they’re all hopped up on somethin’. Just forget it.”

  It was Vera who Karras couldn’t forget.

  Lois Roman returned, and they had another round, and that beer only pushed Karras the wrong way. He stood from his seat, bumped into the adjacent table as he went toward the dance floor. The band was murdering Charlie Barnet’s latest, and all the couples were jitterbugging to it across the floor. Karras found the guy in the brown suit, tapped him on his shoulder. The guy turned around, smiled, shook his head, and he and his toothy girlfriend kept dancing on their way. Karras followed them, tapped Brown Suit’s shoulder, rougher this time. When the guy didn’t respond, Karras gripped him on the shoulder and pulled him away from his girl. Karras stepped in, grabbed the brunette’s hands, began to move her around the floor like she was filled with straw. She was trying to get her hands free when Karras was pulled off from behind.

  He turned around, faced the guy in the brown suit. A couple of Brown Suit’s buddies were coming fast across the floor. Brown Suit reared back his fist like he had seen it done in the Westerns, just what any amateur would have done. Karras swatted away the punch with his left, dropped the guy to the floor with a straight right. The guy’s friends were just about on him now. So was Recevo; Karras could feel him by his side.

  “You wanna try me, sister?” yelled Recevo over the music to the biggest of the friends. “Come on and try me!”

  Karras had his fists balled, his right tight against his chest. He laughed.

  Tsondilis came into the crowd, put himself between the two groups of men. He stepped up to Karras, shoved his face close in.

  “Siga, vre,” said Tsondilis.

  “Okay, Kiriako. I’ll take it slow.”

  “You and your buddy, go cool off in the bar.”

  Karras and Recevo stepped off. Karras smiled at the men and gave one to the brunette as he walked away. Tsondilis helped Brown Suit up, gave him a cloth napkin to wipe the blood from his mouth. The orchestra went into a Guy Lombardo number, and things began to slow down.

  Lois Roman met Karras and Recevo at the bar. They ordered more drinks, and drank them slowly and quietly as the place thinned out. After about fifteen minutes, Recevo shook himself into his topcoat.

  “I’m going to drop Lois off,” he said. “I’ll swing back in about fifteen, pick you up.”

  “All right.”

  “Here.” Recevo slipped a couple of cigarettes into Karras’s suit pocket.

  “Thanks for watching my back, buddy.”

  “No problem.”

  “So long, Lois.”

  “See ya, Pete.” She planted one on his cheek, and she and Recevo went out the side door.

  Karras smoked one of the Raleighs and drank down half of his beer. It was only him at the bar now, and Steve Nicodemus, kind of slumped over at the other end.

  “Oh, what the hell,” said Karras.

  He picked up his beer, walked down to the end of the bar, had a seat next to Nicodemus. Nicodemus looked over, tried to focus, did it enough to recognize Karras. He straightened up a little, pushed at the knot of his tie.

  “Pete.”

  “Steve. Buy you a drink?”

  “Sure, why not. I’m havin’ bourbon, straight up.”

  “Hey, Johnny!” said Karras. “A shot of Old Blue Springs neat, for Steve, here.”

  “The house rotgut is okay by me.”

  “Relax, Steve, it’s on me.”

  Johnny Kavakos served the whiskey. Karras put fire to a cigarette.

  “How’s your mom and dad?”

  “You know. They’re okay, I guess.”

  Yeah, Karras knew. He had seen Steve Nicodemus’s mother several times on the street since the war, gray hair pinned up, silent, wearing black. Always wearing black.

  “My mother,” said Nicodemus, “she misses him all the time, you know. She can’t get her baby boy out of her mind. Goddamnit, Pete, I miss him, too.”

  “I know it, Steve. I think about him every day.”

  Nicodemus tried on a weak smile. “1 used to smack him all the time, remember? It was to make him tough. Because he wasn’t tough, see? He never wanted to hurt anybody or anything. He only wanted to go to Griffith, watch the Nats, or listen to the ballgames on the radio when they were away. When he went into the service he was kind of excited about it, ‘cause he figured it was just another chance to play a little ball. He could have drawn desk duty, too, if he hadn’t been such a good shot. A marksman, is what they called him. So they gave him a carbine instead of an M-1. A carbine—what is that, anyway, some fuckin’ toy?”

  “It’s a light gun, all right,” said Karras, who could think of nothing else to say.

  “And then they landed him and all the others on that beach at Anzio. Soon as he hit the beach, they got him. I bet he never even fired his weapon. He caught a bullet, right in the mouth.”

  “Steve—”

  “But Billy, like I say, he wasn’t tough. When you guys were kids, you used to rumble with them nigger boys from Bloodfield, remember? He’d make some excuse, tell you he had to come home, help me work on some soapbox I was buildin’ in the alley. Shit, Pete, there wasn’t any soapbox. Billy just didn’t want to fight. That’s all it was. He just plain didn’t want to fight. So what’d they do? What’d those motherless bastards do? They gave him a carbine and dropped him on a beach. A goddamn, fuckin’ carbine.”

  “I know it, Steve. It’s tough, buddy. It’s tough.”

  Nicodemus’s shoulders began to shake. A thread of mucus dripped from his nose and settled in his brown moustache. Karras put a cocktail napkin in Nicodemus’s hand.

  “Yeah,” said Nicodemus, wiping the napkin across his face, “I used to smack him around. It was to make him tough, that’s all it was. But if he was here right now, I’m tellin’ you, I’d never lay a hand on him again. If Billy walked through that door right now—”

  “All right, Steve. Forget it.”

  “You’re right. I gotta just forget it.” Nicodemus tilted his head back, let the bourbon drain from the shot glass and down his throat. He closed his eyes, set the glass down on the bar. He smiled a funny little smile then, without an ounce of happiness in it at all. “Must be nice, to be able to afford good whiskey.”

  “I’m doing okay.”

  “Yeah, you and that Italian boy, you guys are doin’ all right. The Greek community around town, they’re all talkin’ about how good you and your Italian friend are doing. Real interested, like. They’re talkin’ all about it, Pete.” Steve Nicodemus stared at Karras, kept the stare fixed.

  Okay, here it comes: Why was it my brother on that beach, and not you? Why did Billy have to go out like that, and not you—a guy rousting immigrants for loan-shark money and running muscle or the protection racket. Why’d my brother Billy have to die, a guy with a heart as wide as a mile. Why him, and not a guy like you?
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br />   Karras stabbed out his cigarette. “I got to get goin’, Steve. You take care.”

  “Sure, Pete. Say hello to Eleni for me. Thanks for the drink.”

  Karras left money on the bar, went down to the other end and found his topcoat on a stool where he had left it. He looked back at Nicodemus staring straight ahead, his hand around the empty shotglass. From across the room, he could see that Steve Nicodemus had begun to cry. Karras looked away, said goodnight to Johnny Kavakos behind the bar, nodded to Jerry Tsondilis at the door. He stepped out to the street, walked to the Mercury idling at the curb. He got inside.“I’ve been out here ten minutes,” said Recevo.

  Karras settled into his seat. “I was talkin’ to Steve Nicodemus.”

  “How’s he doin’?”

  “You know.”

  “Yeah.” Recevo lowered the volume on the radio. The two of them sat there for a minute or so, not speaking, not hearing the tune. Recevo said, “You wanna know somethin’? I was scared over there, Pete.”

  “What?”

  “I never told you this. But on Guadalcanal—when things really got out of control—man, I was just plain scared.”

  “We were all scared.”

  “But I was scared frozen, buddy. One day, when they ordered us to go over this hill…well, there was this Jap machine-gun emplacement on the other side. All the guys that had gone before us had bought it. We could see them droppin’ from where we were. When I got so close to my own death that I could smell it, I just froze up. I made a promise to myself that if I ever got out of it, got back home, that I’d do anything to live to a ripe old age. In the war, I found out that I was just like anybody else, Pete—so afraid, like everybody else. So goddamned afraid to die.”

  “But you made it. You got over that hill and you made it home.”

  “Yeah, I made it. But I found a few things out about myself that I didn’t like.” Recevo swallowed hard. “How about you? What was it like that day when you killed all those Japs?”

  Karras shrugged. “I just…hell, I don’t know. It’s funny, Joe, but I knew that it wasn’t my day. I think you know when it is. And I knew that it was just not my day.”

  Recevo put the shifter in gear. He checked the rearview, then looked over at Karras.

  “How’d Billy get it, anyway?

  “He took a bullet in the mouth.”

  “Those guys at Anzio really took a beating.”

  “Yeah,” said Karras. “They caught hell on that beach.”

  Chapter 13

  George Georgakos lived in one of three furnished rooms in a private rowhouse at 3rd and Seaton Place in Northeast. Recevo pulled the Mercury to a stop beneath a streetlamp, a half block down from the house. He cut the engine, reached beneath the seat.

  “What’re you lookin’ for, Joe?”

  “I got a sap somewhere under here.”

  “You won’t need it. Let me talk to the guy, work it out.”

  “You know him, huh.”

  “I’ve seen him around.”

  Joe kept at it beneath the seat. “Maybe he won’t want to listen.”

  “Forget about the sap. Like you need it on some old man.”

  “You gonna handle it?”

  “I said I would.”

  “Well, move it. I got to check in with Burke, and it’s way late.”

  They got out of the car, moved together along the sidewalk toward the house. The place had been set up by the landlords with a separate entrance for the tenants. Karras and Recevo stepped into a kind of foyer which led to four closed doors and one open door leading to a common toilet and shower. The landlord’s door was decorated with a fancy nameplate, etched brass, while the other doors had small metal cages on their faces holding slips of white cardboard on which the tenants’ names were scrawled. A red sign hung on the wall next to the landlord’s door, announcing a vacancy for a QUIET, OLDER, MALE GENTILE at thirty-two bucks a month.

  “Thirty-two a month,” said Recevo. “For this dump?”

  “Over here.” Karras stood in front of the door at the end of the foyer.

  He looked at the name in the slot, the E in Georgakos lettered Grecian-style, curved like the head of a pitchfork.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothin’,” said Karras. He knocked on the door two times. He could hear loud music coming from inside the room.

  After a while the door swung open and Georgakos stood in the frame. He was a short Greek with closely cropped, unruly hair and a thick, wide moustache handlebarred at its ends. Karras looked at the low-slung build, the forearms thick and hard as slats of fruitwood. Georgakos wore a white shirt with two pens clipped in the breast pocket, and striped, pleated trousers cut from wool. He leaned against the frame, stayed there. He was drunk. They were all drunk.

  “Yeah,” said Georgakos.

  “We’re from Burke’s outfit,” said Karras. “We’ve come to get a payment on what you owe.”

  “Huh?”

  “Chrimata. Yia to Kyrio Burke.”

  Georgakos looked at Karras, his moustache notching up a touch on one side. “Ellinos eise?”

  Karras nodded. “Panayoti Karras.”

  “Apo pou?”

  Now you want to know the rest, Georgakos. Where my people come from, and all that. And then you’ll put me together with my old man.

  “Sparti,” said Karras.

  “O patera sou eine Dimitri Karras?”

  Karras nodded once again. “Ne.”

  Georgakos made a sloppy head move toward Recevo. “Ke aftos?”

  “Aftos eine Italos. Fylos mou.”

  “Uh,” said Georgakos.

  “What are you two goin’ on about?” said Recevo.

  “He knows my old man. He wanted to know about you. I told him you were a greaser, but that you were all right. I told him you were my friend.”

  “Swell.”

  “Just gettin’ us introduced.”

  “Fine. Can we go in now, or are we gonna get a shovel and plant our family trees right out here in the hall?”

  “Ella,” said Georgakos with a flip of his hand. They all walked into the room then, Recevo closing the door behind him.

  The music seemed louder now in the confines of the room. It was a small room to begin with, a cot and a dresser and a sitting area and then a stove and sink arrangement on the side. The place stunk of tobacco, with a haze of it hovering in the room. Georgakos’s boxer shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt were laid out on the radiator to dry.

  Karras recognized the music as remebetica, outlaw music from the Athens ghettos by way of Constantinople and Smyrna. His father listened to it once in a while, though not without deriding it as music for “hashish smokers, cocaine and opium users, bums like that.” Karras had never seen powder himself, though he did get out of a earful of veterans one night when a joker in the front seat had lighted a reefer cigarette. He didn’t want anything to do with guys like that. Being on hop to him was just as bad as being a cripple.

  “Tell him to turn that shit down,” said Recevo.

  Georgakos just smiled, waved a finger to the fiddle dancing around the vocals. A 78 spun on the platter of the automatic record-changing phonograph that sat on a small endtable beside a cat-frayed chair. The woman was singing about a village girl whose mother had cut off her beautiful hair.

  “Thelis kamio beera?” said Georgakos to Karras.

  “All right, I’ll have a beer. How about you, Joe?”

  “No. Let’s just get this done.”

  “You got to let me do it my way, Joe. Just relax.”

  “I get it from the frigidairi,” said Georgakos. He went to the sink and began to wash out a couple of glasses.

  “You see that record player?” said Recevo.

  “I see it. So what?”

  “They got that model down at Sun Radio, on Eleventh and E. One of those new Trav-ler models, go for forty-four bucks and change. If he can afford that—”

  “He bought it on time, most likely.”
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br />   “I don’t give a damn how he bought it. He bought it, is what I’m saying. If he can buy a phonograph, he can give us our money. We’re not walkin’ out of here without it, get me?”

  “I said I’d handle it, Joe.”

  Georgakos returned with a bottle of National and two water glasses in his hand. He placed the glasses on his eating table and carefully poured an equal amount of beer into each glass. He lighted a tailor-made and dropped the match into the neck of the bottle. Karras picked up one glass and Georgakos picked up the other. They touched the two together.

  “Siyiam,” said Georgakos. They both drank.

  Georgakos went to the phonograph and started up the same record. He smiled as the cymbalom kicked in.

  “For Chrissakes,” said Recevo.

  Recevo had a seat in the tattered chair, took an ashtray with him and sat it on the cushioned arm. He lighted a Raleigh, blew out the match. He watched Karras and Georgakos, standing around the table with the water glasses in their hands, splitting one lousy beer like a couple of hillbillies. His own father had done the same damn thing with his Sicilian buddies, in the old days when they used to drop by, before the old man died. It used to drive him nuts then, too.

  Karras wasn’t leaning too hard on Georgakos, at least it didn’t look like it to Recevo. He wasn’t even sure if they had gotten around to the money. Mostly the immigrant was moving his hands around, shrugging, winking when it was called for. Karras’s hands were flying around, too. These Greeks, if you cut the hands off ‘em, odds were they’d forget how to talk.

  After a few more minutes of that, Recevo began to feel the tick of blood through his veins. He didn’t feel so good any more from the booze; a dull, throbbing ache had pitched camp in his temples. He wanted to have the money in his hands and then get out of that stinking room. He mashed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

  The song had ended again, but Karras and Georgakos were speaking Greek exclusively now; Recevo couldn’t figure out if things were coming along. Georgakos went to the icebox for another beer, stopping to take a swig from a bottle of clear liquor he removed from a squat, wood cabinet.