01 The Big Blowdown

by George Pelecanos

  “I’m hurtin’, Lydia. I’m hurtin’ bad.”

  “I know.”

  “And it feels real good to lie here.”

  “I know it does. But I’m scared. All those girls that was killed, you know how they were…they were built like me. I’m askin’ you please, you gotta come with me. I helped you out tonight when you needed it. Don’t I always help you out?”

  Lola looked up at her friend. “All right, Lydia. All right. Help me up outta this bed.”

  Lydia washed Lola’s face, straightened out her dress. The two of them went down the stairs to the foyer of the house. Morgan was waiting there, slapping a pair of leather gloves against his palm. He frowned at the sight of Lola.

  “Well, what’s she doin’ here?”

  “She’s comin’ with me.”

  “The gentleman didn’t ask for a pair.”

  “She ain’t gonna be with me and the gentleman, Mr. Morgan. She’s only going to be around.”

  “For Chrissakes, Lydia, look at her. She’s all the way hopped.”

  Lola stood by the front door, her hands holding the lapels of her overcoat together, her eyes closed. She was smiling, bobbing her head a little, following some rhythm line that only she could hear. The Victrola in the living room was not running; the living room was dark.

  “She’ll be okay,” said Lydia.

  “She needs her rest.”

  “I’m not going without her.” Lydia rested one fist on her waist, tilted her chin impudently at Morgan.

  “You like it here, don’t you? You like the heat in your room, and you like that soft bed. You forgettin’ already where you came from? When I found you, you were spreading your legs for two bucks with those Filipinos down by Sailor’s Row—”

  “I’m not going without her.”

  Morgan scratched his dome, glanced at his watch. “All right, then. I don’t have time to stand here listenin’ to you run your hash-trap all night. So hurry up and get her in the car.”

  “You’re driving? Why not a cab?”

  “It’s what the gentleman asked for. He told me where to drop you, and that’s what I’m going to do. He’s paying for his pleasure, and he’s paying big.”

  “Who is this guy?”

  “Hell if I know. A tender I do business with across town hooked it up.”

  “And he asked for me.”

  “He asked for your type.” Morgan grinned. “Good thing I keep a big old thing like you in stock.”

  * * *

  Lydia and Lola sat in the backseat of Morgan’s big ‘48 Chrysler Windsor as Morgan drove east. Lola rested her head in Lydia’s soft lap, stretched out her legs. Light came in the windows from the streetlamps above, passing over Lola’s fishbelly-white calves, disappearing, then passing over them again. Lola counted the seconds between each spear of light, soon discovered a pattern in the intervals. She found this game pleasant. Lydia hummed a tune as she stroked Lola’s hair.

  The car slowed. Lola felt the downshift of the engine. Morgan stopped the Chrysler, did not cut the ignition. He turned his head to the backseat.

  “Out,” he said.

  “There’s nobody here,” said Lydia.

  “He’ll be here.”

  “You’re not gonna just leave us, are you?”

  “He’ll be here,” said Morgan. “And I got some business to take care of. I’ll swing back and pick you up in a couple of hours. Wait for me on that bench over there, by that bus stop.”

  “But—”

  “C’mon, move it. You asked for company and you got it. Now get her up off the seat and the two of you get out. Like I say, I got business.”

  Lydia pulled Lola up by her arms. She got her out of the car and moved with her along the sidewalk as the Chrysler pulled away. They had a seat on a wooden bench beneath the sole streetlamp on the block. Lola had a sleepy look around: They were on a small commercial strip where a market, a lunch counter, a Dutch bakery, and a laundry sat in a neat row. An alley cut between the bakery and the laundry, where the light of the street-lamp spread and then faded. The windows of the businesses were dark; one pre-war car sat parked on the street.

  Lydia hummed the same tune she had in the car, a quaver now in her voice.

  “Where are we, Lydia?”

  “Northeast somewhere, I guess. Morgan crossed North Capitol a few blocks back.”

  “Northeast?”

  “Don’t you worry about where we’re at. Hold my hand.”

  Lola reached out, felt Lydia’s large soft hand envelop hers. It was as if Lola had sunk her hand into a bowl of warm dough.

  “Mmmm,” said Lola.

  “That’s right, honey. You go to sleep.”

  * * *

  Lola heard the screech of a cat. Like the sound a cat made when its tail got stepped on. Only more human. Sharp, rising in intensity, and then cut off. There and then gone. Lola opened her eyes.

  She was lying on the bench. Her hand dangled off the bench, the cold air stinging her naked fingers. Her hand had felt so warm before, when Lydia had held it.

  Lola sat up. She stared into her lap, brushed weakly at the dried circle of blood. She got off the bench, walked unsteadily across the street.

  “Lydia?”

  She tottered on one heel, watched her shadow do a liquid dance against the asphalt. She caught her balance, edged herself between the bumper of the old car and the grille of the newer model now parked behind it.

  Lola heard a shoe scrape against stone from somewhere in the alley. That would be Lydia, having a pee. Big Lydia, she could squat anyplace when she had to. Lydia and Lola, in the few months that they had known each other, they had managed to have a few laughs over that.

  “Lydia?”

  Lola stood at the head of the alley. In the weak gray light of the street-lamp, she could see the outline of Lydia now, lying down on a bed of black. Lydia was holding her stomach as if she were sick. A small cloud of steam rose off her body.

  “Lydia, you okay?”

  Lola stepped into the alley.

  She bent forward to shake Lydia. She slipped a little, looked down at her feet. She saw that Lydia’s bed of black was blood. A tangled length of slick intestine snaked through Lydia’s hands.

  Lola felt her knees begin to shake. “Lydia?”

  Lydia did not answer. Her eyes were open wide, filmed over. Lola could see between the tear of the crimson-splattered dress, where the heat of Lydia’s organs emitted steam into the cold air.

  Lola stood straight, as if electrified. She tried to but could not scream. She put her hand against the brick wall. She vomited on the bricks.

  Lola Florek felt a blunt shock to the back of her head. She felt nothing after that.

  * * *

  Lola opened her eyes.

  “Don’t look up,” said the man who stood in front of her.

  She stared at his shoes. They looked to her like golfing shoes. She had seen shoes like this in Lydia’s catalogues, back at the house. Shoes that were half one color and half another. Only, these shoes, their insteps were splashed with blood. Lola kept her gaze fixed straight ahead.

  “I don’t know what to do with you,” said the man. His voice was desperate and soft.

  “Please,” said Lola.

  “I’m sorry, you know.”

  A hot tear ran down Lola’s face, and another soon gathered in the corner of her eye. The tear tickled her; she did not blink.

  “Please,” said Lola.

  “You’re too little,” said the man.

  The right shoe moved violently toward Lola’s face. The shoe was the last thing she saw for a long while.

  * * *

  Lola lifted her head. A pain knifed through her sinuses to the back of her skull. She put her face down on the seat, felt the vibration of a motor moving through her. She watched the spears of light enter the windows of the car from the streetlamps above.

  “I’m hurt bad,” she muttered. Her voice sounded queer to her. She ran her tongue around the insid
e of her mouth. Her tongue slipped through the space where her front teeth had been. The gum was jagged there. She tasted the salt in her blood.

  Morgan turned his head to look in the backseat. His eyes were wide and dirt tracks ran down his face.

  “Help me.”

  Morgan’s voice shook. “We’re going home.”

  “I need a doctor,” said Lola.

  “I’m gonna fix you up at home.”

  Lola swallowed blood. The blood stung at the raw spot in back of her throat.

  “I saw a man, Mr. Morgan.”

  “Shut up.”

  “But Mr. Morgan—”

  “1 don’t want to know.”

  “Lydia,” whispered Lola.

  Morgan said, “Don’t ever mention her name again.”

  Chapter 28

  “Hey, Panayoti, it’s for you!”

  Nick Stefanos shouted over the swinging doors into the kitchen. He waited for Karras to walk across the tiles to the kitchen phone. Karras picked up; Stefanos hung the receiver in its cradle.

  “Yeah,” said Karras.

  “Pete, it’s Jimmy Boyle.”

  “Jimmy. What’s up?”

  “I might have something for you on that Florek kid’s sister.”

  “Keep talkin’.”

  “There’s a spade runs a blind-pig joint over on Seventh Street around T. He’s hooked up with Yellow Roberts somehow.”

  “Yellow Roberts. You talkin’ about Jim Roberts, that dope boss?”

  “The same. The spade goes by the name of DeAngelo Ray. Throws gin parties with reefer to go in the mix. My source tells me he orders in white girls for the out-of-town guests. Favors them young and on the blonde side, if you catch my drift.”

  “I get it. Where the spot?”

  “Over there between the Off Beat and the Club Harlem.” Boyle gave Karras the address.

  “You sound a little jumpy, Jimmy.”

  “Hell, Pete, I didn’t get a wink last night. I’m running on fumes.”

  “You been up to 14th and Colorado, is that it?”

  “I seen that Doc you told me about, yeah.”

  “You be careful with that stuff.”

  “I already lost five pounds.”

  “You just be careful.”

  “I’m on a roll, buddy. With that murder last night, the department’s gonna be focusing everything now on that case. If I’m going to catch a ride on that train—”

  “I read about it in this morning’s Times-Herald,” said Karras. “It sounded pretty bad.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. My uncle gave me the real dope. What the reporters don’t know is, they found two types of blood at the crime scene, and two different samples of hair. The hooker who bought it had black hair, but a blonde had taken an injury there, too.”

  “But they didn’t find the blonde.”

  “Uh-uh. That’s the deal. Find the blonde and you find a witness. Which is what I’ll be talkin’ about this whole weekend to all those meatballs out on my beat. Which is what every detective in the department is gonna be talkin’ about out there as well. Why, I’m tellin’ you, Pete…”

  Boyle kept talking, but his voice melted into one big jumble in Karras’s ears. Karras was looking over the kitchen doors now, to a group of four men who had walked into the grill. The leader was a thin man with talkative hands who wore a very expensive suit and a derby. He had engaged Stefanos in conversation immediately. There was a pleasant smile on the thin man’s delicate face.

  A redheaded man with a boxed-in nose stood with his back against the plate-glass window, and a large dark man in a small suit stood by the door. There were no customers in the store; it was Saturday morning, and there was little in the way of business. On Saturday mornings Karras and Stefanos worked alone.

  Karras looked at the fourth man: a half-pint wearing a tall white hat.

  “This is my shot, Pete,” said Boyle. “I deliver some kind of lead on this case, I’m gonna get right out of these blues. It’s my ticket to a detective’s shield—”

  “Jimmy…Jimmy, I don’t mean to cut you off. I got some customers, chum…I gotta go.”

  “All right, Pete.”

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  “Sure thing, pal. Talk to you later.”

  “Yeah…you, too.”

  Karras racked the talkpiece. He reached beneath his apron, pulled his deck of cigarettes. He put a Lucky in his mouth, lighted it. He touched the mole on the side of his mouth, took two steps back into the depths of the kitchen where they could not see him. From that spot he couldn’t see much of them either. He could only see the peak of the tall white hat.

  Karras drew deeply on his cigarette. He felt a vein throb in his neck as he squinted through the smoke.

  * * *

  Stefanos stood behind the counter rubbing his worry beads. He wrapped one finger around the leather string, swung the beads into his huge palm. The four men had been gone now for ten, fifteen minutes. Stefanos had been standing there, rubbing the koumboloi, thinking about things since then.

  “Ella, Panayoti,” he shouted back toward the kitchen. “Come on out here, I wanna talk.”

  Karras limped out to the front of the house. He leaned his forearm on the counter.

  “Yeah, Nick.”

  “Have a beer with me, re.”

  “Okay.”

  Stefanos went to the cooler, pulled a bottle of Ballantine Ale, uncapped the bottle. He poured the ale into two glasses he had set out on the counter. Karras and Stefanos picked up the glasses, tapped them together.

  “Siyiam,” said Karras.

  “Siyiam.”

  Karras drank down some of the ale. He wiped a sleeve across his mouth.

  “You see those guys, a little while ago?”

  “I saw them,” said Karras. “Who were they?”

  “I dunno. They said they heard about the Italos and his men, comin’ in here to shake me down.”

  “And they thought they could help.”

  “Yeah. The thin guy in the pretty suit, he said he’d make the Italos and the others go away for half what the Italos was askin’ me to pay.”

  “So he’s gonna protect us from the others.”

  “Somethin’ like that. That’s what they said, anyway.” Stefanos scratched his head. “Hell, I don’t know. Gimme a cigarette, Karras, goddamn.”

  Karras shook the deck in front of Stefanos. Stefanos pulled a cigarette free, put it between his lips. Karras lighted it. Stefanos blew smoke at his feet.

  “They’re all in it together,” said Karras, shaking out the match.

  Stefanos looked up. “What?”

  “I recognized one of the men in this morning’s group. The little skato in the Tom Mix hat. He works for Burke. The Italos, he works for Burke, too.”

  “Goddamn.”

  “Yeah. It’s an old gag, Nick.”

  “And I fell for it.”

  “You didn’t fall for it yet.”

  Karras studied Stefanos. He looked shaken, disoriented.

  Stefanos said, “What the hell I’m gonna do now?”

  “You know what you’re lookin’ at. But you gotta make that decision yourself. Whether you give up a piece of your place to those guys or not, that’s a call only you can make.”

  “My place.” Stefanos’s eyes flashed. “My place. I’m gonna give up a piece of my place, now, eh?”

  Karras had a drink, eyed Stefanos over the rim of the glass.

  Stefanos said, “You know where I come from, Karras?”

  “You told me.”

  “My house was nothin’ but a stone hut, built into the side of a hill. I slept on a dirt floor, re, next to a fire. My family, all of us, we lived up in the mountains above the village. O pateras mou, he was a shepherd, and that’s where we had to stay. Away from everyone else. I lost two of my kid sisters one winter, Karras, you know about that?”

  “Sure, Nick. You told me.”

  “Sure I did. I told you, I know.” Stefanos
pushed some hair off his face. “And now I got this. I got on the goddamn boat, and I came here, and I worked…for this. I got a brand-new car, and an apartment up in Mount Pleasant with steam heat in every room, and a closet full of suits. And I got this. This is my place. That’s my name on the sign out front. Katalavnis?”

  “I understand.” Karras put the glass down on the counter. The sound of it cut the silence in the room.

  “The thin one, the one who talked like a woman. He said he wants an answer by tonight. They’re gonna come back later, after we close down.”

  Karras stared into Stefanos’s eyes. “You know, Nick, once you start this thing, you gotta be ready to go all the way.”

  “I know. You let me worry about it, hokay?”

  Karras shook his head. “I wish I could do that. But if you’re in it, Nick, I’m in it, too.”

  “Forget about it.”

  “I’m tellin’ you, I’m in.”

  “And I said forget it. This is my fight.”

  Karras glanced down at his twisted knee, then back at Stefanos. “It’s mine, too.”

  Stefanos said, “Entaxi.”

  Stefanos picked up the broom that leaned against the cooler, tapped the end of the stick against the pressed-tin ceiling three times. He and Karras headed back to the kitchen. By the time they had gotten there, Costa had come through the door that led to the apartment upstairs. His hair was uncombed and his hands were covered with bits of meat and bone.

  “What the hell you want, Niko? I’m right in the middle of cleanin’ a little chicken.”

  “Relax. I got somethin’ to tell you.”

  Stefanos filled Costa in. When he was done talking, Costa rubbed his hands off on his apron.

  “So?” said Stefanos.

  Costa smiled crookedly.

  “Good,” said Stefanos. “Tell your yineka to take in a picture show tonight, acous?”

  “Toula hasn’t been out to a movie in ten years,” said Costa.

  “Tell her to go out and visit a friend, then. I don’t care what you tell her. Just get her the hell out of the building.”

  “Florek’s on tonight,” said Karras.

  “Then go up to his apartment and give him the night off. Give it to him with pay. Tell him I said to take his koritsi out, the one with the red hair. Tell him I said to have a good time on me.”