01 The Big Blowdown

by George Pelecanos

  “If they had it…if they had it and decided to use it, I mean…they’d drop it right here on D.C., wouldn’t they. D.C. would be the first place they’d send it, isn’t that right?”

  “Christ,” said Karras.

  Vera drew some smoke from her cigarette. The smoke dribbled from her lips. “You were over there, Pete, when they dropped that bomb.”

  “So?”

  “You know what it did.”

  “It ended the war.”

  “I’m talking about what it did. To human beings, Pete. To children. They say it turned them into little lumps of coal. Boiled their organs from the inside out—”

  “Vera,” said Karras, speaking softly. “The bomb ended the war. That’s what it did. That’s what it did for me and all the other GIs who were lucky enough to make it home. And it couldn’t have come quicker. You know, after Leyte, they sent us back to Guam. Lambs for the slaughter, baby, keeping us fed and rested for the invasion of Japan. Towards the end we were out there on those troop ships, just waiting to go in. By then, most of us had been in combat, so in some ways it was worse than our first landing, because by then we knew what to expect. By then we had seen all that death. And we knew the Japanese would fight to the end—theirs and ours—on their own turf. Most of us figured we were never coming back alive. What I’m telling you is, I know everything I need to know about that bomb. That bomb, it took a lot of lives to save even more. And that’s all I need to know.”

  Vera made a fist. She pressed it to the window, swirled it around in the condensation. The action opened a peephole through the fog to the outside. She stared through the hole.

  “You ever see for yourself what those bombs do, Pete?”

  “No.”

  “Natalie has.”

  “Natalie,” said Karras, with unmasked disgust.

  “That’s right. She was on the Manhattan Project. She saw the films.”

  “You’re talking about Trinity.”

  “Not Trinity. Trinity was just sand and scrub and desert. I’m talking about another test they filmed, where they let one go near some ghost town or something.”

  “Vera—”

  “Natalie told me how it was. How this old town, it was standing there, still as a picture. And then there was a flash, and the town was just gone. Like a big wind had come along and flattened it all out, blown it all away. Like a big blowdown, Pete. There one minute and then just gone. I’m telling you, Pete, sometimes I stand here at night and look out this window, and I imagine that I see that flash, and then everything coming toward me, the cars, the buildings, the bodies, everything, coming at me at a thousand miles an hour in one big rush. And then nothing, Pete, not even black. Less than black.”

  “Vera.” Karras turned her around. He took the cigarette from her hand and crushed it in the ashtray. He held her clammy, rigid body against his.

  “I’m sorry to go on about it, Pete. It’s just that I’m afraid.”

  “I know it, baby. So am I.”

  But he wasn’t afraid. He knew that he should be, but he was not. In the end, Karras feared the image of himself as a useless old cripple more than he feared death. And for a moment, looking over Vera’s shoulder through the clearing in the steamed window, he began to visualize this thing that Vera spoke of, this maelstrom of sound and flesh and architecture, hurtling toward him in one screaming, final rush. And for that one crazy moment, Karras had the peculiar wish to see this blowdown for himself. He knew with certainty that it might be pure and absolute horror. But he had the feeling that it could be something beautiful, too.

  Chapter 31

  Recevo blew into his open pack of Raleighs. A cigarette shot out of the deck. He pulled it free with his mouth, struck a straight match off the sole of his shoe.

  “Nothing yet,” said Burke.

  Recevo lighted the smoke. “That phone hasn’t jumped since the last time you asked, Mr. Burke.”

  “That swish,” said Reed. “I knew we shouldn’t of sent him over to the Greek’s.”

  Recevo sideglanced Reed, pacing the floor. “It’s only been since last night.”

  “You’d think he would’ve called,” said Burke, “to let us know, at least.” Burke turned to Gearhart, stuffed into his chair, his fingers laced across the balloon of his lap. “What do you think, Gearhart? Is there cause for alarm?”

  Gearhart shrugged, moved his turtle eyes curiously beneath their lids.

  “Maybe he skipped,” said Reed.

  “Without his compensation?” said Burke. “I don’t think so. And Bender is a peacock who likes to show his colors. If things had gone off right, he would have been right over here, bragging about the details, embellishing the story.”

  Burke poured bourbon from a decanter into a glass. Recevo watched him take it in one swig.

  “There’s something wrong,” said Burke.

  “Maybe not,” said Recevo. “Maybe they turned Stefanos, and Bender just slept in. He had tickets to that show tonight, remember? Maybe he’s getting himself ready for that.”

  Burke poured two more fingers of bourbon.

  Reed dragged on his cigarette, snapped off some ash. “I don’t know why we’re dancin’ around about it. What we ought to do, we ought to go over to that grill right now and settle it right. Just us, like we shoulda—”

  “They’d take you apart,” said Recevo.

  Reed’s eyes flared. “Oh, so they’d take me apart, huh? Is that it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who? That sawed-off little Greek, the one with all the hair? Or maybe your buddy Karras. You tellin’ me that gimp pal of yours would take me apart?”

  Recevo didn’t respond. Burke sipped his drink.

  Burke said, “Reed’s got a point, Joe, in his own primitive way. We went outside of our own backyard to solve a problem that we should have handled ourselves. Perhaps we should pick up Karras, have a talk with him, see if he can’t act as an intermediary in all this mess.”

  “We’re getting ahead of ourselves, Mr. Burke. We don’t even know if there is a problem, not yet.”

  “I’m supposed to just sit around and wait?”

  “Give it another day,” said Recevo. “I got this feeling, see? By tomorrow, it’s all gonna work itself out.”

  * * *

  Peter Karras stood on the corner of 7th and T, shook his wrist out of his topcoat, looked at his watch. He squinted in the darkness to read its face: 5:45. This time of year, night fell early in the city. Karras adjusted his fedora, buried his hands in his pockets, walked south.

  A thick Negro in a camel-hair overcoat and brown suit did not step off as Karras approached. Karras walked around the man. He passed the Off Beat Club, a favorite of slumming jazz musicians, and the Seventh and T Club, a kicked-up version of “St. Louis Blues” coming from its open door. A Negro couple moved quickly toward him, and Karras stepped out of their way. There were not so many folks out, as it was early yet, and Sunday night. Sunday in D.C. meant beer and light wine, but that did not apply to the city’s blind pigs and bottle clubs. Karras had one particular address in mind.

  He found it in the middle of 7th, near the Club Harlem, a row house with a simple walk-up to a concrete stoop. He took the steps, knocked on the forest-green door, waited for the speak slot to open. It did, and a set of perfectly round eyes appeared in the space.

  Then a deep voice: “Yeah?”

  “How about a drink?”

  “You got a membership card, boss?

  “Do I need one?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’s this?” Karras passed a couple of bucks through the slot.

  “It’s startin’ to look like one.”

  Karras slipped another dollar through. The door opened. A big Negro with a pockmarked face stood before him.

  The Negro grinned. “Tell you the truth, boss, I don’t think this here’s your kinda place. But things been kinda slow tonight, and I ain’t had nary a bit of fun. So why don’t you step on inside.”
/>   Karras walked by the bouncer, heard the door close behind him. He noticed that the windows had been bricked up. Tobacco smoke hung midchest in the room, cut with the smell of perfume and something else that was heavy and sweet. A phonograph played a Louis Jordan record—“Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby”—rather loudly; Karras recognized the tune as a favorite at Nick’s grill. A Negro man slow-dragged a woman to the Jordan near a table of stud players by the far wall. The woman wore a sequined cap and a low-cut gown. Her grin was sloppy and her right eye dropped lower than the left. She was young and happy and half in the bag.

  The place was no more than a fancy living room with a long bar against the north wall. Three Negroes in suit and tie sat at the bar. The bar was tended by a bow-tied Negro wearing red suspenders over a thinly striped shirt with French cuffs. All of them gave Karras the fisheye as he limped across the floor. He removed his topcoat, placed his Luckies on the mahogany, and had a seat.

  “What you gonna have?” said the tender.

  Karras could see no bottles on the shelf. “What’s the choice?”

  “Gin.”

  “I’ll have gin, then,” said Karras.

  The tender reached below the bar, retrieved an unlabeled bottle, and poured liquor to the lip. He waited for Karras. Karras took a healthy swallow, stifled a cough: raw ethyl cut with juniper. The tender smiled. Karras lighted a smoke.

  He looked down the bar. At the very end, a tall, thin man sat staring at Karras, smoking a cigarette, curiosity shading his face. The man looked like a brown mantis. Near him sat a light-skinned man in a fancy hat. He also stared at Karras. The hatred in his eyes was uncomplicated, simple as a fist. Karras looked at the man to his right. He knew the man from Nick’s, a friend of the green-eyed record player whom Florek always chatted up.

  The colored guys in Nick’s, they called the guy Dinky, or Winky, some shit like that. Pinky. Yeah, Pinky, that was it.

  “Hey,” said Karras. “Pinky, right?”

  Karras leaned to the right, extended his hand. The one he knew as Pinky ignored the gesture, got off his barstool. He walked slowly to the table of stud players, had a seat.

  The tender leaned his elbow on the bar. “What you think, you was gonna walk in here, make a few friends?”

  “But I know that man,” said Karras.

  “Not in here, you don’t. Maybe in your own world, you do. But that man’s nothin’ but a stranger to you in here.”

  The Louis Jordan number ended. The phonograph’s tone arm reached the end of the record and made a hissing sound in the bar. No one made a move to lift the tone arm off the wax.

  “I’m here to see DeAngelo Ray,” said Karras.

  “Boolshit,” said the man in the funny hat. He slid off his stool and walked toward Karras.

  The tender said, “Finish your drink. Finish it and get on out of here. I ain’t got nothin’ for you and I ain’t got nothin against you, understand? But you don’t belong here. You stick around here another city minute, you’re gonna get stuck for sure. And nobody in this joint’s gon’ do a damn thing about it ‘cept sit around and watch you bleed.”

  Karras glanced toward the door, twenty feet away: the bouncer had leaned his back against it, folded his arms. Karras turned to the tender.

  “The name is Pete Karras. Tell Mr. Ray I’m here to see him.”

  “I’ll be gotdamn,” said the light-skinned man in the fancy hat. “This motherfucker, he just don’t listen.”

  Karras could feel the man’s hot breath on his face. In his side vision, he saw Fancy Hat reach into his jacket. A voice from the end of the bar stopped him.

  “Ike,” said the tall thin man. “Back away.” Then he spoke to the tender. “You just keep things real good and cool for a minute or so till I get back.”

  The tall thin man stood and walked through a door that led to the back of the house. Fancy Hat went back to his stool. Karras stared straight ahead, finished his drink, smoked down his cigarette. The tall thin Negro returned, tapped Karras on the shoulder.

  “All right, Karras. Go on straight back and have your talk with Mr. Ray. You got five minutes to do it.”

  “Thanks,” said Karras. But the man had walked away.

  Karras draped his topcoat over his arm, slipped his cigarettes into his trouser pocket. He left a dollar on the bar and limped toward the door. He went around the dancing couple, who were still at it though the music had stopped. The stud players and the one Karras knew as Pinky did not look up as he passed.

  Karras entered a room through an open door. He closed the door behind him. A dapper young Negro sat behind a desk, sipping from a goblet of brandy and smoking a thin cigar. On the desk sat a water chaser over ice. The Negro wore a double-breasted slate suit with a chalk stripe running through the slate, and a red carnation in the lapel. A crescent scar curved around his left eye and made a clean white slice through his brow.

  “You’re Karras,” said the man.

  “Pete Karras.” He leaned across the desk, shook the man’s manicured hand. He had a seat in a wine leather chair in front of the desk.

  “My name is DeAngelo Ray.”

  “You’re the man I wanted to see.”

  “So I heard.”

  A windowed door was situated behind the desk giving to a view of a screened porch and then an alley. Karras could see the shadow of a tall figure moving out on the porch. Then there was the sound of some crazy kind of music, a saxophone dancing all over the place, brushed cymbals and bass. Colored jazz, thought Karras, and damn if I can figure it out.

  Ray jerked his head in the direction of the porch. “That would be Junior. We ran an outlet out there so he could listen to his records. He does love his New York jazz. But the folks out front, the cardplayers and the studs and the ladies and all the rest, they go for that straight jump. So Junior, he sits out there in the cold, and he listens to his music.”

  “Who’s Junior?”

  “The gentleman that saved your life.”

  “He saved it, huh?”

  “Ike would’ve opened you up from ear to ear.”

  “Colored man kills a white man in this town, he’s gonna do life if he doesn’t fry first.”

  “Ike wasn’t too worried.”

  “Neither was I.”

  “You’re tough, Karras.”

  “I didn’t claim that. I just knew that it wasn’t my day.”

  DeAngelo Ray allowed a smile, looked Karras over. “That limp of yours looks pretty real. You in the war?”

  “The Pacific.”

  “Army?”

  “Marine Corps.”

  “Kill many men?”

  “1 killed a few.”

  Ray sighed. “I was over in Europe myself. Colored outfit. Had us digging latrines for the enlisted men. I envy you, Karras. I would’ve liked to have killed a few myself, ‘specially when I got a good look at some of the prisoners. Why, those German boys, they were some of the palest motherfuckers I’ve ever seen.”

  “It’s a long life. Maybe you’ll get your chance.”

  Ray threw his head back and laughed. Karras saw gold fillings in the man’s teeth.

  “Yes,” said Ray, “I really wanted to do my part for my country over there. They just didn’t seem to want to trust me with one of those M-ones. Why do you suppose that is?”

  “On account of you might have tripped or something, jerked your trigger finger, shot one of your lieutenants by accident in the back of the head.”

  “I might have, at that. I never thought of it, to tell you the truth.” Ray snapped his fingers. “You could have a point.”

  “So you got a raw deal,” said Karras.

  “Yes. They gave us colored boys quite a raw deal.”

  “I wouldn’t take it too hard. Things look like they’re gonna start to turn around for you people soon.”

  Ray sipped brandy, eyed Karras over the glass. “And what makes you think that I would want ‘things’ to turn around?”

  “I don’t know. I th
ought—”

  “You thought. Well, from where you sit, you’re right. There’s a lot of folks out there, thinkin’ the same way. They’re talking about equality, equal rights, all of that. And if they want that, then fine. Me, I’m a successful businessman. In my world, Karras. I got my own music, my own women, my own way of dressin’—my own style. Any place where I really want to be, I can go. I go where I want and I see who I want to see. When I was a kid in this town, over in Southwest, I rarely saw a white man or woman in my neighborhood. When I did, it was like I was looking at somethin’ that flew in from another planet. You people looked different, talked different. You even smelled different. And I grew up just fine. So why would I want to change that now? Why would I want to sit next to you in a soda bar now? What’s that really gonna do for me?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “That’s right, Karras. You haven’t got a clue.” Ray puffed lightly on his cigar. He rolled a cylinder of ash off in the tray. “So what can I do for you this evening?”

  Karras took the photograph of Lola Florek from his topcoat, tossed it on the desk. It slid neatly in front of Ray. Ray picked it up.

  “Go on and say your piece,” said Ray. “You’re near out of time.”

  “The girl’s name is Lola Florek. My source tells me you organize parties for out-of-town businessmen. That you’re a middleman for Yellow Roberts. That you recruit the entertainment—white whores for colored men. Reefer and gin parties, like that. I thought you might have seen the girl.”

  “Your source.”

  “A cop I know.”

  “This cop on my payroll?”

  “I wouldn’t know. And if I knew, I wouldn’t care. And I wouldn’t sell him out.”

  Ray sipped brandy, chased it with water. “Tell me about the punch-board.”

  “Small-town girl imported to D.C. Hooked on hop from what I can make out. The hop’s what keeps her tied to her pimp. Her brother’s a friend of mine. He’s looking for her, and I’m helping him out.”

  “Why?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “What’s your cut of this?”

  “No cut.”

  “Tough nut like you? It ain’t like a man like you to be ridin’ a white horse.”