01 The Big Blowdown

by George Pelecanos

  Karras shrugged. “What can I tell you, Ray? I been ridin’ that black one all my life. Thought I’d try something else, see how it felt. You know, throw the changeup ball. Just to keep things interesting.”

  Ray laughed. “You’re somethin’, man.”

  “Yeah, I’m somethin’, all right.”

  “And,” said Ray, “you’re a lucky man. ‘Cause I’m about to help you out tonight. See, Karras, you show me this picture, and I’m lookin’ at it, and I realize, all of a sudden—I know this girl.”

  Karras felt his heart jump.

  “See, this girl, she was at one of my parties the other night. Got treated kind of rough by this boy from South Side Chicago. When I saw what he’d done, I had to tell that boy that he ain’t welcome back. ‘Cause I don’t stand to see a woman treated that way. Don’t matter to me whether it’s a lady or a punchboard, neither, understand what I mean?”

  Karras nodded.

  “Now, I thought when her pimp came to pick her up, he was gonna be mad, do somethin’ about it. Even expected some trouble out of him. But this pimp, all he did was, he yelled somethin’ fierce at this poor girl for complainin’ about how she got all ripped up inside. And I just didn’t care for that. ‘Cause you got to take care of your women, see. This pimp, that’s a man I’d never do business with again.”

  “What’s the man’s name?”

  “White man. Goes by the name of Morgan.”

  “Morgan—he retails women?”

  “That’s his business.”

  “You got a phone number where I can reach him?”

  “I’ll do better than that. I got an address for you, too.”

  Ray checked a notebook in his desk drawer. He wrote down the information on a sheet of paper, pushed it across the desk to Karras. Karras read it, folded it, slipped it and the photograph in his jacket pocket. He stood up, shook himself into his topcoat.

  “I won’t take up any more of your time.”

  “Yeah, you better go. And don’t be comin’ back around my place either, hear? You just happened to catch me on one of my generous nights.”

  They shook hands.

  “Leave by the back door. You don’t want to be runnin’ back into Ike.”

  “See you later.”

  “1 don’t think so.”

  “Thanks, Ray.”

  “Go on and go. And Karras—”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t forget to thank Junior, too, on your way out.”

  Karras opened the back door, stepped down onto the porch. He pulled the door shut. The tall thin Negro, the one called Junior, sat in a weathered wood rocker, the brim of his brown hat pulled down, throwing shade upon his eyes. A lit reefer cigarette rested between Junior’s fingers. His hand tapped along the arm of the rocker to the saxophone coming from the phonograph set by his side. Karras couldn’t pull a tune from the melody to save his life, but that saxophone, he had to admit, it did sound right.

  Next to the phonograph sat a kind of open briefcase holding records. A cord ran from the phonograph to a makeshift outlet set in the wall. Karras had a seat on a schoolroom chair near the rocker. He looked out into the dark alley, colored faintly from the pale yellow lights spilling out from the back windows of the adjoining houses.

  “Thanks,” said Karras.

  “Say what?”

  “Your boss asked me to thank you. I did it once already, back in the bar, but you were already travelin’. It doesn’t hurt to say it again.”

  “Thanks for what?”

  “For saving my ass back there, I guess.”

  “I owed you one, man. Now we’re square.”

  “You owed me one.”

  “I did.”

  Junior pushed up on the brim of his hat. He dragged on the reefer cigarette, kept the smoke in his lungs. He held the reefer out to Karras. Karras liked the smell of it, rough and overpowering but at the same time pleasing and sweet. But Karras had no desire to give it a try. He shook his head.

  “Some other time.”

  Junior exhaled, blew ash off the reefer cigarette. “Suit yourself.”

  Karras followed the cord to its outlet, flush but unframed against the wood. “Nice work on running that line. You do it yourself?”

  “I wouldn’t touch it myself. You know what they say about us colored boys, don’t you? There’s only two things we afraid of: alligators and electricity.”

  Karras smiled, chin-nodded the phonograph. “What are we listening to?”

  “Cat by the name of Charlie Parker. On the Dial label.”

  “I mean, what do you call this kind of music?”

  Junior grinned. “Call it Jazz.”

  “Jazz. Swing music, you mean?”

  “Naw, man, I ain’t talkin’ about no swing. I’m talkin’ about jazz. Hard bop, Karras. Head music. Kind of music, you can’t really read it straight off. Real crazy, man, like any damn thing can happen, but beautiful that way, ‘cause you don’t know where it’s goin’. Like life itself.”

  Karras scratched his chin. “I saw Harry James once.”

  Junior, suddenly animated, leaned forward in his chair. “Harry James? Shoot, Karras, James and the Dorsey Brothers and Stan Kenton and any other of those gray faces you care to name, you know they don’t know nothin’. And everything they do know, they copped from Mr. Louis Armstrong and Mr. Fletcher Henderson. You can believe that. Now, you wanna stick to the big band sound, you go on and stick to it, that’s up to you. But if you’re gonna listen to that swingin’ orchestra thing, you might as well go on and listen to Duke Ellington, or the Count.”

  “I’m just ignorant, I guess.”

  “Naw, you ain’t ignorant. But you only know what you done heard. And you ain’t heard nothin’, not until you heard a man who can blow like Bird.”

  “Your boss said you’re into that New York sound.”

  “Well, seems like I’m up there every chance I get. I was up there Christmas Eve past, the night Miles Davis stepped down from Bird’s quintet, and Kenny Dorham stepped in his place. Saw Ted Dameron’s outfit at the Royal Roost, up there on Broadway and Forty-eighth. Been to Bop City, and the Clique. I even do a little dancin’ sometimes at the Savoy, on Lenox at One-fortieth. They got a dance floor there, must be a city block long. And everywhere I go—” Junior patted the briefcase at his feet—“my records and this here portable-model phonograph go with me. But don’t let me give you the impression that I don’t dig what we got goin’ on here in D.C. ‘Cause we got our own sound here, too. Yes we do. Got musicians comin’ out of this town, good ones, people like Earle Swope. Swope, with that trombone of his, climbed on down into the city from up in Hagerstown, he’s got that Southern style of playin’, real relaxed. You won’t find a trombone sound quite like his anywhere else, I’ll tell you that. Uh-uh, man. Earl Swope can play.”

  “You know, you’re makin’ me feel like I been tucked away all these years in my own world.”

  “Don’t worry, man. You got your own thing, that’s all. I jus’ been tucked away in my own thing, too.” Junior leaned forward. “Sure you don’t want none of this tea?”

  “I don’t use it. And I got a night ahead of me still.” Karras stood. “One thing’s botherin’ me, though—you said you owed me one. How could that be? I don’t even know you. Junior.”

  “You just don’t recall that you do. But you do. I met you one time, ‘bout fifteen years back or so. We weren’t nothin’ but kids.”

  “What’s your full name?”

  “Round my way—in Bloodfield, that is—they called me Junior Oliver.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Me and my boys, one summer day, we rumbled you and yours over on a field around Fifth. You had me dead to rights, right up on me. You coulda beat hell out of me. But you backed off. You let me go. I owed you one, Karras. Now we done squared things up.”

  Karras shook his head. “I still don’t remember. How’d you recognize me, anyway?”

  Junior Oliver smiled. “By th
ose blue eyes of yours, and that fucked-up mark on your face. You had it then, and you still got it. I never saw too many white boys when I was a kid. You and that mark, it stuck with me.”

  Karras touched the mole with his finger. “I’ll be goddamned.”

  “Head music, Karras. The shit is plain crazy, sometimes.”

  Karras put his hands in his pockets. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

  “I doubt it,” said Junior. “Most time, you and me be walkin’ through two different worlds. This thing here tonight? This was just an accident.”

  Karras turned and pushed through the screen door. He took the steps down to the cobblestones, cut right. He quickened his pace. The colored jazz trailed him and faded as he limped down the dark alley.

  Out on the street, Karras hooked his forefinger and pinky in his mouth, whistled for a cab. A yellow Dodge pulled over and Karras climbed inside.

  “Where to, pal?”

  “Shaw,” said Karras.

  “Express, or you wanna see the monuments?”

  “Fourteenth and R.” Karras dropped a one over the front seat. “Make it fly.”

  Chapter 32

  Jimmy Boyle picked up the ringing phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Officer Boyle?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Matty Buchner.”

  “Buchner. What’s up?”

  “Somethin’ maybe. I don’t know. Somethin’s been botherin’ me since Friday night. It might be nothin’, but—”

  “Talk, Goddamnit.”

  “Why, you don’t have to be so impatient.”

  “I got the caffeine shakes, is all it is. I’m tellin’ you, I’m just plain jumpy.”

  “Well, let me tell it from the beginning. I was in this bar the other night—”

  “What bar?”

  “Jeez, officer, I don’t remember.”

  “So you were running some cold-finger action in a bar. Listen, Matty, I’m gonna get it from you anyway—”

  “All right, I was in the Hi-Hat. Now can I just tell it?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “So I’m in the bar, minding my own business, enjoying a cocktail or two, and I overhear this conversation between this customer and the house tender. The customer, he’s ordering up a punchboard through the tender, who’s nothing more than a pimp who builds drinks on the side.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “I wouldn’t ‘a thought anything of it, see, but this customer, when he’s giving the bartender his order, he asks him to make sure the broad’s a big one. A big one, just like him. What with that murder on Friday night, I don’t know, I thought the two things might connect.”

  “Why?”

  “On account of the dead punchboard was a big one. And it’s on the street already that this one went like all the others.”

  “When’d you say this was?”

  “Friday evening.”

  “You gotta speak up, Buchner. You know I got a dead ear.”

  “All right.”

  “Describe the customer.”

  “Big and round and ugly. Wears clothes real neat and clean, like—whad’ya call that?—a dandy. Not the criminal type, if you ask me—the guy doesn’t look like your average yegg.”

  “What else?”

  “Here’s the part that’s drivin’ me nuts. The guy reminded me of some character actor. At first I thought it was Victor Mature, but I knew straight off that the guy was too ugly to remind me of Mature. And then it hit me yesterday: This actor I was thinkin’ of, he was in a picture with Mature, see?”

  “What picture?”

  “I can recall the story, but for the life of me, I can’t remember the title of the pic. There’s this guy, see—Vic Mature—and he’s in love with this dame who gets scratched.”

  “Who’s the actress?”

  “Carole Landis is the one gets murdered. My God, Landis has this set of tits on her like—”

  “Go on, Matty.”

  “So Mature, he falls in love with Landis’s sister, played by Betty Grable. It’s the only picture I ever saw Grable in where she didn’t sing. Anyhow, there’s this cop, he’s after Mature for the murder, even though Mature, you know from the start he didn’t chill Landis. But this cop is screwsville over pinning the crime on Mature. He can’t let go of it. In the end, you see the cop, he’s gone over the deep end with his obsession. He’s built a shrine in his apartment to Landis, like a church or somethin’, with candles and shit, the whole nine yards.”

  “Who plays the cop?”

  “I don’t know! I seen him in a lot of pictures, but I don’t remember his name. Funny thing is, he killed himself a couple of years ago, on account of he couldn’t live with being so ugly and fat. Ugly and fat, officer, like this character I saw in the bar the other night.”

  “You didn’t happen to lift this guy’s wallet, did you, Matty?”

  “Ixnay. I wouldn’t of thought of such a thing in a million years.”

  “Matty—”

  “And anyway, he never checked his coat.”

  “I’m gonna get back to you on this.”

  “Always happy to keep you up on things.”

  “You think of the name of that actor, you let me know.”

  “Believe me, it’s killin’ me that I can’t.”

  “You just keep thinkin’.”

  Boyle racked the phone. He looked across his apartment to the hall mirror. He’d had the appetite of a bird for the last week, and he’d lost a good ten pounds. His cheeks looked drawn, and black circles ringed his hollow eyes.

  Boyle went to the bathroom, got his pep pills from the shelf. He palmed one into his mouth, threw his head back, dry-swallowed the pill. He’d felt himself notch down in the middle of his talk with Buchner. The pill, that would shoot him back up; if he was going to catch a break now, he’d need all the energy he could get.

  * * *

  Karras spun the wheel of the big Custom V8, cut left off 14th onto New York Avenue. The Ford fishtailed, straightened coming out of the turn. Florek glanced wide-eyed across the seat.

  “I ain’t much of a driver,” said Karras. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t done it all that much.”

  “That’s all right,” said Florek.

  “Anyway, you ought to be happy right now, instead of worryin’ about my driving.”

  “1 am happy. Happy and a little nervous at the same time.”

  “I know it, kid. I’m a little nervous, too.”

  “It was nice of Nick to loan you his car.”

  “Nick’s all aces. But he doesn’t have to know anything about your sister. As far as he was concerned, I was just running you across town to see your girl. Get it?”

  Sure.

  Karras had trouble getting the shifter into third gear. An awful sound came from beneath the car. Florek sideglanced Karras.

  “You know what they say,” said Karras. “If you can’t find ‘em, grind ‘em.”

  “Pete?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How are we going to get Lola out of there?”

  “We’re gonna take her.”

  Five minutes later, Karras slowed the Ford, stopped beneath a street-lamp, read the address on the piece of paper given to him by DeAngelo Ray. Karras parked the car in front of the house.

  “Let’s go, kid.”

  Florek got out of the car, walked quickly up the stone steps to the front door. He waited for Karras, who had to use the handrail for support as he made his way. Karras stood next to him then. He tapped Florek on the arm.

  “Go on, Mike. Ring the bell.”

  Florek pushed on the buzzer. The door opened quicker than he had expected, and a soft, small man stood before them in the frame. He kept himself behind the door as he leaned his bald head forward.

  “Yes?”

  “We’re here to see Lola Florek,” said Karras.

  The man looked Karras over, ignoring Florek. “There’s no Lola at this address.”

  Karras put his g
ood foot to the door. The small man stumbled backwards, caught himself on a foyer table. Karras and Florek stepped into the house. Karras shut the door behind him.

  A healthy-looking woman sat drinking a highball in the living room, while two women in satin dresses danced together to a Bing Crosby number coming from a Victrola set in the center of the room. They continued to dance slowly, their bodies pressed together, as they watched impassively the entrance of the two strangers.

  “You Morgan?” said Karras.

  Morgan held his nose where the door had bumped it. “What of it?”

  “Just want to know I’m talking to the right man.”

  “I’m going to call the cops,” said Morgan. “That’s what I’m going to do. And I’m going to do it right now.”

  “Call ‘em,” said Karras.

  Morgan did not move.

  “Where’s Lola?” said Florek.

  “You fellas have an appointment?”

  “Where is she?” Florek balled his fist.

  “Why, you lookin’ to bust your cherry or somethin’, sonny?”

  “We’re takin’ her out of here,” said Karras. He slipped his hand inside his topcoat, scratched his chest. He kept his hand there, looked down menacingly at Morgan.

  “Go on and get her, then,” said Morgan. “She’s useless to me, anyway. The way she looks now, I couldn’t give that snatch away for free.”

  Florek moved forward, pivoted his back foot, threw a straight right. He connected at the bridge of Morgan’s nose. Morgan was on the carpet before Florek even realized that he had thrown a punch.

  Karras looked at Florek. Florek rubbed the skinned knuckles of his right fist, smiled thinly through a tight jaw. The dancers stopped moving; one of them stifled a grin.

  Blood dripped out of Morgan’s nose and inched down over his lip. He got himself up on one elbow. “Upstairs, second door to the right. Take her and go.”

  Florek glanced briefly at Karras, then took the stairs two steps at a time. Morgan began to get to his feet.

  “Sit there,” said Karras. “Get up and I’ll knock you down myself.”

  “You bastards,” muttered Morgan.

  Karras said, “And keep your mouth shut.”

  Five minutes passed. Karras stood over Morgan while the dancers in the living room took a seat on the sofa and the healthy woman built herself another drink. Karras said nothing more to Morgan. Then he heard the creak of footsteps and looked up.