01 The Big Blowdown

by George Pelecanos

  On the walk west, Boyle had gone through Temperance Court near 12th and T, where any variety of dope or weapon could be bought, and he had seen a known tea smoker named Russell Edwards making a buy. Boyle had called Edwards’s name, chased him on foot, lost the younger, thinner man two blocks south. Afterwards, he laughed at his own uncharacteristic tenacity while catching his breath. To go after a man in the Court unassisted was foolish, and mainly a waste of time. It was not something Boyle would normally do.

  Boyle headed down U toward 14th, twirling his baton as he walked. He smiled at the sight of a young Negro on the sidewalk talking softly to a woman who leaned out of a second-story row house window. The young man was dressed to the nines, moving his hands elegantly, pleading his case in a very poetic way. Boyle looked at the woman, the fine chocolate skin of her thin arms, the curl of her lips, her teeth…he didn’t blame the young man, understood the inspiration for his poetry and desire. Since Negroes couldn’t come to see the shows in the white venues, but whites could go to the Negro houses, Boyle often went to the Howard Theatre to catch the revues. On those occasions, he spent more time studying the women in the audience than he did the acts. His preference was just another aspect of his character that would have to remain hidden from the departmental brass.

  Boyle stopped at the head of an alley, noticed three men shooting dice against the bricks. The man running the game stood to the side, dollars fanned out in one tight fist. He was a jockey-sized man, balding, a Jew with a knotted nose and a glass eye. Boyle knew him as Matty Buchner.

  “Buchner!” said Boyle, rapping his baton against the wall.

  The three men collected what they could from the ground, bolted off down the alley, booked right at the T. Buchner stopped to collect the money they had left, then began to follow their path. His short wheels didn’t take him far. Boyle caught up to him without effort and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. He spun Buchner around, backed him up against the bricks.

  “Matty, where you think you’re goin’? I know where to find you anyway, you know that.”

  “I wasn’t runnin’ from you, officer, honest. I just wanted to catch up with those guys, they left a few scoots lyin’ around on the ground.”

  “That’s you, Matty, a Boy Scout all the way.”

  Buchner’s good eye moved toward the T of the alley. The glass eye didn’t follow. “I almost made it,” he muttered.

  “You weren’t even close,” said Boyle.

  “You gonna take me in?”

  “Depends. You got anything for me today?”

  Buchner wiggled his closed mouth. He was a nervous little guy, a cold-finger man and gamer who had done a stretch for hitting the coatroom at the Shoreham during a high-society wedding reception in ‘46. Buchner had been going through unattended coats and purses for fifteen years before he had been caught. It was said around Shaw that Buchner had run his hands through more fur pieces in those fifteen years than Sinatra had in his whole career. All cops had informants, some more reliable than others. Boyle had Matty Buchner.

  “What do you hear about the murder?” said Boyle.

  “Which murder?”

  “The latest hooker.”

  “Oh, her. I ain’t heard nothin’, officer. Honest.”

  Boyle ground his teeth together. That was another thing with those pills.

  “That so,” said Boyle. He went to the place where the men had been shooting craps, picked up the dice from the stones. He examined the dice, turning them in his hands. Boyle grinned. “These your sugar cubes?”

  “Yeah,” said Buchner, blinking the good eye, giving his mouth an involuntary wiggle. “Something wrong?”

  “Nothing wrong,” said Boyle. “Not unless you want to roll a seven with these things.”

  “Come again?”

  “Two, four, and six. That’s the only numbers I see on these dice. Any way you add ‘em, it’s kinda hard to roll a seven with these babies, isn’t it, Matty.”

  Buchner slapped his own cheek. “Man-O-Manischewitz! Did I bring them novelty dice out with me today? My little nephew, he musta slipped them into my trousers when I wasn’t lookin’—”

  “Can it.”

  Buchner’s shoulders slumped. “All right.”

  “Those men who just hotfooted it out of here, you think they might want to know about how their pal Matty was fixin’ the game? Say, wasn’t one of those guys that big spade that works behind the bar at the Yamasee on U? That was him, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t r-recollect.”

  “I’m gonna ask you again.” Boyle got close into Buchner’s face. “What do you hear around on the hooker murders?”

  “Pasadeno. It’s like I said, I don’t know nothin’, officer, honest. I mean, I know what you know. The hookers that got themselves dead, they were all big and fat. To each his own and all that, but you gotta figure this guy that turned out their lights has something against fat hookers.”

  “He hated them, huh? What’re you, a head doctor?”

  Buchner shrugged. “Hey, I saw Spellbound, like everybody else. Anyway, it ain’t too hard to figure out. I mean, you saw what he did to ‘em. It ain’t exactly a love letter when you cut a girl open from her throat to her snatch.”

  “Maybe he was on a budget. Maybe he chose the fat ones on account of the fat ones come cheaper.”

  “Ixnay. Not these fat ones. We’re not talkin’ about five-dollar punch-boards here. And none of them were known streetwalkers, I read that much myself in the Evening Star. It was all telephone trade, from what I understand. I mean, it ain’t like the guy walked into a cathouse and ordered one up. He arranged a meeting through a third party, kept the date, then took the girls into an alley and opened them up. But you know all that.”

  “Yeah.” Boyle backed off. “You can go. But I want some information quick. I’m gonna hold on to these dice, in case I run into that bartender from the Yamasee.”

  “I’ll ask around.”

  “Do better than that. Find something, and find it quick.”

  “Thanks for—”

  “Get out of here. I’m tired of lookin’ at your face.”

  The little man went down the alley, cut left at the T. Boyle walked back out to U, headed west. He was feeling a little drawn, kind of blue, with less of the energy he had before. Maybe he’d go into Nick’s place, say hello to Pete Karras, have a cup of coffee to pick himself back up.

  Boyle thought of Buchner, twitching in the alley, shifting his feet like a kid who had to take a leak. The little Jew was tougher than he looked; it must have hurt awful bad when that guy in the joint had taken that spoon to Buchner’s eye. The first trashcan Boyle came to, he tossed the pair of dice inside.

  * * *

  Pete Karras stood in the sunlight coming in through the window, straightened his Windsor knot, formed it right. He slipped on his suit jacket, went to where Vera stood reapplying her makeup in the dresser mirror. He kissed her neck, reached beneath her arm, slid his hand across her breastbone and into her slip. He felt the dampness of sweat, her heartbeat, the swell of her nipple.

  “Pete. I’m going to be late for work.”

  “Me too. You just looked so good standing there, that’s all. I just had to touch it.”

  She turned into him, kissed him, moved him back gently, her palms flat on his chest. “I’ve got to get into work.”

  Vera turned back to the mirror. Karras went to the bed, sat on the sheets, avoided the dark, slick area where they had been. He picked up a paperback novel off the nightstand, read aloud the words on the cover.

  “Evelyn Waugh,” he said. “Who’s she?”

  “It’s a he.”

  “A guy named Evelyn, huh.”

  “You wouldn’t like it.”

  “I haven’t read a book since high school. And even then I didn’t read it.”

  “He’s speaking this weekend at Gaston Hall. Would you like to go?”

  “Speaking? I don’t think so.”

  “You ough
t to read once in a while.”

  “I’ll get around to it one of these years.” Karras watched her drag a tube of lipstick across her fine mouth. “What do you folks do over there at the Census Bureau, anyway?”

  “We count.”

  “Hmm.” He touched the mole on his face. “So it isn’t the job that’s keeping you in D.C.”

  “I come from Indiana, Pete. Anything’s better than—”

  “That’s not what I mean. There’s other cities to visit, if it’s the big city you like. What I’m askin’ is, what makes you stay here?”

  Vera looked at him in the mirror, realized she was staring, forced a quick smile. “I like this town, that’s all. That good enough for you?”

  “It’ll do.”

  Karras got up, shook himself into his topcoat. He walked across the room, stood next to her at the dresser. “What I’m getting at, I guess…what I’ve always wondered is, I mean, why did you call me up, six months after that night in Kavakos’s? And after you had a look at me, what made you stick?”

  Vera stopped what she was doing, gave him that throaty chuckle he was waiting for. Her green eyes were a little watery in the light. “I don’t know, Pete. You noticed my shoes, I guess. And you were funny, and good looking, and honest to boot. And you didn’t try to sell me on how smart you were, or how much money you were going to make, or what a hero you were in the war. You didn’t have any illusions about what you were.”

  “How about when you saw what I had become?”

  Vera grinned. “I took pity on you. Then you surprised me. You turned out to be a great lay.”

  “Aw, quit jokin’ around.”

  “Listen, Pete—”

  “I know, you gotta get into work.” Karras kissed her lightly. “I’ll see you later, sweetheart.”

  He went to the door, opened it, began to step through.

  “Pete?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You think you and me could go out one night? Just have a drink or something, someplace quiet? I’d like to go out one night, get away from this room.”

  “Sure, sweetheart. We’ll do that soon.”

  “Want me to phone you a cab?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s a nice day. I’m gonna walk a while until I get tired. Then I’ll catch a streetcar.”

  “Bye, Pete.”

  “Goodbye.”

  Karras closed the door behind him. Vera got her skirt off the bed, shimmied into it, zipped it up along the side, hooked it at the top. She took her blouse off a hanger and went to the window. She began to button her blouse as she looked outside.

  Karras had paused out on the sidewalk to light a cigarette, his hands cupped around the match. Smoke swirled out of his hands as the match caught.

  “You ask me why I stick around,” she said out loud, her breath fogging the window. “The answer’s staring you right in the face. I don’t know how dumb one man can get.“She saw a twitch of pain cross Karras’s face, felt a dull throb in her own chest.

  “You just don’t get it,” she whispered. “Do you?”

  Vera Gardner watched Karras limp along the sidewalk until he was out of sight. She finished buttoning her blouse, tucked the blouse into her skirt.

  Chapter 20

  Mike Florek slid the last of the dishes into the basin filled with steaming hot, soapy water. He gathered up the tail of his apron, used it to wipe the sweat from his face.

  “I’m gonna let these ones soak for a while,” said Florek.

  “Hokay, boy,” said Costa.

  Florek rubbed his hands dry. Costa stood by the prep table, running the edge of a machete against a whetting stone. Next to the stone, a leather sheath lay on its side. The scrape of the blade against the stone had been ripping through the kitchen since after lunch.

  “Where’d you get that, anyway?”

  “From Karras. One of those Filipinos gave it to him in the war. It’s a good knife. Now I’m gonna make it real good. Real good and sharp, goddamn right.”

  Florek heard a dull thud come from the second floor. That would be Toula, Costa’s wife, calling him from their apartment upstairs, stomping her heavy black shoe on the wood floor.

  Costa went to the door in the kitchen that opened to a straight flight of narrow stairs, he opened the door, yelled up into the black, got a two-minute reply that sounded like bloody murder.

  “Scaseeeee!” screamed Costa, ending the conversation. He slammed the door shut, then walked across the kitchen, his hair going off in all directions, a crooked smile on his animate face.

  It had taken Mike Florek a couple of days to get used to things at Nick’s. Costa and Nick were friends, he could see as much in their eyes, but the stranger off the street wouldn’t have known it. They were at each other’s throats all the time, parrying, constantly looking for an opening in which to place the knife. And Costa could not stand in that doorframe—he was incapable of it—without yelling at his wife, and getting the fury of her verbal wrath in return. It drove Florek crazy at first, all this wasted, meaningless emotion. But after a while he began to look forward to hearing the warm current of affection in their raised voices, their loud spontaneous laughter that came quick as fire and resonated off the high, pressed-tin ceiling of the grill. He liked the way their thick hands punctuated their speech, the way Costa and Nick rolled their Rs, the strange, almost clumsy grace in the way they moved. And there was Karras, a cripple gone gray before his time, a Greek with no accent, a steady, unemotional man, not like Costa or Nick. Florek liked him fine, but Karras was a harder man to get to know.

  Costa sheathed the machete, put it on a high shelf, grabbed a serrated knife and a two-pronged fork from a metal drawer beneath the table, went to a roast beef he had recently withdrawn from the oven and placed atop a cutting board. He licked his thumb, stuck the fork into the beef, began to slice the meat. Costa softly sang a tune in Greek as the slices of meat curled off and fell to the wooden board.

  Nick Stefanos came through the swinging doors, a knife in one hand and a tomato in the other. He looked at Costa slicing the meat, moved his lips like he was going to speak, took a second to chuckle to himself and enjoy the moment before he opened his mouth.

  “Siga, vre,” said Stefanos.

  “I’m goin’ slow, Niko,” said Costa.

  “You’re bein’ too rough with it.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “What’re you tryin’ to do, kill it again? It’s already dead!”

  “Ahhh. What the hell’s the difference, anyway? I make a nice roast beef, cook a nice steamship round like this, these niggers, all they want me to do is throw it on the grill with some onions, put a bunch of hot sauce all over it, goddamn!”

  “Hey, Nick,” said Florek. “You need some help out front?”

  “Yeah, go ahead and watch the counter. I’m gonna slice up the tomatoes came in this morning. Karras ought to be in any minute.”

  Florek refolded his apron, turned the wet part inward, tied it tight around his waist. He went out to the front of the house, Costa and Nick’s laughter trailing behind. The Negro with the records, who Florek now knew as a man named Oscar Williams, sat at the end of the counter with a friend, both of them drinking beers. A uniformed cop sat in one of the booths, sipping a cup of coffee.

  “A coupla more beers down here, youngblood,” said Oscar Williams.

  Florek drew two Nationals from the cooler, served them, put a couple of hash-marks on Williams’s check. Williams handed Florek a record from the boxful that rested next to his stool.

  “Here ya go, man, put this one on the box.”

  Florek placed the record on the platter, let it spin. He snapped his fingers to the now-familiar piano style, the way it rolled fluidly against the rest of the arrangement.

  Williams’s friend looked at Florek going with the beat. “You like this one, huh?”

  “I like it fine. What do they call this?”

  “They call it race music,” said the friend, nudging Williams. “Th
is one here is Fatha Hines.”

  Williams said, “It’s called ‘boogie-woogie,’ youngblood.”

  “What’s that?”

  Williams spread his large hands. “Boogie-woogie? Why, boogie-woogie ain’t nothin’ more than plain old blues, played eight-to-the-bar.”

  Florek didn’t ask what that meant, didn’t really care. He liked the sound, liked all the records, in fact, that Oscar Williams brought into Nick’s. It wasn’t just somebody reading music off a sheet, singing by rote. These people felt something when they played it and when they sang it, and they made you feel it, too.

  Florek grabbed the coffee pot off the burner, went out to the booths, refilled the policeman’s cup. The cop thanked him for his trouble, leaned against the wood. Florek walked back around the counter, replaced the coffee pot, found some dirty glasses and put them in the bus tray. Nick’s revolver, a pearl-handled .38 Smith & Wesson, lay next to the bus tray on its side. The gun was never moved from its spot, and Florek was careful not to touch it.

  Stefanos had come back out and was standing over the sandwich board, slicing the tomato that he held in his hand. Florek had never seen a man who could do it that quickly and without waste. Not that he did it cleanly every time—Stefanos always had cuts on his meaty hands where the knife had slipped. You could count on seeing Nick, every day, with odd pieces of tape hanging off his fingers; tape and bandages, and streaks of blood smudged across the lap of his apron.

  “Hey, Nick,” said Williams’s friend. “What the number was yesterday?”

  “I couldn’t tell you,” said Stefanos. “I don’t play ‘em no more.”

  “You don’t need to,” said the friend, and he and Williams laughed. “If I had your money, I’d throw mine away. Anyway, you fixin’ on havin’ one of those lucky dreams of yours, don’t forget to let us know.”