01 The Big Blowdown

by George Pelecanos

  Florek had his sister by the arm and was leading her down the stairs. Lola wore a dirty beige dress decorated with blood-red roses. An overcoat had been draped around her shoulders. As they took the last step, Karras saw her face, colored almost entirely by a large gray bruise. The bruise obscured the great swelling in the area of her nose. Smaller purple bruises sat gorged beneath both eyes. Her two front teeth had been knocked out, a white line of pus oozing there along the gums.

  Tears ran down Lola’s face; tears clouded Mike Florek’s eyes. Karras looked away.

  “Get her in the car,” said Karras.

  Florek led Lola out into the night.

  Karras said to Morgan, “Who did that to her?”

  “I don’t know.” Morgan caught the look in Karras’s eye. “I’m tellin’ you the truth, buddy—I don’t know.”

  Karras turned.

  “Wait a second,” growled Morgan. “I wanna know who did this to me.” Karras shifted his shoulders beneath his topcoat. “Pete Karras. Remember it.”

  Morgan said, “I will.”

  Karras felt the throb of a vein on his neck. He headed out the door.

  Chapter 33

  Karras drove Mike and Lola Florek back to Florek’s building on 14th. He let them off out front, then took the Ford up to S and swung it into the alley, parked it behind the grill. He moved along the alley, negotiating his way around the cats who sniffed and circled his feet, went in the back door to Nick’s, and walked through the warehouse, which smelled heavily of detergent and pine disinfectant and perfume. Costa had scrubbed down every inch of the floor and walls Saturday night, leaving no trace of Bender or his men when he had finished close to Sunday dawn. Not a hair or a shard of clothing remained, and not a spot of blood.

  Karras found Stefanos drinking a bottle of ale on a stool in the kitchen, a string of worry beads wrapped tightly in one hand. He handed him the keys to the Ford.

  “Efcharisto, Niko.”

  “Tipota. You put any dents in it?”

  “I didn’t beat it up too bad. Costa around?”

  “He’s at the Hellenic Club, playin’ cards.”

  “Toula?”

  “She’s up there. Why?”

  “Just want a word with her, that’s all.”

  “Uh.”

  Stefanos seemed listless or in thought, so Karras did not engage him further. He opened the kitchen door and took the stairs up to Costa’s apartment. Toula was not busy and more than eager to listen to Karras and do as he asked. She especially liked the idea of keeping the matter hidden from Costa and Nick, the promise of conspiracy seemed to delight her.

  Karras delivered Toula to Florek’s room. She went in with a small satchel filled with home remedies and herbs. Karras stayed out in the hall and smoked a cigarette. When he was done with it he crushed the butt beneath his shoe. A thin, middle-aged tenant emerged from another room wearing only a towel around his bony waist; the Big War vet nodded at Karras as he tiptoed toward the common shower. Karras listened to the pipes wail and then a tapping sound as the tenant turned on the hot spigot. Mike Florek came from the room, closed the door softly behind him. He stood next to Karras, leaned his back against the wall.

  “Thanks, Pete. Thanks for everything.”

  “Forget it. Here, have a smoke.”

  “I don’t use em.”

  “Have one anyway.”

  Karras shook the deck in front of Florek. Florek took one and Karras took one for himself. He lighted his own, lighted Florek’s.

  “Toula got to work on her right away,” said Florek. “She practically pushed me out of the room.”

  “She’ll fix her up.”

  “She put an empty water glass lip-down on Lola’s back, and lit a candle near the glass. I could see Lola’s skin getting sucked up into that glass. I had to look away—”

  “Vendouzas,” said Karras.

  “What the heck is that?”

  “The cure. Some kind of Greek voodoo. Don’t ask me to explain it, ‘cause I can’t.”

  “Does it work?”

  “Hell if I know. My mother use to give ‘em to me when I got sick. It can’t hurt. And it doesn’t matter whether it works or not, because Toula’s gonna go ahead and use it on her either way. She’ll do some other stuff, too, on the more legitimate side. Look, from what I saw, the damage is cosmetic. And anyway, you got bigger things to worry about than that bruise on her face and couple of missing teeth.”

  “Like?”

  “Like getting her off that junk. Like turning her back into the girl she was. Making her forget about what she’s become.”

  Florek took a short drag off his cigarette. “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “Get her somewhere so she can’t move around too much. Put her in a room and tie her down if you have to. It’s gonna be hell for her, but it’s the only way I ever heard of that works.”

  “Where do I do that?”

  “Home. With you and your mother, back in that steel town of yours, wherever you come from. She doesn’t belong in this city, Mike. Neither do you.”

  Florek looked at Karras. “Tonight?”

  “No, not tonight. Tonight she needs her rest.” Karras put his cigarette to his lips, inhaled deeply. He glanced at the skinned knuckles of Florek’s right hand. “You gave it to Morgan pretty good.”

  “I guess I did. I never hit nobody before, Pete.”

  “A lot of firsts for you down here, huh? You even look different than when I first met you. With all that work, you put a few pounds on, too.”

  “You think?”

  “Sure. How’d it feel, hittin’ that guy?”

  “It felt all right, I guess. There’s no magic to it, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Remember it, chum. It doesn’t take any brains to slug a guy or to hang out with hoods or to get yourself off track. No brains and no magic.”

  “Maybe not. But I’d like to run into the guy who did that damage to my sister.”

  “You better put it behind you. You can’t change it, so you might as well go on and do what’s right for her now.”

  Florek dropped his cigarette to the wood floor, stamped it out. “She talked about it, you know. While you were getting Toula. She talked about what happened.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Fever gab, Pete. She was rambling on about a whole lot of things. Even claimed she was with the hooker that got sliced the other night. Claimed the hooker was a friend of hers. That the killer opened up her friend, then kicked Lola in the face before he walked.”

  “She claim she saw this killer?”

  “She saw nothing. Only a pair of shoes like rich guys wear on the golf course. You know, two-tones. Brown-and-whites, only without the spikes. I don’t believe a word of it. I gotta think that every working girl in this town is seeing killers, on account of they’re so scared. You don’t think there’s anything to it, do you?”

  “No. Hop talk, I’d say.”

  “Yeah. But I’d still like a minute in the same room with the guy—”

  “Forget about it, Florek.”

  “Right. That’s what I gotta do. Just forget.”

  Karras butted his cigarette against the door frame. “Let me get outta here.”

  “Where you headed?”

  “Home. For a change, I’m gonna beat the stroke of midnight. See if I can’t catch up with my wife before she hits the sack.”

  Florek tugged on the sleeve of Karras’s topcoat. “Pete, I—”

  “You told me already.” Karras smiled. “Go on inside and see how she’s doin’.”

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Yeah. Tomorrow we’re gonna work everything out.”

  Karras headed for the stairs. Florek watched his shadow on the wall as he descended. Then there was the creak of the building’s front door and the solid sound of it being shut.

  Florek rubbed his swollen knuckles, thinking of the man who had just limped away. A man taller than his own shadow—that’s
who Pete Karras was. And the guy didn’t even know it. Florek smiled to himself, seeing for the first time how maybe Lola could be all right. He pushed off from the wall, opened the door to his room, stood there for a moment in the frame. He went inside.

  Chapter 34

  The next morning, a Monday, before Dimitri woke in his crib, Peter Karras made love to Eleni to the sound of car horns on H and Eleni’s own gasps and sobs. They had joined violently at first, caught a rhythm soon thereafter, and taken it slow to the end. Karras came first, quietly and for what seemed to be a long while; Eleni broke with a spasm, her one leg kicking at the air, as it always did. Afterwards they laughed about that, Karras giving her the treatment about the leg and not letting up about it, causing her to blush. She forgot about her anger over not having seen or heard from him, except for that one hour of church, for the last few days.

  Eleni cooked Karras a couple of eggs over easy with fried slices of scrapple from Maryland’s eastern shore. Karras took his eggs unbroken and preferred his scrapple browned deeply on both sides. Eleni served both in perfect form, and Karras enjoyed his breakfast while listening to Eleni’s new Jo Stafford record and the sound of the boy trying to sing along to it from the playpen set in the middle of the room. Karras thought: You know, this isn’t bad, hanging around here like this. If I tried it out once in a while I could maybe get used to it. Yeah, this could be all right.

  Karras pushed his plate away and read the sports page of the morning Times-Herald, and had a cigarette with his second cup of coffee, and then he took the boy from the playpen and tried to start a game with him involving a blue rubber ball. But the boy went straight to his mother after the first turn, and Karras had a seat in the living room armchair, thinking: Now what do I do? I’ve gone at it with my wife and I’ve eaten my breakfast and I’ve tried to play with my son. I’ve done all that, and now I’ve got the whole rest of the day to do…what? And then: I’m just not cut out for this racket.

  Some guys can sit around with their families and get used to it and even like it, but I’m not built for it. Who the hell am I kidding? It’s just not right for me.

  So Karras showered and dressed in a blue suit and slipped his cigarettes in the jacket of the suit and shook himself into his topcoat and walked for the door.

  “Where you goin’, Pete?” said Eleni.

  “Out.”

  Two minutes later he was limping east on H, his back to the morning sun.

  * * *

  The bell chimed as Karras pushed through the door and entered Nick’s. A couple of Negroes whom Karras did not recognize were seated on stools, with Costa back behind the counter, alternately halving lettuce heads on the sandwich board and keeping an eye on the customers. A show called “Rhythm Special” on WOOK came from the house radio, and the two customers moved their heads in unison to the bass line of the beat.

  “Hey, Costa.”

  “Karras.”

  “Busy?”

  “Yeah. Your boy Florek called in sick.”

  “Where’s Nick?”

  “Sto kouzina.”

  Karras went through the hinged doors, entered the kitchen. Stefanos sat on a stool next to the prep table, a newspaper spread out on the table, an empty bottle of ale and a glass half-full of it beside the paper.

  “Yasou, Panayoti.”

  “Yasou, Niko.”

  “C’mon and have a little beera with me.”

  “It ain’t even noon.”

  “Ella, re! I been waitin’ for you to come in. Go get a bottle and let’s talk.”

  Karras went out to the front of the house, retrieved a bottle of Ballantine Ale from the cooler, uncapped the bottle, took it back to the kitchen along with a clean glass. He removed his topcoat, put his cigarettes and matches on the table, found a stool. He dragged the stool next to the table. He and Stefanos touched glasses.

  “Siyiam.”

  “Siyiam, re.”

  Karras and Stefanos drank. Karras wiped foam off his upper lip.

  “Anything good in the paper?”

  “There’s this one thing.” Stefanos leaned forward to get a good look at the newspaper, touched one thick finger to an item above the fold. “The law fried some colored guy in Alabama last night. A blind guy. Mavros by the name of Buster Snead. First blind man ever put to death by the state.”

  “He do it?”

  Stefanos nodded. “He confessed. Hacked a woman to pieces in her bed. Says she owed him twenty bucks for over a year. He got tired of askin’ for it, I guess.”

  “Twenty bucks. Not much for either one of them to die for.”

  “Uh. But here’s the funny part. Not laugh funny, but, you know, strange. They asked the guy for his last words before they threw the switch. He says—” Stefanos squinted as he read directly off the page—” ‘I’m going to see Jesus and I’m glad.’”

  “He say anything else?”

  “Yeah. He said, ‘Goodnight’.”

  “That about covers it.”

  “I guess.”

  Stefanos folded the paper, crossed one leg over the other.

  Karras said, “You been hittin’ it kind of early lately, haven’t you?”

  “I been thinkin’, that’s all. The pioto, it helps me think.”

  “About what?”

  Stefanos spread his big hands. “The other night, mostly. Those men we killed. How maybe we moved too fast. How we coulda done somethin’ else.”

  “It’s a little late for that.”

  “I know it. And I’m not sayin’ that they didn’t deserve to die, because they did. If not for this, then probably for somethin’ else. But I’m tired of it. I don’t have the stomach for any more killin’, katalavenis?”

  “I understand. But I told you then that when you start something like this you gotta be ready to go all the way.”

  “I remember.”

  “And you know, somebody’s gonna come looking now for Bender—his own men or Burke’s men, it doesn’t matter which—and when they find out what happened back in that warehouse, believe me, they’re going to want to take it out in blood.”

  “Sure, they’ll come. What I’m sayin’ is, I don’t know if I have the orexi anymore to fight back.”

  “You turnin’ over a new leaf, huh.”

  “Go ahead and grin about it. But that’s exactly what I’m gonna do. I’m gettin’ into my middle age now, Karras. I got a little lucky with that number a few years back, and I want to be around to share it with my family. I wanna get that good-for-nothin’ son of mine over from Greece, get him workin’ here, too. I got a letter from him last week, said he met a nice koritsaki in Sparti. I’m thinkin’, maybe he marries her, comes over with his new wife, I’m gonna get real lucky now, have a grandson of my own some day, too.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you.”

  “Goddamn right I’m gonna like it! Wouldn’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t see that far ahead, to tell you the truth.”

  Stefanos caught himself staring at Karras. He looked away, grabbed his glass off the table, had a swig of ale.

  “Ah,” said Stefanos, “that’s good. Anyway, so like I say, I been thinkin’. I wanna slow things down around here, no more hoods hangin’ around. And no more guns and no more knives. I gonna slow down myself—on my drinkin’, and my gamblin’, and everything else. And you, vre, you need to slow it down, too.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “You and your friend, the Italos. Maybe you ought to talk things over. Get a few things straightened out.”

  Karras looked down at his shoes, shook his head. “Me and Joey don’t know how to do that.”

  “Bullshit. What you gotta do is, you gotta get off the bus.”

  “What?”

  Stefanos leaned forward. “I got this idea about life, see. That life, it’s like a bus ride through town. Lemme give you an example: You take the U Street line over to Seventh, right? You transfer over to a southbound bus, transfer again to the F Street
line, head west on that one across town.”

  “So?”

  “So. When you’re on the U Street line, you gonna see the same people all the time, all doin’ the same kinds of things. The Seventh Street southbound is gonna be different. On the F Street bus, same thing, but maybe you see some of those old people from U—”

  “What the hell are you talkin’ about?”

  “Just this. You and the Italos, you been on the same bus all your lives. That bus you been on, the brakes are wearin’ down on it, katalavenis? I know, ‘cause me, I been on the same kinda bus myself. But now I’m think-in’, maybe I’m gonna pull down on the cord, jump off at the next stop before it’s too late. Catch a new bus, I mean. You and that Italian friend of yours, you gotta get off that old bus, too.”

  Karras lighted a cigarette. He shook out the match and tossed it on the tiled floor. The phone rang loudly from the front of the house.

  “Like I said, Nick. I don’t know how to do that. I’d like to, but I just don’t know how.”

  “Aaaah,” said Stefanos, waving a hand at Karras. “You just don’t know yourself, that’s all. You look in the mirror, you’re not seein’ the same man I see sittin’ here right in front of me.”

  “Listen, Nick…”

  Costa pushed halfway through the swinging doors. “Karras! It’s that Irish cop on the phone, lookin’ for you.”

  “Boyle?”

  “Boyle, Doyle, what the hell do I know? I’m busy out here, goddamn! Come on out here, malaka, and pick up the phone.”

  Karras went out to the front of the house. He mussed Costa’s hair as he took the phone.

  “Ella, vre bufo!” said Costa. He cursed Karras creatively as he walked away.

  “Jimmy?”

  “Yeah, Pete, it’s me.”

  “Jimmy, I was gonna call you this morning myself, thank you for that tip on DeAngelo Ray.”

  “Anything there?”

  Karras dragged on his smoke. Lola had claimed that she had witnessed the murder; hop dream or no, he didn’t want her involved with the law just yet.

  “Nothing yet,” said Karras. “But I’m still checking things out.”