01 The Big Blowdown

by George Pelecanos

  Recevo looked at Burke, slumped down in his chair. You need to think, all right. And that goddamn whiskey is really gonna help.

  Recevo stood up. “Well, I’m gonna grab a little chow. I’ll swing back around later on.”

  “Go on, Joe. Go have a little dinner. But come right back. I need you around here. You’re the only one I’ve got with any sense in his head.”

  “Sure, Mr. Burke. I’ll be right back.”

  Recevo walked quickly from the room. Gearhart and Burke sat in silence for the next five minutes. Then Gearhart moved his turtle’s eyes curiously beneath their lids.

  “Mr. Burke?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you mind if I go downstairs? I’d like to sit around with the boys a little bit, if you don’t mind.”

  Burke looked into his empty glass. “Go ahead. Don’t drift.”

  “I won’t.”

  Burke said, “Then go ahead.”

  * * *

  Joe Recevo pulled the Olds to the curb, parked in front of the Patio Lounge, a beer garden at 13th and F. He bought a mug of draught from the barman and took it into the phone booth back by the head, left the booth door open so he could smoke. He found Jimmy Boyle’s number in the book, dialed it up.

  “Jimmy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Joe Recevo.”

  Boyle didn’t answer. Recevo listened to him breathe.

  Boyle said, “What do you want?”

  “I got somethin’ for you, Jimmy.”

  “I don’t want nothin’ to do with you, pal.”

  “Sure you don’t. You hate me straight down to my guts. But I’m gettin’ ready to hand you the biggest break of your life.”

  “Yeah? What for?”

  “On account of Pete Karras asked me to, that’s why.”

  “You talked to Pete?”

  “Yeah. I talked with him this afternoon. But we don’t have time to go into all that. Now listen, you write down this address…”

  Recevo gave it to him.

  “I got it,” said Boyle.

  “Good. Now you get your ass over to that apartment. Go to the bathroom and then in the medicine cabinet. You’ll find a straight razor there. The razor folds into a tortoise-shell handle. Wear gloves when you get it, then take it out of there and get it to your lab boys.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “‘Cause that’s the razor that killed them whores.”

  Recevo lighted a Raleigh, waited for Boyle to sort it out.

  “How do you know?”

  “Karras tipped me, and don’t ask me how. Get goin’, Jimmy. You gotta move fast, on account of someone’s gonna be there in an hour or two look-in’ for the same thing.”

  “Who?”

  “One of mine.”

  “Who’s the killer, Joe? One of your guys, too?”

  “Never mind that. Get the razor first. I’ll deliver you the killer later on.”

  “How am I supposed to get in?”

  “There’s a key under the mat.”

  “Joe—”

  “Get goin’.”

  “I just wanted to thank you.”

  “All right, you thanked me. Now go.”

  Recevo racked the receiver before Boyle could have a chance to say anything else. He leaned back against the wood of the booth. He closed his eyes.

  * * *

  Jimmy Boyle got his service revolver from his dresser, checked the load, watched his hand shake as he sighted down the barrel. He spun the cylinder of the .38, wrist-jerked the cylinder back in, wedged the gun barrel-down behind the waistband of his trousers. He stuck it on the left side of his gut with the grip facing in so he could cross-draw with his right hand.

  Then he practiced the drill in the hall mirror, as he had done so many times before.

  Boyle put a carcoat on over his street clothes. He reached into his side pocket, found the vial of Benzedrine there, dry-popped the last pill on his way out of his apartment. He took the stairs two at a time, blowing by an old woman who pressed her back against the wall to let him pass. A moment later he was out on the street and running, full speed, toward his old coupe.

  Chapter 36

  At 13th and Euclid, Boyle slowed his Buick coupe to a crawl in the middle of the street, double-checked the scrap of notepaper beside him on the seat. He pulled over, parked behind a late-model sedan, cut the engine. He looked around the block of three-story row houses, some crowned with grand turrets, some plain and nondescript. Two starlings lifted off the roof of the corner house, their black wings spread as they glided down to the asphalt to pick at the open skull of a dead squirrel. No one was out on the street; the slate-gray veil of night had fallen. The cold cut right through Boyle’s carcoat, hit his face with the shock of a hornet’s sting.

  Boyle got out of the car, felt the finger-dance at the back of his head. He had come to know it well in the last week. The pep pill gave him that; and it gave him a powerful and unquenchable thirst. Taking the steps at a bounding trot, he tried to raise spit, found that he could not.

  Jimmy Boyle had a sudden image of a lifeless naked boy lying on a concrete slab. The image had not entered his mind since he himself was a child, and here it was again. It had begun to haunt him the day his father had brought home the shoes from the morgue. His father had removed the shoes off the corpse of the boy just the night before, and early the next morning had laid them neatly side-by-side at the foot of Jimmy’s bed. Jimmy Boyle awoke that morning to the sounds of his parents in the adjoining room, their voices raised in argument. “Let’s be practical, honey,” his father had said. “You know we ain’t got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, and Jimmy needs shoes. That boy got hit by that flatbed, he can’t use them shoes today any more than he could use a shirt collar on his broken neck. We gotta be practical!” Jimmy Boyle had closed his eyes then, tried not to picture the boy, lying on that slab with his bruised and twisted neck. And Boyle wore those shoes, all that summer and into the next. But for a long time, he could not stop that boy from entering his dreams. Eventually, the image of the dead boy went the way of all his childhood nightmares, buried and forgotten, but sleeping, not dead. Now, as he walked through a common foyer towards Gearhart’s apartment door, the image was back.

  “Stop it!” said Boyle aloud, his voice echoing in the hall.

  He shook his head vigorously. The dead boy was gone. He knocked on the door. He knocked again. He bent down, lifted the straw mat that sat before the door: no key.

  Boyle stood, turned the knob. He pushed lightly on the door, let it open halfway. He looked around the foyer, stepped into the living room, closed the door behind him.

  A woman lives here, thought Boyle, or a fancy kind of man. The place was neat and orderly, clean smelling, with magazines stacked on side tables and books shelved fussily in order of ascending height. A Lawson sofa, covered in wine matelasse, sat in the center of the room. A Duncan Phyfe loveseat, mahogany-framed with a beige striped fabric, sat facing the sofa. Between the two was a long mahogany table, its top brilliantly waxed and finely beveled, with intricately scrolled feet. Next to the sofa sat an RCA Victor Crestwood model radio-phonograph console, also constructed in rich mahogany wood.

  Boyle walked quickly across a rose, tone-on-tone broadloom rug. The thickness of it muted his steps. He moved into a hall past two open bedroom doors. The hall ended at another open door leading into a bathroom. He moved toward the bathroom; queerly, it seemed to move toward him.

  And then he was in the bathroom. The layout was simple: a sink and a toilet and a bathtub. The tub was large and sat free. Its feet were fashioned as lion’s paws, heavily clawed and leafed gold. A white curtain was drawn around the tub, hung from a semicircular rod. The mirrored wood medicine cabinet sat flush in the plaster of the wall, centered above the sink.

  Boyle looked in the mirror at the black circles ringed around his eyes. His flesh sagged gray on his face. My God, he thought: Is that me?

  He reached for t
he cabinet, winced at the shake in his hand as his fingers grabbed the handle. He pulled back on the door, opened it, looked inside. He saw a pack of Feenamint, some Eno salts, a styptic pencil, a tube of Kolynos toothpaste, a brush, a bottle of Mistol nose drops, a bar of Old Spice soap, a jar of Pond’s Cold Cream…no razor. And for the first time he thought: It stinks a little in here. Rusty, kind of, like some guy just took a big shit.

  Boyle closed the cabinet door. The outline of a man flashed in the mirror. He turned to the right.

  The man was in the doorway—a huge man in a flannel suit with a sickening grin spread wide across his fat face. The brown handle of a straight razor was tightly grasped in his upraised fist.

  My ear. That goddamned bum ear of mine. I didn’t even hear him coming down the hall.

  “I’m a cop,” said Boyle.

  The man said, “Then you must be looking for this.”

  The man brought the razor down violently. Boyle felt as if he had been pushed with a hammer. He stumbled back, turned to grab the bath curtain, saw a diagonal line of blood splash against the white curtain as he turned.

  “Momma,” said Boyle.

  The curtain ripped free from its rings. Boyle tumbled into the empty tub. His head hit the porcelain. He heard the sound, like the sound of a muffled bell, but he couldn’t feel a thing. He couldn’t feel it because of the other pain. There was the other pain now and it was pulsing and horrible and somewhere else. The air had gotten to the cut.

  The fat man walked toward Boyle.

  “I’m a cop,” said Boyle, his voice rubbery and weak.

  The fat man laughed.

  Boyle fumbled his right hand to his left side. The hand was numb, clumsy. He found the grip of the .38. His hand slipped off the slickness there.

  “I’m sorry, you know.” The fat man raised the razor.

  Boyle reached, found the grip. He pulled the gun, slipped his finger inside the trigger guard, fired the gun as the man’s hand slashed down, fired again, screamed something as he fired a third time, watched the revolution of the cylinder through the smoke that had exploded into the room.

  The fat man hit the floor, bucking in convulsion, the heel of one brown-and-white shoe kicking wildly at the tiles. Boyle aimed, put a round through the sole of the shoe. The fat man stopped kicking.

  Boyle laughed senselessly, pulled the trigger, watched the dead man jump from the force of the lead. He pulled the trigger again. The hammer snapped on an empty chamber.

  Jimmy Boyle dropped his service revolver as his head lolled to the side. He heard a splashing sound. A steady high note rang in one ear. It was all warm below his waist. His hand fell away, touched the wetness at the bottom of the tub. It was warm there, too. Boyle’s eyes began to cross.

  The room tilted. The room went black.

  Chapter 37

  Burke placed the phone back in its cradle. He rubbed his hand roughly across his face.

  “That was Reed.”

  Recevo’s fingers ran around the brim of the fedora which he held in his lap.

  “And?”

  “He called in an hour ago to report on his progress, right after I discovered that Gearhart had booked. I told him to get over to Gearhart’s place right away.”

  “He found Gearhart?”

  “Not exactly. There were a bunch of cops and an ambulance out front of Gearhart’s when he got there. Reed parked, hung around, listened to some of the crowd and a couple of the blueboys jawboning about the details.”

  “Reed get any dope?”

  “Yeah. Gearhart’s dead.”

  “Damn.” Recevo frowned in counterfeit remorse.

  “A cop out of uniform took him down after Gearhart sliced the cop from top to bottom. The cop really let him have it. Reed says he saw them bring out the body. Even with the sheet, you could see it was a mess.” Burke sipped at his drink. “I shouldn’t have let Gearhart out of my sight. He panicked, I guess, went to get his things before he skipped. The thing I can’t figure out is, what was that cop doin’ at his place?”

  “Hell if I know.” Recevo paused. “The cop buy it, too?”

  “I don’t know if he made it or not. They had already taken him away by the time Reed got there.” Burke looked at Recevo. “What’s it to you, Joe?”

  Recevo spread his hands. “Cops go bananas when you kill one of their own. They’ll be all over us—”

  “True. But I don’t know if he made it or not.”

  Recevo watched Reed pour from the fifth which had been full that afternoon. The bottle was nearly empty now.

  “You know, Mr. Burke, no disrespect to Gearhart or anything like that, but we might want to look at this as some kind of blessing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This thing with Gearhart is over now. They can’t tie anything to us now.”

  “Well, yeah. But there was that bartender, and the pimp, and that girl that Gearhart let go. Witnesses, all of them. I don’t know what he told them. We’ll never know until we talk to them. Don’t you agree?”

  Recevo did not respond. He was studying the slumped posture of Burke behind his desk. He was wondering how he ever could have followed a guy like that.

  “Anyway,” said Burke, “we’ll know in a couple of minutes. Reed told me he talked to the bartender and the pimp. He sounded real excited about something when we talked. Said he couldn’t wait to get in here and spill it.”

  Recevo withdrew a cigarette. He lighted it, tossed the match in the ashtray in front of him. He took a drag, watched smoke settle in the room. A little while later he butted the cigarette. A door slammed from the first floor at the front of the house. Heavy footsteps ascended the stairs.

  “There’s Reed,” said Burke.

  Recevo said, “I know.”

  * * *

  Peter Karras got out of the cab, went straight into Garfield Hospital, asked the first cop he saw as to the whereabouts of Boyle. There were plenty of cops to ask. They were in the lobby and in the halls, some in uniform, some not. Uniforms or no, to Karras they all looked like cops.

  Karras was told that Boyle was in recovery; he found the room, guarded out front and crawling with more cops. Karras saw Boyle’s father, frail as always, and his uncle, a detective named Dan Boyle. Karras shook the father’s hand, limped across the room to the uncle, a big man in a raincoat who was leaning against the wall, drinking coffee from a mug and dragging hard on a cigarette.

  “Detective?”

  Dan Boyle looked up. “Yeah.”

  “Pete Karras.”

  They shook hands, Dan Boyle giving Karras the hard lawman’s eye.

  “Thanks for callin’ me.”

  “He was askin’ for you before they put him under.”

  “He gonna make it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Karras smiled, bit on his lip. He looked down, saw that he had been wringing his hands.

  “How is he?”

  “The bastard cut him bad. They got him stitched up and stable…whad’ya call that, stabilized. The main thing was he lost a lot of blood. Me and my brother—his father, I mean—we gave what they let us give. Plenty of other cops, they gave, too. Well, he ain’t gonna look so good at the beach. But he’s gonna make it all right. He’s gonna make it fine.”

  “Can I look at him?”

  “Come on.”

  They went to a window that gave to a view of the recovery room. Karras looked in, saw Jimmy laid out with tubes going in his arm and another running beneath the sheet. He saw a couple of white-coat characters standing nearby, talking something over, and a nurse with her palm on Jimmy’s forehead.

  “Those doctors,” said Karras. “They know what the hell they’re doin’?”

  “I suppose.” Dan Boyle nodded. “I can get you in there for a minute if you’d like.”

  “That’s all right. Just do me a favor—when he wakes up, tell him that Pete Karras sent his love.”

  Boyle chuckled wryly. “What, are you two queer for each other or so
methin’?”

  Karras said, “Just tell him I love him, that’s all.”

  Boyle studied Karras. “Jimmy told me about you. Said you’ve been friends since you were kids.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Funny, him havin’ friends outside the force. Me, I don’t have too many friends who aren’t cops. Even family. My own kid just got out of the academy. Hell, his kid will probably be a cop someday. It’s just in our bloodline, I guess.”

  “I guess it is.”

  “I sure would like to know what happened in that apartment today, though.”

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  Boyle shook his head. “We don’t even know why Jimmy was there. The lab boys are going over things now, and we’re interviewing everybody in the neighborhood—”

  “Your nephew’s a hero,” said Karras.

  “What?”

  “I’m telling you, Jimmy’s a goddamn hero. That guy that he killed, the fat man?”

  “Yeah?”

  “He was the whore murderer you guys have been trying to nail for the last three years.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I’m serious. The lard-bucket, he sliced Jimmy with a razor, right?”

  “So?”

  “You tell your lab boys to check out that razor. I bet they’re gonna find some traces of that hooker that bought it last Friday night.”

  “What the hell are you talkin’ about?”

  “Jimmy told me all about it. How he found this piece of evidence, and how he was gonna follow it through.”

  “What evidence?”

  “Damn if I know. You’re the detective, you figure it out. But you better get on it and phone the station real quick.”

  Dan Boyle stared into Karras’s eyes. He walked away, turned once, gave Karras the eye again, kept walking to another group of men. He said something to them in a very blunt and officious manner, and two of them broke off and stepped down the hall at a fast clip.

  Dan Boyle rubbed his chin. He looked over toward the recovery room window. His nephew’s friend, the cripple with the gray hair and marked face, was gone.

  * * *

  Reed stopped pacing for a moment to allow his audience the opportunity to absorb the drama in his account. He grinned widely, his pigs’ eyes closing completely on the action. Recevo reached across the table, tapped ash off his cigarette. Burke broke the seal on a virgin bottle of bourbon, slopped a few inches into his glass.