01 The Big Blowdown Read online

  “What’s goin’ on?” said Recevo.

  “We’re working it out,” said Karras. “It might not be tonight, but he’ll pay what he owes. I’ve got his word. He’s got himself in a little financial trouble right now, is all it is.”

  “That’s horseshit. We get the money tonight.”

  “You’re not gonna get involved here, Joe.”

  “Watch me.”

  Georgakos returned, poured beer into the glasses. He drank deeply from the glass, looked at Recevo in a too-cheerful kind of way. Recevo stood out of the chair.

  “All right—you’ve been given enough time, old man. We want the money tonight.”

  “Huh?” said Georgakos.

  “You understand what I’m saying,” said Recevo. “You understand everything just fine. I want that money—now.”

  “I’m gonna give it to you. But first I’m gonna have a dance. Hokay, vre gamoto?”

  “What’d he call me?” said Recevo.

  He called you a fuck, thought Karras. Karras said, “He called you his pal.”

  Recevo took his hat off, smoothed back his hair. Georgakos went to the phonograph, started the same record once again. He turned up the volume.

  “Ah, no,” said Recevo. “I’m tellin’ you, Pete, I’ve had it with this shit.”

  Georgakos looked at Recevo, smiled. He began to sing: “Ta mallia sou ta kommena!”

  As he sang, he raised his arms and started to dance. It was a solo dance, a zembekiko. Karras had seen his father do it at the Hellenic Club, or at home when he was happy or drunk.

  “What the hell,” said Recevo.

  He watched Georgakos, snapping his fingers to the music, hopping on one leg, tilting his head in his direction as he smiled that goddamned smile of his.

  “Opa!” yelled Georgakos.

  The blood began to drain from Recevo’s face.

  “Ella, yiane tyn karthia mou,” sang Georgakos as he danced. He moved very close to Recevo. His eyes were locked on Recevo’s, and they were mocking and bright.

  “The money!” screamed Recevo.

  “Joe,” said Karras. But it was too late.

  Recevo grabbed Georgakos by the collar of his shirt and threw him violently across the room. The Greek crashed into the phonograph, knocking it from the table and tumbling with it to the hardwood floor. There was a feline screech as the needle ripped across the vinyl, and then the record was in pieces on the floor. The old man sat there looking at the broken 78 as Recevo advanced on him from across the room.

  Karras stepped in front of Recevo. He grabbed the lapels of his topcoat, jerked them together, got right up in Recevo’s face. They stood there inhaling the foul alcohol and tobacco smell of each other’s breath. It had been like this so many times, going back to when they were kids; they couldn’t hit each other; it would always end the same way.

  The color came back to Recevo’s face. Karras released his grip on the lapels. He smiled. Recevo looked away. He bent down to pick up his fedora from where it had fallen, straightening it on his head. He walked from the room. Karras followed, closing the door behind him. He didn’t turn around, didn’t stop to say a thing to the Greek.

  “Hey, Joe!” said Karras. “Come on, Joe, slow down.”

  They were out on the sidewalk now, Recevo walking quickly and well ahead of Karras. Karras was shouting, getting no response. It was late, well past midnight, and quiet as a church. Their brogues made echoes as they slapped against the pavement. A light came on in a window down the block.

  Recevo made it to the Mercury, got in, started it up. Karras slipped into the passenger side just as Recevo put the car in gear. Recevo pulled out, gave it too much gas against the clutch, left a little rubber on the street.

  Karras laughed. “You keep driving this hunk of tin like that, it’s gonna fly apart.” Recevo didn’t answer, didn’t even smile. “Aw, hell, Joey, gimme a cigarette.”

  Recevo reached into the pocket of his topcoat, passed over the pack. Karras lighted one, tossed the match out the window. He smoked some of the cigarette down, settled in his seat.

  “Listen, Joe. About that back there. I didn’t mean to put my hands on you like that.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I thought you were gonna hurt the old guy, that’s all.”

  “I said forget it.”

  “Georgakos, he plays dice games with my old man, down at the club.”

  “Your old man.” Recevo’s voice went low, stayed low and steady. “What the hell did your old man ever do for you anyway, Pete. I been hearin’ about it all my life, and I’m tellin’ you I’m sick of it. Your old man.”

  Karras dragged on his cigarette. “You don’t get it.”

  “It’s you that doesn’t get it. I was doin’ that old guy a favor back there. What I was gonna do to him is ten times softer than what Reed and his boys will do to him next. Not to mention what’s gonna happen to us. When Burke finds out—”

  “I don’t give a good goddamn about Burke.”

  “Sure you don’t. You don’t give a good goddamn about a damn thing, do you? It’s never gonna be your day. You’re indestructible. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “Go on, Joe. Turn it off.”

  Recevo rubbed his cheek. “I gotta make a call.”

  Recevo got the Mercury off New York Avenue, put it on 14th. He parked around F, told Karras to wait in the car. He jogged across the street to the 400 Club, which he knew would be open late. There wouldn’t be a cover at this hour, and they had a phone in a booth with a door on it that sealed nice and tight.

  He entered the club, found the booth, had a seat on the triangular wood bench inside it. He shut the door. The sounds of Joe Masters’s band died out. He rang Burke up, got him on the line.

  “Burke here.”

  “Mr. Burke, it’s Joe Recevo.”

  “Joe. You get it done?”

  “Yes and no. We saw him, but we don’t have the dough in our hands. We had a little problem—”

  “That’s too bad for you.”

  Burke sounded a little slow and slurry to Recevo. He knew Burke drank, heavily at times and mostly late at night. A hand went over the receiver on the other end. The hand came off to a trail of laughter from the others who were in Burke’s office.

  “So let me get this straight,” said Burke. “You didn’t get the money.”

  “No, but—”

  “Karras queered it. Isn’t that right?”

  Recevo shifted in his seat. “He made a deal with Georgakos. He’s gonna get the money from him in a couple of days. Three days, tops.”

  “If I wanted the money in a couple of days, I wouldn’t have sent you over there tonight. Now I’m going to ask you again—did Karras get in the way of what I asked you to do?”

  “Listen,” said Recevo. “It just wasn’t the right time, that’s all.”

  Burke must have made a face or something, because there was an eruption of laughter on the other end. They were having fun with him, kidding him a little. That’s what it was.

  But then there was no laughter. And Burke said, “We need to have a talk with your Greek friend. Tonight.”

  A line of sweat slid down the back of Recevo’s neck. “No disrespect intended, Mr. Burke, but I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “Not necessary?”

  “What I mean to say is, Pete’s out. You don’t need to talk to him, on account of he’s gettin’ out. This business ain’t for him. He’s not cut out for this line of work, that’s all.”

  “He’s out all right. We just want to give him a little retirement present before he goes.”

  “Mr. Burke—”

  “It’s like this, Joe. You have a kid, he does something wrong, you have to slap him every so often, so he gets the idea. You’re doing him a favor, like. We’re just going to slap your friend around a little bit, so he learns.”

  “Pete’s not so easy to slap.”

  “Neither am I,” said Burke, his voice losing some of its contr
ol. “Not normally, anyway. But your friend managed to slap me real good tonight. I have no choice but to give some back.”

  “Listen, M…Mr. Burke…” Recevo heard the stammer in his own voice, hated himself for it. “If it’s me you’re really tryin’ to teach a lesson to, then how about this—I’ll walk away from the business, too. Walk away clean. We part friends, with no hard feelings. How about that?”

  “You misunderstand me, Joe. Anyway, who ever told you that you could just walk away? I can assure you that the alternative is much worse than you can ever imagine.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You saw a lot of death overseas, didn’t you, Joe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I don’t need to spell it out for you, do I.”

  “Maybe you better, Mr. Burke. Maybe you better spell it out.”

  “Think of it like this. You play it like I ask, you’re gonna save his life. You’re gonna save his, and yours. The other way, you’re both going to go down. Understand?”

  Recevo didn’t answer. He was thinking of the weakness that had seeped into his knees, and the heat inside the booth. He was thinking of that day on Guadalcanal, the feeling he had then, the same exact feeling he had now. He was thinking that he was a stinking coward. That he always would be. And that he knew he couldn’t stand to die.

  “Joe, are you there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you?”

  “The Four-hundred Club. Fourteenth and F.”

  “There’s a late-night market three blocks up, on the east side of Fourteenth. Right next to an alley. Do you know it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Drop your friend off there in about fifteen minutes. When he’s inside the market, drive away. It won’t be all that bad. You’ll see.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t fight us, Joe. Believe me, you’ll lose.”

  Recevo closed his eyes, lowered his voice to a near whisper. “How am I going to get him to go inside?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Burke. “Send him in for some cigarettes. How’s that?”

  He’s been out of cigarettes all night. He needs cigarettes.

  “Mr. Burke. Mr. Burke, are you there?”

  There was no one on the other end of the line. The line was dead.

  Chapter 14

  “Gimme one of those, will you?”

  “My last one. We’ll split it, how about that?”

  “All right.”

  Recevo lighted the cigarette, crumpled the empty pack in his hand. He rolled down the window of the coupe. Karras reached over, plucked the cigarette from Recevo’s hand. He hit it, kept the smoke deep in his lungs. He took another drag before he exhaled the first, and let it all go at once.

  “You’re gonna get it all hot like that.”

  “Relax, Joe. Anyway, you don’t look like you ought to have any right now. You look like you had a dizzy spell, or somethin’. Like you had too much to drink. You’re all pale.”

  “I’m fine.”

  With their windows rolled down, they could hear the band from inside the club. From where they sat, it sounded like a pileup of brass, a collision of blare and no rhythm.

  “That’s Joe Masters’s outfit, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They sound like one weak tit.”

  “It sounded something like music inside the club.”

  “You get a hold of Burke in there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “He ain’t happy.”

  “I’ll talk to him myself, Joe. Tell him how it was.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I’ll talk to him, anyway.”

  “Gimme back my cigarette.”

  “Sure.”

  Karras handed it over. Recevo put it between his lips, let it dangle there. Except for the sound of the band, there was no racket coming from anywhere else. There wasn’t a soul out on the street.

  Karras breathed in the air. “It’s nice this time of night. It’s beautiful, you know it? I love this town when it’s like this.”

  “I know you do.”

  “But D.C.‘s different now, since the war.”

  “Different.”

  “Yeah. There’s too many people. And the people are different. Like they always got something on their minds, with no time for nobody else. You notice that? I’m tellin’ you, we lost something in that war. Not just guys like you and me, guys that shipped out overseas. Everybody lost something, I mean.”

  Recevo pitched the cigarette out the window. He turned the key on the ignition, pulled away from the curb. He swung the car around, kept it going north on 14th.

  “Listen,” said Karras. “I’m sorry about how things went tonight.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “We’ll find our way, Joe. We’ll find our way clear, and things’ll be more simple. Like they were when we were kids.”

  Recevo pulled his hat down a little, so the brim of it shaded his eyes.

  Karras smiled. “Remember when we used to spend every Saturday at the pictures? You remember that, Joe?”

  “Sure. At the Earle.”

  “Four hours of entertainment. Fifteen cents if we got in before one o’clock. Selected short subjects, the Movietone news, and a feature. And the orchestra would rise out of the pit. Those dancers—”

  “The Roxiettes.”

  “Yeah, them.”

  Joe laughed. “That one time, you had eaten some of that shit your mother always cooked on the weekends, that shit with all the garlic in it.”

  “Scortbolia.”

  “Whatever. That garlic was just comin’ right through your skin. Little by little, everybody around us started to move out of their seats. They didn’t know where that smell was comin’ from. Goddamn, Pete, I’m tellin’ you, you smelled somethin’ awful.”

  “You didn’t move, though.”

  “No,” said Recevo, his voice cracking. “I didn’t move.”

  Karras stared at him from across the bench. “You all right, Joe? You don’t sound so good.”

  “I’m tired, that’s all. Time for me to turn in. Let’s pick up some smokes and head home. There’s a market open, just ahead.”

  “Okay. I’ll run in.”

  Recevo took his foot off the gas. He pulled to the curb, let the engine idle. Karras noticed a car parked in front of them, two lengths up.

  “Joe, you see that car?”

  “Yeah. It’s a ‘thirty-eight Packard. So what?”

  “I seen that car tonight, somewhere else. I remember that straight-up grille, and the color.”

  “You don’t know a damn thing about cars, Pete.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “Get me a deck of Raleighs while you’re in there.”

  “All right. Be right out.”

  Karras opened the door, stepped onto the sidewalk, closed the door behind him.

  “Hey, Pete.”

  Karras leaned on the lip of the window. Recevo’s eyes looked funny, hollow, his mouth was stretched back like he was in some kind of pain. Like he wanted to scream. He thought that Joe looked awfully strange in the light.

  “What,” said Karras.

  “Nothing.”

  “Raleighs, right?”

  Recevo hesitated. “Yeah.”

  Karras shook his head and laughed. “Man, you do need that sleep.” He pushed away from the car, stood straight, and walked toward the market.

  There was a tune coming from the open windows of the Packard: Tommy Dorsey’s “Well, Git It.” Karras liked that one, with its crazy clarinet solo and those two trumpets coming in together at the end. WTOP played the Dorsey Orchestra well into the night. Was it that late?

  There was no one in the Packard that he could see, and he wondered then why someone would let the radio go on like that and have the battery run down with no one around to hear the music. But then he saw the suit jackets of a couple of guys moving around in
the shadows of a nearby alley, guys who had ducked in, to take a leak most likely, or to shoot a little dice. Karras kept to his own business and entered the store.

  The old bird behind the counter had to get up out of his chair, made a tortured face to let Karras know he didn’t much like it. Karras looked around the candy section, his eyes lighting on a box of chocolate-covered cherries in a vanilla cream. Eleni loved those. Now that his drunk was wearing off, he could stand to have a couple himself.

  “How much for the chocolate?” said Karras.

  “We got more than one kind.”

  “The Miss America cherries.”

  “Forty-nine cents.”

  “Gimme a box of those. Also, a pack of Lucky Strikes. And a pack of Raleighs.”

  “The cigarettes are thirteen cents a pack. Two for a quarter.”

  “I said I wanted ‘em both. I didn’t ask you for the price.” Pops was beginning to cut on Karras’s nerves.

  The old man shrugged and arranged everything together in a bag. Karras dropped a dollar bill on the counter and took the cigarettes from the bag, sliding them in the pockets of his topcoat. He looked out the storefront window while the old man rang up the sale. He saw the metallic flash of Recevo’s car as it passed beneath the light in the street. Recevo was driving away, heading north on 14th. What the hell was he doing, anyway? Probably got antsy, sitting there. Probably just driving around the block, trying to stay awake.

  “Take care, old timer,” said Karras. He took his change and the bag of chocolates and exited the market.

  Karras stood on the sidewalk, looked up the street. Recevo had stopped the Mercury a block or so north, kept it running there against the curb. The brake lights were engaged, and he could see exhaust coughing from the tailpipe. Karras hooked two fingers in his mouth, whistled for Recevo to swing the coupe around, bring it back.

  The coupe didn’t move. Karras stared at the coupe as the lights inside the market switched off behind his back. Reed stepped out of the alley, flanked by two men.

  “What the hell,” said Karras, under his breath.

  Karras recognized the two other men as part of the group sitting around the living room of the house, earlier in the night. One was of medium height, medium build, wearing a badly tailored suit. The other was a little guy, short and slight, with sharp, severe features. He wore a topcoat cut short above the knees and a tall hat meant to give him size. On him the hat looked comical—a Tom Mix number, with nothing underneath. Karras glanced over their shoulders at the Mercury; Joe had moved it out to the street. He was giving the coupe gas, pulling it away.