Karras did not step back. “I gotta go. Pop.”
“You too good to talk to me now? In your gangster suit?”
“Dimitri—” said Georgia.
“Shutup!” Some spit flew from Dimitri Karras’s mouth.
“Relax, Pop.”
“I’m gonna relax when I wanna relax! You’re not gon’ tell me nothin’!”
Dimitri raised his open hand, brought it down towards Peter’s face. Peter grabbed his father’s wrist, twisted, pushed away. Dimitri lost his balance and fell heavily to the hardwood floor. He stayed there on his side, looking up at this son, his watery brown eyes a mixture of hurt and anger and shame. Karras looked away.
“Fiya apo tho!” his mother screamed, gasping for air through her sobs.
Karras did as his mother asked, and walked from the apartment. On the stairs, he heard the door close softly behind him. He went out of the building, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. He looked back up at his parents’ apartment, and saw the curtain move from his mother’s bedroom window.
Karras found a phone in a Chinatown restaurant, dialed Joe Recevo. He lighted a cigarette and drew on it while he waited for someone to pick up.
“Hello.”
“Joe, it’s Pete.”
“Hey, Greek, been waitin’ by the phone.”
“Here I am.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothin’,” said Karras. “I’m just anxious to get out, that’s all.”
“Where you at, I’ll pick you up.”
“I’m gonna grab a little dinner first. Why don’t you swing by Nick Stefanos’s grill, say in about an hour.”
“Fourteenth and S, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Hell, what are you, in Chinatown? That’s a long way on foot. I’ll pick you up now, we’ll drive over.”
“That’s all right, Joe,” said Karras. “It’s nice out, not too cold. I think I’m gonna walk.”
Karras cradled the receiver, stepped out of the restaurant, buttoned his topcoat as he headed west, pigeons fluttering at his feet. The sun had gone down behind the buildings, leaving long shadows in the golden cast of dusk. He closed his eyes, breathed in the city smells, tried to let things slow down. It was better now, alone out here, walking on the streets.
9
Peter Karras had broken a sweat beneath his topcoat by the time he reached 14th. He turned north, going by Pete Frank’s restaurant, a place called the Sun Dial, at R. Frank — Frangis was his name before he Americanized it — was a large Greek from Comosta, a mountain village outside Sparta proper. Karras could see Frank’s wife Alice, a stylish woman in her early forties, behind the counter as he passed. He nodded, and caught a smile in return.
Nick Stefanos’s grill stood one block up, on the corner of S. An oblong sign hung above the door, blue with red lettering encircled by white bulbs, lit now in the growing darkness like a theatre marquee. NICK’S was all it said. Karras pushed on the door and stepped inside.
Nick’s was a plain eat house with eight backless stools up against the lunch counter and three wood-benched booths along the wall. Behind the counter ran a grill and sandwich board arrangement with a soda fountain, coffee urn, and ice cream cooler to the side. A full kitchen sat to the back, and beyond that lay a warehouse area with a private head and a bolted door that led to the alley.
Karras removed his topcoat, hung it on one of the trees that adjoined the booths, and had a seat on a swivel stool cushioned in red, the cushion veined in black. He took his smokes with him.
“Yasou Panayoti!” said Nick Stefanos, walking down to Karras behind the counter, rubbing his hands on a stained apron.
“Yasou Niko.”
Karras took Stefanos’s hand, leathery and large as a boy’s first mitt, and shook it. Stefanos was big for a Greek, barrel-chested and broad, with a wide open face to go with his size.
“What’re ya gonna have?” said Stefanos.
“What’s the dinner special?”
“We got a nice little lamb. Costa cooked it this afternoon.”
“I don’t think so. Make it a plate of franks and beans.”
“Anything to drink? How ’bout a bottle of beer?”
“Just a Co-cola,” said Karras.
Stefanos turned his head toward the slotted hinged doors that led to the kitchen. “Costa,” he yelled, “a plate of franks and beans out here! Grigora!”
Costa, short and stocky with a great head of black hair and a thick black moustache, pushed through the doors excitedly. The only other customer, an old-timer wearing a chesterfield coat, glanced up from his soup at the sound of the doors crying on their hinges.
Costa looked at Karras. “What, you tellin’ me these hot dogs for you, Pete?”
Karras nodded. “That’s what I want, Costa.”
“You think you at the ballpark or somethin’? Huh? I got a nice little lamb in the back!” He tossed the carving knife that was in his hand up into the air. It rotated once, came to rest cleanly in his grip.
“Give him what he wants,” said Stefanos.
“Entaxi.” Costa snorted, cursed floridly, turned back toward the kitchen.
“You got no problem,” said Stefanos, “do you, Costa?”
“Me?” said Costa. “I don’t give a damn nothing.”
Stefanos reached into the cooler, fixed a nice plate of calamata olives and feta cheese. He put the plate and a bottle of Coke on the counter in front of Karras.
“Here you go, vre,” said Stefanos. “Have a little meza while you’re waitin’.”
“Thanks, Nick.”
Karras popped an olive into his mouth, stripped it, spit the pit into the plate. He looked past Stefanos’s wide head to the large blue sign that hung on the wall — MANN’S POTATO CHIPS, YEAH MANN! — and listened to the show coming from the radio that sat on a wooden shelf next to the sign. An actor was being interviewed by a ventriloquist’s dummy. Karras had to smile.
“Who’s that on Charlie McCarthy?” said Karras.
“What’s that guy,” said Stefanos, “the guy plays a drunk.”
“Ray Milland,” said Karras. “You seen The Lost Weekend yet?”
“I go to the pictures, I wanna be happy. See a good Western, maybe. What I wanna see a movie ’bout a boozer for? I got enough problems of my own, right here.”
“What kind of problems you got?”
Stefanos made a sweep of his hand. “Just look at my dinner business. There isn’t any. The car agencies across the street, they had to close on account of the war.”
“Well, they didn’t have any cars to sell.”
“I know, but... what I got left is the phone company business, and it’s not enough. I’m telling you, I’m thinkin’ about turning this into a place for the mavri.”
“You’re gonna make this into a colored joint?”
“I’m thinkin’ about it. Hell, Pete Frank’s gettin’ ready to do it, right down the street. I can’t let him get all the mavriko business from U Street, can I?”
“Frank’s a good man.”
“All right, he’s good. But what the hell, I’m not gonna let him get all the goddamn business.”
Costa came from the kitchen and dropped a steaming plate of food in front of Karras. He reached under the counter and married a fork and knife setup to a napkin. He slid a bottle of ketchup down next to that.
“Here you go, boss,” said Costa. He walked away.
“So what about you?” said Stefanos, leaning his bulk against the counter. “What’re you gonna do, now you’re back from the war?”