“It’s stupid, Joe, that’s all.”
Recevo grinned a little, fished a deck of Raleighs from his coat, blew into the open top of the pack. A cigarette popped out from the rush. Karras lighted a match, heated up a Lucky for himself, extended the match to Recevo, lighted his. Recevo extinguished the flame on the exhale. Karras cracked the window, tossed the match out into the night.
“Have a good dinner with your pals?” said Recevo.
“Yeah.”
“You and all them JCOs, talkin’ away. That must of been a sight.”
“JCOs?” said Karras. “They didn’t just come over.’ Hell, Joe, they been here over twenty years. Came the same time as your old man, and mine.”
“They don’t sound like it. The little one, Costa—”
“He’s all right. Just has an excitable personality, is all. And Nick Stefanos is all aces.”
“Stefanos is Jake. I know one thing, I’d hate to be on the receiving end of one of his punches. You ever get a look at that guy’s hands? Like pie plates.”
“He offered me a job in his place.”
Joe smiled. “I’d like to see that. You in an apron.”
“Yeah,” said Karras. “That would be somethin’, wouldn’t it?”
Recevo slowed going by the Lotus Club, where a small line had formed outside. Karras craned his neck.
“What’re they, givin’ away drinks?” said Karras.
“No cover tonight,” said Recevo. “The usual revue. Burlesque, with an orchestra. The Baron Twins—”
“I seen ’em,” said Karras. “One’s all right, but two is overkill.”
Recevo hooked a left onto New York Avenue, downshifted going into the turn. Karras lurched forward, ashes dropping onto his coat.
“Shit, Joe, can’t you control this oil can?”
“It’s that Flathead V-8 under the hood. A little too many horses for the car.”
“Maybe you ought to get yourself a nice, quiet sedan.”
“I got my eye on the new models when they come out. A Hudson, maybe. Anyway, I don’t need advice from a guy who doesn’t even own a set of wheels.”
“I like to walk, is what it is.”
“Yeah, you took a good one tonight. You know, you coulda caught a streetcar, Pete.”
“You seen the streetcars lately? Too crowded for me. They all look like the Toonerville Trolley, everybody hangin’ off the sides. This whole damn town’s too crowded. They said things would clear out after V-J Day, but you wouldn’t know it, lookin’ around D.C.”
“You can’t complain about the women, though, can you. My God, there’s enough of ’em.”
“I noticed,” said Karras.
“Sure you did,” said Recevo. “Gash-hound like you.”
Karras dragged on his cigarette, blew smoke through his lips and watched it shatter on the windshield. He looked down on the hand that held the cigarette. A wedge of yellow light passed across his fingers, disappeared and returned as they drove beneath the streetlights. The veins along the back of his hand reflected blue in the light.
“Where we headed now?” said Karras.
“To see Mr. Burke,” said Recevo. “He’s got something for us to take care of later on. It won’t take a minute. He’s just gonna give us our marching orders, and then we’re gonna be on our way.”
“I took all the orders I ever wanted to take in the service.”
“It kept you alive, didn’t it?”
“Luck kept me alive,” said Karras. “Plain dumb luck.”
“Well, I’ll do any talking if it’s called for. You just smile and nod your head. Think you can do that?”
“Sure, Joey,” said Karras. “I’ll just nod my head.” He took one last drag off his cigarette, and pitched the butt end out the window.
Sinatra’s latest, “Day by Day,” came smoothly through the radio. Recevo reached over and gave the volume a quarter turn. He tossed his cigarette, settled into his seat, smiled, and began to sing along. Karras let him do it. The truth of it was, Joe had a pretty nice voice.
“You know, they say it’s gonna be all singers now,” said Recevo at the break in the vocal. “The big bands are through.”
“That’s what I hear.”
“I loved the bands, you know? But if all the singers sounded like Sinatra, I wouldn’t mind if I never heard another instrumental number in my life.” Recevo tapped Karras’s arm. “Hey, you remember the first time we saw him?”
“U-Line Arena,” said Karras.
“Nineteen-forty. He was with the Pied Pipers. Sang ‘Just Look at Me Now.’ My God, the girls went nuts. One minute we were dancin’ with a couple of broads, and the next we were standing alone in the middle of the floor. Hell, we barely even knew who the guy was.”
“Looked like just another greaser to me,” said Karras. But Recevo was off somewhere, and the comment didn’t sink.
“But the best night,” said Recevo. “The best night! That was when we took those canoes down from Fletcher’s Boathouse, floated down the channel to the Watergate barge. Sinatra was playing for free that night, under the stars with a full orchestra. Sang ‘Ol’ Man River,’ right? It’s like the whole crowd was hypnotized or somethin’. Man, those women were all googoo-eyed, hangin’ off the Memorial Bridge.”
“Just before you shipped out.”
“Yeah. I was with that Lawson girl — what the hell was her first name?”
“How would I know? She was your girl, not mine.”
“And you were with Helen Leonides. Goddamn, did she look put together that night. A brick shithouse don’t begin to describe it—”
“Knock it off, Joey.”
“Sorry. I forgot, you’re married now. And your buddy Pericles is married to Helen—”
“Forget about it.”
“What, now you’re gonna tell me you never had any of that? Shit, Greek, you told me the next day that you jazzed her all up and down—”
“I said, knock it off!”
“All right.”
They drove without speaking for the next couple of miles. A Phil Harris record replaced the Sinatra. Karras rolled the window down an inch and let himself cool off. It wasn’t Joe he was mad at, anyway.
“As a matter of fact,” said Karras, “I saw Perry earlier tonight.”
“How’s he doin’?”
“He’s good. He’s working hard, lookin’ to open a place of his own. He’ll probably have a few of them when he’s done.”
“See the new baby?”
“Uh-huh. The baby’s fine.”
“And how about Helen. You see her too?”
“I saw her.”
“Yeah?” Recevo cleared his throat. “How’d she look?”
Karras looked over at Recevo. Both of them broke out in laughter. Karras punched Recevo’s arm. Recevo put one hand up to stop a second blow, and the Mercury swerved over the center line. They hit the Negro blocks around New Jersey Avenue, still laughing as they reached a cross street with a few row houses occupied by whites. Recevo pulled over to the curb and cut the engine.
“Remember what I said, Pete.”
“Smile and nod.”
“Right.”
They got out of the coupe and crossed the street. Karras and Recevo were roughly the same height, moved similarly with fluid, sharklike intent. When they walked together, side by side like that, it was as if they were two halves of one man. Recevo had angular, set-in, pockmarked cheeks, and he was dark of complexion with black, wavy hair. Nobody ever called him handsome like they did Karras. Street handsome was more like it. But Recevo did all right.
They took the steps up to the row house door. Like several corner row houses scattered around D.C., this one was topped with a castlelike battlement. A crenellated wall crowned its turret. Recevo pointed it out to Karras.
“What, is Burke splittin’ the rent with King Arthur, or somethin’?”