“A couple of bucks.”
They walked out of Turner’s, hit the night air. Karras reached into his topcoat, withdrew an empty pack of Luckies, crumpled the pack.
“Gimme one of those Raleighs, will you?”
“Here.”
Karras struck a match, drew in smoke. He made a sour face, tossed the match into the street. “How the hell do you stand these things?”
“What, they’re good enough for Babe Ruth and Ed Sullivan, aren’t they?”
“Ed Sullivan,” said Karras, and shook his head. “Where we off to, Joe?”
“To see Georgakos, I guess. Get that out of the way.”
“Georgakos hangs out at the Hellenic Club most nights. He won’t be in till late.”
“All right then, we’ll wait.”
“What are we gonna do in the meantime?”
“Find ourselves a drink, I guess.”
“Make it Kavakos’s,” said Karras.
Recevo grinned, put the Mercury in gear.
12
They drove into Northeast, parked on H, approached the club on the 8th Street side. The sound of the place was spilling out onto the sidewalk, people laughing and shouting over the amplified voice of Frankie Donato, the house emcee. Karras removed his wedding band, dropped it in his trouser pocket. The doorman, a guy named Jerry Tsondilis, let Karras and Recevo in on sight.
It was jumping for a weeknight, the bar near full, all the tables of the nightclub occupied. Karras stepped up to the stick. Recevo elbowed his way to a spot on Karras’s right.
Karras signalled Bill Kavakos, who stood drawing a draft beneath the tap. His brother Johnny leaned on the other end, wiping down a puddle where some booze had spilled.
Bill Kavakos stepped up, nodded at the two of them. His eyes lingered on Karras without emotion. “Pete. What’s it going to be?”
“A bottle of Senate for me,” said Karras. “And a shot of rye.”
“What flavor on the whiskey?”
“Pete Hagen’s. The hundred proof if you’ve got it.”
“How bout you, friend?”
“The same way,” said Recevo.
Bill Kavakos went and put together the order while Recevo lighted a smoke. He blew into the pack, sent another one out, pushed the pack in the direction of Karras. Kavakos returned with the drinks, set them down. Karras floated a couple of ones onto the bar.
Recevo lifted his glass. “Success, buddy.”
“I’m for it, chum.”
They knocked back their shots at once, chased the rye with a swig from their bottles. Karras took in a lungful of smoke, let it out slowly. He looked around the bar.
Kavakos’s bar didn’t seem much different from years ago, when it had been a low-ceilinged, straight saloon, with a film of sawdust on the floor and the smell of stale beer locked in every split of wood. Peter Karras had often walked here from across town as a child, sent by his mother to find his father, to bring him home for dinner. More often than not he did find his father here, watery-eyed and belligerent, his arms folded on the bar. Fifteen years later, here was Karras, doing the same damn thing. He wasn’t his old man, though. Not by a long shot.
“There’s Steve Nicodemus,” said Recevo. Nicodemus was down near the end of the bar, visibly drunk, trying to get Johnny Kavakos’s attention.
“I see him.” But Karras was already looking past Nicodemus to a blonde who sat beyond him, reading a paperback novel, a cocktail glass in front of her.
“Want to go talk to him?”
“Maybe later,” said Karras, finishing his beer. “Let’s have another round.”
“We got work to do tonight. And you ain’t much of a drinker.”
“I need more practice at it, that’s all.”
“Whatever you say.” Recevo caught Bill Kavakos’s eye. “One more time over here!” he said, swirling his finger above their empty glasses.
They had their shots and dented the beers. Recevo saw a girl he knew, Lois Roman, walk into the nightclub with an older guy wearing a herringbone topcoat. Lois wore a muskrat topper, which Recevo figured went for a couple of hundred bucks. He wondered if the guy with the gray temples had sprung for the coat.
“I’m gonna head into the nightclub,” said Recevo. “You coming?”
“Nah. That Donato guy gives me a headache. Your grandmother was laughing at those jokes when she was in diapers.”
“Not unless she heard ’em in Sicilian, she wasn’t.”
“You go ahead. I’ll be along.”
Karras took his beer down the bar to where the blonde sat. He stood next to her, leaned over, rested one forearm on the pocked oak. Even through the tobacco curtain and the stink of booze he could pick up the clean smell of shampoo coming off her long blonde hair. She wore no perfume, and he couldn’t stand it when a woman did. He wondered, how in the hell could a dish like this be all alone?
She wore a blue slack suit with wing sleeves on the drop-shouldered jacket, a white silk blouse underneath. Karras checked out her feet: cobra-skin sling pumps, open-toed. A matching handbag sat on the bar next to a pack of Camel cigarettes.
“Snake charmers,” said Karras.
“Excuse me?” she said, without looking up from her book.
“Your shoes. I saw them down at Hahn’s. They had a little card set up next to the display. ‘Snake Charmers’ is what it said on the card.”
She glanced up into his eyes for a second or so, and then at his hand on the bar. She had a small, tidy nose and a wide mouth that curved kind of nicely and didn’t seem to move too much when she spoke. Her own eyes were a kind of sea green, crystalline at times when they picked up the light from the fixtures above the bar. He could see that much in those couple of seconds, and knew right away that he liked what he had seen. She returned to her book, spoke to him again without so much as a movement of her head.
“So what were you doing shopping for women’s shoes?”
“It’s a hobby of mine.”
“Or maybe you were thinking of picking up a little something for your wife. Men surprise their wives with gifts when they’ve got to take a load off their consciences, don’t they.”
“I guess you got me,” said Karras, throwing up his palms in surrender. “Yeah, I’ve got a wife. Truth is, I’m as married as a drunk to his bottle.”
“Well, at least you’re honest. You’re awful forward, but you’re honest, I’ll give you that. It’s an unusual combination in this town.”
She had a gravelly quality to her voice, worn and frayed. It was the cigarettes that had done it, that and the bars, if bars were where she spent her nights. Tiny lines flowered off her eyes, and a nice long one arced around the side of her mouth. Her life was beginning to show itself on her face. Karras figured she had two, three years on him. He didn’t mind.
“How’d you know I had a wife?”
“You’ve got a sun line on your finger. You didn’t figure that, did you.”
“Can’t say I did. Anyhow, we got that out of the way nice and quick. Why don’t you let me buy you a drink?”
“What am I going to have to do for it?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Take your head out of that book, for one. It must be something, the way you’re buried in it.”
“It’s The Fountainhead. Have you read it?”
“I’m not big on books. Any good?”
“It’s long, anyway. It’s about... well, it’s about Freud and Nietzsche, when you get right down to it.”
“Nietzsche? Nietzsche, geechie, what do I know?”
“He’s a philosopher. You know, Man and Superman.”
“Superman? Him I know. I’ve seen the cartoons.”
She laughed, put the book down on the bar, tossed her hair off her shoulder as she looked his way. She studied him this time.