13
George Georgakos lived in one of three furnished rooms in a private rowhouse at 3rd and Seaton Place in Northeast. Recevo pulled the Mercury to a stop beneath a streetlamp, a half block down from the house. He cut the engine, reached beneath the seat.
“What’re you lookin’ for, Joe?”
“I got a sap somewhere under here.”
“You won’t need it. Let me talk to the guy, work it out.”
“You know him, huh.”
“I’ve seen him around.”
Joe kept at it beneath the seat. “Maybe he won’t want to listen.”
“Forget about the sap. Like you need it on some old man.”
“You gonna handle it?”
“I said I would.”
“Well, move it. I got to check in with Burke, and it’s way late.”
They got out of the car, moved together along the sidewalk toward the house. The place had been set up by the landlords with a separate entrance for the tenants. Karras and Recevo stepped into a kind of foyer which led to four closed doors and one open door leading to a common toilet and shower. The landlord’s door was decorated with a fancy nameplate, etched brass, while the other doors had small metal cages on their faces holding slips of white cardboard on which the tenants’ names were scrawled. A red sign hung on the wall next to the landlord’s door, announcing a vacancy for a QUIET, OLDER, MALE GENTILE at thirty-two bucks a month.
“Thirty-two a month,” said Recevo. “For this dump?”
“Over here.” Karras stood in front of the door at the end of the foyer. He looked at the name in the slot, the E in Georgakos lettered Grecian-style, curved like the head of a pitchfork.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothin’,” said Karras. He knocked on the door two times. He could hear loud music coming from inside the room.
After a while the door swung open and Georgakos stood in the frame. He was a short Greek with closely cropped, unruly hair and a thick, wide moustache handlebarred at its ends. Karras looked at the low-slung build, the forearms thick and hard as slats of fruitwood. Georgakos wore a white shirt with two pens clipped in the breast pocket, and striped, pleated trousers cut from wool. He leaned against the frame, stayed there. He was drunk. They were all drunk.
“Yeah,” said Georgakos.
“We’re from Burke’s outfit,” said Karras. “We’ve come to get a payment on what you owe.”
“Huh?”
“Chrimata. Yia to Kyrio Burke.”
Georgakos looked at Karras, his moustache notching up a touch on one side. “Ellinos eise?”
Karras nodded. “Panayoti Karras.”
“Apo pou?”
Now you want to know the rest, Georgakos. Where my people come from, and all that. And then you’ll put me together with my old man.
“Sparti,” said Karras.
“O patera sou eine Dimitri Karras?”
Karras nodded once again. “Ne.”
Georgakos made a sloppy head move toward Recevo. “Ke aftos?”
“Aftos eine Italos. Fylos mou.”
“Uh,” said Georgakos.
“What are you two goin’ on about?” said Recevo.
“He knows my old man. He wanted to know about you. I told him you were a greaser, but that you were all right. I told him you were my friend.”
“Swell.”
“Just gettin’ us introduced.”
“Fine. Can we go in now, or are we gonna get a shovel and plant our family trees right out here in the hall?”
“Ella,” said Georgakos with a flip of his hand. They all walked into the room then, Recevo closing the door behind him.
The music seemed louder now in the confines of the room. It was a small room to begin with, a cot and a dresser and a sitting area and then a stove and sink arrangement on the side. The place stunk of tobacco, with a haze of it hovering in the room. Georgakos’s boxer shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt were laid out on the radiator to dry.
Karras recognized the music as remebetica, outlaw music from the Athens ghettos by way of Constantinople and Smyrna. His father listened to it once in a while, though not without deriding it as music for “hashish smokers, cocaine and opium users, bums like that.” Karras had never seen powder himself, though he did get out of a earful of veterans one night when a joker in the front seat had lighted a reefer cigarette. He didn’t want anything to do with guys like that. Being on hop to him was just as bad as being a cripple.
“Tell him to turn that shit down,” said Recevo.
Georgakos just smiled, waved a finger to the fiddle dancing around the vocals. A 78 spun on the platter of the automatic record-changing phonograph that sat on a small endtable beside a cat-frayed chair. The woman was singing about a village girl whose mother had cut off her beautiful hair.
“Thelis kamio beera?” said Georgakos to Karras.
“All right, I’ll have a beer. How about you, Joe?”
“No. Let’s just get this done.”
“You got to let me do it my way, Joe. Just relax.”
“I get it from the frigidairi,” said Georgakos. He went to the sink and began to wash out a couple of glasses.
“You see that record player?” said Recevo.
“I see it. So what?”
“They got that model down at Sun Radio, on Eleventh and E. One of those new Trav-ler models, go for forty-four bucks and change. If he can afford that—”
“He bought it on time, most likely.”
“I don’t give a damn how he bought it. He bought it, is what I’m saying. If he can buy a phonograph, he can give us our money. We’re not walkin’ out of here without it, get me?”
“I said I’d handle it, Joe.”
Georgakos returned with a bottle of National and two water glasses in his hand. He placed the glasses on his eating table and carefully poured an equal amount of beer into each glass. He lighted a tailor-made and dropped the match into the neck of the bottle. Karras picked up one glass and Georgakos picked up the other. They touched the two together.
“Siyiam,” said Georgakos. They both drank.
Georgakos went to the phonograph and started up the same record. He smiled as the cymbalom kicked in.
“For Chrissakes,” said Recevo.
Recevo had a seat in the tattered chair, took an ashtray with him and sat it on the cushioned arm. He lighted a Raleigh, blew out the match. He watched Karras and Georgakos, standing around the table with the water glasses in their hands, splitting one lousy beer like a couple of hillbillies. His own father had done the same damn thing with his Sicilian buddies, in the old days when they used to drop by, before the old man died. It used to drive him nuts then, too.
Karras wasn’t leaning too hard on Georgakos, at least it didn’t look like it to Recevo. He wasn’t even sure if they had gotten around to the money. Mostly the immigrant was moving his hands around, shrugging, winking when it was called for. Karras’s hands were flying around, too. These Greeks, if you cut the hands off ’em, odds were they’d forget how to talk.
After a few more minutes of that, Recevo began to feel the tick of blood through his veins. He didn’t feel so good any more from the booze; a dull, throbbing ache had pitched camp in his temples. He wanted to have the money in his hands and then get out of that stinking room. He mashed out his cigarette in the ashtray.
The song had ended again, but Karras and Georgakos were speaking Greek exclusively now; Recevo couldn’t figure out if things were coming along. Georgakos went to the icebox for another beer, stopping to take a swig from a bottle of clear liquor he removed from a squat, wood cabinet.