“Pete’s not so easy to slap.”
“Neither am I,” said Burke, his voice losing some of its control. “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.
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?