“That’s right.”
“That where you get your leg?”
“Jap shell,” said Karras. He caught the blonde’s eyes flicking down to his knee.
“You kill many Japanese?”
“Tons.”
Wong showed some rotten teeth. “Then I like you fine. The Japanese, they very bad people.”
“Yes,” said Karras. Whatever it will take to get you to talk.
Karras pushed the photograph of Lola Florek across the table. Wong did not look down.
“So now we talk.”
“You and me alone,” said Karras.
“I wanna stay,” said the blonde, tossing the orangeish mane of straw off her shoulder.
“Beat it,” said Wong, keeping his eyes on Karras as he jerked his head sharply toward the front door. “Brow.”
Brow. It’s “blow,” you pimp.
Karras thought of Recevo, how if he had been here the two of them would have had a good laugh now at the expense of this flyweight. Seeing Recevo earlier in the night, Karras had been reminded that he had not laughed like that in a very long time.
The woman snorted, rolled her eyes. Neither Wong nor Karras paid attention. After a few more second-bill theatrics the woman left the table. Wong picked up the photograph, studied it. Some ash fell from his cigarette into his lap.
“She’s not one of mine,” he said.
“Maybe you’ve seen her around. Like over at the Eastern House.”
“How you know about Eastern House, Kawwas?”
“I grew up in this neighborhood. We used to call it the ‘Eastern Cat-house’ when we were kids.”
Wong nodded. “I know many woman at Eastern House. This is one I have not seen.” He took the tailor-made from his mouth, crushed it in the ashtray. “Why you come to me?”
“You look like a businessman. I see you sittin’ over here with a blonde hooker—”
“All my women blonde,” bragged Wong.
“No Chinese?”
“One Chinese woman to every ten Chinese men. Chinese women too valuable to whore. We marry them, make whore of them like that. Whore who make baby, clean house.”
“This one I’m looking for, she’s taking drugs, too.”
“Not unusual. Drugs make very loyal whore.”
Karras tapped his finger on Lola’s thick-featured face. “So you don’t know her.”
“No.”
Karras took back the photograph. If not for Su, he might have slapped this creep around, just for fun. Instead he shook Wong’s hand.
“Thanks for your time.”
“Okay, Kawwas. I see you around.”
Boyle was back at the four-top, out of uniform and having a little gin with Su. Karras limped across the dining room, letting the fisheyes from the patrons pass. He had a seat, lighted a cigarette.
“Jimmy.”
“Pete.”
Su knocked off the rest of his gin. “I seen you shake Wong’s hand. How you like the way it feel?”
“Next time I’ll pet a snake.”
“You find anything out, though?”
“Nothing. Not even the secret handshake.”
Su grinned. “Well, I tried. Anyway, I gotta get back to my cab, make a little dough.”
“So long, Su.”
“See ya, Karras. Boyle.”
Su speed-walked from the restaurant. Karras poured gin from the teapot, watched Boyle’s fingers beat out a rhythm on the table. Gene Krupa with flesh sticks.
“What’s with all the energy tonight, Jimmy?”
“Couldn’t sleep, that’s all. I’m glad you called me, Pete. I stopped workin’ nights, I’m crawling the walls, looking for something to do.”
“You quit workin’ the door for La Fontaine?”
“Yeah, that’s done. La Fontaine’s eighty-one years old, it ain’t gonna be long before he kicks. And the feds are stepping up on those gambling raids out in the county. What’s that DA’s name, been in the papers every day?”
“You’re talking about Fay.”
“Yeah, him. His boys raided Snags Lewis’s joint last week, got twenty grand from the Crossroads alone. And they got forty-five numbers-and-ponies men in a raid on Ninth Street last month, screwed up the handbook action for a whole week. Course, Charlie Ford’ll get ’em all off. The point is, it just ain’t kosher for cops to be pulling bounce jobs out at those clubs anymore. Eventually, the shit’s gonna rain down on them, too. And it looks bad when promotion time comes around.”
“I never liked that county action, myself,” said Karras. “To tell you the truth, it never felt right to me, being outside the city. I was always lookin’ over my shoulder.”
“That’s you, Pete. That’s you all over.”
“Here you go, chum.” Karras slid the picture of Lola in front of Boyle.
“This that whore you told me about on the phone?”
“Yeah. You keep the picture, the kid’s got another one for me. Lola Florek’s her name — I wrote it on the back.”
“I hear anything,” said Boyle, “I’ll let you know.”
Boyle glanced nervously around the room. Karras tapped his cigarette ash off in the tray, studied his friend: pale, flabby, with shaded half-moons beneath hard, glassy eyes.
“Want a little soup or somethin’, Jimmy? They got a hot and sour here, so good it’ll make you sing about it in the street.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Soup’ll make you feel better. You look like you might be comin’ down with something.”
“I never felt better. You Greeks, always pushin’ food.”
“Okay, Jimmy. Suit yourself.”
They had another teapot of gin, and Karras smoked a few more cigarettes, and somewhere in the middle of the night he decided he’d had enough. Boyle had done most of the talking, gone on about the prostitute murders and about their childhood and other silly things that began to make less and less sense as the time passed. It was like he was in love with the sound of his own voice. When Karras turned at the door to wave goodbye, Boyle was still sitting at the table, beating out a drum roll with his fingers, some elusive number he could neither name nor forget, like the strange tingle that came and went inside his head.
Out on the street, Karras headed for his building. A ’4 °Chevy coupe passed on H. The kid in the passenger side put his head out the window, yelled something at Karras. Karras kept walking, listened to their laughter fade.
He entered his building, began the long trip up the steps. He stopped once, bent over, rubbed at his knee, a habit that did little to erase the pain. He made it to the apartment, entered quietly, hung his topcoat in the closet. He checked on Dimitri, leaned into the crib, smelled the boy’s hair. Karras left the door open as he exited the room. That way the boy would not be so hot.
Peter Karras undressed, slipped under the sheets of his bed. Eleni slept on her side, her breath deep and heavy. Karras lay beside her, let one arm fall around her shoulders. He pushed his groin below her buttocks. She shifted beneath him, his cock settling between her thick thighs.
“Pete.”
“It’s me, baby. Go to sleep.”
24
Mike Florek stood at the prep table, reached for a tomato that floated in a water-filled bus tray among a dozen others. Florek held a small instrument in his hand that looked like something from his mother’s knitting basket, an orange-handled piece with a round, sharp-toothed cap on its end. He dug the cap into the edge of the tomato’s stem, careful not to let it slip too deeply beneath the red skin. He cut around the stem in a clockwise direction, scooped the stem out, and dropped the tomato back in the water. Florek liked coring the tomatoes, getting them ready for Nick to slice. Usually, when Florek was done, Nick would come over, give the tomatoes a brief inspection, offer a mild criticism, and tell Florek he had done a good job. But not today. Today Nick just walked to the prep table, lifted up the bus tray with a grunt, and carried it back out to the front of the house without a word. It had been like that with Nick all morning, and with Costa as well.