A hot tear ran down Lola’s face, and another soon gathered in the corner of her eye. The tear tickled her; she did not blink.
“Please,” said Lola.
“You’re too little,” said the man.
The right shoe moved violently toward Lola’s face. The shoe was the last thing she saw for a long while.
Lola lifted her head. A pain knifed through her sinuses to the back of her skull. She put her face down on the seat, felt the vibration of a motor moving through her. She watched the spears of light enter the windows of the car from the streetlamps above.
“I’m hurt bad,” she muttered. Her voice sounded queer to her. She ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth. Her tongue slipped through the space where her front teeth had been. The gum was jagged there. She tasted the salt in her blood.
Morgan turned his head to look in the backseat. His eyes were wide and dirt tracks ran down his face.
“Help me.”
Morgan’s voice shook. “We’re going home.”
“I need a doctor,” said Lola.
“I’m gonna fix you up at home.”
Lola swallowed blood. The blood stung at the raw spot in back of her throat.
“I saw a man, Mr. Morgan.”
“Shut up.”
“But Mr. Morgan—”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Lydia,” whispered Lola.
Morgan said, “Don’t ever mention her name again.”
28
“Hey, Panayoti, it’s for you!”
Nick Stefanos shouted over the swinging doors into the kitchen. He waited for Karras to walk across the tiles to the kitchen phone. Karras picked up; Stefanos hung the receiver in its cradle.
“Yeah,” said Karras.
“Pete, it’s Jimmy Boyle.”
“Jimmy. What’s up?”
“I might have something for you on that Florek kid’s sister.”
“Keep talkin’.”
“There’s a spade runs a blind-pig joint over on Seventh Street around T. He’s hooked up with Yellow Roberts somehow.”
“Yellow Roberts. You talkin’ about Jim Roberts, that dope boss?”
“The same. The spade goes by the name of DeAngelo Ray. Throws gin parties with reefer to go in the mix. My source tells me he orders in white girls for the out-of-town guests. Favors them young and on the blonde side, if you catch my drift.”
“I get it. Where the spot?”
“Over there between the Off Beat and the Club Harlem.” Boyle gave Karras the address.
“You sound a little jumpy, Jimmy.”
“Hell, Pete, I didn’t get a wink last night. I’m running on fumes.”
“You been up to 14th and Colorado, is that it?”
“I seen that Doc you told me about, yeah.”
“You be careful with that stuff.”
“I already lost five pounds.”
“You just be careful.”
“I’m on a roll, buddy. With that murder last night, the department’s gonna be focusing everything now on that case. If I’m going to catch a ride on that train—”
“I read about it in this morning’s Times-Herald,” said Karras. “It sounded pretty bad.”
“You don’t know the half of it. My uncle gave me the real dope. What the reporters don’t know is, they found two types of blood at the crime scene, and two different samples of hair. The hooker who bought it had black hair, but a blonde had taken an injury there, too.”
“But they didn’t find the blonde.”
“Uh-uh. That’s the deal. Find the blonde and you find a witness. Which is what I’ll be talkin’ about this whole weekend to all those meatballs out on my beat. Which is what every detective in the department is gonna be talkin’ about out there as well. Why, I’m tellin’ you, Pete...”
Boyle kept talking, but his voice melted into one big jumble in Karras’s ears. Karras was looking over the kitchen doors now, to a group of four men who had walked into the grill. The leader was a thin man with talkative hands who wore a very expensive suit and a derby. He had engaged Stefanos in conversation immediately. There was a pleasant smile on the thin man’s delicate face.
A redheaded man with a boxed-in nose stood with his back against the plate-glass window, and a large dark man in a small suit stood by the door. There were no customers in the store; it was Saturday morning, and there was little in the way of business. On Saturday mornings Karras and Stefanos worked alone.
Karras looked at the fourth man: a half-pint wearing a tall white hat.
“This is my shot, Pete,” said Boyle. “I deliver some kind of lead on this case, I’m gonna get right out of these blues. It’s my ticket to a detective’s shield—”
“Jimmy... Jimmy, I don’t mean to cut you off. I got some customers, chum... I gotta go.”
“All right, Pete.”
“Thanks for the tip.”
“Sure thing, pal. Talk to you later.”
“Yeah... you, too.”
Karras racked the talkpiece. He reached beneath his apron, pulled his deck of cigarettes. He put a Lucky in his mouth, lighted it. He touched the mole on the side of his mouth, took two steps back into the depths of the kitchen where they could not see him. From that spot he couldn’t see much of them either. He could only see the peak of the tall white hat.
Karras drew deeply on his cigarette. He felt a vein throb in his neck as he squinted through the smoke.
Stefanos stood behind the counter rubbing his worry beads. He wrapped one finger around the leather string, swung the beads into his huge palm. The four men had been gone now for ten, fifteen minutes. Stefanos had been standing there, rubbing the koumboloi, thinking about things since then.
“Ella, Panayoti,” he shouted back toward the kitchen. “Come on out here, I wanna talk.”
Karras limped out to the front of the house. He leaned his forearm on the counter.
“Yeah, Nick.”
“Have a beer with me, re.”
“Okay.”
Stefanos went to the cooler, pulled a bottle of Ballantine Ale, uncapped the bottle. He poured the ale into two glasses he had set out on the counter. Karras and Stefanos picked up the glasses, tapped them together.
“Siyiam,” said Karras.
“Siyiam.”
Karras drank down some of the ale. He wiped a sleeve across his mouth.
“You see those guys, a little while ago?”
“I saw them,” said Karras. “Who were they?”
“I dunno. They said they heard about the Italos and his men, comin’ in here to shake me down.”
“And they thought they could help.”
“Yeah. The thin guy in the pretty suit, he said he’d make the Italos and the others go away for half what the Italos was askin’ me to pay.”
“So he’s gonna protect us from the others.”
“Somethin’ like that. That’s what they said, anyway.” Stefanos scratched his head. “Hell, I don’t know. Gimme a cigarette, Karras, goddamn.”
Karras shook the deck in front of Stefanos. Stefanos pulled a cigarette free, put it between his lips. Karras lighted it. Stefanos blew smoke at his feet.
“They’re all in it together,” said Karras, shaking out the match.
Stefanos looked up. “What?”
“I recognized one of the men in this morning’s group. The little skato in the Tom Mix hat. He works for Burke. The Italos, he works for Burke, too.”
“Goddamn.”
“Yeah. It’s an old gag, Nick.”
“And I fell for it.”
“You didn’t fall for it yet.”
Karras studied Stefanos. He looked shaken, disoriented.