Costa moved forward. He reached behind his neck, gripped the handle of the machete, pulled it free from where it was sheathed beneath the back of his shirt. He raised it above his head; the blade flashed in the light.
Bender gasped. Costa brought the machete down violently, screamed as he did. The blade splayed the flesh at the base of Bender’s neck, severed the carotid artery, cut diagonally into Bender’s spine. Blood geysered, splashed across the naked bulb. Bender crumpled, his arms dancing wildly at his side.
Karras was the first to fire. His shot blew Sanderson’s white hat and the top of his scalp clean off. Karras kept firing, pinned Sanderson to the warehouse wall with the bullets of his .45. He could feel the power of Stefanos’s and DiGeordano’s guns exploding around him then, could see the red-haired pug and the one called Moon blown off their feet, twisting horribly from the force of the lead. He could see the rounds sparking off the bricks, the ejecting shells, the men going down even as they reached for their undrawn weapons, their figures gray now, floating in the cloud of gun-smoke that had fallen in the room.
Then there was the click of a hammer falling on an empty chamber; the heavy exhalation of a man’s last breath; and the thin sound of a copper casing rolling across the concrete floor.
“Karras,” said Stefanos.
But Karras was already limping toward Sanderson. He stepped over the body of the pug, dead as Roosevelt, his red hair wet and matted with the burgundy of his own blood. Karras kicked Sanderson in the face. He kicked him again, loosing something thick and chunked from the pulpy area at the top of his head. Karras brought his foot back once again, was stopped by a meaty hand gripping his arm.
“Karras,” said Stefanos, in a quiet way. “You can only kill him one time.”
Karras stepped back.
Costa put his foot on Bender’s face, pulled the machete free.
Lou DiGeordano went to Moon. The big man arched his back, struggled to take in air. DiGeordano touched the muzzle of the .380 to the center of Moon’s chest, pulled the trigger. A spray of blood caught DiGeordano as he turned his head.
“Sonofabitch,” said DiGeordano.
“Here,” said Stefanos, tossing his apron, which he had picked up off the floor. DiGeordano caught it, wiped his face.
The color had drained from Costa’s complexion. “I’m gonna get that butcher’s paper from the kitchen,” he said.
He returned a few minutes later. Six walking behind him. Six stopped cold when he saw the bodies. He took in the blood and flesh showered on the brick wall.
“Anybody come by out front?” said Stefanos.
“Uh-uh,” said Six.
DiGeordano went through Bender’s pockets, found an envelope and some keys. Costa stripped the others of their effects while DiGeordano threw the keys to Six.
“Here ya go, Six. You see what they drove in with?”
Six nodded. “Late model Ford.”
“Get it. Bring it around to the alley and park it by the back door.”
“I’ll do that.”
“And then I’m gonna need your help,” said Costa. “I’m gonna need a strong man like you to help me cut these bastards up.”
“That ain’t exactly in my contract,” said Six.
“Go on,” said Stefanos. “You did enough. Bring the car to the alley and get on home.”
Six went back to the front of the house. DiGeordano opened the envelope, examined the contents.
“I got some tickets to a show here. Some kinda play or somethin’. Some-thin’ called Hamlet.”
“I’ll take those,” said Karras, and he slipped the bloody envelope inside his shirt.
Stefanos took his own set of keys out and removed the padlock from the back door. He opened the door a bit to let out the smell of cordite and death. A couple of cats slipped in through the opening and went to the bodies. One of the cats jumped up on Bender’s chest, touched its nose to the crimson canyon between Bender’s shoulder and neck. Costa pushed the cat away.
“Lousy gatas,” said Costa.
“What’re you gonna do with em?” said Stefanos.
“I’m gonna make the fish happy tonight, Niko, that’s what I’m gonna do. Don’t worry about nothin’, hear? I’m gonna take care of these guys, and the caro, too. Don’t you worry about nothin’.”
“I’m not worried,” said Stefanos. But he was already thinking of what God did to men who took other men’s lives.
Karras released the empty magazine from the Colt. He slid the magazine into the pocket of his trousers.
“Mr. DiGeordano,” he said.
“Yeah, boy.”
“You got any more ammo for this forty-five?”
“It’s in the bag.”
“How about its holster?”
“The same bag.”
“You don’t mind if I hang onto this gun for a while, do you?”
“Sure, Karras Jr. You go ahead.”
Karras hefted the Colt in his palm, wrapped his fingers tightly around the grip. It felt good there, fitted in his hand.
30
The next morning was a Sunday, and Peter Karras went to church. He accompanied Eleni, little Dimitri, and his mother, who wore a black dress with stocking anklets and black orthopedic shoes. Karras had not been inside the church since the baptism of his son, over one year ago.
Stepping into the narthex, Karras saw several of the parents and some of the children he had grown up with, now with children of their own, and he nodded cordially to those who nodded at him but did not engage them in conversation. A few of the old grias stared unashamedly at his twisted knee and whispered among themselves. Karras paid them no mind. He lighted an orange candle for his father, crossed himself, then kissed the icona and had a seat with his family in a pew to the right of the altar toward the back of the church.
In the thirties, when Karras was still a child, the men took their seats on the right side of the church and the woman took theirs on the left. Karras had always sat on the left with his mother, as his father had rarely attended service. He was reminded of this watching Dimitri sitting comfortably between his mother and grandmother in the pew.
Father Laloussis performed the liturgy, the glass in his wire-rimmed spectacles occasionally flashing in the light. Laloussis had an unremarkable singing voice and was not particularly dynamic, but he had been attentive to Georgia Karras after her husband’s death, and Karras had thought him to be a pretty fair priest as far as priests went. Karras listened to the liturgy, closed his eyes occasionally to enjoy the choir, and took in the pleasant smell of the incense smoke that hovered heavily in the church. He did not care to tax his mind over the meaning in the spoken verse or in those words being sung. But when Laloussis brought out the communion cup, Karras went dutifully forward to take what he had been told to be the body and blood of Christ, and he drank the wine and ate the bread, and crossed himself as he backed away, because he thought that a man who had killed another man the night before should at least hedge his bets. He sat back down in the pew and tasted the antithoron that he held in his hand. Laloussis went into his sermon, spoken in Greek; Karras looked around the room.
Perry Angelos was up front in his usual spot with Helen and their two little girls. Behind them sat Mr. and Mrs. Nicodemus, Mrs. Nicodemus dressed entirely in black, six years after Billy’s death. Next to the Nicodemuses sat Nick Kendros, who had owned and operated the Woodward Grill, near the D.C. stock exchange, where men had stood on platforms writing the latest figures on a board. Karras knew Kendros’s daughter, a girl named Ruby, and he thought that she was pretty nice. When Karras and his friends had gone into the grill as children, Kendros, a short, stocky man with a rug of black hair and huge, gentle eyes, had always greeted them the same way, in his rich, enunciated, theatrical voice: “Welcome to the Wall Street of Washington, boys!” The place was New York modern, and air-conditioned like many of the movie houses around town. Nick Kendros had often treated Karras and his friends to lunch; it was not unusual for Kendros to bring a man on his uppers in off the street and serve him a cup of coffee or a hot bowl of soup.