Peter Karras stood on the corner of 7th and T, shook his wrist out of his topcoat, looked at his watch. He squinted in the darkness to read its face: 5:45. This time of year, night fell early in the city. Karras adjusted his fedora, buried his hands in his pockets, walked south.
A thick Negro in a camel-hair overcoat and brown suit did not step off as Karras approached. Karras walked around the man. He passed the Off Beat Club, a favorite of slumming jazz musicians, and the Seventh and T Club, a kicked-up version of “St. Louis Blues” coming from its open door. A Negro couple moved quickly toward him, and Karras stepped out of their way. There were not so many folks out, as it was early yet, and Sunday night. Sunday in D.C. meant beer and light wine, but that did not apply to the city’s blind pigs and bottle clubs. Karras had one particular address in mind.
He found it in the middle of 7th, near the Club Harlem, a row house with a simple walk-up to a concrete stoop. He took the steps, knocked on the forest-green door, waited for the speak slot to open. It did, and a set of perfectly round eyes appeared in the space.
Then a deep voice: “Yeah?”
“How about a drink?”
“You got a membership card, boss?”
“Do I need one?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s this?” Karras passed a couple of bucks through the slot.
“It’s startin’ to look like one.”
Karras slipped another dollar through. The door opened. A big Negro with a pockmarked face stood before him.
The Negro grinned. “Tell you the truth, boss, I don’t think this here’s your kinda place. But things been kinda slow tonight, and I ain’t had nary a bit of fun. So why don’t you step on inside.”
Karras walked by the bouncer, heard the door close behind him. He noticed that the windows had been bricked up. Tobacco smoke hung midchest in the room, cut with the smell of perfume and something else that was heavy and sweet. A phonograph played a Louis Jordan record — “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby” — rather loudly; Karras recognized the tune as a favorite at Nick’s grill. A Negro man slow-dragged a woman to the Jordan near a table of stud players by the far wall. The woman wore a sequined cap and a low-cut gown. Her grin was sloppy and her right eye dropped lower than the left. She was young and happy and half in the bag.
The place was no more than a fancy living room with a long bar against the north wall. Three Negroes in suit and tie sat at the bar. The bar was tended by a bow-tied Negro wearing red suspenders over a thinly striped shirt with French cuffs. All of them gave Karras the fisheye as he limped across the floor. He removed his topcoat, placed his Luckies on the mahogany, and had a seat.
“What you gonna have?” said the tender.
Karras could see no bottles on the shelf. “What’s the choice?”
“Gin.”
“I’ll have gin, then,” said Karras.
The tender reached below the bar, retrieved an unlabeled bottle, and poured liquor to the lip. He waited for Karras. Karras took a healthy swallow, stifled a cough: raw ethyl cut with juniper. The tender smiled. Karras lighted a smoke.
He looked down the bar. At the very end, a tall, thin man sat staring at Karras, smoking a cigarette, curiosity shading his face. The man looked like a brown mantis. Near him sat a light-skinned man in a fancy hat. He also stared at Karras. The hatred in his eyes was uncomplicated, simple as a fist. Karras looked at the man to his right. He knew the man from Nick’s, a friend of the green-eyed record player whom Florek always chatted up. The colored guys in Nick’s, they called the guy Dinky, or Winky, some shit like that. Pinky. Yeah, Pinky, that was it.
“Hey,” said Karras. “Pinky, right?”
Karras leaned to the right, extended his hand. The one he knew as Pinky ignored the gesture, got off his barstool. He walked slowly to the table of stud players, had a seat.
The tender leaned his elbow on the bar. “What you think, you was gonna walk in here, make a few friends?”
“But I know that man,” said Karras.
“Not in here, you don’t. Maybe in your own world, you do. But that man’s nothin’ but a stranger to you in here.”
The Louis Jordan number ended. The phonograph’s tone arm reached the end of the record and made a hissing sound in the bar. No one made a move to lift the tone arm off the wax.
“I’m here to see DeAngelo Ray,” said Karras.
“Boolshit,” said the man in the funny hat. He slid off his stool and walked toward Karras.
The tender said, “Finish your drink. Finish it and get on out of here. I ain’t got nothin’ for you and I ain’t got nothin against you, understand? But you don’t belong here. You stick around here another city minute, you’re gonna get stuck for sure. And nobody in this joint’s gon’ do a damn thing about it ’cept sit around and watch you bleed.”
Karras glanced toward the door, twenty feet away: the bouncer had leaned his back against it, folded his arms. Karras turned to the tender.
“The name is Pete Karras. Tell Mr. Ray I’m here to see him.”
“I’ll be gotdamn,” said the light-skinned man in the fancy hat. “This motherfucker, he just don’t listen.”
Karras could feel the man’s hot breath on his face. In his side vision, he saw Fancy Hat reach into his jacket. A voice from the end of the bar stopped him.
“Ike,” said the tall thin man. “Back away.” Then he spoke to the tender. “You just keep things real good and cool for a minute or so till I get back.”
The tall thin man stood and walked through a door that led to the back of the house. Fancy Hat went back to his stool. Karras stared straight ahead, finished his drink, smoked down his cigarette. The tall thin Negro returned, tapped Karras on the shoulder.
“All right, Karras. Go on straight back and have your talk with Mr. Ray. You got five minutes to do it.”
“Thanks,” said Karras. But the man had walked away.
Karras draped his topcoat over his arm, slipped his cigarettes into his trouser pocket. He left a dollar on the bar and limped toward the door. He went around the dancing couple, who were still at it though the music had stopped. The stud players and the one Karras knew as Pinky did not look up as he passed.
Karras entered a room through an open door. He closed the door behind him. A dapper young Negro sat behind a desk, sipping from a goblet of brandy and smoking a thin cigar. On the desk sat a water chaser over ice. The Negro wore a double-breasted slate suit with a chalk stripe running through the slate, and a red carnation in the lapel. A crescent scar curved around his left eye and made a clean white slice through his brow.
“You’re Karras,” said the man.
“Pete Karras.” He leaned across the desk, shook the man’s manicured hand. He had a seat in a wine leather chair in front of the desk.
“My name is DeAngelo Ray.”
“You’re the man I wanted to see.”
“So I heard.”
A windowed door was situated behind the desk giving to a view of a screened porch and then an alley. Karras could see the shadow of a tall figure moving out on the porch. Then there was the sound of some crazy kind of music, a saxophone dancing all over the place, brushed cymbals and bass. Colored jazz, thought Karras, and damn if I can figure it out.
Ray jerked his head in the direction of the porch. “That would be Junior. We ran an outlet out there so he could listen to his records. He does love his New York jazz. But the folks out front, the cardplayers and the studs and the ladies and all the rest, they go for that straight jump. So Junior, he sits out there in the cold, and he listens to his music.”
“Who’s Junior?”