Eleni cooked Karras a couple of eggs over easy with fried slices of scrapple from Maryland’s eastern shore. Karras took his eggs unbroken and preferred his scrapple browned deeply on both sides. Eleni served both in perfect form, and Karras enjoyed his breakfast while listening to Eleni’s new Jo Stafford record and the sound of the boy trying to sing along to it from the playpen set in the middle of the room. Karras thought: You know, this isn’t bad, hanging around here like this. If I tried it out once in a while I could maybe get used to it. Yeah, this could be all right.
Karras pushed his plate away and read the sports page of the morning Times-Herald, and had a cigarette with his second cup of coffee, and then he took the boy from the playpen and tried to start a game with him involving a blue rubber ball. But the boy went straight to his mother after the first turn, and Karras had a seat in the living room armchair, thinking: Now what do I do? I’ve gone at it with my wife and I’ve eaten my breakfast and I’ve tried to play with my son. I’ve done all that, and now I’ve got the whole rest of the day to do... what? And then: I’m just not cut out for this racket. Some guys can sit around with their families and get used to it and even like it, but I’m not built for it. Who the hell am I kidding? It’s just not right for me.
So Karras showered and dressed in a blue suit and slipped his cigarettes in the jacket of the suit and shook himself into his topcoat and walked for the door.
“Where you goin’, Pete?” said Eleni.
“Out.”
Two minutes later he was limping east on H, his back to the morning sun.
The bell chimed as Karras pushed through the door and entered Nick’s. A couple of Negroes whom Karras did not recognize were seated on stools, with Costa back behind the counter, alternately halving lettuce heads on the sandwich board and keeping an eye on the customers. A show called “Rhythm Special” on WOOK came from the house radio, and the two customers moved their heads in unison to the bass line of the beat.
“Hey, Costa.”
“Karras.”
“Busy?”
“Yeah. Your boy Florek called in sick.”
“Where’s Nick?”
“Sto kouzina.”
Karras went through the hinged doors, entered the kitchen. Stefanos sat on a stool next to the prep table, a newspaper spread out on the table, an empty bottle of ale and a glass half-full of it beside the paper.
“Yasou, Panayoti.”
“Yasou, Niko.”
“C’mon and have a little beera with me.”
“It ain’t even noon.”
“Ella, re! I been waitin’ for you to come in. Go get a bottle and let’s talk.”
Karras went out to the front of the house, retrieved a bottle of Ballantine Ale from the cooler, uncapped the bottle, took it back to the kitchen along with a clean glass. He removed his topcoat, put his cigarettes and matches on the table, found a stool. He dragged the stool next to the table. He and Stefanos touched glasses.
“Siyiam.”
“Siyiam, re.”
Karras and Stefanos drank. Karras wiped foam off his upper lip.
“Anything good in the paper?”
“There’s this one thing.” Stefanos leaned forward to get a good look at the newspaper, touched one thick finger to an item above the fold. “The law fried some colored guy in Alabama last night. A blind guy. Mavros by the name of Buster Snead. First blind man ever put to death by the state.”
“He do it?”
Stefanos nodded. “He confessed. Hacked a woman to pieces in her bed. Says she owed him twenty bucks for over a year. He got tired of askin’ for it, I guess.”
“Twenty bucks. Not much for either one of them to die for.”
“Uh. But here’s the funny part. Not laugh funny, but, you know, strange. They asked the guy for his last words before they threw the switch. He says—” Stefanos squinted as he read directly off the page— “‘I’m going to see Jesus and I’m glad.’”
“He say anything else?”
“Yeah. He said, ‘Goodnight’.”
“That about covers it.”
“I guess.”
Stefanos folded the paper, crossed one leg over the other.
Karras said, “You been hittin’ it kind of early lately, haven’t you?”
“I been thinkin’, that’s all. The pioto, it helps me think.”
“About what?”
Stefanos spread his big hands. “The other night, mostly. Those men we killed. How maybe we moved too fast. How we coulda done somethin’ else.”
“It’s a little late for that.”
“I know it. And I’m not sayin’ that they didn’t deserve to die, because they did. If not for this, then probably for somethin’ else. But I’m tired of it. I don’t have the stomach for any more killin’, katalavenis?”
“I understand. But I told you then that when you start something like this you gotta be ready to go all the way.”
“I remember.”
“And you know, somebody’s gonna come looking now for Bender — his own men or Burke’s men, it doesn’t matter which — and when they find out what happened back in that warehouse, believe me, they’re going to want to take it out in blood.”
“Sure, they’ll come. What I’m sayin’ is, I don’t know if I have the orexi anymore to fight back.”
“You turnin’ over a new leaf, huh.”
“Go ahead and grin about it. But that’s exactly what I’m gonna do. I’m gettin’ into my middle age now, Karras. I got a little lucky with that number a few years back, and I want to be around to share it with my family. I wanna get that good-for-nothin’ son of mine over from Greece, get him workin’ here, too. I got a letter from him last week, said he met a nice koritsaki in Sparti. I’m thinkin’, maybe he marries her, comes over with his new wife, I’m gonna get real lucky now, have a grandson of my own some day, too.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you.”
“Goddamn right I’m gonna like it! Wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see that far ahead, to tell you the truth.”
Stefanos caught himself staring at Karras. He looked away, grabbed his glass off the table, had a swig of ale.
“Ah,” said Stefanos, “that’s good. Anyway, so like I say, I been thinkin’. I wanna slow things down around here, no more hoods hangin’ around. And no more guns and no more knives. I gonna slow down myself — on my drinkin’, and my gamblin’, and everything else. And you, vre, you need to slow it down, too.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“You and your friend, the Italos. Maybe you ought to talk things over. Get a few things straightened out.”
Karras looked down at his shoes, shook his head. “Me and Joey don’t know how to do that.”
“Bullshit. What you gotta do is, you gotta get off the bus.”
“What?”
Stefanos leaned forward. “I got this idea about life, see. That life, it’s like a bus ride through town. Lemme give you an example: You take the U Street line over to Seventh, right? You transfer over to a southbound bus, transfer again to the F Street line, head west on that one across town.”