There was a story that used to be told around town concerning my grandfather and Lou DiGeordano that almost attained the status of local folklore, until the men telling it began to die off and it began to die off with them.
My grandfather, Nicholas (“Big Nick”) Stefanos, came to this country from a village in Sparta just after World War I, leaving behind his wife and young son. Like almost three quarters of Sparta’s male population in those years, he came to America to make a quick fortune and to escape the horrible rural poverty that resulted from the new government’s disorder and indifference after the Greek War of Independence. He had every good intention of returning to Sparta, but as it happened his wife died from tuberculosis and his son was raised by relatives in the village. His son eventually married another young woman in the village and out of that union I was born. My parents sent me to the States at a very early age with the intention of joining me in a year or two, but again, as things happen, they never made it. nsw Consequently I was raised by my grandfather in D.C. Having never known my parents, I can almost truly say that I’ve never missed them, though I’m sure some eager psychiatrist could bleed me dry with a lifetime of sessions and related explanations as to why I’ve become this person that I have.
Big Nick spent Prohibition living with relatives and driving a bootlegger’s truck in upstate New York. I imagine he was also some sort of a strong-arm man, as he had the bulk, and I’ve heard several old-timers claim that he was quick with his clubbish hands. He himself told me, without remorse and in fact with a bit of light in his eyes, that he had done some “bad things” in those years to get by. I know he packed a pistol; an Italian. 22 had blown up in his face around that time and given him a lifelong scar on his cheek, which explained his fondness for American firearms, witnessed by the fact that he carried a pearl-handled. 38 Smith amp; Wesson in his jacket pocket until he died. There is a photograph of him in my possession that says more about those years than he ever could. He is in a dark, wide-lapelled pinstriped suit, and he’s wearing a wide-brimmed hat. The hat is pulled down over one eye. There is a young blonde wearing a floral-print dress in the edge of the photograph, obviously an American woman, and she is looking up at him and laughing. It’s easy to guess from his cocksure grin why that young man never returned to the village.
But something, some trouble maybe, made Big Nick decide to drift south and end up, with relatives again, in Southeast Washington in the thirties. He had brought some cash with him, and the cash staked him in a vegetable stand in the old Southeast Market. His life here was more austere, though reportedly he was a heavy drinker and enjoyed fairly high-stakes poker and occasionally games involving dice. One night, according to the story, he had a dream of his mother, alarming in itself, since Greeks in general did not believe it was likely to dream about the dead. In the dream she was behind the door of an apartment, and what he talked about with her is relatively unimportant. What he remembered when he woke up is that the number on the apartment door was 807.
The next day Big Nick put twenty bucks on 807 with a young numbers runner by the name of Louis DiGeordano. Little is known of DiGeordano’s history before that day except that he was a Sicilian immigrant of my grandfather’s generation who up to that point had not experienced the luck of Big Nick. He pushed a fruit-and-candy cart in the streets and lived near Chinatown in a two-room apartment with ten other relatives.
When the number hit, DiGeordano delivered the payoff to my grandfather. The hit was in the neighborhood of forty thousand dollars, a fortune in those days. The legend has it that when DiGeordano gave Big Nick the bankroll, my grandfather peeled off two thousand dollars and handed it to Lou. DiGeordano supposedly dropped to his knees (an embellishment, I think, that has been tacked on to the story over time), but my grandfather pulled him back up. It was a curious act of generosity that my grandfather never explained or claimed to regret.
Life after that took unexpected turns for both of them. My grandfather invested in a couple of downtown buildings and owned and operated a series of modest coffee shops until his death. He never flashed his money around, decreased his card playing over the years, and even quit drinking when I entered the picture. Lou DiGeordano opened his own carryout with the two thousand and began a loan-sharking business and an organized gambling operation that grew into a small, bloodless crime deodless empire in D.C. that lasted well into the sixties. Lou was still alive, but his business had deteriorated and had been run into the ground, as businesses usually are, by his son, a man named Joey.
Now, on this bright, biting Saturday in December, I was driving my Dodge Dart south on Georgia Avenue with the window down, letting in as much cold air as I could stand in a vain attempt to slap away my hangover, and I was on my way to see the DiGeordanos. The cigarette I was smoking tasted like the poison it was, and I pitched it out the window. I tried a breath mint, but that was worse, and it followed the path of the cigarette.
I pulled over and parked on Georgia just past Missouri, in front of an R amp; B nightclub and across the street from a Chevy dealership and a Chinese restaurant facaded as a pagoda. Next to the nightclub was a pawnshop and next to that was Geordano’s Market and Deli. The sign on the window was small, but there was a larger fluorescent sign below it advertising cold beer and wine to go. I walked around a man with mad black eyes who looked seventy but could have been forty. He was wearing a brown wool overcoat that was ripped open beneath both arms. The coat smelled, even with the wind behind us, of body odor and urine. The man said something unintelligible as I passed and entered Geordano’s.
A small bell sounded as the door closed behind me. The air was heavy with the tang of garlic and spice. I went by tall shelves stacked with small red-and-blue cans and large gold cans of olive oil. Past the shelves were two coolers stocked with beer, fortified wine and sweet sodas, and past that a row of barrels with clear hinged lids containing various types of olives and spiced peppers. The barrels were lined across a Formica counter on which sat an old register. Beyond the counter was a work area and the entrance to a back room of sorts. In front of the entrance was a chair and next to that a steel prep table on wheels. Dried beans were scattered on the top of the table, and next to the table sat a burlap sack half filled with the beans. An old man was sitting in the chair, and he was looking closely at the beans on the prep table before he pushed small groups of them into his hand and dumped them into another burlap sack. He looked up at me as I approached the counter. Thin pink lips smiled beneath a broad gray mustache.
“Nicky,” he said.
“Mr. DiGeordano.”
I walked around the counter before he could stand and shook his hand. His grip was still strong, but the flesh was cool, and the bones below it felt hollow. His aging was not a shock-he was in his mideighties, after all, and I had seen him at my grandfather’s funeral-but the frailty that went with it always was. He was wearing a brown flannel shirt buttoned to the neck and over that a full white apron. The apron had yellowed in spots, and there were reddish brown smudges of blood near the hemline where he had wiped his hands. He wore black twill slacks and black oilskin work shoes with white socks, an arrangement fashionable with kids sixty-five years his junior in some of the clubs downtown.
“I wasn’t sure if this was your place,” I said. “The name I mean. When did you drop the Di?”
“A couple of years ago,” he said in the high rasp common in Mediterranean males his age. “Only on the sign out front. No use making it touts. aking igher on our customers to remember our name than it already is. We still get some of the old-timers, but mainly what we get is neighborhood people. Beer and cheap wine is our main seller. You can imagine.”
I nodded and then we stared at each other without speaking. His eyes were brown and wet like riverbed stones. His hair was whiter than his mustache, full and combed high and then swept back. Deep ridges ran from the corners of his eyes to the corners of his mouth. The mouth was moving a bit, though he still wasn’t talking.
“What are you doing?” I said, glancing at the table.
“Checking the beans for rocks,” he said. “There’s always a rock or two in the bag. You have to go through them by hand. A customer breaks his tooth on a rock, you got a lawsuit, you lose your business.” He shrugged.
“Is Joey in? I’d like to talk to him if he has a minute.”
“Anything I can help you with?”
“Nothing that serious,” I said.
“In the office,” he said, and made a small backward wave with the point of his index finger. Then he yelled for his son.
Joey DiGeordano stepped out momentarily. He was rubbing his hands with a towel, and he looked at me briefly before he looked over to his father. Joey wore a dark suit and a blue textured dress shirt more poly than cotton, with a plain lavender tie that was tacked to the shirt by a pearl button. He was street slender, and his hairline was identical to his father’s, and it was pompadoured identically but was black and slicked with some sort of oil-based gel. The smell of a barbershop entered the room with him.
“Yeah, Pop.”
“This is Nick Stefanos.” Joey glanced my way again, this time with more interest. “Big Nick’s grandson.”
“How ya’ doin’,” Joey said in a tone that was inching its way up the scale toward his old man’s.
“Good,” I said. “You got a couple of minutes?”
“Sure,” he said, and jerked his head just a little. “Come on back.” I could feel the old man’s appraisal as we walked by.
I followed Joey through a long storage room Metro-shelved with dry goods into a wider room that housed a metal desk and a couple of chairs. On the desk was a phone and an empty plastic in-basket and not much else. A calendar that featured a topless blonde holding a crescent wrench hung over the desk. Beyond the desk was a narrow hall containing a small bathroom and beyond that a padlocked door that opened to the alley.
A broad-shouldered lummox stained the bare wall across from the desk. He was also wearing a suit, but the suit did not hit the intended mark. His arms barely reached past his hips, his mouth was open, and his spiky haircut was some suburban hairstylist’s idea of new wave. His eyes shifted beneath heavy lids as I entered the room.
Joey motioned me into a chair upholstered in green corduroy. I folded myp e I fold overcoat on the back of it before I sat. He took his seat at the desk. He removed a pencil from a mug full of them and tapped its eraser on the edge of the metal desk. His olive skin was lightly pocked and his sideburns reached almost to the lobes of his ears. I had seen him in May’s quite often, though we had never spoken. Usually he sat with a group of aging, scotch-drinking hipsters whose conversations ran from Vegas to “broads” to Sinatra and back again, guys who were weirdly nostalgic for a time and a place that they had never known. I placed his age at about forty-eight.
“Who’s he?” I said to Joey, jerking my head slightly in the direction of the lummox.
“Bobby Caruso. You want some java?”
“Black,” I said. “Thanks.”
Joey signaled Caruso, the first time since we entered the room that he had acknowledged his presence. Caruso left but brushed my back with his heavy arm before he did it. I pulled a business card from my inside breast pocket and slid it across the desk until it touched Joey’s fingers. He read it without lifting it off the table and then tapped the eraser on the desk as he looked back my way.
“What can I do for you, Nick?”
“I’ve been hired by Bill Goodrich,” I said, “to find his wife.” I let that hang in the air and studied his cool reaction. “He thought you might be able to point me in the right direction.”
Joey chuckled and shook his head. He made a tent with his hands and didn’t say a word, and then Caruso lumbered back into the room and set a small cup of espresso on the edge of the desk nearest my elbow. I nodded by way of thanks, and in response he tried to sneer, showing me some large front teeth that would have been attractive had they belonged to an aquatic rodent. I had a sip of the bitter coffee.
Joey said evenly, “I don’t think I can help you.”
“Bill Goodrich thinks you can.” There was more silence as Joey and I stared at each other meaninglessly and without malice. Finally I said, “Let’s talk about this, Joey. Alone.”
Joey looked over my shoulder and moved only his eyes in the direction of the doorway. I felt the heavy arm bump my back, harder this time, and then heard plodding footsteps fade. Joey used a thin gold lighter to fire up a white-filtered cigarette, then slipped the lighter into his suit pocket.
“Who’s the sweetheart?” I said.
“Bobby’s a young cousin of mine. I apologize for him. He’s very protective of me and my father. Hangs around ’cause he’s got visions of getting into ‘the business.’ Of course there is no business anymore. But I haven’t been able to convince him of that.”
“Keep him away from me,” I said.
“You said you wanted to talk,” said Joey, his dark eyes narrowing.
“Okay.” I sat back. “Goodrich thinks you were having an affair with his wife. He doesn’t seem too stoked about that, to tell you the truth. He just wane t He justs to make sure she’s all right.”
“What’s your angle?”
“No angle. It’s a job. Goodrich is paying me to locate her and that’s it. It should be very simple if we all cooperate.”
“How did you two hook up?”
“Old friends,” I said.
Joey’s eyes lingered on my wrinkled blue oxford and loosened knit tie. “I don’t make you guys as peas in a pod.”
“We were once,” I said, and killed it at that. “How about you? How did you hook up with him?”
“Your friend’s a very ambitious young man,” Joey said. “He was persistent early on, calling me every day, trying to interest me in locations for carryout shops I was thinking of opening at the time. Finally I let him drive me around to look at some spots. I could see right away he was more interested in my business than in brokering locations. I guess Goodrich bought into all that fiction they print in the newspaper.”
“It’s not all fiction.”
“No, but it is ancient history. The loan-sharking, the necessary arsons-they might as well have gone down a thousand years ago. We’re involved in a little bookmaking here and there, and that’s all-college basketball, and so on.”
“So Goodrich was ambitious,” I said, filling in the common blanks. “You met his wife over dinner, and he says you gave her the eye.”
“Listen”, Joey said, “I’ll speed this up for you.” He flicked an inch of ash to the linoleum floor and leaned forward. “I not only gave her the eye, my friend, I gave her this.” Joey grabbed his crotch for emphasis and shook its contents. “All right? I gave it to her all over her beautiful body and anywhere else I damn well pleased. And all the while I had the distinct impression that your young friend was pimping his wife to me for just that purpose.”
I shook a Camel from the deck. Joey leaned over with his gold lighter and set it on fire. I blew some smoke across the room that mingled with his. He slid the lighter back into his pocket.
“How so?” I said.
“Goodrich didn’t care about that broad any more than I did, that’s how so. I could see she had no class the first night I met her, and class is something I know a thing or two about.”
I looked at the blond mechanic on the calendar and then back at him. “A thing or two at the most, maybe.” The shot glanced off him, so I plowed on. “What was your deal with Goodrich?”
“I put him on the payroll as a real estate adviser. He was paid in cash, always in cash. It’s something he asked for, and it’s something guys like him can really appreciate. After a while their high salaries just become a blur of numbers. But cash-it’s real, you can feel it in your hand, and it’s dangerous, you know what I’m saying? Let’s face it, there’s no reason to be in business for yourself unless you can steal from the IRStenfrom th. He wanted a piece of it. I gave him what he wanted, and I took what I wanted from his wife.”
The comment lingered in the air like a bad odor. “Joey,” I said, “do you know where April Goodrich is?”
Joey DiGeordano barked a short laugh that turned into a cough. When he was finished coughing he wiped his eyes with a handkerchief that he drew from the breast pocket of his suit jacket. Then he studied my eyes and grinned. “Big private eye,” he said, and shook his head. “You really don’t know a damn thing, do you?”
“Educate me,” I said.
“I don’t know where April Goodrich is,” he said. “But I’ll give you ten grand if you find her and bring her to me.”
I considered that after a drag off my cigarette. “I thought you didn’t care about her.”
“I don’t. But she’s got something of mine.”
“What would that be?” I said.
Joey said, “Two hundred grand.”
I finished my espresso and had a last pull off my cigarette before crushing it on the floor. I heard Caruso’s heavy breathing in the hallway and below that the faint tick of my wristwatch.
“You going to tell me about it?”
“Why not?” he said. “Everybody in town knows I got took for a ride. I have an apartment I keep downtown. I take my friends, girlfriends there, for parties, whatever. I also keep my bankroll there. Being in the cash business has its disadvantages. One of them is you can’t use the banks.”
“April knew about it?”
“Yeah. She was at the apartment on a regular basis for quite a while, and occasionally she needed cash. I didn’t have a safe or anything, and I knew how much was there, so I figured it couldn’t do any harm to let her in on it.”
“You trusted her?”
“It wasn’t so much as trust. She was a hillbilly piece of ass-from southern Maryland, for Christ’s sake. I just didn’t think she’d pull anything like that.”
“Go on,” I said.
“She had a key to my place. One night-”
“What night was that?”
“Monday, last week. She was supposed to meet me at the apartment. She was there-I called her at about six o’clock. But when I got there she was gone. So was the bread.”
“How do you know she took it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Anything can go down, right? But my money’s missing, and she’s missing, and that’s what I’ve got.”
I thought things overe. things. Bill Goodrich had said that April had disappeared a week ago Wednesday. The money was stolen on the Monday of that week. That left a day in between.
“Will you help me?” Joey said.
“I work for Goodrich,” I said, rising from my chair as I put on my overcoat. “But if I find the girl, and she has the money, you’ll get it back.”
“Fair enough,” Joey said. “But understand this. I’ve got people out looking for her. If they find her before you do, I can’t guarantee they’re going to be too gentle.”
“People like Caruso?” I said, pointing my chin to the hallway. “He couldn’t find his dick in the shower.”
“Others too. There’s a lot of people in this town, Nick, they owe me favors.”
“So long, Joey.”
“Be in touch.”
“So long.”
I turned and headed through the doorway. Caruso was off to the side, his back against the shelving. I don’t know why he decided to make a play. Maybe he didn’t like the way I talked to his boss, or maybe he just didn’t like my looks. It didn’t really matter. Guys like him always do the wrong thing, and they always keep doing it; he telegraphed his move by trying to look too casual. But casual hung on Caruso like his tight shiny suit. When I was one step away he jerked his arm up in my direction.
I grabbed the arm with my left hand and twisted it back. Then I boxed his ear with my open right hand and swung the elbow of that arm across his mouth. It sent him into the steel shelving with a force that rocked it back and knocked cans to the floor. I bunched his shirt and got up in his fat, sweaty face. A small amount of blood seeped off his gums and pinkened his beaverlike teeth.
“Now, listen, you fucking Guinea. You touch that arm to me again,” I said, “and I’ll cripple you. Understand?”
“Let him go,” Joey said tiredly from the office to my right.
I looked to my left. The old man was in the doorway that led to the store, slicing me open with his watery brown eyes. I released Caruso’s shirt and straightened my overcoat, shifting my shoulders underneath. Caruso exhaled and attempted a vicious stare but didn’t say a word. I walked out into the store, sidestepping the old man. The old man followed. Finally I reached the front door.
“I’m sorry, Mr. DiGeordano,” I said. “He had that coming.”
“Not in my place, he didn’t.”
“I apologize.”
“You have your grandfather’s quick hands,” he said. “But you don’t have his class.” Lou DiGeordano looked me up and down and made sure I saw it.
I pushed on the door and walked to my car, where I slid behind the wheel. I watched my hand shake as I touched the key to the ignition. The car came alive. I swurm alive. ng it out on onto Georgia Avenue and ignored an angry salutation of blaring horns.