King Suckerman

Karras and Vivian left the apartment and walked south. The sidewalks were dense with people, tourists in for the big Sunday show. The papers, the TV news, all the stories were on the upcoming Bicentennial bash. The carpenters had been hammering down on the Mall for weeks now.

Karras was relieved when Vivian told him she wanted to spend the day hanging at the circle. He gave her his duplicate apartment key, left her with a girl she recognized at the fountain, told her he’d see her later, and got on his way.

Karras went down below the circle to the Jefferson Coffee Shop on 19th, entered the narrow city diner through a glass door tied open with heavy string. The open door told him that the Jefferson’s air conditioner had gone down once again. He had a seat on an orange stool at the end of the counter next to a guy named Dale, the huge but gentle bouncer who worked the Brickskeller, a glorified beer garden on 22nd above P.

“Hey, Dale.”

“Dimitri.”

“How’s it goin’?”

“Goin’ good.”

It was that time between breakfast and lunch when the lawyers, government types, and IBM repairmen were already hard at work, and the local restaurant workers were just starting their day. Moe and Terry, a couple of waiters from the Palm, the pricey steak-and-lobster house next door, sat in the middle of the counter, laughing about something that had happened at a four-top the night before.

Pete, the Greek who owned the place, walked down to Karras, set a cup of coffee in front of him, took his order, said, “Okay, young fella,” went back to the grill, and cracked open a couple of eggs with one hand. Like Karras’s old man, who had also been named Pete, the Jefferson’s Pete was a veteran of the Philippine campaign of World War II. This Pete did not know Dimitri’s father, but he had heard of him. Peter Karras had died under violent, mysterious circumstances in 1949. About his father Dimitri Karras knew little else.

Karras liked the Jefferson. They never broke the yolks on his easy overs, and as far as lunch deals went, the Royalburger with shoestring fries was one of the best combos in town. Pete, reserved in a friendly kind of way, had recently returned to the store after a long illness; his teenaged son had stepped up to run the place for the last six months while his father recovered. The son, a skinny, Camaro-driving, outgoing kid with shoulder-length curls, was in the back of the coffee shop, talking and joking with the dishwasher, a boy everyone called Butterball, and the grill-girl, another teenager from the Shaw part of town. She was keeping up with the conversation while singing along to Hot Chocolate’s “You Sexy Thing,” which was blasting from the house radio. In the Jefferson, the radio dial was always set on WOL, except for that period after lunch when Lula, the booth and counter waitress, was allowed her hour of gospel. Karras came here in the mornings for breakfast and a daily dose of Top 40 funk.

A leggy blond secretary came in for some carry-out, endured the burning eyes of all the men at the counter while she waited for her food. She left hurriedly. Dale and Karras discussed the Wayne Hays affair, an exchange prompted, of course, by the Liz Ray look-alike who had just left.

“Wayne Hayes,” said Dale, shaking his head. “Man lost everything for a piece of tail. Can you believe it?”

Karras said, “I can.”

Karras left three on two twenty-nine and stepped out of the Jefferson into the prenoon heat. He walked north, pointedly going around the circle rather than through it, stopping once or twice to talk to friends, passing girl-watching businessmen, stoners, cruising homosexuals, short-skirted secretaries, doe-faced chicken hawks eyeing little boys, the whole Dupont stew. A pimp-wagon Lincoln rolled up Connecticut, heavy wah-wah guitar and bass pounding from its open windows; a quick-footed, bearded Arnold and Porter messenger wearing a Rock ’n’ Roll Animal T-shirt waved to Karras from across the avenue.

Karras stopped at Real Right Records above R, stepped into the store. They had a Graham Central Station tune, an epic instrumental workout called “The Jam,” cranking through the house KLMs. Cheek was in the corner of the shop, talking to a P-Funk-loving regular, a kid named Mills with a major-league Afro, who had his own personal copy of Standing on the Verge of Getting It On cradled under his arm. Mills claimed to have Parliament’s Osmium on the Invictus label in his private collection. Cheek had never actually seen it, though, and had repeatedly asked Mills to bring the proof into the store. Cheek and Mills had gotten past that now and were arguing about the meaning of a certain cut off Maggot Brain.