“What was it?” asked Karras tiredly. “You figure it out?”
“Well, it turns out it was your last name I was picking up on. I have this uncle, Jimmy Boyle, was a beat cop in this town and then a homicide detective later on. I’m going back to the forties, understand? Anyway, I can remember, even as a kid, my uncle talking about this friend of his he grew up with, back when the poor immigrants lived in Chinatown. I don’t know the story, but my uncle claims this guy had something to do with him getting his gold shield. Pete Karras was his name. He died before I was born, so I never met him or anything like that. But around my uncle it was always Pete Karras this and Pete Karras that.”
“Pete Karras was my father.”
“Christ,” said Boyle, “wait till I tell my uncle.”
“He’s alive, huh?”
“Yeah, he’s alive. Boy, I had a feeling, too.”
Boyle finished his shot with a quick toss. Karras noticed the butt of Boyle’s revolver beneath his jacket as he threw his head back to drain his beer. Boyle took a last drag off his smoke, crushed the cherry in the ashtray, stood up, and left a heap of ones on the bar.
Boyle went over to Karras and squeezed his shoulder. He leaned in close. Karras could smell the whiskey and nicotine on his breath.
“Nice meeting you,” said Boyle. “My sympathy for the loss of your son.”
Karras nodded but said nothing. Boyle left the bar.
FOURTEEN
Nick Stefanos parked his Dodge between the customized Lexus and a black Maxima in the Kennedy Street lot beside Hunan Delite, where Jerry Sun, the partial witness in the Donnel Lawton case, was employed.
Today Stefanos wore his version of a uniform: blue Dickies pants, a blue shirt, and a charcoal waistcoat. He carried a cell phone that he had rigged to an oversize case.
The blue shirt and pants, the phone that looked like a pack set – he wasn’t impersonating a cop, exactly. But he looked enough like the species to give pause to the people he was hoping to talk to on the street.
Stefanos pushed open the door of Hunan Delite. Lunch was over, and there was only one customer, an obese woman in tights and a sweatshirt, in the lobby. She leaned her back on a red eat-in counter and avoided eye contact with Stefanos.
The place smelled of fried food and grease. A speaker mounted in the lobby was set on PGC. Callers to the station were giving their shout-outs to friends, family, and lovers.
Stefanos went to the lazy Susan contraption set in the Plexiglas wall. An old Asian woman came forward and stood before him, spoke through several teardrop cutouts in the glass.
“What you have?” she asked.
Stefanos opened his billfold. Inside was his investigator’s license, a photo ID that simply said “Investigator,” white letters against a red background, barred across the top. He placed the open billfold flat against the glass and spoke into the cutout teardrops.
“I want to speak to Jerry Sun. Could you get him, please?”
The woman left without a word. Stefanos heard a foreign tongue in a raised voice. He waited. A clean-cut young man in a black turtleneck came to the glass. It looked like the same young man Stefanos had seen the night he had driven by.
“Yes?”
“Jerry Sun?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m an investigator working on the Donnel Lawton case.”
“I’ve already talked to the detectives, two times.”
“I have a few more questions, if you don’t mind.”
Jerry Sun looked over his shoulder, then back at Stefanos. “Go around the store and meet me behind.”
“See you there.”
The obese woman studied Stefanos as he walked out the door. Jerry Sun stood against the brick wall beside the rear entrance to the kitchen. As Stefanos approached, he noticed the tail of a rat disappear beneath a nearby Dumpster.
“Nick Stefanos.”
Stefanos offered his hand. Sun took it tentatively.
“Make it, quick, okay? I’ve got to get back inside.”
“You run this place?”
“With my mother.”
A couple of young men passed by on the sidewalk. One of them yelled, “Hey, Jerry-San, whassup?” His friend laughed.
Jerry smiled tightly and half-waved back.
Stefanos said, “You get that much?”
“Sure, all the time. Customers ordering in a Chinese accent. People who make fun of my mother.”
“But you stay.”
Sun shrugged. “I’m the oldest son of six children. It was my responsibility to stay. This place has put three of my siblings through college.”
“Not you?”
“The birth order decided my fate. It was just an accident. But I accept it.” Sun lost his frown. “Don’t get me wrong; it’s not so bad. There are people who mock us, but there are plenty of nice people down here. I grew up in Montgomery County. But in some ways I’ve grown up with a lot of these neighborhood people, too.”
“Known many who’ve died?”
“Yes.”
“Donnel Lawton?”
Sun touched the right stem of his rimless glasses. “I knew him by sight, yes.”
“How about the guy who was accused of killing him?”
“Randy Weston? I knew him as well.”
“Better than Lawton?”
“We played together, right where we are standing, a couple of times when we were children. He showed me how to put a spiral on a football, something my father would not have known. But that was a long time ago. We didn’t speak as adults except when he was giving me a food order or I was taking it. He showed me respect, nothing more.”
“Was Weston in the life?”
“I’ve heard that both Weston and Donnel Lawton sold drugs. But if they did, it was minor. Neither of them was the kingpin down here, this much I know. Listen, I’ve already told this to the police.”
“I’m not the police. I’m working for the lawyer defending Randy Weston.”
“I don’t mind cooperating, but I’ve told the police everything I know.”
“All right, I’ll try not to drag this out. A couple of quick questions here…” Stefanos opened the loose-leaf pad on which he kept his notes. “You told the police you heard gunshots the night of the Lawton murder. That was at what time?”
“Just after nine-thirty at night.”
“How do you know it was nine-thirty?”
“Just after nine-thirty. Because we close then, and I had just locked the door.”
“You recognized the sounds as gunshots?”
“Two gunshots, yes. And I know what that popping sound is.”
“When you heard the shots, were you in the lobby or behind the Plexiglas?”
“In the lobby, sweeping up.”
“So you could see clearly through the front window.”
