Read Online What It Was by George P. Pelecanos - Free Book Online Page A

looking at the run-down gateway to Washington that was the first impression for many visitors to the nation’s capital, a mix of warehouses, liquor stores, unadorned bars, and rank motels housing criminals, prostitutes, last-stop drunks, and welfare families.
    “This is where Zoot said to rent a room?” said Fanella.
    “That’s what he said.” Gregorio was on the young side, with a wiry build, thinning blond hair, the cool blue eyes of an Italian horse opera villain, and a face cratered with scars grimly memorializing the nightmarish acne of his adolescence.
    “It’s all smokes ’round here,” said Fanella.
    “There were some places looked all right, back where we were.”
    “Then let’s go back to where we were.”
    They turned around and got a room in a motel off Kenilworth Avenue, in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Their room smelled strongly of bleach and faintly of puke. The area itself was no better than the one they had rejected, but most of the people here were white. Now they were comfortable.
    They went out and bought liquor and mixers and brought the goods back to the room. Fanella drank Ten High bourbon and Gregorio went with Seagram’s 7.
The Black Shield of Falworth
was playing on their small television set, and they watched the swords-and-tights movie while they drank and put away cigarettes. Soon the room was heavy with smoke and the sound of their thoughtful conversation.
    “Janet Leigh,” said Fanella.
“God.”
He shook the ice in his glass and looked at Gregorio. “Tony Curtis is a Jew. Did you know that?”
    “So?”
    “Means Janet likes her salami cut.”
    “I’m like that down there, too.”
    “Yeah, but you don’t look like Tony. I bet he had that dish up one side and down the other all day long.”
    “How would you know?”
    “ ’Cause he was married to her, you dumbass.”
    “Oh.”
    “
Look
at that. I love it when a broad has a narrow waist and big tits. How about you, Gino?”
    “I guess.”
    “You guess?”
    “Who doesn’t?”
    “Homos,” said Fanella.
    They found a place nearby that had steaks on special and a salad bar. After the main they went with a couple of slices of cheesecake, then settled up the check and drove back into the city. They found Thomas “Zoot” Mazzetti seated at the bar of a place called the Embers, on the 1200 block of 19th Street.
    A jazzy outfit called the Frank Hinton Group was playing in the lounge for an audience of lawyers, lawyer types, and secretaries, all dressed nice, seated around the low-lit spot. Fanella and Gregorio wore sport jackets and polyester slacks with bold-print shirts, collars out over the lapels. They looked like what they were.
    Fanella felt that Zoot was showing off, setting the meeting at a high-end spot. Like, look at me; I have made it. Zoot had come up in their area and like them had worked for the Organization on the ladder’s lowest rungs. All of them were high school dropouts. Gino Gregorio, at the bottom of the bell curve, had done a stint in the army but had gone no further than the motor pool.
    Years earlier, Zoot had followed a girl south to the Baltimore–Washington corridor. She soon threw him over for a guy with a brain and a job. By then Zoot had grown comfortable with the area. He was a novelty here, a real Italian just like Pacino instead of another failed swinging dick from the neighborhood back home. He decided to stay and found a niche in D.C. as a bookie and a buyer and seller ofinformation. Lately he had developed a relationship with a local cop who was into him on a gambling debt for two thousand dollars and change. Zoot was not book smart but he knew how to operate.
    “Big shot,” said Fanella. “Look at you.”
    Zoot smiled, stepped back from the bar, let them see his getup, tight jeans with a dollar-sign belt buckle, a rayon shirt, and a cinnamon-colored leather jacket.
    “Them pants are kinda snug, ain’t they?” said Fanella, winking at Gregorio.
    “That’s for the