Harlem Shuffle

by Colson Whitehead

  He allotted twenty minutes for the takeover of the lobby and the raid of the vault. “Vault?” Freddie asked. It wasn’t a real vault, Miami Joe told him, that’s what they called the room containing the safe-deposit boxes. Since they were smashing the boxes open, Arthur wouldn’t be able to use his expertise, but he was dependable, a scarce quality. He was cool with it. He cleaned his glasses with a monogrammed handkerchief and said, “Sometimes you need a pick, sometimes a crowbar.”

  Twenty minutes, four men. Baby, the eponymous owner, brought them another round, refusing eye contact and payment. The crew debated the details as the happy-hour trade grabbed stools at the bar and the music cranked up. Pepper kept his mouth shut except to ask about the guns. He focused on his partners’ faces, as if around a poker table and not the wobbly Formica of Baby’s Best.

  Arthur thought five men was better, but Miami Joe preferred the four-way split. At the safecracker’s gentle suggestion, they plucked Freddie out of the car and inducted him into the lobby action. It was only a few yards from the street to the hotel lobby, but infinitely closer to peril. Poor Freddie. Purple-and-blue lights sliding all over the place, this gun talk, it was unnerving. He didn’t see a way to protest. Pepper glaring like that. The crew picked up on his hesitation, so when Miami Joe said his usual fence had been pinched the week before, Freddie gave up Carney as an offering, although he did not phrase it to his cousin this way in his retelling.

  At 3:43 a.m. the night of the job, Freddie parked the Chevy Styleline on Seventh across from the Theresa on the uptown side of the street. As Miami Joe had promised, there were plenty of spots. The traffic at that hour was nothing. King Kong come running down the street, there was no one to see. Through the glass doors, the night guard stood at the bell stand, fiddling with the long antenna of a transistor radio. Freddie couldn’t see the front desk, but the clerk was somewhere. The elevator operator sat lethargically on his stool, or was on his feet directing the cab up or down, depending. Miami Joe said that one morning, forty-five minutes went by without an elevator summons.

  It spooked Freddie, being in the night man’s field of vision like that. He moved the Chevy closer to the corner where the guard couldn’t see him. It was the first deviation from Miami Joe’s plan.

  The knock at the window startled him. Two men got into the backseat and Freddie panicked—then he realized the disguises had thrown him off. “Settle down,” Pepper said. Arthur wore a long, conked wig and a pencil mustache that made him look like Little Richard. Shaved twenty years off him, the time he spent in the joint refunded. Pepper was in a Hotel Theresa bellhop uniform, which Betty had stolen from the laundry two months ago. The night she grabbed it, she asked Miami Joe to put it on and say some dialogue before she permitted him to kiss her. It was all in the overhead.

  Pepper had the uniform altered. He didn’t change his facial appearance. He had gravel eyes that made you stare at your feet. The aluminum toolbox sat on his lap.

  Thirty seconds before four a.m., Arthur got out of the car and crossed the median. His tie was loose, jacket rumpled, his stride erratic. A musician calling it a night or an out-of-town insurance salesman after a night in the Big City—in short, a Hotel Theresa guest. The night man saw him and unlocked the front door. Chester Miller was in his late fifties, slim-built except for his belly, which perched on his belt like an egg. A little sleepy. After one o’clock, when the bar closed, hotel policy only permitted registered guests inside.

  “Perry? Room 512,” Arthur told the night man. They’d booked a room for three nights. The clerk wasn’t at the front desk. Arthur hoped Miami Joe had that situation in hand.

  The night man flipped through the papers on his clipboard and pulled the brass door wide. Arthur had the gun in the man’s rib cage when he turned to lock the door. He told him to take it easy. Freddie and Pepper were on the red carpet outside—the night man let them in and locked the door as directed. Freddie held the three leather valises. A rubber Howdy Doody mask covered his face; the crew had bought two of them at a Brooklyn five-and-dime two weeks earlier. Pepper carried the heavy toolbox.

  The door to the fire stairs was open. A crack. They were halfway to the registration desk when Miami Joe opened the door the rest of the way and entered the lobby. He’d been hiding in the stairwell for three hours. The Howdy Doody mask had come on five minutes earlier, but as far as he was concerned he’d been in disguise all night because he wasn’t wearing a purple suit. There were no hard feelings about who got masks and who didn’t. Some of the crew needed their faces revealed in order to do their jobs, and some didn’t.

  The arrow above the door indicated the elevator was on the twelfth floor. Then the eleventh.

  For most of the day the hotel lobby bustled like Times Square, guests and businessmen crisscrossing the white-and-black tiles, locals meeting for a meal and gossip, their number multiplied by the oversize mirrors on the green-and-beige floral wallpaper. The doors to the phone booths by the elevator folded in and unfolded out, weird gills. At night, the swells congregated in the leather club chairs and sofas and drank cocktails and smoked cigarettes as the door to the bar swung open and shut. Porters ferrying luggage on carts, teams of clerks at registration handling crises big and small, the shoe-shine man insulting people in scuffed shoes and arguing for his services—it was an exuberant and motley chorus.

  All that was done now and the cast had shrunk to thieves and captives.

  The night man was pliable, as Miami Joe had promised. Miami Joe knew Chester from his nights at the hotel; he would do as he was told. It was one of the reasons Miami Joe covered his face. The mask smelled like piney ointment and pushed his breath back at him, gusting up hot and rotten.

  Arthur nodded toward the bell on the desk, a signal for the night man to ding the clerk. When the clerk emerged from the offices, Miami Joe was upon him, one hand over his mouth and the other jabbing the nose of the .38 beneath the man’s ear. One school held that the base of the skull was the best spot, the cool metal initiating a physical reaction of fear, but the Miami School, of which Joe was a disciple, liked below the ear. Only tongues went there and metal made it eerie. There was an alarm with a wire to the police station, activated by a button beneath where the guest book rested. Miami Joe stood between the clerk and the button. He motioned for the night man to come around so Pepper could watch him and the clerk.

  “Elevator on four,” Freddie said.

  Miami Joe grunted and went into the back. To the left was the switchboard, where an unexpected visitor waited. Some nights the switchboard operator’s friend kept her company. They were eating pea soup.

  The weeknight operator was named Anna-Louise. She had worked at the Hotel Theresa for thirty years, since before it was desegregated, routing calls. Her chair swiveled. She liked the night work, joking with and mothering the succession of young desk clerks through the years, and she liked listening to the guests’ calls, the arguments and arrangements of assignations, the lonely calls home through the cold, cold wires. The disembodied voices were a radio play, a peculiar one where most of the characters only appeared once. Lulu visited her at the switchboard some nights. They had been lovers since high school and around their building referred to themselves as sisters. The lie made sense when they first moved in, but it was silly now. No one really cares about other people when you get down to it—their own struggles are too close-up. The women screamed, then shut their mouths and put their hands up when Miami Joe aimed the gun. To the right was the manager’s office. “Get the key,” he said.

  Pepper brought the clerk and the night man into the office area. Miami Joe stood by the wall of iron bars that separated the room from the vault, far enough away to cover both the men and the women if they tried anything funny. He didn’t think that was going to happen. They were rabbits, quivering and afraid. Miami Joe’s voice was level and calm when he spoke to them, not to soothe but because he thought it more s
adistic. He felt the erotic rush he always got on jobs, it kicked in when the caper got going and dissipated when it was over and then he didn’t remember it until the next job. Never could get ahold of it when he wasn’t thieving. It told him his idea for the job and its practical execution were in harmony.

  When the elevator door opened, its two occupants saw a lean young man at the desk in a silly mask looking at them. He mouthed hello. Arthur swept around, his gun out. He waved the elevator operator and the passenger out of the cab and directed them behind the registration desk. By now Pepper had taken the key to the manager’s office from the clerk and was conducting the four other captives into the room.

  Rob Reynolds, the manager of the hotel, had arranged a nice refuge for himself. There were no windows, so he created them—tasseled curtains, identical to those in the finest suites upstairs, framed painted Venetian scenes. After the afternoon rush, he liked to think that was him under the hat, steering a gondola down salty boulevards in silence. The overstuffed sofa matched the ones in the lobby, though this one endured less wear and tear; one man’s naps and quickie fucks with past-due long-term residents couldn’t compete with the weight of hordes. Autographed photos of famous guests and residents covered the walls—Duke Ellington, Richard Wright, Ella Fitzgerald in a ball gown, long white gloves up to her elbows. Rob Reynolds had provided exemplary service over the years, the standard amenities and the secret ones. Late-night smack deliveries, last-minute terminations via the Jamaican abortionist who kept two rooms on the seventh floor. It was no surprise, in some quarters, when the gentleman turned out to not be a doctor at all. In many pictures, Rob Reynolds shook hands with Hotel Theresa’s celebrity visitors and grinned.

  Miami Joe checked the desk drawer for a gun—it had just occurred to him. He didn’t find one. He asked the clerk where they kept the cards that tracked the safe-deposit boxes. The young clerk had gone by Rickie his whole life but now wanted folks to call him Richard. It was a tough haul. His family and those he grew up with were a lost cause. New acquaintances switched to the nickname as if they’d received instructions by telegram. The hotel was the only place they called him Richard. No defections so far. This was his first real job and each time he walked through those front doors he imagined he stepped into himself, the man he wanted to be. Clerk, assistant manager, top dog with this office to call his own. The day after the heist, a porter called him Rickie and it stuck. The robbery cursed him. Rickie pointed to the metal box. It sat on the desk between the phone and Rob Reynolds’s nameplate.

  Miami Joe directed the captives to the rug between the desk and the couch: Lie there with your eyes closed. Freddie covered them from the doorway. Freddie wasn’t a gunman, but Miami Joe figured he was jumpy enough that he’d get off a shot if anyone moved, it didn’t matter if he missed if it bought the rest of the crew time to put down an insurrection.

  The team hit their marks. They wore thin calfskin gloves. Pepper in his bellhop uniform took up his station at the front desk. Arthur had unlocked the door to the vault and now he and Miami Joe stood before the bank of safe-deposit boxes. The brass-colored boxes were twelve inches tall and eight inches wide and deep enough for jewelry, bundled cash, cheap furs, and unsent suicide notes. Arthur said, “This is all Drummond. You said they were Aitkens.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  Aitkens took three or four good whacks before there was enough purchase for a crowbar. Maybe that’s why they replaced them with Drummond, Arthur thought, which required six to eight whacks. The take had been cut in half, if they stuck to the timetable. Miami Joe said, “78.” Arthur got to work with the sledgehammer. The index cards recorded the box numbers, the name of the guests, the contents, and the day of deposit. The manager had sissy handwriting that was easy to read. Arthur got into box 78 after six blows and started on the next while Miami Joe cleaned it out. The contents matched what was on the card: two diamond necklaces, three rings, and some documents. He put the stones into a black valise and searched the cards for the next box to hit.

  If the banging rattled Pepper, he didn’t show it. He was at the desk one minute when he concluded that working registration was a lousy job. Most straight jobs were, in Pepper’s estimation, which is why he hadn’t held one in many years, but this gig was spectacularly bad. What with all the people. The constant yipping and complaints—my room’s too cold, my room’s too hot, can you send up a newspaper, the street noise is too loud. Fork over thirty bucks and suddenly they’re royalty, ruling over a twelve-by-fourteen-foot kingdom. Shared bathroom down the hall unless you pay extra. His father had worked in a hotel kitchen, cooking chops and steaks. He came home stinking every night, in addition to the other worthlessness, but Pepper would take that work over desk duty any day. Talking to these fucking mopes.

  Bang bang bang.

  Pepper got the first call about the noise five minutes later. The switchboard buzzed and Freddie told the operator to get up and answer it. Anna-Louise put room 313’s call through. “Front desk,” Pepper said. It was the voice he used when he was telling a joke and making fun of white people. He apologized for the banging and said they were fixing the elevator but they’d be done soon. If you come to the front desk in the morning, we’ll give you a voucher for ten percent off breakfast. Negroes do love a voucher. The mezzanine floor was offices and a club room, shut now, and the Orchid Room occupied most of the third, or else they’d be getting a lot more calls. Mr. Goodall in room 313 had a voice like a chipmunk, whiny and entitled. Fry chicken all day in that kitchen heat over this goddamned job.

  “Tell her to stay at the switchboard in case there’s more,” Miami Joe said. Freddie stood in the doorway of the manager’s office. He’d sweated through his shirt and into his black suit. The eyeholes in the mask made him think something outside his range of vision was about to clobber him. The men and women on the floor didn’t move. He said, “Don’t move!” anyway. His mother did that all the time—tell him not to do something right before he was about to do it, like he was made of glass and she could see inside. But so many things lived in his head that she never suspected, he hadn’t had that little-boy feeling in a long time. ’Til tonight. He’d jumped off the Hudson cliffs—but instead of hitting the river he kept falling. Freddie wasn’t able to pull the trigger, so he hoped the captives did what they were supposed to. At her station, Anna-Louise covered her face with her hands.

  Bang bang bang.

  The rug was freshly vacuumed, which suited the captives, who had their faces in it. The elevator passenger, the man from the twelfth floor, was named Lancelot St. John. He lived two blocks away and his occupation was sitting at the hotel bar until he lit upon a suitable lady from out of town. If his quarry picked up on his euphemisms, Lancelot straightened out the money before he undressed them; if not, afterward he mentioned a present he wanted to buy for his mother, but he was a little short this week. In the service industry you shift your approach depending on the customer. Tonight’s lady had flown in from Chicago to speak to a real estate lawyer about a brownstone she’d recently inherited. Her mother had passed. Perhaps that explained the tears. He’d walked into robberies before—he’d be in bed soon enough. It was almost time for the Theresa to wake to the day and the criminals had to wrap it up.

  The elevator operator had done time for stealing a car, and later that day when questioned by detectives he said he didn’t see a goddamned thing.

  Arthur smiled. It was good to be out, it was good to be stealing again. Even if a quick glance told him that half the jewelry was paste. Half of it was real, fine-quality stones. He measured his prison time in terms not of years lost but of scores missed. The city! And all its busy people and the sweet things they held dear in safes and vaults, and his delicate talent for seducing these items away. He’d bought farmland in Pennsylvania through a white lawyer and it was waiting for him, this green wonder. Arthur put the pictures the lawyer sent him up in his cell. His cellma
te asked him what the hell it was, and he told him it was where he’d grown up. Arthur had grown up in a Bronx tenement fighting off rats every night, but when he finally retired to the nice clapboard house, he’d run through the grass like he was a kid again. Every hammer blow like he was busting through city concrete to the living earth below.

  Bang bang bang.

  They got two more calls about the banging. It was loud, rebounding on the vault walls, vibrating in the very bones of the building. The excuse about the broken elevator came about after they decided to keep the operator on ice in the office. How many people would call for the elevator between 4:00 and 4:20 a.m.? Maybe none, maybe plenty. How many would take the stairs down and be ushered by Pepper in his gentle way into the office with the other captives? Just one it turned out, at 4:17, a certain Fernando Gabriel Ruiz, Venezuelan national and distributor of handcrafted crockery, who would never visit this city again, after what happened last time and now this, fuck it. And how many guests knocked on the front door to be let into their rooms? Also one—Pepper unlocked the door and marched Mr. Leonard Gates of Gary, Indiana, currently staying in room 807 with its lumpy bed and the hex from the guy who’d had a heart attack, into the back with the rest. Plenty of room in the manager’s office. Stack them like firewood or standing room only if need be.

  Given that only two souls had intruded on their scheme, Miami Joe said, “Keep going,” when Arthur told him twenty minutes was up.

  He wanted to push their luck.

  Arthur kept swinging. Freddie became aware of his bladder. Pepper said, “It’s time.” It wasn’t his visceral distaste for the front desk and the interaction it represented. You tell Pepper it’s twenty minutes, it’s twenty minutes. Arthur kept swinging.