Pepper could take care of himself if it went south. He didn’t know about the rest of the crew and he didn’t care. When the fourth complaint came in about the noise, he told room 405 that the elevator was being fixed and if they bothered him again he’d come up there and beat them with his belt.
Pepper permitted them to empty four more deposit boxes. He said, “It’s time.” It was not his white-boy voice.
They’d filled two valises. Miami Joe said, “Now.” Arthur packed the toolbox and Miami Joe put the index cards inside, too, to mess up the next day’s sorting-out. He almost left the empty valise, then remembered the cops might trace it.
Pepper cut the wire to the police station and Freddie yanked the office phone out of the wall. They weren’t neutralizing the switchboard so this didn’t change their chances materially, but it was a show of enthusiasm that Freddie hoped would serve his cause in the postmortem. In Baby’s Best, Miami Joe might mention it and affirm him. Those melancholy lights roving over him, red and purple. Miami Joe recited the names of the staff—Anna-Louise, the clerk, the night man, the elevator operator—and shared their addresses. If anyone so much as twitched before five minutes was up, he said, it was their job to stop them because he knew where they lived.
The bandits were a mile away when Lancelot St. John sat up and asked, “Now?”
FIVE
The thieves were overdue. Carney had a notion to turn out the lights and hide in the basement. He might fit in the unloved Argent buffet, among the spiders.
“What if one of them tried something?” he said. Referring to the captives.
Freddie shook his head. As if harassed by a fly.
“And what do you expect me to do when they get here?” Carney said. “Check out the stash? Pay them for it?”
Freddie bent over to tie his shoes. “You always want in, in the end,” he said. “That’s why I gave them your name.” But the crew wasn’t supposed to meet up until next week, after the heat died down. He didn’t know what this was about.
Miami Joe rang the buzzer, longer than any decent person would.
He arrived with Arthur. Tonight Miami Joe’s purple suit verged on the zoot, high-waisted with wide lapels. The man was smaller than Carney remembered; Freddie’s accounts had magnified him. His handshake, the rings pincering Carney’s flesh, brought back the night they met, last winter, however briefly: the Clermont Lounge. One of those spots where his cousin ran into hard men of his acquaintance, who stared Carney down when introduced. Cigar smoke twisting like genies below the green glass shades; sharp, cruel laughter from two drunk ladies at the end of the bar; and Carney telling his cousin that May had taken her first steps. A good night.
Arthur’s demeanor, as Freddie had described, was that of a schoolteacher. Chalk dust under the fingernails. Except for the small lump at his ankle where he wore a pistol. When he was little, Carney and his father played a game where he had to guess whether or not his daddy was wearing his revolver under his pants leg. For a long time he thought it was his father’s attempt to get close to him, bleak as it was. Now he was sure his father was merely testing his tailor’s competency. A guy on Orchard handled his work-related alterations.
The architect of the Theresa heist and the able safecracker took the office couch. Pepper showed up last, as he had at the Baby’s Best meeting. A tactic of his, Carney gathered. He was burly and long-limbed, stooping to hide his true size. Something off about him made you look twice, but his dark gaze made you turn before you could figure it out. He shouldn’t be there, but was. A mountain man who’d taken a wrong turn and stayed in the city, or a blown-in weed that’d found purchase in a sidewalk crack: a foreign body that had adapted to its new home.
When Pepper saw there was no place to sit, he picked out the new Headley ottoman from the showroom and set it against the back wall of the office. He hunkered, lips pressed together in an expression equal parts attention and impatience. Faded denim overalls, a dark checkered work shirt, and scuffed horsehide boots. Like the construction truck had just dropped him off on the corner of St. Nicholas after daywork. He could have been any number of Harlem men, outrunning some brand of Southern devil, new to the city and trying to put some grub on the table. Less a disguise than a shared biography.
Nonetheless: something off.
It’d been a long time since Carney had been in the company of such men. Criminal types used to be a regular thing in his life. His father invited cronies to the apartment on 127th; they thumped up the stairs, these mean-eyed rogues with flashy style and smiles as counterfeit as the twenties in their hip pockets. Sent to his room, Carney’d kneel at the bedroom door, puzzling over their shop talk: pinch, vig. Juggler? Why did they need a juggler? Not juggler, a jugger—a safecracker. Reminded of their own lost children, the men sometimes gave him toys of unfamiliar make, trinkets with sharp points and hungry edges that broke within minutes.
“Place looks halfway legit,” Miami Joe said. He squinted at Carney’s college diploma on the wall.
“It is legit,” Carney said.
“Some nice stuff,” Arthur said. “Good front for an offman. TVs.”
Freddie cleared his throat. Pepper looked bemused, reminding Carney of a photo from National Geographic—a crocodile raising his lids above the waterline, gliding toward unsuspecting prey.
“Why Juneteenth?” Carney asked.
Miami Joe shrugged. “I didn’t know that’s what day it was.”
“It’s some country shit,” Pepper said. “They have a party.”
According to the Tribune’s account, the Brown family, late from Houston, Texas, held a Juneteenth party every year. The Skyline Ballroom soiree the night of the robbery was their twentieth celebration. Honoring the day that the final enslaved men and women received word of emancipation was a tradition worth bringing North, they thought. The bandleader played with Duke Ellington, it was jumping. They had hoped to make the party an annual affair; no more. “This sort of thing doesn’t happen back home,” Mrs. Brown told the reporter. “Waking up to such a scene!”
“If it pissed people off,” Miami Joe said, “good.” If it made it look like there was a racial aspect to throw everybody off, so much the better.
“Why don’t you tell them why we’re here,” Pepper said.
They had a Chink Montague problem, Miami Joe said. Everyone north of 110th Street knew the mobster from the papers, from a gossip-page roundup of a big charity ball at the Theresa, or a police blotter item about a shootout in a basement gambling room: The victim was taken to Harlem Hospital where he was pronounced dead. If not the news, then from daily routine, if you were the sort to play numbers, and there were many of that sort, or handed over an envelope of protection money to his men once a week, and of these there were many, or needed a loan now and again, and who didn’t need a little help now and again.
Miami Joe provided a more detailed résumé to explain the predicament. Chink was a protégé of Bumpy Johnson, he explained, starting off as a bodyguard, then muscle at one of Bumpy’s numbers spots. Tradition called for hoods and gangsters to dump bodies in Mount Morris Park; the joke was that Chink had his own reserved spot, like a private parking space. A quick promotion put him in command of one of the plum Lenox Avenue routes. When Bumpy got sent to Alcatraz on drug charges, he entrusted his numbers bank to Chink’s care. Hold on to it until he did his time, make sure he got his cut, his wife got paid every Friday. Don’t give an inch to the Italians or a local up-and-comer. Keep it safe.
Chink was known for his facility with a straight razor. “Got that knife of his to keep people in line,” Freddie said. “His daddy’s that knife sharpener from Barbados.” As if the Barbados part explained something. Carney made the connection—Chink’s father and his sturdy cart were longtime neighborhood characters. The father and the son had made a name for themselves, taking care of elementary needs. t. m. knifesmith, in faded go
ld paint on wood slats, grinding & sharpening blades saws scissors skates. The old man steered up and down the Harlem streets, ringing his bell—never know which building might send customers onto the sidewalks with their dull steel. Heaving that cart, ringing the bell, and bellowing, “Sharpening! Sharpening!” Carney had used his services for years, everybody did. T.M. honed and buffed your cutlery, humming an unrecognizable hymn, then wrapped it in pages from The Crisis and handed it back solemnly before resuming his route. “Sharpening!”
Carney didn’t see how the elder Montague’s sharpening skills meant that his son knew how to wield a blade—it just meant he knew proper care of his instruments. Carney’s father was crooked, but that didn’t make him so. It simply meant that he knew how things worked in that particular line.
“The hotel pays Chink protection—we knew he’d be coming,” Miami Joe said. “Can’t have niggers sticking up places on his watch. But this is about something else.”
“He got a girl,” Pepper said.
“He got this woman he’s taken up with,” Miami Joe said, “Lucinda Cole. Used to dance at Shiney’s before it got shut down?”
“High-yellow gal, looks like Fredi Washington,” Pepper said.
“Fredi Washington?” Freddie said.
“What I didn’t know,” Miami Joe continued, “is that he’s been trying to get her into pictures. Paying for lessons on how to act, how to talk right, carry herself like so. All that. He’s been putting her up at the Theresa that last six months, paying for it. Movie people coming through town, introducing her around like she’s going to be the black Ava Gardner.”
“Ava Gardner,” Freddie said. Her in those sweaters.
“What we didn’t know,” Arthur said, “is that she kept her jewelry in the Theresa vault. All the stuff he bought her. Miss Lucinda Cole. And he says he’ll skin the niggers who stole it, in the middle of 125th Street. For fucking with his investment.”
Carney sighed, more loudly than he thought.
“I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” Pepper said. “It takes a special kind of nigger to skin a nigger, and that ain’t Chink Montague.” His delivery was such that one believed his expertise in skinning-people matters, and his measure of the mobster’s character. “But he’s got his blood up, and it’s true what they say, he’s handy with a razor. All sorts of folks who’d like that reward money. Or like Chink to owe them one.”
Pepper tailed Montague’s men all day as they pressed the big uptown fences, and the small-timers, and otherwise fringe operators like Carney. He’d been across the street sipping a bottle of cherry cola when Delroy and Yea Big—those were their names—visited Carney’s Furniture. “Walking in like a pair of water buffalo.” They hit Carney’s joint, they called on the Arab, on Lou Parks, and even walked up to the second-floor offices of Saul Stein, self-proclaimed Gem King of Broadway, from the radio. Other members of Chink Montague’s organization visited the known stickup men and heisters.
“Come looking for me, I bet,” Miami Joe said. “Maybe tomorrow if they can find me.”
“They call him Yea Big?” Freddie said.
“On account of his johnson.”
“He has to save face because of the girl,” Pepper said, “and because he took over Bumpy’s business. That’s what we got.”
“What’d they say to you?” Miami Joe asked Carney.
“Keep on the lookout for a necklace.”
“If they knew who we were, we’d know,” Arthur said. “If they connected Mr. Carney to us, they wouldn’t have left it like that.” He crossed his legs and pinched his pants leg so it fell correctly over his ankle. “You can expect a visit from the cops,” he told Carney. “Whoever he’s got on the payroll at the precinct. Sniff around, see if they can get a rise out of you.”
Carney had explanations ready for cops about some of the items in the store, but they wouldn’t hold up if they really wanted to put the screws to him. Cross-check the serial number of a Silvertone TV with a list of stolen merchandise. He glared at Freddie.
“None of you said shit?” Miami Joe asked. “No one?”
Silence. Pepper stuck a toothpick in his mouth and a hand in his pocket.
“We’d know if they knew,” Arthur repeated.
Miami Joe said, “Who’d you tell about it, Freddie?”
“I didn’t tell anybody, Joe,” Freddie said. “What about you? The girl from the Theresa who tipped you off? Where’s she?”
“I got her out of town to visit her mother. Living at the Burbank, with those niggers running their yaps all day, she had to go.” Miami Joe turned his attention to Carney.
Carney shook his head. It was like Arthur said—if anyone had talked, they wouldn’t be in his office acting civilized. Semi-civilized. People had been talking on him, not the other way around, the way Carney saw it. One of the crooks who’d brought a gold watch or a Zenith portable into the furniture store had added Carney’s name, finally, to the underground roster of middlemen. It had to happen sooner or later.
The last time Carney had this many people in his office was that odd afternoon when he confronted the very laws of physics: how to get the goddamned convertible sleeper out of the basement. The sofa had been left there by Gabe Newman, the previous tenant, before he split town. Obviously Newman had carried the orange sleeper in through the metal grate in the sidewalk, or down the stairs through the trapdoor in the office. Unless he’d used a matter transporter machine, like in that movie The Fly, or a voodoo spell, unlikely propositions. But no one could figure out how to get it out, not Carney and not the four Italian men from Argent, who needed the room to finish the spring delivery. They heaved and grunted. The oversize sofa did not break down, it did not yield, it refused to clear both sets of stairs no matter what ancient, time-honored furniture-moving tricks they tried. Profanity provided no solace. The afternoon ground on and Carney got the fire ax and chopped the fucker up. It was an off-model and thoroughly unloved. The whole thing remained a mystery.
Now men had assembled in the office again and it was only a matter of time before they turned their attention to that other thing that didn’t fit: Carney. He hoped the ax wouldn’t make a return appearance.
A siren approached, crawling east down 125th Street. No one moved until they were sure it was a fire engine and not a cruiser. They were hard men, and then some breeze came along and they got scared their little match might blow out.
Miami Joe loosened his tie. It was hot. The fan wasn’t much use. “What I want to know is,” talking to Carney again, “can you handle what we got? I never heard of you before Freddie put your name in. Small-time or what—I don’t know shit about you.”
The man had a point, more than he knew. For Carney was not a fence.
Yes, a percentage of his showroom was stolen. TVs, radios back when he could still unload them, tasteful modern lamps, and other small appliances in perfect condition. He was a wall between the criminal world and the straight world, necessary, bearing the load. But when it came to precious metals and gems, he was more of a broker. Freddie came into his office with stuff, and Carney hoofed it downtown to Canal and his man Buxbaum. Buxbaum pulled out his loupe and scale, appraised the goods, and gave Carney fifty cents on the dollar to give to Freddie. Carney got five percent out of Buxbaum’s cut. It allowed the Jew to serve colored clientele without going uptown, without meeting them at all, and it gave Freddie—and the few local characters who came in with gem-encrusted bracelets or silver—another outlet for their goods, away from the Harlem drama.
Carney didn’t go into what happened to the rings and necklaces after his cousin brought them in. Freddie never asked, same way Carney never asked where they came from. If he believed Carney had secret supply lines to the midtown and Canal Street diamond districts, so be it. If it took Carney a day to come up with the cash, he was good for it. They were blood. These men in Carney’s offic
e, however, were not blood, and they were not going to hand over hundreds of thousands of dollars in stones to a stranger and trust that their fifty cents on the dollar was “on the way.” Plus Buxbaum couldn’t carry that weight, far as Carney knew.
The last hour, Carney had been working on how to get out of this mess. He said, “I sell furniture. People come in off the street, look around, decide to buy somewhere else, that’s business. If you want to go to someone else, I don’t take it personally.”
Miami raised an eyebrow.
Arthur said, “Huh.”
Pepper looked Carney over. He leaned forward on the ottoman, alert and stiff. As if perched on a crate of moonshine in a backwoods shack, revenue agents barreling up the driveway, and not on a new Headley with sumptuous, space-age fill. He didn’t let Carney off the hook. “He knows, he’s in.”
Freddie said, “He’s solid. I told you.”
Carney had sounded too indifferent. Folks mistook that for confidence sometimes. In the store, his job was to nudge people into doing what they didn’t know they wanted to do—lay down a couple hundred on a new dinette, say. That was a different matter than convincing them to do the opposite. The crew had come here to reassure themselves of their decisions. He made a note to correct his pitch; it would come in handy the next time Elizabeth tut-tutted one of his ideas or May demanded an extra scoop of ice cream. He’d have to satisfy himself with making it through the meeting in one piece.
The safecracker dismissed the class. “We keep our mouths shut,” Arthur said, “see how it shakes out. Then divvy it up like we planned.” Miami Joe never closed a job unless he was satisfied they were free and clear. Putting off the split was sometimes a problem with the crew, but Arthur was known as a good thief, steady all around, and they trusted him to hold the loot until Monday. Give Chink Montague some time to get distracted with other business, the cops time to move on to another case to botch.
Harlem Shuffle Page 6