Harlem Shuffle

by Colson Whitehead

  Carney waited, like he did when a customer acted squirrelly. Everything in the store too expensive, or they’d walked in on a whim and were searching for an excuse to split.

  “Elizabeth fainting the other day,” Alma said. “That was a scare.” It had just been the day before. Why not say yesterday?

  “Only a few more weeks,” Carney said. He slid the silverware into the sink so it didn’t clatter.

  “Leland and I were thinking,” his mother-in-law said, “what if Elizabeth stayed with us until the baby came? With the doctor’s orders to stay off her feet, it’s been so difficult. The heat.” That kind and gentle register in her voice. She’d never tried to sell him something before and was unsure how to go about it. “It’s comfortable there, and with you working in your store. I can look after her all the time and take her off your hands.”

  “That’s nice of you to offer, but we’re doing okay right now.”

  “It’d be easier for May, too,” she said, “with the spare room. That’s how they built them, for cross ventilation.”

  “May, too? That’s the deal here?”

  “She wouldn’t want to be apart, obviously. At that age. With you at that store all day. It makes sense.”

  “Sense.”

  “We think it’s reasonable. My mother always said—”

  “Did your mother ever tell you to mind your own fucking business?”

  “Raymond!”

  “ ‘With me in the store all day.’ Did your mother ever tell you to mind your own fucking business?”

  “You’ll wake May,” Alma said.

  “She sleeps like a rock. With that train all night? She sleeps like a rock.” He had never talked to her like this, but he had been waiting.

  She had been waiting as well. Alma dried her hands on the dish towel. Draped it over the sink faucet, perfectly even. She said, “Talk to me like that—who the fuck do you think you are, nigger? I’ve seen street niggers like you my whole life, hands in your pockets.” She slouched in imitation and her voice went low and colored. “I’m-a just out here trying to make a dollar. You think I don’t know what game you’re running? With your whole jive?”

  On the one hand, her honesty. On the other hand.

  The phone rang in the living room. And once more. Alma straightened her dress and went to answer it. Carney put his hands on the sink. Outside the window, he caught four floors’ worth of kitchen windows in the building next door: one dark; another lit up but empty; the next featuring two hands deep in suds; and in the last a thin brown hand tapped cigarette ashes outside. People trying to make it through the day. The 1 train pulled into the 125th Street station, he felt it in his toes. He couldn’t see the line of windows in the train cars, the people pour out onto the platform, head down the stairs, but he pictured them scatter to their private dramas. Regular as sunsets and arguments, this movement. People heading home to their private cars, light spilling from the square windows of kitchens. As if they lived in trains stacked on top of one another.

  A fence, and also a thief. He had stolen her daughter, after all.

  She wasn’t getting her back.

  Alma’s passionate account met a friendly ear and he gathered it was Leland on the phone. If their words hadn’t wakened Elizabeth, then she was asleep for the night, arms reaching out for May, with that new baby in between. Carney split.

  * * *

  * * *

  Out on the street, the first Saturday-night shift was busy. They were loud: jeers, rhythm and blues, disputes on the cusp of fistfights. Carney walked among the couples heading out for a special dinner, or for one at their usual haunts, where they knew what to avoid on the menu. He dodged the dirty kids who should have been in bed, running and screaming themselves sick, and the teenagers wringing out the last bit of the day before they had to return home to pant by the open window next to their beds. In tenements and split-up townhouses, the second shift made preparations for their entrance. Loitering in the bathtub, ironing their best duds, rehearsing alibis, and confirming orders of business: We’ll meet at Knights and take it from there. Plus the second-shift men and women meeting no one at all, taking one last confirmation in the mirror before they gave themselves to Saturday-night destiny.

  And then there were the crooks, who tied their shoes and hummed jumpy songs, for soon the midnight whistle would call them to the factory.

  There was no question where he was headed: Riverside Drive. He crossed the street to avoid the street preacher, then crossed the street again to go around the mission church on 128th and its night congregation filing inside. He’d had enough of sales pitches today. Don’t hurt me, I’ll talk. Tell me what I want to know or else. Then Alma with, Let the girls stay with us. Give Elizabeth enough time and she’ll come around, Alma and Leland must have told each other. Wake up to the poverty of her choices. He was the rat that crept out of the gutter and squeezed under the door.

  Alma’s proposal made sense, though not for the reasons she gave. Carney had put his family in danger, and that’s why he had cursed at her. Left a trail to his door for bad men to follow. One of the crew dead, two others missing…but that was wrong. Pepper was right. It was Miami Joe, no doubt. Miami Joe was not missing. He had killed Arthur and taken the money and stones from the Theresa job. Perhaps brought harm to his cousin. And if Miami Joe hadn’t split for the South yet, he needed to eliminate the rest of the crew to cut off Chink’s payback. Or to prevent them—well, Pepper—from avenging the double-cross. Carney didn’t know how this particular region of the crooked world worked. Maybe Miami Joe was in Florida, or maybe he wouldn’t leave town until he was sure no one was coming after him.

  There was a breeze off the river. Rank but cool. The buzz of the afternoon hunt and his fight with Alma had dissipated. A little dizzy—he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Carney crossed to the west side of the street and looked north, tracing the wall of Riverside Drive, that jagged line of majestic red brick and white limestone. The perimeter of a fort, to protect the good citizens of Harlem. Wrong again—a cage to keep the mad crowd who called those streets home from escaping to the rest of the world. Who knew the havoc and ruin they’d perpetrate if allowed to run free among decent people. Best to keep them all in here, on this island, bought for twenty-seven bucks from the Indians, the story went. Twenty-seven bucks went a lot further in those days.

  He’d wandered across from 528 Riverside Drive, his latest prospect. This is what he was working toward. Who wouldn’t want to live on Riverside Drive? Come home from the store, open the front door and the smell of Caw Caw chicken drifts from the kitchen. Radio on, big band, and May hugs one of his legs and the new addition—he was a boy in this reverie—hugs the other. Sunset light from the west, even if you had to look at New Jersey, too. A nice place, like no other he’d lived in his whole life. Street nigger, she’d said.

  A tall woman in a green dress ducked out of the front door, high heels clicking on the concrete. She checked her purse for keys or lipstick or cigarettes and kept walking. Carney stood in a spot diagonal to one of the gargoyles on a cornice of 528—their eyes met. No hint of the beast’s stone appraisal. What would his father do? Big Mike Carney. He wouldn’t go to his office, not that he had one, wouldn’t go home, that’s for sure. He would not lay his head down until he hunted down the man who’d double-crossed him. Like Pepper, he’d turn uptown upside down until he shook out his quarry.

  Who wouldn’t want to live on Riverside Drive? A few blocks north was the Burbank. Where the finger—Miami Joe’s source inside the Theresa—kept a room. It was a short walk.

  The SRO’s lobby was Saturday-night busy—residents striking out to their drinking spots, running home after work to gussy themselves up for their evening machinations. The disheveled manager perched behind a scratched-up desk, guarding the array of mail slots. A tiny fan blew into his miserable face, two streamers flapping from the
grille like tentacles. Carney said he was looking for his friend Betty, couldn’t remember the room number.

  “Betty who?”

  “I work with her at the Theresa. She forgot her purse.”

  The manager looked down at his paper. “She ain’t been around.”

  “Maybe I could give it to Joe?”

  The manager pushed his glasses up on his nose. He waited for his visitor to notice the hole in his scheme. “Where’s the purse?”

  Carney jerked his hand toward the street. “My truck.”

  The elevator opened and two ladies with bouffant hairdos levitated into the lobby like queens, gowns shimmering. “I don’t know any Joe,” the manager said.

  Carney rounded the corner and stopped to think. Freddie had mentioned Baby’s Best in his account of the robbery. That was on 136th or 137th, off Eighth. He wasn’t going to confront the man—Pepper could handle that. But to help the hunt before calling in the roughneck, it was better than pacing around his living room. Alma rarely stayed past ten o’clock. The apartment would be quiet soon. He chose his route to Baby’s Best.

  * * *

  * * *

  Miami Joe was not a law-abiding sort and had no love for its earthly muscle: sheriffs and deputies back home, cops and detectives up here. Had they the misfortune to stop him when he had his pistol in his pocket, he’d cut them down. His disdain for those he robbed was of a different variety, akin to that of a child grinding his shoe on a cockroach. They were insignificant, they were helpless, and they passed from his mind after the job was done, whether the task at hand was a rip-off or a rubout. There was, for example, an empty place in his mind formerly occupied by Arthur. Eventually the next job would fill that vacancy. Until he finished that one, too. Miami Joe vaulted down the fire stairwell after Gibbs, the night manager, rang Betty’s room. Clasping his pistol to his leg. If he were quick enough. Miami Joe was surprised to make out the furniture salesman down 140th Street. Pepper would have sensed his approach. Chink would have sent two men. He lucked out. Miami Joe got as close as he could, dropped to his knee, rested the barrel on his forearm to aim, and pulled the trigger.

  NINE

  His day ended as it started: with men of hard character bracing him under the two-foot-tall letters that spelled out his name.

  Like most Harlemites, Carney grew up with broken glass in the playground, the pageant of sidewalk cruelty whenever he stepped outside, and the snap of gunfire. He recognized the sound. Carney crouched and zagged toward the aluminum garbage cans. When he looked back, there was Miami Joe and the zing as his second shot hit the lid of the can next to him. It wasn’t too far to the corner—he sprinted for it.

  New York was like that sometimes—you turn a corner and end up in an entirely different city, like magic. 140th Street was dark and silent, and Hamilton was a party. The bar two doors down had a line waiting to get in—one of those bebop spots, from the sound—and next to the bar some Spanish guys drank wine and played dominoes in the light cast from a barbershop. The domino players worked in the barbershop; it paid their rent during the day and provided a refuge from their families at night. Carney bumped through the people standing in line, jostling, and sped down the block. A patrol car cruised on the other side of the street. He looked over his shoulder. No sign of Miami Joe. If Carney saw the cops, so did Miami Joe. He ran once the cops got far enough away.

  Carney took an eccentric path south, sawing back and forth down avenues and streets. Before he dropped Pepper off that afternoon, the man told him to leave any messages at Donegal’s. “Don’t matter who’s working—that’s my answering service.” This was definitely more Pepper’s field—gun battles and whatnot. The man was like a swami when it came to putting a hurt on somebody. Carney couldn’t go home and lead Miami Joe to his family. If Miami Joe went there anyway…There were bars full of people; he could hide out in one. Until last call and then what? He headed for the store, that’s where his feet took him at any rate. He’d call Pepper from his office and wait.

  Morningside and 125th was quiet when he arrived ten minutes later. All the activity was by the Apollo a few blocks down. He couldn’t remember who was playing that night, the name painted on the side of the big tour bus, but the mob and its squeals meant it was somebody big. His hands shook as he put the keys to the front door.

  Miami Joe said, “Hurry it up.” He stood off the sidewalk between two dark sedans. There hadn’t been time to put on his suit jacket; he wore a white shirt open on his chest, damp with sweat, over striped purple pants. He held his pistol on Carney, low, where the cars hid it from view.

  The crowd outside the Apollo screamed and passing drivers smacked their horns. The entertainer coming out to greet his fans.

  Inside the furniture store, Miami Joe said, “Leave the lights out.” They could see. The streetlight on his showroom beauties at night usually sent Carney into a sentimental mood: It was just him and this little place he’d carved out of the city. Miami Joe jabbed the barrel into Carney’s back. “Anyone here?”

  “We’re closed.”

  “I asked if anyone was here, nigger.”

  Carney said no. Miami Joe stopped him at the office door to make sure the room was empty. He told Carney to turn on the desk lamp. The door to the basement was open and Miami Joe peered down, leaning back a little.

  “What’s down there?”

  “Basement.”

  “Anyone down there?”

  Carney shook his head.

  He let it drop. “Didn’t have time to call anyone.” He sat on the couch. From his expression, he was surprised at how comfortable the Argent was. Carney resisted the urge to sell him on the Airform core.

  Miami Joe waved his pistol: Sit at the desk. Carney did so and noticed the sales record Rusty had left for him by the telephone. He’d sold an entire Collins-Hathaway living-room set that afternoon.

  “Look at me,” Miami Joe said. He checked to make sure he couldn’t be seen from the street. “How’d you get on the Burbank?”

  “I remembered the girl.”

  Miami Joe scowled. “Always,” he said. He rubbed his collarbone and relaxed. “You want to know why?”

  Carney didn’t say anything. He thought of his wife and daughter on their safe bed. That little lifeboat aloft on the dark and churning Harlem sea. He didn’t sell bedroom furniture but a guy he knew from around gave him a deal. Carney’d be sleeping there with them, peaceful and quiet, if Alma hadn’t started with her shit. It was her fault he was out in the street. But before her, it was Freddie and years of him pushing Carney into dumb business of one kind or another. It was him saying yes. He wondered if his cousin was still alive.

  “Once Chink started looking for us,” Miami Joe said, “I didn’t want to wait until Monday for the split. Then I had to think about which one of you dummies would talk in the meantime. Your idiot cousin. And if I had to shut one nigger up…” He rubbed his temple as if shaving down the rough edges of a headache. “You know what? Half those stones was paste—ain’t that a bitch? What kind of dumb nigger locks up their fake shit in a safe-deposit box?”

  “I have a family,” Carney said.

  Miami Joe nodded, bored. “I’m sick of it up here anyway,” he said. “The winters are cold as hell. And y’all have a stuck-up attitude. I hate stuck-up people who ain’t got nothing going on. It’s nonsensical. You got to earn your attitude, you ask me. No, you can keep it. I’m descended from African people—I need to be in the sun.” He sat up and rubbed his chin with the gun barrel. “I want you to call Pepper at Donegal’s—he uses the joint for messages. Call him up and tell him you got a line on me and he has to get his ass down here, toot-sweet. We can wrap this up. You two, then Freddie. I grab the stash at Betty’s, then I’m on the next train out of this dump. Where’s your cousin at?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You know. And once I take care o
f that nigger Pepper, I’ll get it out of you.”

  Carney rang the bar as instructed. It was loud, but once he mentioned Pepper’s name, the bartender told everybody to shut up. He said he’d deliver the message.

  “Where do you keep the money?” Miami Joe asked.

  Carney pointed to the bottom drawer of the desk.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” Miami Joe chuckled. “Family, whew! I had a cousin like that—my cousin Pete. We got into some shit, boy. All kinds of shit. But he was dumb as a donkey and got hooked on that junk. Can’t rely on a man once he gets on the needle.”

  Miami Joe’s hand dangled as he remembered, then he trained the gun on Carney again. “I did what I had to do. Buried him at this fishing spot we used to go to. He always liked it there. Sometimes, they see it coming, and they know it’s a mercy. Especially when it’s family.”

  Carney had to turn away. He saw the record of Rusty’s big sale again. An entire Collins-Hathaway living-room set. It was enough to put him over on the rent.

  They both saw Pepper pop up from the basement at the same moment, but Miami Joe was unable to get off a shot. The first bullet hit him above the heart and the second, his belly. He fell back on the couch, tried to stand, and tumbled onto his face. Pepper climbed the final steps into the office and kicked the man’s pistol away. Carney found it a week later when sweeping up.

  “I was across the street,” Pepper said. He waved the gun smoke away from his face, bothered. “Someone was going to show up,” he said. “If it was you or your cousin, I had a spare hand for the hunt. Midnight shift. If it was him, I’d finish it.” He tilted his head toward the street. “You’re going to need a new lock on that door in the sidewalk.”

  Miami Joe’s blood crept out in a slow tide toward the desk. Carney said, “Christ,” and got a towel from the bathroom.