Harlem Shuffle(13)
“He said I was going to be the wheelman, that’s why I said yes.” He shrugged. “What’s so hard about that? Two hands and a foot.”
The first convocation of the crew was held in a booth at Baby’s Best, on the brink of happy hour. In the dressing room the strippers covered their scars with powder; blocks away, their faithful customers waited to punch out of straight jobs. The lights were going, though, spinning and whirring, perhaps they never stopped, even when the place was closed, red and green and orange in restless, garish patrol over surfaces. It was Mars. Miami Joe had his arms spread on the red leather when Freddie walked in. Miami Joe, sipping Canadian Club and twisting his pinkie rings as he mined the dark rock of his thoughts.
Arthur was next to arrive, embarrassed by the meeting place, like he’d never been in this kind of establishment before, or spent his every hour there. Arthur was forty-eight years old, hair corkscrewed with gray. He reminded Freddie of a schoolteacher. The man favored plaid sweater vests and dark slacks, wore bookworm glasses, and had a gentle way of pointing out flaws in aspects of the scheme. “A policeman would spot that phony registration in a second—is there another solution to this problem?” He’d just finished his third stint in prison, thanks to a weakness for venal or otherwise incompetent comrades. Not this time. Arthur was “the Jackie Robinson of safecracking,” according to Miami Joe, having busted the color line when it came to safes and locks and alarms, generally regarded as the domain of white crooks.
Pepper showed up last and they got to business.
“What about this man Pepper?” Carney asked.
“Pepper.” Freddie winced. “You’ll see.”
Cocktails at the Hotel Theresa were a hot ticket, and Miami Joe often installed himself at the long, polished bar with the rest of the neighborhood’s criminal class, talking shit. He took out one of the maids every once in a while, a slight, withdrawn girl named Betty. She lived at the Burbank, a once-dignified building on Riverside Drive that had been cut to into single-room accommodations. A lot of new arrivals washed up there. Betty liked to stall before she let Miami Joe into her bed, which meant a lot of talking, and in due course he had enough information to plan the robbery. The job struck him the first time he laid eyes on the hotel. Where others saw sophistication and affirmation, Miami Joe recognized opportunity, for monetary gain, and to bring black Harlem down a notch. These up-North niggers had an attitude about Southern newcomers, he’d noticed, a pervasive condescension that made him boil. What’d you say? Is that how y’all do it down there? They thought their hotel was nice? He’d seen nicer. Not that he’d be able to provide an example if challenged on this point. Miami Joe was strictly hot sheet when it came to short-term accommodations.
The hotel bar closed at one a.m., the lobby was dead by four, and the morning shift started at five, when the kitchen staff and laundry workers punched in. Weekends were busier, and on Saturday nights the hotel manager ran gambling rooms for high rollers. Which meant bodyguards and sore losers—too many surly men walking around with guns in their pockets. Tuesday night was Miami Joe’s lucky night when it came to jobs, so Tuesday.
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.