Harlem Shuffle(18)

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 gold 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.