Harlem Shuffle(32)

    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 of 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.