Harlem Shuffle(33)

“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.

“Make a little dam, that’s what I do,” Pepper said. He stuck a toothpick in his mouth. “Where’s this Betty live?”

Carney made a dam. “At the Burbank,” he said, “140th Street.”

“What apartment?”

“I don’t know.”

Pepper shrugged. “Your cousin’s okay, sounds like.”

“He usually is.”

Pepper walked into the showroom.

“Wait,” Carney said. “What do I do with him?”

Pepper yawned. “You got a truck, right? You’re Mike Carney’s son. You’ll figure it out.”

Carney leaned against the office doorway as Pepper closed the front door. He headed for the river. Two young men passed by the front window going the other way, joking and howling.

The night proceeded down its avenue. It was physics.

His father’s truck came in handy. By sunrise he had dumped the body in Mount Morris Park, per the local custom. From the way the newspapers wrote about the park, he thought there might be a line. It was easier than he thought, getting rid of a body, or so he told Freddie when his cousin returned from his vacation down in the Village. Carney was almost caught by two men copulating under a birch tree, a worn-out hooker scouting wee-hour johns, and a man in a priest’s collar who cursed at the moon and did not sound like a man of God at all. Plus he was out the money for the Moroccan Luxury rug he rolled the crook up in, but still: easier. If there was one thing he’d learned in recent days, it was that common sense and a practical nature are a great boon in the execution of criminal enterprises. Also that there are hours of the night when other people are less visible, so vivid are one’s private ghosts. He cleaned up the blood in the office. He climbed into bed next to Elizabeth and May. Out cold two seconds later.

    The story of that Saturday night made Freddie shake his head and sigh. He had a hungry look. Then he asked, “In a rug?”

It ended up being a good month once the heat broke. Customers returned and he and Rusty closed some nice sales. Some of them were repeat. Sell quality goods, and people come back. The two Silvertones found takers one Thursday afternoon, one after the other. More where that came from, Aronowitz told him.

Elizabeth didn’t have any more fainting spells, and if her mother told her about the argument that night, there was no sign. That bill would come due in time.

About a month later Carney received a package. He got an odd feeling and closed his office door and drew the blinds to the showroom. Inside the box, wrapped in newspaper like a fish, was Miss Lucinda Cole’s necklace. The ruby glared at him, a mean lizard eye. Pepper’s handwriting was childish. The note said, “You can split this with your cousin.” He didn’t. He sat on it for a year to let the heat die down. Buxbaum paid him and Carney put the money away for the apartment. “I may be broke sometimes, but I ain’t crooked,” he said to himself. Although, he had to admit, perhaps he was.





DORVAY


   1961




“An envelope is an envelope. Disrespect the order and the whole system breaks down.”





ONE


Five hundred dollars, onetime payment. As far as bribes and payoffs went, the onetime nature argued in its favor. Detective Munson came knocking for his weekly envelope, every Friday Delroy and Yea Big came to the store to pick up Chink Montague’s—Carney didn’t have the heart to calculate how much he’d paid out to those crooks the last two years. Operating expenses. The price of doing business, like rent and insurance and Ma Bell. Squint at it, the five hundred to Duke was an investment.

“It’ll pay off down the road.” That’s how Pierce had pitched membership to Carney, when the lawyer caught his reaction to the words Dumas Club. Carney’s expression: a braid of disdain and revulsion. “I’m not the right color,” Carney said.

“It’s not that bad anymore,” Pierce said. He grinned. “Look at me.”

It was true that Pierce was a blacker variety of berry than the average Dumas member. Certainly the lawyer wasn’t as stuffy or stuck-up as, say, Leland Jones.

“That’s your father-in-law?”

“Yes,” Carney said.

“Sorry, brother.”

They first met at the inaugural meeting of the Harlem Small Business Association. Basement of the St. Nicholas AME Zion Church. Terrance Pierce was on hand to lend his legal expertise, pro bono. “We’re not going to rise unless we all rise, right?”

    Carney sat in the front row, as he had as a student. Pierce arrived five minutes late and took the only seat left, next to him. Instead of clapping for the speakers, Pierce tapped a Chesterfield on a monogrammed silver cigarette case. He was a tall man, with wavy black hair that focused his features into something eagle-like. His suit was expensive, gray with silvery pinstripes; Carney had been mulling a wardrobe upgrade and later inquired about his tailor.