Harlem Shuffle(43)
In his school days, Carney was a young man alone, unencumbered by all but his ambition. He decided to heed the primitive call in his blood and slipped easily into two shifts of sleep. The lost art of dorvay. It recognized him and he, it. The dark hours were the canvas for coursework and haphazard self-improvement. Alley cats and gutter rats scrabbled outside, the pimp upstairs harangued his new recruit, and Carney drew up sample business plans, advertisements for improbable products, and furiously underlined Richmond’s Economic Concepts. No rent parties, no girlfriends to keep him up late—just him jimmying his future. He put in nine good months advancing his cause: all A’s. Every morning Carney rose rested and energized, until his early-bird shift at Blumstein’s prohibited those nighttime jaunts and dorvay became a memento of those bygone days of solitary aspiration, before Elizabeth, before the store, the children.
Then three weeks ago he sacked out when he got home from work and was dead until one a.m. He woke alert, humming. His antenna capturing odd transmissions zipping above the rooftops. Elizabeth stirred in bed next to him and asked if something was wrong. Yes and no. He split for the living room, and the next night, too, when he woke, restlessly pacing until he figured out why he’d returned to dorvay. The banker, the offense. He turned the room down the hall into a second office for his second job of revenge. The elevated train clacking uptown and down his only company. He had been summoned to the old hours for a purpose. Where Carney once studied centuries of financial principles, he now went over his notes on Wilfred Duke and wove schemes.
* * *
*
Harvey Moskowitz’s store was in the uptown Diamond District, Forty-Seventh between Fifth and Sixth, second floor. A lonesome stretch this time of night, but the light was on in the jeweler’s office. Walk a street like this uptown, you’d be on the lookout for some druggie to jump out and bust your head open, but the epidemic had not transformed downtown yet. Which is not to say that there weren’t persons up to no good in this neck of the woods. To wit: Carney hit the buzzer. He was overdue for a visit, neglecting business since he took up the Duke job. Rusty had the sales floor in hand, but there were areas only Carney could take care of.
One of Moskowitz’s nephews came down to let him in and scurried into the back room once they got upstairs. Most of the Diamond District establishments had converted to the modern style of sleek steel and glass but Moskowitz’s hewed to its traditions, with dark wood paneling and green globe shades. You walked on creaky old planks, not assembly-line white carpet. During shop hours Moskowitz’s was brightly illuminated, the rows of jewelry on their velvet beds glittering under the strategic lighting, and stadium-loud with barking and yelling, as Moskowitz’s nephews hectored and cursed out one another nonstop, heedless of customers. The bickering was part of a sales pitch, for when Moskowitz caught your gaze and you shared a weary smile over his relatives’ antics, you became a regular, one of the family.
The store was a circus during the day but serious and calm late at night, when the real work went down. Time, straight-world rules, what his watch said—it was topsy-turvy now. The temperament and spirit of these hours, what you stuffed into them, mattered more than where they fell on a clock’s face.
Moskowitz’s office overlooked the street, separated by walls of frosted glass that allowed sunlight into the showroom. Given the volume of illicit business that crossed his desk, and the travel agency on the second floor across the street, Moskowitz had to open and close the blinds several times a day. Whenever Carney walked in, Moskowitz rose to perform his robot ritual, even late at night when every building opposite was a dead, scuttled ship.
“I put it to you,” Moskowitz said. An item on his desk was wrapped in a white monogrammed handkerchief.
Their lessons were over, but the jeweler teased and tested Carney from time to time. Carney picked up the loupe and unwrapped the bracelet. It was a nice piece. Pigeon blood rubies and diamonds, alternating, channel-set in platinum. He counted: fifteen oval links. Maybe from the ’40s? Light in his hand, but not too dainty—it’d look swell on a society gal’s wrist and also on a woman who worked for a living and would never touch its likes her whole life.
It was a fine piece, an indictment of the motley stuff Carney brought by. He took the challenge as a chance to appreciate the craftsmanship, rather than disrespect. “American-made,” Carney said. “Raymond Yard? From the design.” Moskowitz was a fan of the man’s work and had shown Carney a magazine article on Yard’s pieces for Rockefeller and Woolworth.
“Don’t rush,” Moskowitz often said. “It took a million years to make it, the least you can do is take your time.” Carney squinted some more, and gave his best guess.
“About right. Ballpark,” the jeweler said. “Platinum market now, maybe more.” Moskowitz was a thin man in his late fifties, with the pinched features of a fox. His hair had gone gray but his thin mustache was glossy and black, out of fashion but religiously dyed and groomed. He was a strange mix—congenial but reserved in a way that told you being friendly was an act of will.
The jeweler kept a jar of hard-boiled eggs in vinegar on a filing cabinet and removed one with a pair of brass calipers. Carney always demurred—it reminded him of drinking holes his father used to drag him to—so Moskowitz didn’t offer him one.