Harlem Shuffle(44)
Moskowitz bit the egg and rubbed his front teeth with his tongue. “Got a new fan,” he said. “This heat.”
“Times Square, everybody’s sweating.”
“I bet. What have you got?” Moskowitz said.
The Duke job had kept Carney uptown, so his briefcase was heavier than usual. After the Theresa heist, Chink sent his muscle to collect for operating in his territory, but he also started steering thieves to Carney’s office. For a cut. Over time what Chink threw his way became steady business, and lucrative. Half of tonight’s haul was courtesy of the gangster. Bracelets, some not-too-bad necklaces, and a bunch of men’s chronographs and rings, courtesy of Louie the Turtle, who must have knocked over some Captain of Industry. Or robbed someone who had. Some nice pieces. Tomorrow Carney intended to off-load the lesser stuff on the Hunt’s Point gentleman.
Moskowitz lit a cigarette and got to his appraisal. He was not overfond of chitchat, another reason Carney didn’t miss Buxbaum. Carney disapproved of criminals who bragged about their cleverness, crowed over the stupidity of their marks, whose paranoia stemmed not from caution but from an outsize sense of their importance. “Big mouth, small time,” his father used to say. Buxbaum had ripped him off; Carney’s ignorance about the trade demanded it. When the jeweler shared his tales of hoodwinking this or that associate, Carney knew that he featured in similar stories Buxbaum shared with other shady types.
That was another thing: There were too many shady characters around Top Buy Gold & Jewelry, unshaven pocket-flask white men who smelled like gin, who clammed up when Carney walked in. A store—a jewelry store especially—is made for looking. Characters who studiously looked at nothing at all were conspicuous. Eschewing eye contact, checking the street to see if some mistake was catching up with them. Put on a show, for Christ’s sake. Too many losers, too much loser traffic with easily loosened tongues.
But Carney had been stuck with Buxbaum, and the man knew it. The Canal Street jewelry district kept shrinking—merchants going under or joining the Forty-Seventh Street gang—so when Buxbaum’s store got raided it struck Carney as part of a natural process: This is how the city works. The jeweler ended up in the joint and Carney was shit out of luck. Carney reached out through Buxbaum’s lawyer. The name came back: Moskowitz.
Carney was surprised by two things: how much Buxbaum had scammed him, and Moskowitz’s refusal to do the same. Perhaps such easy game was beneath the Forty-Seventh Street merchant. The first time Carney showed up with stones—Buxbaum’s name vouched, down came the blinds—the jeweler asked what Buxbaum would’ve offered. Carney said a number.
“You have no idea what any of this is worth, do you?” Moskowitz said.
The white man’s tone pissed Carney off, before he learned it was straight shooting and not condescension.
“Buxbaum wanted to keep you dependent,” Moskowitz said. “You schlepp all the way down here, I’m going to deal with you straight.”
Yes, Buxbaum had ripped him off, but the new contact and his more favorable rates took the sting out. He quickly made up the shortfall.
One night, Moskowitz asked Carney what kind of cash he had on hand. “Look,” he said, “you’re letting a lot of money fall out of your pockets.” Under the Buxbaum arrangement, Carney was a messenger and got paid like one. He go-betweened with street hoods, put his legit enterprise on the line, ferried the goods and money back and forth—for a measly five percent.
“You go to Buxbaum,” Moskowitz said, “and he turns around and kicks up the stuff to the dealers he works with—his gold guy, his precious-gem guy, whatever. Sometimes it’s me.” If Carney could maintain this volume, and if the furniture salesman was able to front the money to his “associates”—the jeweler’s term for Harlem’s lowlife element—he should rightly take Buxbaum’s cut. “You got that kind of cash?”
“I do.”
“I figured. Let’s do it like that, then.” They shook on it. “And the khazeray you know I’ll toss back, there’s no need to bring it here. It wastes both our time.”
Buxbaum had taken everything, even the junk. Moskowitz couldn’t be bothered. He delivered a line like “I’m not even touching that, sir,” with the scorn that the object deserved.
“I’ll pay you to school me,” Carney said. “To give me the eye.”
“School you?” Moskowitz said.
“I have a degree in business from Queens College,” Carney said.
The jeweler’s smile was either bemused or flattered. They shook on this as well.
Moving up the supply chain cut into the Carney family apartment fund, but not for long. He was no longer a mere errand boy for uptown crooks but a proper middleman. How had he suffered the old arrangement for that long? Part of moving up in the world is realizing how much shit you used to eat. He got a tip about a guy in Hunt’s Point who’d take his junk pieces, the club rings and costume stuff, and another guy who dealt in rare coins. Soon he had outlets for everything Moskowitz turned his nose up at.
The jeweler raked it in, even with Carney’s increased share. Most of the illegal side of Moskowitz’s operation ended up overseas. A guy from France came in twice a month and took it off his hands. From there it went who knows where. Despite Moskowitz’s international concerns, he didn’t skimp on the small stuff, like Carney’s lessons. For six months, Carney locked up the furniture store, took the downtown 1 train, and endured the smoke from Moskowitz’s hand-rolled cigarettes. The jeweler tutored him in color, clarity, and cut. Explained how a bead setting showcased faceted stones, why a bezel lent itself to high-karat gold. Carney had picked up a lot in the last eighteen months without knowing it; Moskowitz gathered all the unmoored lingo and half-formed notions floating in Carney’s head and tethered it to solid objects. He had a good sense of the precious and the fake, the worthy and the chintz; Moskowitz encouraged him to trust his instincts. “You got a nose,” he told him. “Anyone can train the eye. But a nose? You need a nose.” He did not elaborate.