Harlem Shuffle(90)

Moskowitz stood at the window, taking in the manic boil of Forty-Seventh Street. Two fans were trained on his executive chair, they swiveled to and fro and nudged the hot air. The jeweler let down the blinds and greeted Carney with his usual reserve.

“It’s a lot this time,” Carney said.

“I gathered,” Moskowitz said. “Your uptown associates getting ambitious?”

Carney didn’t like the tone. He opened the satchel and set the Van Wyck necklace on Moskowitz’s desk blotter next to the overflowing ashtray.

The jeweler withdrew. “Put it away,” Moskowitz said.

“What?”

“I had to see it, but I don’t want to look at it. You know why.”

Carney returned the necklace to the leather satchel.

“It’s too hot,” Moskowitz said. “People are inquiring. You must know that. I couldn’t move that five feet.”

“You had a visit?”

“Anybody who can move that knows not to touch it. Toss it in the East River and don’t look back. I’d say return it and ask forgiveness, but I don’t think it would be forthcoming.”

    You might say it wasn’t a rosy picture. “That’s it?” Carney said.

“It’s best you don’t come back.”

Ari waved goodbye as Carney departed. Carney didn’t notice.

It had gotten hotter outside. Carney wiped his neck with his handkerchief in the middle of the sidewalk stream. You can have all sorts of craziness in your head and people will walk right by you as if you are a normal person. Moskowitz. He’d been threatened. Had someone linked the two of them or had they come at him because he handled heavy weight?

At the corner of Seventh Ave, Carney heard his name. The intonation was that of a dispassionate clerk, engaged but too overworked to offer more than the perfunctory. “If you have a minute, Mr. Carney.”

The man was tall and thin, with sharp features—Carney thought of museum statues cut from cold white stone. Hermes, the God of Speed. Or was it Mercury? May had brought home a book on Roman gods from the library. This guy looked like he relaxed at home with a chalice and one of those laurel-wreath crowns around his head.

He shook Carney’s hand as if they’d been doing business for years. “The name’s Bench—Ed Bench. I’m with the law firm of Newman, Shears & Whipple.” He gave Carney his card. Heavy stock, dignified typeface.

Carney said he didn’t understand.

“I represent the Van Wyck family.” He tilted his head. “I’m here with Mr. Lloyd.”

Presenting Mr. Lloyd, the muscle, neck and head a solid column atop his barrel chest. Carney doubted he’d taken the bar exam. The man’s right hand was in his jacket pocket, pointing a revolver at Carney. He wore a fake, dumb smile to camouflage him as one of the tourists gee-whizzing at the Big City.

“Let’s walk, Carney,” Ed Bench said. Carney looked back at Mr. Lloyd, who kept pace, gun at an angle, same smile. Carney’s heart pounded and the street noise—the honking and backfiring and cussing—doubled in volume, as if by radio knob.

    “How’s your cousin, Carney?” Ed Bench said.

“I haven’t seen him.”

“That’s unlikely. We hear you’re like brothers. Do anything for each other. Can I have that, please?”

Mr. Lloyd coughed for emphasis. Carney handed over his satchel.

Ed Bench performed a quick look-see for confirmation. He said, “The rest?”

“That’s it. If somebody’s saying something else, they’re wrong.”

“The other items. I’m referring to the other items.”

The dont walk sign at the corner of Forty-Ninth and Seventh kept them put. Carney tried to get a handle on what was happening. Had they followed him from uptown? Straphanging two feet away while he dreamed of wheeling and dealing? This Van Wyck lawyer—the one who handled their dirty stuff, he supposed—was more concerned with the other things Linus had swiped from the family safe. Carney had been so distracted by the fact of the emerald he hadn’t gone over the papers thoroughly.

“I don’t have them.”

“Carney,” Ed Bench said.

Mr. Lloyd jabbed the nose of the pistol into Carney’s back.

Ed Bench made a gesture and Mr. Lloyd backed off. The lawyer led them to the opposite corner. “A hundred years ago,” he said, “this was a cow pasture—all of this. Midtown. Times Square. Then someone had an idea, and built, and bought more land, and built. Some things pan out. Some things don’t. The Van Wycks didn’t build here on Seventh Avenue. They built there.” He pointed toward Sixth. “The one on the east corner. If this was a cow pasture, that was a mud puddle. Now look at it. You don’t have to be first. Second is fine. If you have an eye for what’s going to pan out, second is fine.”

    Carney spied a patrolman across the street, drinking a Coca-Cola through a straw with bovine serenity. For a moment, he entertained the ridiculous proposition of a Negro calling a cop to complain he was being threatened by two white men.

Ed Bench saw the policeman give a sympathetic frown at Carney’s plight. “You’re a smart man, Carney. An entrepreneur. I wonder if you’ve recognized your current venture isn’t going to pan out.” The lawyer showed his teeth. “Have you considered what will happen? To you? Your family?”