Harlem Shuffle(94)

“I’ll sit on your house tonight in the truck,” Pepper said. “Tomorrow I’ll bring on another guy to watch your family.”

A big pothole rocked the truck, one of those craters with its own zip code, and Pepper winced. He laid his palm on his belly, below his heart.

“They work you over?” Carney told him he looked like crap.

Pepper mumbled something about spacemen.

When they got to the apartment, Elizabeth was lying on the couch and the kids were pinching each other. “Pepper,” she said.

“Helping me move some furniture,” Carney said, “since Rusty is out.” He’d explained the closure of the store by telling her that Marie and Rusty deserved a break after last week, plus people were too unsettled to think about home furnishings.

Elizabeth made a joke about being his secretary, too, since Marie was off.

“What do you mean?”

She got the message pad. “You got a call from Ed Bench. He said he gave you his card?”

Carney called the lawyer from the phone booth around the corner.

They had Freddie.





EIGHT


He took Park down. It made sense to him, to trace the line of soot-streaked uptown tenements to where they terminated abruptly at Ninety-Sixth and became the world-famous regiments of grand residential buildings, which in turn gave way to the corporate behemoths in the Fifties and below. Park Avenue was like a chart in one of his economics textbooks illustrating a case study of a successful business, Manhattan street numbers on the x axis and money on the y. This is an example of exponential growth.

“It’s Fifty-First,” Carney said.

“That’s what you said,” Pepper said.

Carney still wasn’t used to seeing the Pan Am Building looming at Forty-Fifth Street, cutting off the sky. They keep going up—the buildings, the piles of money.

The orange safety cones were where Ed Bench promised, halfway between Fifty-First and Fiftieth on the west side of the ave. Pepper moved them and Carney parked.

Across the street was 319 Park, behind a plywood fence festooned with posters for the new Frank Sinatra record with Count Basie. The building was more than thirty stories high, clad in light blue metallic panels. The panels stopped halfway up; construction was still ongoing. Far enough along that the elevator worked and the fifteenth floor had a floor in place, according to the lawyer’s instructions.

    When Carney had stepped out of the phone booth, he recounted the conversation to Pepper. The bloodless voice, the calm declaration of facts. They had nabbed Freddie outside his mother’s house.

“I told you he’d fuck it up,” Pepper had said.

“Yes,” Carney said. Knowing his cousin, he wanted a glimpse of Aunt Millie to tide him over. If Moskowitz had been quick with the necklace money, Freddie would have beat it on a bus without seeing her.

Ed Bench told him to bring “Mr. Van Wyck’s property” to a certain Park Avenue address at ten p.m. His cousin would be returned in exchange. Ed Bench handed over the phone to Freddie, who had time to croak “It’s me” before the lawyer took the receiver back.

“On their turf,” Pepper declared. “They control the scene.”

“Will they do it?”

Pepper grunted. What were they capable of? They had ransacked Aunt Millie’s, vandalized Sterling Gold & Gem, come to his place of business with guns. They had not killed Linus—Linus would have given up the location of the briefcase if they’d braced him. From Pierce’s account, they’d murdered the witness in a criminal suit before he could testify. If Pierce was to be believed. The question remained: What would they do to Freddie, and would they return him?

“I’m starving,” Pepper said.

“What?”

“We should eat before,” Pepper said.

“He didn’t say bring somebody.”

“Did he say don’t bring somebody? We’re old friends, me and those Van Wyck dudes.”

They drove to Jolly Chan’s on Broadway. It was getting dark, every day as summer contracted it grew dark earlier. Dinner service at the restaurant was in full swing. At the door, a young woman in one of those long Chinese dresses welcomed “Mr. Pepper.” She had an air of brusque confidence and led them to where Pepper and Carney had sat last time, pulling out the table so that Pepper could take his preferred seat. Back to the wall, as Carney’s father used to say, so nothing can sneak up on you. Carney hadn’t appreciated the wisdom until recently.

    “Chan died,” Pepper said. “That’s his daughter. She runs the place now.” He ordered fried chicken and fries, Carney pork fried rice. A young boy with untied shoelaces deposited a pot of tea on the table and quickly bowed.

Carney opened the briefcase. What did Van Wyck want? He examined the power of attorney. Linus had signed his rights over to his father three years ago. In and out of the booby hatch, dope problem—smart play is to take your son out of the family business. Had Linus been looking for the document, or did it happen to be in the safe? With his death, it was void—his family had control of his estate. Unless he had a will, but did young men get wills drawn up? If you had money, maybe.

“What’s that?” Pepper said.

“Love letters,” Carney told him. He held up the Valentine’s Day card from a girl named Louella Mather—the handwriting and the date said she and Linus had been kids at the time—and a letter.