His day ended as it started: with men of hard character bracing him under the two-foot-tall letters that spelled out his name.
Like most Harlemites, Carney grew up with broken glass in the playground, the pageant of sidewalk cruelty whenever he stepped outside, and the snap of gunfire. He recognized the sound. Carney crouched and zagged toward the aluminum garbage cans. When he looked back, there was Miami Joe and the zing as his second shot hit the lid of the can next to him. It wasn’t too far to the corner—he sprinted for it.
New York was like that sometimes—you turn a corner and end up in an entirely different city, like magic. 140th Street was dark and silent, and Hamilton was a party. The bar two doors down had a line waiting to get in—one of those bebop spots, from the sound—and next to the bar some Spanish guys drank wine and played dominoes in the light cast from a barbershop. The domino players worked in the barbershop; it paid their rent during the day and provided a refuge from their families at night. Carney bumped through the people standing in line, jostling, and sped down the block. A patrol car cruised on the other side of the street. He looked over his shoulder. No sign of Miami Joe. If Carney saw the cops, so did Miami Joe. He ran once the cops got far enough away.
Carney took an eccentric path south, sawing back and forth down avenues and streets. Before he dropped Pepper off that afternoon, the man told him to leave any messages at Donegal’s. “Don’t matter who’s working—that’s my answering service.” This was definitely more Pepper’s field—gun battles and whatnot. The man was like a swami when it came to putting a hurt on somebody. Carney couldn’t go home and lead Miami Joe to his family. If Miami Joe went there anyway…There were bars full of people; he could hide out in one. Until last call and then what? He headed for the store, that’s where his feet took him at any rate. He’d call Pepper from his office and wait.
Morningside and 125th was quiet when he arrived ten minutes later. All the activity was by the Apollo a few blocks down. He couldn’t remember who was playing that night, the name painted on the side of the big tour bus, but the mob and its squeals meant it was somebody big. His hands shook as he put the keys to the front door.
Miami Joe said, “Hurry it up.” He stood off the sidewalk between two dark sedans. There hadn’t been time to put on his suit jacket; he wore a white shirt open on his chest, damp with sweat, over striped purple pants. He held his pistol on Carney, low, where the cars hid it from view.
The crowd outside the Apollo screamed and passing drivers smacked their horns. The entertainer coming out to greet his fans.
Inside the furniture store, Miami Joe said, “Leave the lights out.” They could see. The streetlight on his showroom beauties at night usually sent Carney into a sentimental mood: It was just him and this little place he’d carved out of the city. Miami Joe jabbed the barrel into Carney’s back. “Anyone here?”
“We’re closed.”
“I asked if anyone was here, nigger.”
Carney said no. Miami Joe stopped him at the office door to make sure the room was empty. He told Carney to turn on the desk lamp. The door to the basement was open and Miami Joe peered down, leaning back a little.
“What’s down there?”
“Basement.”
“Anyone down there?”
Carney shook his head.
He let it drop. “Didn’t have time to call anyone.” He sat on the couch. From his expression, he was surprised at how comfortable the Argent was. Carney resisted the urge to sell him on the Airform core.
Miami Joe waved his pistol: Sit at the desk. Carney did so and noticed the sales record Rusty had left for him by the telephone. He’d sold an entire Collins-Hathaway living-room set that afternoon.
“Look at me,” Miami Joe said. He checked to make sure he couldn’t be seen from the street. “How’d you get on the Burbank?”
“I remembered the girl.”
Miami Joe scowled. “Always,” he said. He rubbed his collarbone and relaxed. “You want to know why?”
Carney didn’t say anything. He thought of his wife and daughter on their safe bed. That little lifeboat aloft on the dark and churning Harlem sea. He didn’t sell bedroom furniture but a guy he knew from around gave him a deal. Carney’d be sleeping there with them, peaceful and quiet, if Alma hadn’t started with her shit. It was her fault he was out in the street. But before her, it was Freddie and years of him pushing Carney into dumb business of one kind or another. It was him saying yes. He wondered if his cousin was still alive.
“Once Chink started looking for us,” Miami Joe said, “I didn’t want to wait until Monday for the split. Then I had to think about which one of you dummies would talk in the meantime. Your idiot cousin. And if I had to shut one nigger up…” He rubbed his temple as if shaving down the rough edges of a headache. “You know what? Half those stones was paste—ain’t that a bitch? What kind of dumb nigger locks up their fake shit in a safe-deposit box?”
“I have a family,” Carney said.
Miami Joe nodded, bored. “I’m sick of it up here anyway,” he said. “The winters are cold as hell. And y’all have a stuck-up attitude. I hate stuck-up people who ain’t got nothing going on. It’s nonsensical. You got to earn your attitude, you ask me. No, you can keep it. I’m descended from African people—I need to be in the sun.” He sat up and rubbed his chin with the gun barrel. “I want you to call Pepper at Donegal’s—he uses the joint for messages. Call him up and tell him you got a line on me and he has to get his ass down here, toot-sweet. We can wrap this up. You two, then Freddie. I grab the stash at Betty’s, then I’m on the next train out of this dump. Where’s your cousin at?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know. And once I take care of that nigger Pepper, I’ll get it out of you.”
Carney rang the bar as instructed. It was loud, but once he mentioned Pepper’s name, the bartender told everybody to shut up. He said he’d deliver the message.
“Where do you keep the money?” Miami Joe asked.
Carney pointed to the bottom drawer of the desk.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Miami Joe chuckled. “Family, whew! I had a cousin like that—my cousin Pete. We got into some shit, boy. All kinds of shit. But he was dumb as a donkey and got hooked on that junk. Can’t rely on a man once he gets on the needle.”
Miami Joe’s hand dangled as he remembered, then he trained the gun on Carney again. “I did what I had to do. Buried him at this fishing spot we used to go to. He always liked it there. Sometimes, they see it coming, and they know it’s a mercy. Especially when it’s family.”
Carney had to turn away. He saw the record of Rusty’s big sale again. An entire Collins-Hathaway living-room set. It was enough to put him over on the rent.
They both saw Pepper pop up from the basement at the same moment, but Miami Joe was unable to get off a shot. The first bullet hit him above the heart and the second, his belly. He fell back on the couch, tried to stand, and tumbled onto his face. Pepper climbed the final steps into the office and kicked the man’s pistol away. Carney found it a week later when sweeping up.
“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.