Harlem Shuffle

by Colson Whitehead

  Professor Simonov returned to his lecture and his unique pronunciation of receivables. Carney wanted more on the nighttime flights. He spoke up in his classes but not Simonov’s—the old man was too imposing. A trip to the library was fruitless until another librarian overheard Carney pestering the reference desk and suggested the French word was spelled thusly: dorveille, from dormir, to sleep, and veiller, to be awake. Professor Simonov told the truth; the body had kept a different clock in olden times. Medieval scholars chronicled it; Dickens, Homer, and Cervantes made references. Carney hadn’t read Homer or Cervantes, but recalled Great Expectations (humble beginnings) and A Christmas Carol (rueful ghosts) with much fondness. Benjamin Franklin enthused over dorvay in his diaries, using the intermission to walk around the house naked and sketch inventions.

  Learned gentlemen aside, Carney knew crime’s hours when he saw them—dorvay was crooked heaven, when the straight world slept and the bent got to work. An arena for thieving and scores, break-ins and hijacks, when the con man polishes the bait and the embezzler cooks the books. In-between things: night and day, rest and duty, the no-good and the up-and-up. Pick up a crowbar, you know the in-between is where all the shit goes down. He upheld the misspelling in his thoughts, in keeping with his loyalty to his mistakes.

  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.

  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.

  Most of the knowledge he imparted was less ethereal. How to distinguish a Burmese ruby from a Thai ruby, good-quality lapis lazuli from the cheap dyed lapis that was everywhere these days. Then there was the elusive science of culture and fashion that governed how things went in and out of style, the myriad ways in which history left its mark. “The Great Depression,” Moskowitz said, “produced a lot of extravagant design, so that your wife’s dress could look like a million bucks, even if she’d made it herself.” What caused the boom in costume jewelry after the war? “People wanted to show off their money, whether they had it or not. It didn’t matter if it was real or fake, it was how it made you feel.”

  Carney told Elizabeth he was taking a night course in marketing. Sometimes one of Moskowitz’s nephews, an apple-cheeked young man named Ari, sat in for his apprenticeship in the crooked side of the family business. Carney’d catch Moskowitz looking at the two of them studying some rock, side by side, the Negro and the Jew, and the jeweler got this queer smile on his face, as if delighting in this turn in his life. Teaching a colored gentleman and his sister’s youngest boy the ropes of his illicit trade. Ari and Carney got along fine in class. The boy pretended not to know him if his cousins were around.

  “That’s all you need to know for your purposes, I think,” Moskowitz told him at the end of one meeting. The teacher produced a bottle of sweet sherry. They toasted.

  For his purposes. The hoods who came in the side door of Carney’s furniture had a station, Moskowitz had one, and Carney had his.

  * * *

  * * *

  Moskowitz priced tonight’s haul and they did a deal for the stones. Now came Carney’s favorite part of a Moskowitz visit, apart from the cash: the ceremonial opening of the Hermann Bros. safe. The Hermann was an imposing tank, a square-door number of black metal that tiptoed on improbably dainty feet. The utilitarian shell hid the luxury inside, the walnut drawers with brass fixtures, the silk-lined compartments. The dial said click click click click. Carney felt like the second mate on a grand ship—the combination dial was a compass pointing the route, the five-spoke handle a ship’s wheel to steer them to an uncharted continent of money. Land ho!

  He had asked after the safe’s provenance once and the jeweler told him they didn’t make them anymore. Hermann Bros. had been based in San Francisco. Houdini appeared in their advertisements, wearing a sad face as the Hermann product line confounded him. Aitken bought them and then phased out their consumer lines of safes and vaults. Carney was not naturally prone to envy, but each time he saw Moskowitz’s safe he got a real hankering.

  “If you get a new one,” Moskowitz had said, “make sure it’s a proper size. A man should have a safe big enough to hold his secrets. Bigger, even, so you have room to grow.”

  The jeweler removed a brick of cash from the safe and counted the money. Then he lovingly placed Carney’s offerings in their designated drawers inside the metal box. The walnut drawers whispered in and out, so elegant it made Carney wince.

  “My wife thinks we should see that Sidney Poitier movie,” Moskowitz said.

  “The reviews are good. The Times. He’s good in it, they say.”

  “She knows I don’t go to movies, I don’t know why she says it.”

  “What’s u
p?” Carney said.

  “Buxbaum got seven years.”

  “Oh.”

  “The lawyer, he was not the best.”

  “Up the river,” Carney said.

  The two men did not express sympathy or speculate over what information Buxbaum might share. He hadn’t ratted yet. They had to satisfy themselves with that.

  Moskowitz closed the door to the safe and spun the handle. “My friend from France is coming in, end of the week.”

  Carney said, “Good.” He stood to go.

  “You look good,” Moskowitz said. “Business is good?”

  “Business is good,” Carney said. “So I’m good.”

  When he got to back to Broadway, it was almost one-thirty a.m. The sidewalks nearly dead. Soon it would be news-truck hour, bread-truck hour, night-shift clock-out-and-scatter time. Carney yawned, that dorvay spell wearing off. Time to get back home.

  There was a camera store next to the subway. Carney tried the door and chuckled. The store had closed long before—not everyone was keeping his loopy hours. He satisfied himself with window-shopping. Had Pierce mentioned what camera he used for his family photos? Carney couldn’t remember, and he wasn’t going to ask that slick motherfucker for nothing.

  He disapproved of the crowded display. What’s the point if no one can see it? But with Times Square foot traffic, the widening market, the various types of camera customers these days, maybe it made sense to cram it in. It was the same in his field, home furnishings—there was too much of everything these days. He scanned the gizmos. The Nikon F featured something called “Automatic Reflex.” Whatever the hell that is. “When using Preview Control it is impossible to cause an accidental exposure.” He wasn’t an aficionado, he wanted something simple.

  Two white drunks tottered at the corner. They dashed into Broadway after a Checker cab. Carney carried a lot of cash these days, a briefcase full of stones or gold or cash, what used to be a year’s salary, but he didn’t want to get to where he stopped being vigilant. Back to the window. Everybody was talking about Polaroid and their instant film, it was the new thing. In the Polaroid Pathfinder display, a white family enjoyed a picnic by a deep blue lake. White folk on picnics were everywhere in ads these days. The Interstate Highway System and where it’d take you. All smiles in the poster in the window, the dad in a striped polo shirt directing his brood.