Carney’s father-in-law remained on the rolls but had stepped down from club leadership. As one of the old dogs, a Duke crony, Leland was viewed with suspicion by most of his fellow Dumas gentlemen. He didn’t drop by as often as he used to.
The evening of the Bella Fontaine debacle, Carney arranged to meet Pierce for a drink. Carney was the first to arrive. As was his habit now, he fiddled with his Dumas Club ring while waiting on something. He ordered a beer.
At six o’clock, the lounge started to fill up. Carney tipped his beer glass at Ellis Gray, who offered that strange leer of his, as if they were partners on the same swindle. Now that Carney was on the inside, he appreciated the extent of the club’s sovereignty over Harlem. A conversation, a wink, a promise inside these walls expressed itself magnificently, permanently, on the streets beyond in individual lives, in destinies across the years.
Take last week’s protests, for example: They altered the energies in the room. Bloviating across the way was Alexander Oakes, Elizabeth’s childhood neighbor. He continued to work his way up in the prosecutor’s office; his bosses made sure he stood next to Frank Hogan, the Manhattan DA, during press conferences about the boy’s killing. Just a matter of time before Ol’ Alex turned to politics—he was that type. Oakes sat by the fireplace with Lamont Hopkins, who ran the uptown branch of Empire United Insurance. In the coming weeks as Hopkins accepted and rejected claims, he would shape the next version of Harlem. When it came to cleaning up and rebuilding, Sable Construction was still the go-to construction company in Harlem. Its glad-handing owner, Ellis Gray, was a regular fixture at the weekly Dumas scotch tastings and at this moment traded Polish jokes with James Nathan, who was in charge of business loans at Carver Federal and thus decided which entities took over the demolished spaces, which operations received a bailout, separating the drowned from the saved.
Small men with big plans, Carney said to himself. If this room was the seat of black power and influence in New York City, where was its white counterpart? The joint downtown where the same wheeling and dealing happened, but on a bigger stage. With bigger stakes. You don’t get answers to questions like that unless you are on the inside. And you never tell.
Pierce stirred Carney from his reverie with a tap on the shoulder. He sat in the red leather club chair opposite and signaled for his usual drink.
“I saw you on the TV,” Carney said.
“Busy days,” Pierce said. He loosened his tie. Cases like James Powell’s were the specialty of Calvin Pierce, Civil Rights Crusader; you rang him up once you got off the phone with the undertaker.
The boy had been killed five days prior, in Yorkville, East Side in the Seventies. A white building superintendent named Patrick Lynch was hosing down the pavement and asked some students to move so they wouldn’t get wet; Robert F. Wagner Middle School was holding summer classes down the street. When the kids refused to budge Lynch said, “Dirty niggers, I’ll wash you clean,” and sprayed them with the hose. In retaliation, the kids threw garbage cans and bottles at him, and a couple of curse words, which attracted more of the summer students to join in the taunting.
Lieutenant Thomas R. Gilligan, thirty-seven, was off duty and out of uniform, checking out TVs in an electronics store. He went to investigate the commotion and stopped James Powell, a ninth grader who had joined the mob of angry students. Powell was unarmed, according to witnesses. Gilligan maintained that the boy flashed a knife. He shot him three times.
Two days later, Harlem erupted.
Pierce told Carney, “You have the people who are angry. Justifiably so. And then there’s the police force. How are they going to defend this shit? Again! And city hall and the activists. And in the way back of the room, you can barely hear a little voice, and that’s the family. They’ve lost a son. Somebody has to speak for them.”
“They’re going to sue?”
“Sue and win. You know they ain’t going to fire the bastard.” Sermon crept into his voice here. “What kind of message will that send—that their police force is accountable? We’ll sue, and it will take years, and the city will pay because millions and millions are still cheaper than putting a true price on killing a black boy.”
“That was good,” Carney said. One of Pierce’s better tirades. Nearby members had glanced over and returned to their companions when they saw it was Pierce doing his shtick.
“You got to keep stuff like that in your back pocket,” he said, “city like this.”
They caught each other up on their children and wives. Pierce’s wife, Verna, was hot on Lenox Terrace—two of her friends had moved in and wouldn’t shut up about it. The amenities, the famous people in the elevator. “One thing she hates is people showing off,” Pierce said. “How’s Riverside Drive treating you?”
“Let me ask you something,” Carney said. “You ever heard of the Van Wyck family?”
“Van Wick? You mean Wike?”
“Like the expressway.”
“It’s pronounced Wike, but yeah. They’ve been players in this city since back in the day. You’re talking some stone-cold original Dutch motherfuckers. As in, charging the Lenape Indians rent on their own land type shit.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” Pierce said. “Robert Van Wyck was the first mayor of New York City, back in the eighteen-whatevers. And they still wear it like that—like royalty. Last time I saw the Yankees, they brought old man Van Wyck to the scout seats behind home plate, practically carried him on a litter like a maharaja.” He took out his cigarette case. “Got a hand in everything—politics, banking—but real estate is their main bag. Van Wyck Realty, that’s what the VWR stands for, on those little plaques on half the buildings in midtown.” He checked out the room and leaned in. “What’s up?”
“It came up.”
“They dropped in to look at some couches? They strike me as more downtown shoppers.” Pierce didn’t press. He removed a Chesterfield King and lit it. VWR were known for making their money off everybody else’s moves, Pierce said. According to lore, Thirty-Fourth Street was dead when they broke ground for the Empire State Building, but Van Wyck saw what was coming and put up his own office building across the street. “Look at it now.” They missed out on the main Lincoln Center contracts, but carved out a big residential complex on Amsterdam, ready for their piece when the arts center was finished.
“They’re sneaky.”
“Sneaky gets you paid around here.” He raised an eyebrow in reference to their fellow Dumas members. “It wasn’t my case—I had just started at Shepard—but there was this wrongful death suit we handled one time. Seemed cut-and-dried, criminal negligence. Unsafe conditions at a building site—crane topples over and crushes two men. And it’s a VWR operation, near the UN building. They were looking at an excruciating settlement. There was a VWR employee who was set to testify that his boss had ordered him to bribe the inspector and that he’d done the same at other sites, for years. We had him in the bag for months leading up to trial.”
“And?” Carney’s neck got hot.
“He doesn’t show. Wanted to do his civic duty or whatever. He’s a solid citizen, happily married—poof. No sign.” Pierce paused to let the situation sink in. “Washes up in New Jersey three weeks later, throat cut so bad his head is barely hanging on. Like a Pez dispenser. Junked the case, obviously. That’s that. I’m not saying that anything nefarious happened, only saying what happened.” He gestured for a refill. “One thing I’ve learned in my job is that life is cheap, and when things start getting expensive, it gets cheaper still.”
FOUR
It was Linus’s, from the L.M.P.V.W. embossed on the leather. A gift from someone who’d once believed in his prospects. Carney popped the briefcase’s latch with the letter opener his downstairs neighbor had given him as a college graduation gift. Because she saw that he had no one to look out for him and pitied him, or because she believed in h
is prospects.
Inside the briefcase were some personal papers, miscellany of private importance—a Valentine’s Day card from one Louella Mather, a 1941 Yankees Double Play baseball card featuring Joe DiMaggio and Charley Keller—and the biggest cut emerald Carney had ever seen. The gem was set in a diamond-studded platinum necklace and flanked by six smaller, equally splendid emeralds on either side; held up by either end of the necklace, the center stone was the head of a gorgeous bird of prey, the smaller stones curving up like wings. Carney shut the briefcase and took a step back. When he’d joked that it contained strontium 90 he had not been far off; he had been bathed in ancient radiation.
His phone call from Aunt Millie Tuesday morning forced him to finally open it. He had slept poorly again. When Aunt Millie rang at six a.m., he had drifted off. They let it ring the first time. When Elizabeth answered the second time, Carney heard his aunt squawk from the other side of the bed: Her house had been ransacked. He dressed.
Aunt Millie had been sobbing; he recognized the puffy eyes from Pedro-related squabbles. But she had stopped and progressed on to Angry Millie, the Terror of 129th Street. As she told it, she got off her late shift at four a.m. and returned to shambles. “You know if I hadn’t been at work,” she said, “I’d have kicked that little nigger’s ass. Come in my house. Come in my house and make a mess like this.” Aunt Millie permitted a quick, reassuring hug, which made her flinch, for she did not want to be reassured. She wanted to fight.
Whoever had tossed the place had been thorough. They had slashed the cushions, pulled the dime novels off the living-room shelves, pried up the squeaky floorboard in the hallway to see if it contained secrets. The kitchen was a horror—every container bigger than a Campbell’s Soup can had been emptied and rooted through. Flour, beans, rice, and pickled pig’s feet made a repugnant mound on the old checkerboard kitchen tile. In the bedroom, Carney slid the dresser drawers back into place as Aunt Millie gathered up ungainly armfuls of clothes.
She could have kicked the ass of a druggie or the ne’er-do-well nephew of her upstairs neighbor—her mastery of her weapon of choice, the hairbrush, went unchallenged—but whoever had done this was not some two-bit crook. They had a purpose. They were completists. Looking for something in particular.
A rotten feeling reared up as they toured the mess; she beat it back. Aunt Millie struggled over what they might have taken. “Why would they do this?” She clutched Carney’s arm, whispered, “Do you think Freddie is mixed up in something again?”
“I haven’t seen him,” Carney said. “I haven’t heard anything.” His standard response now to all the interested parties, who increased by the hour, or so it seemed.
“Like father, like son,” Aunt Millie said. “Into the world somewhere.” Pedro was a rover. When Carney was young, Freddie’s father spent maybe a third of the year in New York City and the rest somewhere having his adventures. His own father, Carney gathered, had made a performance of being dependable and legit when he wooed Carney’s mother. Pedro had been a rolling stone when he met Millie and never made a show of being otherwise. Neither Aunt Millie nor his cousin had ever expressed any emotion over Pedro’s “travel,” and Carney had learned at a young age not to inquire about it. It was one of the few times his mother had scolded him. “Other people got their business, you got yours.”
Freddie idolized Pedro. You knew when he was in town because it was all Freddie talked about, and when he was down South, it was as if his father didn’t exist. On and off like a switch. Until Freddie became a teenager, and chasing girls became more important—or following Pedro’s ladies’-man ways became a means of worshipping the man. From Freddie’s dishevelment these days, it seemed women were no longer his foremost priority.
Aunt Millie picked up a table lamp and set it right. “At least you didn’t take Mike as an example,” she said.
Carney nodded. He made sure there was no one hiding under the bed or in the closet. “These druggies,” Carney said. “They have to get their sick kicks somehow.”
Gladys from next door appeared with a broom and Carney said he’d ask Marie to pitch in with the cleanup. His aunt and his secretary went to the movies occasionally, when Rock Hudson’s name was above the title. It wouldn’t be terrible to have Marie away from the office. Too many unexpected parties dropping in these days.
He went straight to the store, beeline to the safe. He had feared discovering packets of—what? heroin? reefer—in the briefcase. The emerald necklace was worse; drugs explained themselves. Freddie had stopped coming to Carney to fence jewelry or gold, and he’d never showed up with anything near that quality. Had he and Linus ripped off Linus’s family, taken the literal family jewels, as the cops insinuated? Or was that some separate beef between Linus and his relatives, and Freddie and his friend had ripped off some heavy players who were after payback? Even if Carney returned the briefcase to his cousin and told him to fuck off, he was still in somebody’s sight for being close to Freddie. It was too late: Carney was in.
* * *
* * *
Munson beckoned from the sidewalk.
Carney locked up the store. It was half past noon. From now on, Rusty and Marie were on paid leave from Carney’s Furniture; opening hours were whenever Carney felt it was safe to leave the front door open. By way of explanation, he blamed the lack of foot traffic after the riot and exaggerated the likelihood of another round of violence. “I’ll see you when things get back to normal,” he told his employees.
It relieved him more than he anticipated to have them safe.
The detective sat on the hood of his dark brown sedan, lighting a Winston with the smoldering end of the previous one. Carney hadn’t seen him in daylight in a long time. The cop was pale and puffier, threadbare from the mileage. His face maintained the record of his boozing, rouged and speckled by popped capillaries. Free meals from local merchants and shady clients had ruined his build.
He was in his customary carefree mood. “I figured you’d be calling,” Munson said. “Why don’t you ride along while I pick up the mail?”
The mail: his recent coinage about his envelope route. “Neither rain, nor sleet,” Munson said as Carney slid into the passenger seat. “Riots though, they’ll throw you off schedule.”
“We’re all in the same boat.”
“You don’t want people to think you have a forgetful nature. I got to collect before they think it’s their money and they spend it.” Munson tilted his head toward the furniture store. “You made it out okay.”
“Most of it was this way.” Meaning, east on 125th.
“Yeah, I was there.” He drove one block and parked outside a hole-in-the-wall newsstand Carney had never stepped in. Grant’s Newspaper & Tobacco, across from the Apollo. For years, the dingy red, white, and blue streamers across the storefront had snapped ferociously on winter-swept mornings, and hung limp on hot days like this.
“Buck Webb on vacation again?” Carney said.
“Yeah, gone fishing.” It was Carney’s standard joke: Where’s Buck? Since Munson’s shakedowns—one assumed—fell outside his official police duties, Carney rarely saw Munson’s partner. Buck was probably off tending to his own envelopes.
Munson said he’d be out in a sec and entered the tobacco store.
The marquee of the Apollo promised the Four Tops, but a big white canceled sign crossed the ticket window. Look at him, sitting in the front seat of a cop’s car. He wondered how many black boys Munson and his cronies had worked over and then tossed into the backseat on the way to the station house. Carney’s fingers slid on the vinyl: EZ wipe. Munson’s line of work was not the kind where you wanted fabric upholstery.
“You ever play in that game?” Munson said on his return.
Carney didn’t know what the cop was referring to.
“Grant—Grant’s son, now—has been hosting one of longest-running craps games in H
arlem in the back. You never threw in?”
Carney rubbed his temple.
“One block away and you never got in on it?” Munson said. “No, you ain’t the kind. Grant’s kid told me he kept the game running the whole time of the riot. No one wanted to leave, and when they did, someone was always knocking, trying to get a piece. All hell breaking loose out here, back there business as usual.”
Carney bought his newspapers elsewhere; Grant’s run-down facade discouraged outsiders, as intended. A whole gambling operation back there—Freddie probably knew about it. The cop’s car had made Carney into a country bumpkin, like his own street didn’t belong to him.
Munson drove another block and stopped short of Lenox. The detective darted into Top Cat Dry Cleaning. The place had been there as long as Carney could remember. He’d never patronized this place, either; Mr. Sherman’s up the street was more welcoming. Perhaps he’d known Top Cat wasn’t legit in some way, in his bones, and he’d avoided it because of his solid-citizen side. To disavow the crooked inclinations of his nature.
Munson got back in the car and said, “He takes numbers for Bumpy Johnson.”
“You take your piece from Bumpy and leave him high and dry, too?” Carney said.
A man lurched toward Munson’s car as he exited a Checker cab. The detective honked. “I was waiting for you to say something like that,” Munson said. “Look, I fucking apologize. Take a gander at my Fucking Apology Face—it’s like Medusa, you only ever see it once.”
With that, the detective gave Carney his account of the riot days, as a prelude for why he failed to run interference with the homicide detectives.
Harlem Shuffle Page 24
