“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.
Carney read out sections to Pepper, summarizing. The thing was out of Elizabeth’s dime novels, the ones with a white lady in a flowing dress running from a cliff-side castle, candelabra in hand. Young Miss Mather expounded upon the night with Linus on the patio, the bonfire at the beach. “Counting down the days until we can see each other again on Heart’s Meadow.” Heart’s Meadow—it reeked of gazebo confessions in splintered moonlight. Romantic letter aside, Linus and the young lady didn’t end up together, he knew that.
A woman in shiny red hot pants strolled by on the sidewalk and distracted Pepper, which Carney took as an indication to stop reading. He was returning the letter to the yellowed envelope when he noticed the folded piece of paper. It was new and didn’t belong with the old letter. The heavy white office bond contained five rows of numbers, typewritten. Carney held it up to Pepper.
Pepper grunted.
“What is it?”
“From the number of digits, numbered bank accounts,” Pepper said.
Carney looked them over again. “How do you know?”
“Where do you think I keep my shit?” Pepper said.
Carney couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. Money stashed abroad. Laundered? Tax evasion? Is this why they were chasing Freddie down? The last item in the briefcase was the 1941 Double Play baseball card featuring Joe DiMaggio and Charley Keller. But it’d be ludicrous to go through all this for a baseball card.
Pepper and Carney killed time in the Chinese joint. Instead of offering prophecies or lucky numbers, the white slips inside the fortune cookies advertised United Life Insurance. Pepper left an inordinate tip.
They walked over to Carney’s truck. Carney had gotten a new paint job for the Ford but the sounds it produced when he turned the key betrayed its age. He had stopped selling gently used furniture years ago and mostly used the truck to make the rounds of the swap meets, to off-load old coins or watches on specialists. Given the way his business was going, and Elizabeth’s, they could afford a new car, a sporty but practical number, but he liked the truck because it felt like a disguise. The kids could still squeeze in the front seat and it made him happy to have the four of them in a line, chopping his hand to restrain them at a sudden stop.
Pepper said, “Still runs.” He closed the door.
“It’s a good old truck.” He decided: Get a proper car for the family at the end of the summer, before May and John got too big. And concentrate on the job at hand.
When he and Pepper left the furniture store that afternoon, Pepper had put a steel lunch box by his feet. Now he opened it up and took out the two Colt Cobras inside. “They dropped these,” he said. He checked them.
Carney pulled out his own gun. “From Miami Joe,” he said. He’d found it under the sofa a few months after Pepper killed the man in his office. It had remained untouched in the bottom drawer of his desk, beneath a copy of Ebony with Lena Horne on the cover, until today.
Pepper was unsurprised. “Know how to use it?”
There had been one time in high school when his father was out and these rats had been squealing for hours behind his building. That anyone could hear it and not go crazy was inconceivable. He knew where his father kept his gun. On the closet shelf where his mother had kept her hat boxes, Big Mike had a shoebox with bullets and knives and what Carney later figured out was a makeshift garrote. And this month’s gun. The day of the rats it had been a .38 snub nose that sat like a big black frog on Carney’s thirteen-year-old palm. It was loud. He didn’t know if he hit any of the critters, but they scattered and Carney lived in fear for weeks that his father would find out he’d been in his stuff. When he opened the shoebox months later, there was a different pistol inside.
He told Pepper he knew how to use it.
Pepper grunted. He put one of the Colt Cobras into a pocket inside his nylon windbreaker.
Now that they had arrived at the Park Avenue meet, Miami Joe’s gun seemed silly. For the last five years, Carney had told himself that if anything bad went down, there was the gun from under the couch for protection. Secret security, like get-out-of-town money you keep in a shoe just in case. But they were on Park Avenue. One of the most expensive streets in the world. The building Van Wyck had chosen for the handoff was worth tens of millions of dollars; it was a token of the man’s concentrated power, the capital and influence that scaffolded his greed. As for Carney, he had a dead man’s gun and a worn-out crook who was too cheap to buy new pants.
“Ready?” Carney said.
“I was checking out the Egon one.”
Carney looked at him.
“The Egon recliner with the EZ-Smooth Lever Action. In your office, the catalog. And a standing lamp.”
“Of course,” Carney said. “It’s usually four to six weeks.”
A tiny latch secured the plywood doors in front of 319 Park, next to a sign that read van wyck realty: building the future. Pepper and Carney moved beyond the fence and the sounds of the city magically hushed. The bronze plate was already up: VWR. White tape crisscrossed the newly installed glass of the lobby entrance. Dusty cardboard covered the floors and gray clouds of plaster mottled the walls.
A white security guard sat on a folding chair by the bank of elevators. He removed his reading glasses—he had been scratching at a book of word jumbles—and regarded Carney and his partner with irritation. His hand dropped to his waist, in the vicinity of his holster. He pointed to the glass case containing the building directory, where white letters floated on an expanse of black felt: suite 1500. The lone occupant.
Inside the unfinished elevator, a bare plate awaited the inspection certificate. Still time to turn around. “How do you know which bank?” Carney asked.
“Was wondering when you’d ask,” Pepper said. Weary. “You like this heat?”
Carney thought, Let Freddie lie in the bed he made. And then what? Raid the maybe bank accounts and run off to an island somewhere like Wilfred Duke? It was a short-lived fantasy, a brief excursion between floors: Elizabeth would leave his ass in a second when she found out about his crooked side. Call the cops herself if thugs came knocking on Leland and Alma’s door looking for them.
The elevator produced a crisp, cheerful ping and opened its doors.
The hallway of the fifteenth floor was carpeted in red, sturdy pile and a series of faux-marble panels ran its length. The ceiling lights, Carney noted, were encased in those Miller globes that had caught on in office buildings. A thin brass arrow pointed to suite 1500.
“High up,” Pepper said. “The last time I was above the tenth floor…” He pulled out the Colt Cobra from his windbreaker. Carney had left his gun in the glove compartment after telling Pepper about it. He wasn’t going to use it so it didn’t make sense to bring it. In due course, the stupidity of this argument made itself evident.
The lights were on in reception. No one present. Ed Bench yelled, “In here, gentlemen,” from down the hall. It smelled of paint, so fresh that the
pale green walls looked like they’d smudge on you from a foot away. Chest-high dividers cut the big rooms into individual work areas, but the desks, chairs, and everything else were missing. Businesses had moved into Pan Am before it was finished, Carney remembered. There was so much urgent business to be done that the buildings couldn’t keep pace, the money pushed on ahead. Next week these rooms and sub-rooms would be full of men in pinstripe suits barking into receivers.
A different sort of deal had to be concluded before that.
The door to the conference room was propped open, and inside waited Ed Bench and two men in gray flannel suits with skinny lapels. From Pepper’s description, the two men were the astronauts. Ed Bench was seated at the big oval-shaped table, a white telephone with an intercom system by his elbow. There were twelve empty seats. The table and chairs were from Templeton Office’s new fall line of business furniture. Not even out yet, as far as Carney knew. Outside the glass wall to the street, the new midtown skyline—ever changing—marched in silhouette.
Pepper nodded in greeting to the two astronauts, who made no response. They flanked Ed Bench and had their guns trained on Carney and Pepper in the doorway. The astronauts were more at home in the tailored suits than the gas-company costumes; this corporate warren was their natural habitat.
From his reaction, Ed Bench had been briefed on the couch salesman’s bodyguard, but could not resist raising an eyebrow at his rustic attire.
Pepper kept his gun on the redhead. He had a particular dislike.
“My client was glad to have the necklace back,” Ed Bench said. “He’ll be pleased you brought the rest of his things.”
“Where’s Freddie?” Carney said.
Ed Bench gestured at the briefcase. “Everything inside?”
“The man asked you a question,” Pepper said. He checked the office behind him for party crashers. The partitions made it impossible. “Can we quit with the jibber jabber?”
The eyes of the two astronauts communicated that they waited on a pretext.
“You parked where I told you?” Ed Bench said, lowering the temperature.
Carney said, “Yeah.”
Ed Bench dialed a number. He said, “Okay,” and hung up. “If you go to the window, you’ll see.”
Pepper said, “Go ahead,” and kept his gun level. Carney moseyed over. His father’s truck was directly across the street.
“He’ll be along,” Ed Bench said.
“Van Wyck,” Carney said. “He must be broken up about his son.”
“Linus had a knack for getting into trouble. He hung out with a bad element.”
Below, two men emerged around Fifty-First Street. They carried a limp figure, which they deposited in the truck bed. They withdrew. Perhaps it was Freddie. The person did not move.
“What’s wrong with him?” Carney said.
“He’s alive,” Ed Bench said.
The blond astronaut made a sound.
“Mr. Van Wyck took a dim view,” Ed Bench said.
Pepper said, “Fuck is that?”
“Introducing his son to narcotics. Laughing.”
Introducing—that wasn’t true at all. “What do you mean, laughing?” Carney said.
Ed Bench registered Pepper’s new posture. “When they robbed the apartment. Linus and Mr. Van Wyck had a scuffle and he fell. And Linus’s friend laughed.” He stroked his chin. “He took a dim view.”
For the first time the redheaded astronaut spoke: “So we tuned him up.”
Later, Pepper explained it was the principle of the thing: Let white people think they can fuck all over you and they’ll keep doing it.
That was two months after the night on Park Avenue. Summer had burned off and autumn crept in like a thief. They were in Donegal’s. Carney had stopped by to see how Pepper was enjoying the Egon recliner and pagoda standing lamp. Carney said, “You said with the riots, what was the point? Everything keeps on the way it is, so all the protests were for nothing.”
Pepper said, “I am right in that. Grand jury had nothing to say about that cop, did it? He’s still on the job, right? But as it pertains to me shooting those dudes…maybe you start small and work your way up.”
TOSS
AND
SEE THEM RUN!
That night in 319 Park, Pepper started small by shooting the redheaded astronaut in the mouth. Instinct compelled the redhead to fire his .38. He missed. The blond astronaut shot at Pepper and got him in the meat above his left hip before Pepper shot him once in the face and twice in the gut. Pepper fired two more rounds into the redhead to put him down, for the man flopped weirdly on the conference table as if electrocuted. The final bullet put an end to the flailing.
“Spinal column,” Pepper said. “Makes them go buggy like that.”
From his reaction, Ed Bench had never seen two men shot to death close up. Pale by pedigree, he grew more so. Carney had seen Pepper kill a man before, so seeing him kill two held little novelty, but he didn’t have the psychological burden of wondering if he was next. He rushed over. “You’re shot, man,” he said.
Blood unspooled from Pepper’s fingers. “I got to get a look at it,” he said. Meaning the wound. “We should wrap this up.”
Carney put the briefcase on the conference table. “Do what you want,” he told the lawyer.
“You sure?” Pepper asked.
“I am.” There was no other ticket back.
“Shit, take the guns at least,” Pepper said. “Have this fool shooting at us.”
Carney did as instructed, not that Ed Bench was in any condition to chase them down. He stared at the redheaded astronaut’s body. Blood had sprayed on Ed Bench’s shirt and face. The lawyer’s mouth worked silently. If attended to promptly, the new space-age fibers in the Templeton Office carpet prevent stains.
Down the hall the elevator was waiting. How many people worked in the neighboring buildings and might report the shots? Carney hadn’t checked if any offices with line-of-sight on the conference room had their lights on. “Is it bad?” Carney said.
“It’s a gunshot wound.” Pepper left bloody whorls on the lobby button. He wiped away the print.
The lobby guard jumped out of his chair when the elevator opened and scrambled to the opposite elevator bank. He did not interfere. How far did the sound of gunfire travel? No cop cars waited on the other side of the plywood. Pepper hobbled into the street. He allowed Carney to give him a hand. They traversed the median that separated the uptown and downtown lanes, stopping only to let a gray Rolls-Royce pass. The passengers made no indication of seeing them.
Freddie lay in the truck bed, a heap in bloody clothes. He croaked when Carney appeared and put his hand on his chest.
“Give me the keys,” Pepper said.
Carney did so and climbed into the back. The ladies had always loved his cousin, especially in his glory days before he was drinking and drugging too much. Pretty boy—Pedro had passed that down to him the way Big Mike had passed down crookedness to Carney. Those young women would not recognize Freddie now, the way they’d worked over his face.
They had to get to the hospital. Carney had given Pepper the keys distractedly and it was only when the truck lurched forward that he realized the man intended to drive with a bullet in his side. Had the slug gone through him? Were the cops close? The hospital was how far? The truck swung a U-turn and Carney got down low with Freddie and slipped his arm under his cousin’s head. Carney’s arm wettened. They were both on their backs. Looking up, Park Avenue was a canyon, like Freddie had said, cliff faces of buildings racing against the dark sky. It reminded Carney of when it got so hot, those summer nights years ago, that he and Freddie would take a blanket and lie on the roof of 129th Street. The day’s heat radiated out of the black tar but it was still cooler than being indoors. Beneath the vast and eternal churn of the night sky. The eyes
adjust. One night Freddie said the stars made him feel small. The boys’ constellation knowledge stalled after the Dippers and the Belt, but you didn’t have to know what something was called to know how it made you feel, and looking at the stars didn’t make Carney feel small or insignificant, the stars made him feel recognized. They had their place and he had his. We all have our station in life—people, stars, cities—and even if no one looked after Carney and no one suspected him capable of much at all, he was going to make himself into something. The truck bounced uptown. Now look at him. It wasn’t a bronze plate on a skyscraper, but everybody knew the corner of 125th and Morningside was his, it had his name on it—carney’s—plain as day.
The truck rear-ended the car parked out front, fast enough for a nice jolt. The lights from the entrance to Harlem Hospital washed over them. Pepper helped Carney get his cousin out of the truck bed. Two young orderlies appeared with a stretcher.
“You’re what, not coming in?” Carney said.
“I was just there. I need a break.” Pepper took two steps uptown, hand tamped to his side. “I know a guy.” He took two more steps.
Carney trotted alongside the stretcher into the hospital. He grabbed Freddie’s hand. Freddie stirred. His head lolled. “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”
NINE
another quality development from van wyck realty.
It took Carney a year and a half to make it downtown to the construction site. Lord knows he’d been busy. Was Marie going to come back to work when her baby got big enough? Her husband, Rodney, was the type to consider a woman bringing home money a threat to his manhood. The new girl Tracy was learning the ropes but she was no Marie, who knew when to zip it and when to politely avert her eyes. It wasn’t clear what Tracy’s reaction would be when she realized there was something hinky going on.
Lunch hour on Rector and Broadway. The office workers spilled out and sloshed around the avenues. Curbside hot dogs, Automat specials, bloody steaks for big shots at their reserved tables. Why today? The contract with Bella Fontaine, for one thing. Mailing the contract to Bella Fontaine’s Omaha headquarters brought back everything about that sticky July. The killing of James Powell and the riots, and then the dangerous urgency of the following week—the heat that came down and what happened to Freddie. Signing up with Bella Fontaine after eighteen months of renewed pursuit of Mr. Gibbs made those events into a mirage.
Harlem Shuffle Page 30
