Seven

She grabbed his arm and startled him—Sandra from Chock Full o’Nuts. He was headed for the subway, downtown to Moskowitz’s. The emerald in his leather satchel made him suspect everybody on the street had X-ray vision.

On the lookout for a gunman or an anvil-chinned heavy with a five-o’clock shadow, he didn’t catch the waitress’s approach.

Outside of the coffee shop, Sandra was just as chatty and vivacious. She asked after his family; he had shown her pictures over the years, courtesy of his Polaroid Pathfinder. Sandra told him she’d made it through “all that drama last week okay.” Some roughneck had lobbed a brick through the Seventh Avenue window of the restaurant so they boarded up the place until the protests subsided. They were back in business now. “People need their coffee,” she said.

Carney apologized for being too busy to come by. She touched his arm again and said they weren’t going anywhere.

A few minutes later he was on the subway, humming the shop’s theme song: Better coffee a millionaire’s money can’t buy… What can a millionaire’s money buy: everything else. Cops and city hall and faceless thugs to do your bidding. Carney recalled the fear of those days after the Theresa job, the fear that Arthur’s killer might come for him, his family.

Now Freddie and Linus had unleashed trouble of another magnitude, pissed-off rich people who were as bent as gangsters but didn’t have to hide. They did it out in the open, notarized their misdeeds or engraved them into bronze plates for building facades.

Sure, when this was over he’d return to Chock Full o’Nuts for a nice, solid cup of coffee, but he had to get this racket going first. Pepper had signed up, so Carney was spared the tricky business of hitting up one of his customers on the fencing side to see if they had a name. He was not

impressed with Harlem’s thugs overall. Whether you were talking construction, poetry, or women’s pumps, the Walt Whitmans, the Peppers, of a given field were hard to come by. It was no different in the violence-and-mayhem trade; the majority of practitioners were average or subpar.

Carney was grateful Pepper had forgiven him, even if he suspected it was only out of an old obligation to his father, ancient blood-oath shit.

After their initial discussion of the job, Pepper hadn’t tried to talk him out of helping Freddie. Carney had enough doubts with outside encouragement.

The debacle of Bella Fontaine and Mr. Gibbs aside, Freddie had brought danger close again. When they were children, when he’d brought down parental wrath and they sat in the bedroom waiting for the belt, Freddie would croak out a pitiable, “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.” It never occurred to him that things would go wrong, that the caper would go sideways and there would be consequences. There were always consequences.

Carney didn’t have to do it anymore. Freddie was a grown man. What to call this operation: the Freddie job, the Van Wyck job? Maybe it was the Carney job, because he wanted to prove that he could move a big rock like that, stick it to the rich bastards again. Rich white bastards this time. This wasn’t a broken radio some strung-out loser had grabbed from a widow’s apartment. This necklace was mythic, a piece out of legend.

He scored a seat on the train. Carney pulled out the flyer and unfolded it

—he’d rediscovered it in his wallet when he bought tokens. Last week in the middle of the protests, this young woman, college kid, had stopped him as he surveyed 125th Street. It was Monday morning and Carney was getting his first real look at the weekend carnage. She wore white slacks with a green-and-white-striped top. Given the uneasy mood on the street, her cheer and purpose were a declaration of principles. She grabbed his wrist and tucked a leaflet in his hand:

INSTRUCTIONS:

ANY EMPTY BOTTLE

FILL WITH GASOLINE

USE RAG AS WICK

LIGHT RAG

TOSS

AND

SEE THEM RUN!

When he looked up she had vanished. Who’d print such a thing? It was dangerous, the product of a demented mind. Back at the office he folded the flyer and tucked it away. He wasn’t sure why.

The white lady next to him on the subway read it over his shoulder. She frowned. That’s why you shouldn’t read over people’s shoulders. He returned the paper to his wallet. No harm in keeping it. As a talisman or a crooked hymn kept close for reference.

Back to the setup: Freddie was lamming it in Brooklyn, Pepper minded the store in case anyone showed up. Next up was Moskowitz. Did the man have enough cash in that Hermann Bros. safe of his or did Carney have to wait a few days? He had kept it cryptic on the phone; that plus the uncustomary afternoon meeting would warn the jeweler that it was serious.

In midtown there was no indication that New York City had been besieged one week prior. The black city and the white city: overlapping, ignorant of each other, separate and connected by tracks.

Moskowitz’s was busy—Carney passed four customers as he went up the stairs. Ari, the nephew who sat next to Carney during his lessons, nodded hello and excused himself from the young couple gawking at the diamond necklaces. There was another man by the Ventura display buying something for his mistress. One of Moskowitz’s more engaged lessons had dissected the differences in posture when a customer was buying something for a wife versus a mistress, and how to adjust one’s sales pitch. Ari rapped on the office door and stuck his head in, then waved in Carney.

Moskowitz stood at the window, taking in the manic boil of Forty-Seventh Street. Two fans were trained on his executive chair, they swiveled

to and fro and nudged the hot air. The jeweler let down the blinds and greeted Carney with his usual reserve.

“It’s a lot this time,” Carney said.

“I gathered,” Moskowitz said. “Your uptown associates getting ambitious?”

Carney didn’t like the tone. He opened the satchel and set the Van Wyck necklace on Moskowitz’s desk blotter next to the overflowing ashtray.

The jeweler withdrew. “Put it away,” Moskowitz said.

“What?”

“I had to see it, but I don’t want to look at it. You know why.”

Carney returned the necklace to the leather satchel.

“It’s too hot,” Moskowitz said. “People are inquiring. You must know that. I couldn’t move that five feet.”

“You had a visit?”

“Anybody who can move that knows not to touch it. Toss it in the East River and don’t look back. I’d say return it and ask forgiveness, but I don’t think it would be forthcoming.”

You might say it wasn’t a rosy picture. “That’s it?” Carney said.

“It’s best you don’t come back.”

Ari waved goodbye as Carney departed. Carney didn’t notice.

It had gotten hotter outside. Carney wiped his neck with his handkerchief in the middle of the sidewalk stream. You can have all sorts of craziness in your head and people will walk right by you as if you are a normal person.

Moskowitz. He’d been threatened. Had someone linked the two of them or had they come at him because he handled heavy weight?

At the corner of Seventh Ave, Carney heard his name. The intonation was that of a dispassionate clerk, engaged but too overworked to offer more than the perfunctory. “If you have a minute, Mr. Carney.”

The man was tall and thin, with sharp features—Carney thought of museum statues cut from cold white stone. Hermes, the God of Speed. Or was it Mercury? May had brought home a book on Roman gods from the library. This guy looked like he relaxed at home with a chalice and one of those laurel-wreath crowns around his head.

He shook Carney’s hand as if they’d been doing business for years. “The name’s Bench—Ed Bench. I’m with the law firm of Newman, Shears & Whipple.” He gave Carney his card. Heavy stock, dignified typeface.

Carney said he didn’t understand.

“I represent the Van Wyck family.” He tilted his head. “I’m here with Mr.

Lloyd.”

Presenting Mr. Lloyd, the muscle, neck and head a solid column atop his barrel chest. Carney doubted he’d taken the bar exam. The man’s right hand was in his jacket pocket, pointing a revolver at Carney. He wore a fake, dumb smile to camouflage him as one of the tourists gee-whizzing at the Big City.

“Let’s walk, Carney,” Ed Bench said. Carney looked back at Mr. Lloyd, who kept pace, gun at an angle, same smile. Carney’s heart pounded and the street noise—the honking and backfiring and cussing—doubled in volume, as if by radio knob.

“How’s your cousin, Carney?” Ed Bench said.

“I haven’t seen him.”

“That’s unlikely. We hear you’re like brothers. Do anything for each other. Can I have that, please?”

Mr. Lloyd coughed for emphasis. Carney handed over his satchel.

Ed Bench performed a quick look-see for confirmation. He said, “The rest?”

“That’s it. If somebody’s saying something else, they’re wrong.”

“The other items. I’m referring to the other items.”

The DONT WALK sign at the corner of Forty-Ninth and Seventh kept them put. Carney tried to get a handle on what was happening. Had they followed him from uptown? Straphanging two feet away while he dreamed of wheeling and dealing? This Van Wyck lawyer—the one who handled their dirty stuff, he supposed—was more concerned with the other things Linus had swiped from the family safe. Carney had been so distracted by the fact of the emerald he hadn’t gone over the papers thoroughly.

“I don’t have them.”

“Carney,” Ed Bench said.

Mr. Lloyd jabbed the nose of the pistol into Carney’s back.

Ed Bench made a gesture and Mr. Lloyd backed off. The lawyer led them to the opposite corner. “A hundred years ago,” he said, “this was a cow pasture—all of this. Midtown. Times Square. Then someone had an idea, and built, and bought more land, and built. Some things pan out. Some things don’t. The Van Wycks didn’t build here on Seventh Avenue. They built there.” He pointed toward Sixth. “The one on the east corner. If this was a cow pasture, that was a mud puddle. Now look at it. You don’t have to be first. Second is fine. If you have an eye for what’s going to pan out, second is fine.”

Carney spied a patrolman across the street, drinking a Coca-Cola through a straw with bovine serenity. For a moment, he entertained the ridiculous proposition of a Negro calling a cop to complain he was being threatened by two white men.

Ed Bench saw the policeman give a sympathetic frown at Carney’s plight. “You’re a smart man, Carney. An entrepreneur. I wonder if you’ve recognized your current venture isn’t going to pan out.” The lawyer showed his teeth. “Have you considered what will happen? To you? Your family?”

Moskowitz had tipped off the Van Wycks and sold Carney down the river. They visit the jeweler’s store, brace him, and tell him to give a heads-up if the necklace appears. Because whoever has that emerald has the briefcase and the rest of its contents.

Back when Buxbaum got pinched, Carney and Moskowitz had sweated over whether or not he’d squeal. Buxbaum, weak sister or no, had kept his trap shut. He was still up at Dannemora, doing time. Moskowitz, the old gentleman, the professor, was the one who ratted him out in the end.

Fuck this.

Ed Bench said, “Hey!”

Johnny Dandy starring Blake Headley and Patricia De Hammond had been running on Broadway at the Divinity Theater since Memorial Day weekend. Critics had meted their blows and yet. The dialogue and action were so shrouded in euphemism, so opaque in meaning and intention, alternately dull and worrisome, that no one could decide what the play was

about, if they understood it, let alone enjoyed it. Was this tragedy or farce?

Such a faithful reflection of existence proved irresistible. Every night a pantomime of modern life unfurled before a sold-out house. Dandy’s run was cut short when Blake Headley slipped a disk; his understudy’s inert line readings broke the spell. The play was never produced again, save for an avant-garde attempt in Buenos Aires that closed during the first intermission (arson). Its author moved to Los Angeles and made a name in TV Westerns. Every afternoon the matinee ended at 3:42 P.M., ejecting hundreds of distracted theater mavens into an already congested Forty-Ninth Street.

South Ferry 306, which claimed as its domain fourteen miles of the IRT

line between South Ferry and Van Cortlandt–242nd Street, was scheduled to pull into the Fiftieth Street station at 3:36 P.M. but was delayed after a signalman reported a figure shambling among the tracks at Herald Square.

Subsequent investigation determined the shape in question to be an addled raccoon. It happened sometimes, a wrong turn. The train screeched into Fiftieth Street at 3:45 P.M., nine minutes behind schedule. The station’s Forty-Ninth Street exit was convenient and popular. A train car collects specimens, the station releases them from captivity. Men and women stepped from the cars, bumped turnstiles, and mounted stairs to feed the maddening flux of Broadway.

Carney ran, availing himself of this confluence. He ran as if Freddie had stolen a comic book from Mason’s display racks and Old Man Mason himself pursued them down Lenox with a machete, he ran as if he and his cousin had dropped a fistful of firecrackers into the aluminum garbage cans outside 134 West 129th and rattled the whole street. He ran like a kid convinced that the whole grown-up world with its entire grown-up might was going to beat him silly. There were people and cars. He danced and darted and zipped through, weaving around frumpy salesmen and limping matrons, threading himself between slow-walking rubes and briskly moving sophisticates as if he were a piece of celluloid navigating the rollers of a gigantic movie projector, lost footage from a B movie.

He shook Ed Bench and Mr. Lloyd after two blocks—not the God of Speed after all—and kept going another ten, although not as fast, trotting some, for he was out of shape. They’d finished construction on another segment of Lincoln Center and the south entrance of the Sixty-Sixth Street stop was open again.

The necklace was gone, like that. Yes, you can have all sorts of craziness in your head and people will sit right next to you on the train as if you are a normal person. He felt safe on the train, all the way up, until he got to the store and saw Pepper.

* * *

Pepper hadn’t been himself lately. It probably had something to do with getting stabbed in the stomach on the Benton’s rip-off. The job had started fine. A routine hijacking, trailer full of overcoats, sleepy Sunday night.

Dootsie Bell brought him in on it. In former times, Dootsie Bell had been an ace stickup man. Prompt, with a bogeyman voice that kept the squares in check. Then he went on the needle and the only cure that took was the Bible. Sure, a little Jesus is good for some individuals but you don’t want Do unto others riding shotgun on a job. Dootsie had assured Pepper the driver was tied up tight. The blade got him deep.

A week in the hospital on this dopey ward. Chumps rotated in and out.

The day after he returned to the apartment on 144th, the boiler quit. The landlord gave him excuses for weeks until Pepper gave him an or-else. Hard weeks, the kind where you realize you’ve engineered it so that nobody has anything on you, and that means nobody has anything for you: help, a kind word. He had plenty of time to think about that and decided he wouldn’t change a thing about how he’d lived his life, but going forward a man was allowed to make changes if he saw fit.

His gut bothered him worse than he’d admit. He couldn’t work. The first job that came his way was a payroll rip-off, a glass factory in New Brunswick. Working with Cal James—his girl’s cousin worked there and had the inside dope. Half an hour into casing the place for security patterns,

his stomach started twisting and he passed out in the car. Somehow he got back into the city and had to spend a week in bed. Sorry, Cal. He didn’t sign up for anything after that. A voice kept saying, Are you sure you want to do that? His commonsense voice that had saved his hide many times. It was out of his hands.

He spent a lot of time at Donegal’s. Used to be he walked in and there were men he liked, or at least had worked with—they had something in common. These days he didn’t know where everybody’d gone. Jail, the graveyard, sure, but besides that. There were no pension plans for retired safecrackers, for heisters and hustlers. Looking around Donegal’s, he realized everyone in the bar was a washed-up crook—too old to play the game anymore, brains scrambled after ten years in the joint, or so luckless that no one would work with them. Those guys, plus him. Which is why he was glad that afternoon when Carney walked in. Sometimes Big Mike’s face lurked in his son’s face, in the eyes and the frown, and his friend was returned to him.

They were in Donegal’s one night, him and Big Mike, and Pepper was sharing some thoughts about the nature of the universe. Big Mike said,

“You know what your problem is?”

Pepper said, No, please tell me.

Big Mike said, “You don’t like anybody.”

Pepper told him, I like plenty of folks, I just don’t like people. He liked Big Mike. Any resemblance between father and son was dispelled pretty damn quick when the furniture salesman opened his trap, but it was nice to see that glimmer. However briefly. Pepper’d work for the man, if he wasn’t going to take his advice and cut his loser cousin loose. Pepper’s convalescence had confirmed the void in his life. A recliner would fill it handily.

He was on the clock as soon as he hit 125th Street. Pepper rolled up the store’s grate and flipped the keys in his hand after the one for the front door.

Behind him, a reedy voice asked, “Why’s he got his store closed all day?”

It was not a customer. The sunglasses and hepcat demeanor fit Carney’s description of Chet the Vet, one of Chink Montague’s thugs. Pepper ignored

him and unlocked the front door.

“You igging me? I’m talking to you.”

Pepper faced the man, with the resignation of a man discovering his toilet is still busted after the plumber had left.

“Who are you?” said Chet the Vet.

“I’m the night man.”

“I’m looking for your boss.”

“I’m here.”

Chet the Vet squinted into the gloom of the store. He took stock of Pepper. The man’s attitude bewildered him. “I’ll come back,” he said.

“Store ain’t going nowhere.”

Chet the Vet took off. He glanced back twice, and twice turned away quickly from Pepper’s glare.

Guard duty commenced with an egg salad sandwich and a milkshake from Lionel’s on Broadway. Wednesday night was quiet, allowing him to contemplate the relative merits of the Argent recliner and its advertised smooth hydraulic action. A fine piece of furniture overall, he decided, although he preferred upholstery with a little more texture.

The Argent was a bite of the forbidden apple. The next day he took advantage of watch duty to peruse some of the man’s promotional material.

Get a sense of what was out there, recliner-wise. His sentry station was Carney’s office, with the lights out. He had the blinds open a fraction, allowing him to see into the showroom and out to the street, but not the other way around. He held the catalogs up to his face in the dimness.

Locking wheels, stainproof, lever action. There was one newfangled model had a built-in TV tray that flipped up over your lap, which he reckoned might come in handy if he ever got a TV set.

Had it been three years since he stopped using this place as an answering service? The furniture looked different—changing with the popular tastes—

but Carney had kept the place up and running. He’d done a good job. His father would be proud, even if it was a straight job. Like his father in one way, and not like him in another. Which is why he didn’t hold a grudge for

the thing with Duke and the drug peddler and the cops. Big Mike had never been able to resist some payback, and he’d passed that down.

He stretched. There was something in the back pocket of his overalls.

One of the activist leaflets they were handing out last week on 125th: COOL IT BABY

THE MESSAGE HAS BEEN DELIVERED

We have been screaming for jobs, decent schools, clean houses, etc. for years.

Some folks just wouldn’t listen.

We’ve been telling them that all hell was liable to break loose unless Negroes saw real progress.

Some folks just wouldn’t listen.

Today everybody’s listening—with both ears.

The Message Has Been Delivered

This young brother laid it on him, a sit-in type wearing one of those African shirts they’re selling nowadays. “You have a look,” he told Pepper, like he was some Southern hayseed who had to be educated about the ways of the Big City. Pepper’s heat vision sent him scurrying. Cool it baby. Ain’t nobody listening. Do you listen to what the roach says before you step on him? He almost tossed the leaflet in the trash, but returned it to his back pocket instead.

At 3:32 P.M., two white men strolled up to the front door. Customers turned around on seeing the CLOSED sign, but these two cupped their eyes and pressed their faces to the glass to see inside. They were clean-cut young men, in gas company uniforms that were not theirs. They weren’t meatheads, like a lot of muscle, panting after a few punches. These dudes were fit and clean, like astronauts. That new generation. Half his age.

Pepper grabbed the spot in his belly where the knife had gone deep. It already hurt from the fighting he was going to do.

They split up. One astronaut, the redhead, walked to the corner and looked up Morningside, to the side door of the office. The blond astronaut walked the other way, to the wall between the store and the bar next door.

They returned to the front door, conferred, and left.

Five minutes later they were back. The redheaded astronaut bent down to pick or pop the lock on the grate and rolled it up while the other pretended to consult a clipboard. On a job, wearing the clothes of a waiter or porter gave Pepper free passage among white people. Same way a white man in an official-looking uniform in a Negro neighborhood can get into a lot of places, no sweat. A cop uniform sends one message, a utility man’s another, long as they’re not there to turn off the electricity. The redheaded astronaut picked the front door without a fuss and his companion wheeled a metallic box over the threshold. Acetylene torch, most likely.

Once inside, their movements turned slow and they entered the hunt. In tandem: one step, pause and survey, another step. The redhead taking Carney’s office and the blond heading for Marie’s. Halfway into the store, the blond let go of the box and the both of them reached for their pistols, Colt Cobras. They continued toward the back of the store with predatory attention.

Pepper was at a disadvantage in that he was not armed. His last gun had been the throwaway he used in the hijack, and he’d last seen it on the floor of Dootsie Bell’s Cadillac before Dootsie dumped him in front of Harlem Hospital. Pepper had a meet-up with Billy Bill scheduled that evening to buy a piece. What he had on hand now was a baseball bat and a hunting knife.

The bat to start. Pepper popped the redhead below the rib cage with the head of the baseball bat, then brought it down with gruesome force on the base of the man’s skull. He’d left the office door ajar and pounced when the man got in range, had the astronaut seeing stars. There were scarce seconds before his scream attracted his partner. Go for the gun or use the fallen astronaut? The Colt Cobra had bounced and skittered on the floor—where?

The sounds of its passage had muffled, so across the rug. No time to scramble for it.

Pepper pressed the hunting knife to the redhead’s throat when the other one appeared in the doorway. His body was half shielded by the redhead. A certain kind of man would have fired anyway, but the blond wasn’t that breed.

“Move on back, buddy,” Pepper said. The redhead yelped as Pepper increased the pressure on his neck. “We’re getting up, right?” They rose.

Pepper sensed the man trying to figure out his opening. He steered him a foot closer to the entrance. The astronaut moved deliberately, to force an opportunity. Pepper reached out to slam the office door shut and rammed the man into it. He hit the button on the doorknob to lock it.

The astronaut elbowed Pepper in the stomach, then slugged him in the jaw. Pepper had been protecting his stomach where he got stabbed, angling his body, and it gave the man his chance. The other man tried the lock, then rammed his shoulder into the door to break it down. The redhead tackled Pepper and brought him down.

The office window shattered inward before the weight of the Collins-Hathaway ottoman the other astronaut hurled against it. The blinds were twisted up. The rug: Pepper saw the butt of the fallen pistol. So did the redhead. They crawled over each other to get it. Pepper got there first and twisted and fired at the shape in the office window. He missed. He brought the butt down on the redhead’s cranium.

Last time it was bloodstains on the man’s rug, this time his window.

The window gaped. “Cool it, baby,” Pepper said. “Anything pops up, I’m shooting it.” He got ahold of the redheaded astronaut and continued to address the man’s partner. “You get on back to the front window. I’m coming out with this motherfucker.” He instructed the redhead to open the office door.

It was odd—the white man’s silhouette against the 125th Street scene, which proceeded as if their violent drama did not exist. On the opposite sidewalk, a teenage girl tried to master her Hula-Hoop. The gunshot hadn’t attracted the stepped-up police patrols. So far.

From the way he aimed the gun, the blond astronaut’s ambitions lay in the vicinity of a headshot. Maybe two in the belly as a chaser.

“You can drop that,” Pepper said. “Unless you want to leave him here.”

The astronaut bent low to place the gun on the floor and put his hands up.

“Now get the fuck out of here,” Pepper said.

The message had been delivered, as the young people of Harlem liked to say.

* * *

Carney saw the broken glass and ran to his office phone. Elizabeth didn’t answer. At the store, the park, no telling.

“I know a guy who’ll buy the torch, you don’t want it,” Pepper said.

“The what?”

“Over there. They were going to torch the safe.” He paused. “No, J.J. got pinched. I’m sure there’s another guy.”

“Look, I have to get home.”

He removed Linus’s briefcase from the Hermann Bros. safe. Pepper told him to leave the safe open. “So they wouldn’t bust it open if they came back.” Carney took the cash—Freddie needed it now that fencing the necklace was no longer on the table.

He had a quick look at the papers inside the briefcase. Blueprints for a big office complex on Greenwich Street downtown—important, perhaps, but hardly irreplaceable. Beneath the blueprints were legal documents, real estate stuff with Linus’s name on them and the family corporation. One of them granted Mr. Van Wyck power of attorney over his son. Was that what it was all about? Later, Carney could figure out what had the Van Wycks so uptight. Now he had to check on his family.

As Carney locked up, Pepper asked if he still had his father’s truck. It would come in handy, he said. They got the truck out of the lot and beat it to Riverside Drive.

It hit Carney anew: The necklace was gone. He had handed it over, like that. And they didn’t even care about it. He honked the horn at the red light.

Elizabeth and the kids. “They’re okay,” Carney said.

“Maybe.”

“Freddie.” The way Carney used to say it when they were kids and he’d put them in line for an ass-whipping. Freddie.

“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.