Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)(10)
“I get tickets. I get tickets to everything,” Munson said. “I tell you I went backstage at Vic Damone? He’s from Brooklyn, he didn’t put on airs. Some of these cocksuckers…”
Brown paper bags. It was undignified. Took away the romance. Because Carney was smitten with those beautiful stones. “Good tickets,” he said. “Up close.”
“I know everybody and everybody owes me.” Munson smiled. “How long will it take?”
They did a deal for the concert tickets. Carney departed with the paper bags, supporting the bottom like they held leaky coffee cups.
THREE
You knew the city was going to hell if the Upper East Side was starting to look like crap, too. Things were in decline here and there at the edges of Carney’s vision: half-finished graffiti on the metal grate of a closed-down drugstore; a crop of overflowing garbage cans past due for pickup; the aftermath of a smashed windshield, glass squares on the asphalt like knocked-out teeth. It was carved into the faces of the Upper East Siders, where something more downcast had replaced the smirks, and behind the eyes one discovered a vague and unformed hopelessness instead of the standard entitled cheer. Things were definitely in decline all over, across zip codes. Strike threats and work stoppages, the yellow stain of pollution above and dangerous fractures in the infrastructure below. It was creeping on everyone, like a gloom blowing over the East River and into the vast grid, the apprehension that things were not as they had been and it would be a long time before they were right again.
Commerce proceeded.
Carney still had the business card: Martin Green, Antiques. Why hadn’t he thrown it out? Because he knew or wished a day like this might come. Crooked stays crooked.
Green lived near the corner of Eighty-second and York, in a white-brick number notched with cramped terraces and equipped with a lobby that was recessed from the street. To overcompensate for the building’s newness, they decked out the doorman in an old-fashioned getup of red and gold, like the leader of a marching band that had deserted him. The doorman called up to the apartment.
Martin Green was the only fine-gem guy Carney could think of. The men he trusted had fallen hard since his retirement. Boris the Monk got caught holding the Fox-Worthington haul, which had been heisted from the heiress’s Fifth Avenue penthouse. Ellen Fox-Worthington’s usual domain was deep in the gossip columns; the robbery elevated her to the front page. The cops had been on the lookout. Now Boris was doing eight to twelve in Dannemora, where Carney’s original connection Buxbaum had died last spring, gut cancer. Ed Brody’s place on Amsterdam got knocked over so many times he enrolled in night classes to get his real estate license. Now he sold marsh-adjacent lots in Florida to a variety of suckers. Brody sent a Christmas card every year: “I’m making more than I ever did hustling stones.”
There were new players, but no time to make a proper inquiry. Martin Green was his only lead. A phone call confirmed he was still in the trade, and after a stop at the office to upgrade the paper bags to his black leather briefcase, Carney caught a taxi downtown.
Green had dropped by the store in the fall of ’69 to introduce himself. Carney had white customers—neighborhood lifers, college kids, and intrepid young couples after cheap rent and undeterred by Harlem’s current decrepitude. The moment he saw Green, he knew the young white man was not one of them. He was in the showroom observing an Esme Currier wall feature, a brass-and-steel lattice overlaid with a series of blue-and-green enamel crescents. He scrutinized it with the tip of his eyeglasses stuck in his mouth, as if he stood on the cool marble of a museum. “I love it,” Green said, before Carney could speak. “Can I take it home with me?”
He wore a white linen suit and a shiny yellow shirt, the top three buttons open to reveal pale, freckled skin and a turquoise Indian pendant. Green was lucky he didn’t get beat up, walking around uptown like that. The man was oblivious.
In the office he shared the real reason for his visit: to present his services as a dealer. Harvey Moskowitz, Carney’s old contact, was a friend and had informed him that Ray Carney was the man to talk to if you were looking to do business uptown. “He said you’re an honest apple,” Green told him. “And that you catered to an underserved community.”
Underserved community was an amusing way to say Black thieves refused service by white fences downtown. He asked Green if Moskowitz had explained why they’d stopped working together.
“He mentioned an incident, and that the blame was entirely his.” Green spotted the Hermann Bros. safe. “Wow, that’s a beauty.”
The secret fraternity of Hermann Bros. safe aficionados. Green gave his pitch. Like Moskowitz, he was the American point man for a European network. Anything put in his hands would be out of the country in seventy-two hours. He was careful, he said, and discreet. No one had anything on him—criminal, cop, or Fed—and he meant to keep it that way.
“Which is all to say,” Green concluded, “if you need a venue one day, I’m your man.” He hooked his thumb toward the showroom. “Now about that Currier piece—it really is exquisite.” He peeled off some bills.
Carney liked him—despite his association with Moskowitz, who’d sold him down the river during their last encounter. Nonetheless: Carney was retired, and sometimes whole hours passed where he didn’t have a crooked thought.