Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)(14)
Munson chuckled, remembering how the grown-ups shook their fists at him and his crew, this tribe of juvenile delinquents cutting them off on the sidewalk and skidding about. Those outside the game couldn’t see it, even as it unfolded around them with anarchic purpose. Then one of the brats collared someone on the other team and shouted Ringolevio, one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three! and the game broke through to the civilian world in a burst of noise. Old biddies dropped their grocery bags in surprise, deliverymen swerved their hand trucks and cursed.
The only non-players hip to what was happening were those watching from above—the shut-ins, weirdos, and geezers who spent their lives at the window, chests and arms perched on dingy pillows that rested on the sill. Every block had them, these silent judges. Their stories circulated: got beaned his first at-bat with the Brooklyn Robins and now his brains were scrambled; drank a bottle of nerve tonic after she got left at the altar and ever since she got out of the booby hatch she watches and waits for her man to come for her. They saw the whole thing from up there, the feints and reversals, the gambits and misbegotten sprints. When young Munson crouched behind a milk truck, he’d look up and see the former shortstop gaze down at him, face empty.
Now Munson was one of them, watching from his 157th hideout, ejected from the game. Once you’re out, you can see the system in its entirety, make out where gears bite gears, how the mechanism works, and scheme accordingly.
Munson rolled his arm and flexed to test the injury. Usable, if painful, his thumbs and fingers. The caveman: opposable thumb on one hand to hold a club, middle finger on the other hand to flip ’em the bird. He stretched and winced. Turned to Carney. “You’re married, right?”
“You fucking know that.”
“I ain’t trying to jump to conclusions,” Munson said. “The family unit is complex in the ghetto, I know that. You got a wife, you know no matter how much you love her, no matter how great she is, she’s going to drive you batshit sometimes. With how she walks and talks, how she chews her fucking food, fucking breathes. Sometimes. All the time, if you’re unlucky.” A beer can materialized in his hand. “That’s what it’s like having a partner. Sitting in the car, babysitting some scumbag, it’s cold, he’s telling the same story you heard a hundred fucking times, you’re telling a joke you told a hundred fucking times, smelling each other’s farts, staring in the darkness—it’s a marriage. Same shit.”
Munson’s guest frowned. He glanced at the front door, as if for reassurance it still existed. “Did you get divorced or something?”
“Divorce,” Munson said. “That’s what I’m saying, you have to ride out the bumps. Step back. Cool off. Otherwise, you’re going to tear each other’s eyes out.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “You know what a pad is?”
“The Serpico thing,” Carney said. “It’s how a precinct divvies up bribes.”
Everybody knew about Frank fucking Serpico. Last year, The New York Times ran a whole series on police corruption, starring Serpico as “the Whistleblower.” Serpico was straight, everyone else in his precinct was bent. The little things that made the job bearable—meals on the arm, cooping, pocketing twenty bucks to rip up a speeding ticket—Saint Frank found distasteful. Which made big things, like the pad—a marvel of grifting ingenuity—morally unacceptable. Serpico tattled to his superiors, who did nothing (no surprise), went all the way up to the mayor’s office, who did nothing (ditto), until they got wind the Times was about to publish. Then Mayor Lindsay got the Knapp Commission together to study “the problem.”
Among the freebie meals and shakedowns of bar owners, working girls, and any unlucky fool who believed they could operate for free, the pad underwent particular scrutiny. “Everybody pays money to operate,” Munson explained to Carney, “since time immemorial. Even if they called it something different, shekels or whatever. A couple of years ago a wise man said, Why don’t we organize this? In the station house. That’s the pad—everybody’s envelopes made nice and orderly. On collection day, two bagmen make the rounds for the whole division. They hit up the local sports book, the numbers joint, the man behind the big dice game. Then that big stack of money that gets divided up according to who you are, your rank and seniority. Patrolman, let’s say he’s getting six hundred extra a week, a sergeant makes eight hundred, up to the captain, who gets a share and a half.”
In Harlem, anyway, Munson added to himself. That’s why they called it the Gold Coast. It’s why Munson transferred up from vice, no-brainer. Patrol the streets, making twelve grand a year if you’re lucky, the Gold Coast brings a nice bonus. In the good old days when Munson was the bagman for his division he ran a scam where he inflated the number of plainclothes. The bookies forked it over. Since Munson was the one who divvied up the pad, he pocketed the made-up shares. Wasn’t a bad racket.
“Guys like me,” Munson said, “I get my nut, but I also work nights, you might say. I extract additional tribute from certain parties for my own private contracts. Like you. Chink Montague. Notch Walker now. He pays the station house to operate, and gives to me to keep it running smooth. One’s gasoline in the tank, the other is the oil.”
“It runs smooth until it breaks down,” Carney said. “Serpico got shot in the face. They said it was cops.”