Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)(15)
“Bent hates straight, Carney. Putting on airs—You think you’re better than me?” The detective shrugged. “Only a matter of time before someone tried to clip him.”
Carney got up to open the window more. It didn’t budge.
“You want to know why Webb jumped you,” Munson said. He lit a cigarette. “Two weeks ago, the BLA shot those two men on patrol and declared open season on cops. The whole force is mobilized to put them down—what’d Malcolm X say?—by any means necessary. It’s a holy mission. Webb and I are running all over the city. Get a tip about some militant assholes who use a soup kitchen for a front. We go in, bust some heads—”
“Soup kitchen?”
“You ever read that Panther paper? Soup kitchens are how they get a foothold in a neighborhood. Giving people what they need. A lot of these people are from out of state, out-of-state agitators. California, Oakland. And they come in with their talk and try to turn our own blacks against us.”
“Yours?” From Carney, the tone qualified as incensed.
Munson put up his hands: People were so touchy these days. “Point is, we’re all over town following leads. Last Friday, I get a tip from a guy I know—breaks kneecaps for Notch Walker. Sometimes feeds me stuff, I don’t know his game yet. I meet him in the back of Baby’s Best and he asks me if I’m still looking for those cop killers. What do you think? He gives me the address of this place one of their girlfriend’s at.”
Munson and Buck sat on the apartment, a five-story tenement on 146th between Amsterdam and Convent. The third-floor window didn’t have a curtain. The apartment was lit, shadows play on the walls. The detectives waited in the car.
Two colored guys came rolling up the street. They carried themselves differently than the local talent, a different species entirely. Munson and Webb looked at each other: Okay. The men didn’t buzz up or produce keys—the front door was busted. They went upstairs to join the party.
Munson sighed. “I should point out that me and Buck, our relationship is showing signs of strain. We’ve ridden together for many years, have kicked down doors and collared every brand of knucklehead on God’s green earth, but like I said, a partner is eventually going to get on your nerves. Buck’s on my case. ‘You’re really putting away the booze, maybe you should lay off the bennies, stop burning the candle at both ends.’ I go, who are you to talk—”
“I get the gist,” Carney said.
“Point is, you know how when your wife starts yelling at you about ABC, it’s never A, B, or C that’s actually pissed her off, it’s really Z, the last thing on her list? But she can’t say it until she goes through the whole alphabet?”
“Grab your Alpha-Bits and come with me, we’ll eat through the Alpha-Bits A to Z.”
“What?”
Carney shrugged.
“Buck’s going through the whole alphabet,” Munson said, “and finally he gets to Y, which is how much money I’m making. Why didn’t you cut me in on this, why didn’t you cut me in on that, naming shit I haven’t thought of in a long time. People been dead for years, old deals from way back. What does he expect? I’m enterprising.
“Finally he drops Z. Z is what he’s really pissed about. Z is, he says he got a subpoena from the Knapp Commission and why him and not me?”
Why Buck and not him? It was not something Munson wanted to ponder overlong. Before the City Council granted Knapp and his crew subpoena power, nobody was sweating them. Another phony commission for public relations. Running stings on low-level patrolmen putting the bite on bar owners and tow-truck drivers, penny-ante bullshit. But in March they got that subpoena power. And people are getting served. And people who should definitely be getting served are not talking about getting served.
Munson first heard of Knapp back in the ’50s, when the assistant DA busted up the waterfront rackets. A serious man. It was public knowledge that the commission’s budget ran out July 1—Munson had figured on waiting them out. But if it was Memorial Day and they’re calling the guy who sits next to him, how much longer until they came knocking? Sometimes Munson thought he should’ve gone into the corruption beat, back in the day. Steady work, and you can probably come up with some higher-level grifting from the inside.
Munson lit a cigarette. That was two he had going. He commenced to alternate. “I’ve been with Buck for ten years,” Munson said. “Seen men wet their pants when we roll up. He’s got that ‘mean fuel’ from his childhood. But he got shot two years ago and he is not the same man. Buck’s wife’s got this divorce lawyer, she knows where he gets his cash from, wants to use that to juice him. In his prime, he was something else. Now he’s scared money.
“I have to wonder,” the detective said, “they bring him in, can they break him? In the old days, forget about it. But these are not the old days. The city has changed. It’s crumbling around us and we have to outrun all the shit raining down.” Munson stopped to consider his guest. Did Carney understand what he was saying? One of those inscrutable colored guys who never let you know what they’re thinking. Most of the time it was fine. Tonight Munson had to know if Carney had what it took to keep up his end.
We’ll see.
“Can they break him?” Munson said. “That’s the question I am mulling when the lights go out in the apartment and those cocksuckers we’ve been sitting on come out of the building.”