Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)(23)
Tuesday’s guard was Arnie Polk, a third-rater who’d been bounced from Chink Montague’s organization for being “kind of spacey” and having “his head up his ass,” per his performance reviews. Arnie would be the first to admit that violence was not his first passion.
From the brief, Arnie expected a docile crowd. His attention drifted. He made frequent forays to the sandwich platter and had the temerity to complain about the quality of the mayonnaise. When the robber pistol-whipped him, Arnie had been daydreaming about the Newport 30, the snazzy-looking keelboat on the cover of the May issue of Top Boating; he subscribed. Because of his bleak outlook, he’d furnished his daydream with misfortune: After a wrong turn, the sailboat wobbled on the mad heave of the Hudson in the wake of a cruise liner. He assumed the man had come to play—whoever heard of a white man knocking over a card game in Harlem? The robber slugged him and Arnie buckled to the parquet floor, where he played possum for the duration of the robbery. His deception went undetected. Didn’t even flinch when the white robber took his gun, though it tickled.
The white one did the talking. He was sweating and disheveled and he wore a harried expression, but his bark made the players jump. The black robber’s tentative air—“a startled quality” as Purvis put it later—made more than one player think he was on drugs, and thus a dangerous, unpredictable variable. His partner told him to hold up his gun. The black man did as instructed, but his arm slowly sank, capitulating to an invisible burden. This occurred multiple times during the robbery, as if he had a wrestling match inside him. “He was obviously a ruthless killer,” the talent manager told his accountant later, “fighting hard not to murder us all.”
Corky Bell stood. “Detective Munson?” he said, squinting.
The white man said, “Yes, yes.”
“We paid your man at the station,” Corky Bell said. “What the fuck are you doing? Also, you look like shit, motherfucker.”
“I’m working,” Munson said.
“Munson,” Wright said. As the longtime proprietor of a neighborhood whoring concern, Wright made regular contributions to the 28th Precinct’s pad. This man, his division, was in his pocket. But who was that nigger with him? He looked like a spaced-out druggie. Should be knocking over pharmacies for cough syrup, not card games.
“A policeman,” Purvis said, trying to wrap his head around it.
Corky Bell turned to the black intruder. “You a goddamn cop, too?”
The gunman’s hand dropped and he gave a slight but unmistakably guilty shrug, as if caught biting into the last cupcake.
The Aloha Room presented a tableau of tension and confusion, against an absurd tiki backdrop. The violation of a Corky Bell game, the interracial composition of the robbers, the revelation that the white man was a cop—it confounded. Corky Bell was right: None of them would forget this Memorial weekend game.
While the greater robbery unfolded, parties considered private capers. The architect made a quick assessment of the table; if the opportunity presented itself, he’d pocket some chips. At the same time, the talent manager surveyed Purvis’s formidable, many columned empire of red and green chips. An outer settlement appeared undefended.
From the minute changes in their posture, Corky Bell gathered that the architect from Newark and the so-called talent manager were planning to swipe chips when no one was looking. Didn’t matter how many chips these dummies stole if these thieves grabbed the bank.
To wit: Munson asked after the cash. When Corky Bell reiterated that he had paid the precinct and that the detective had no right, Munson shot a round into the ceiling.
The talent agent shrieked.
Corky Bell pointed to the bar. Munson told his partner to cover him and reminded him, with evident impatience, to hold his gun up “properly.” As if scolding a kid over untied shoes. Half a minute later, the black man’s gun pointed at the floor once more.
By now Lonnie and Nelson Wright were certain they recognized the second gunman. Lonnie thought he was that stickup guy who liked to drink himself into a smudge at the Blossom, back when he worked there. Later that night, Wright decided he knew him from church, alto in the choir. Both men had purchased items at Carney’s Furniture in the past, Lonnie an Egon dresser and Wright a Sterling Dreamer recliner.
Purvis said, “Oh, my lands.”
Munson kept his gun on his captives. He chomped a roast beef sandwich from the spread, then reached down for the big metal box and set it on top of the bar. He gestured at Lonnie with his .38 and ordered him to get the key from Corky Bell.
Between dealing cards and tending bar, Lonnie had been embroiled in three stickups and three proper robberies in his life, on top of untold tantrums abetted by lethal props. He had dealt at tables where a bad beat or a suspicious flush had sent men reaching for their pistols, watched in muted wonder when Blackjack Martin pulled a .22 on the Accountant for flipping two pair. Each time he was certain he was going to die. His father, a button man for Caesar Mills back in the ’40s, had been rubbed out and dumped in Mount Morris Park, over by the seesaws. Lonnie avoided the park and its reminders, and had been unsettled the entire weekend due to the proximity. He was sure, looking at the detective’s gun, that Mount Morris was about to claim the latest member of his unfortunate bloodline.
Corky Bell opened his waistcoat and glared at the wall opposite. Lonnie reached into the man’s pocket and extracted the key.