Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)(31)

Munson looked at Carney, as if he wanted him to grab the detective’s gun from the coffee table and toss it over. Or start shooting. Carney kept his face as blank as cement.

Notch Walker grimaced as he appraised the messy apartment. Between his imperial poise and large frame, he seemed too big for the room. A long, burgundy leather trench hung on his shoulders like a tyrant’s cape. His shirt was untucked; he’d thrown some clothes on hastily.

“Detective Munson!” Notch said. “Look at you, with the exploits. Been hearing about you all night.”

Munson cussed, his voice regressing to a rascally Hell’s Kitchen accent. Notch’s men slapped him around to quiet him.

“You the furniture guy?” Notch asked Carney.

“Carney’s Furniture on 125th.”

The gangster frowned. “Got me out of bed,” he said. “Where’s the shit?”

Carney nodded toward the closed bedroom. He exhaled: sprung from jail.

Carney had asked the bodega clerk to break a dollar bill. The man claimed to be low on change. That left Carney with three dimes and little time before Munson got wise. No one answered the phone behind the bar at Nightbirds, which was unfortunate and exasperating.

The operator put him through to Donegal’s and the receiver lifted for a moment—raucous music and laughter—and then cut off again. He checked over his shoulder to see if Munson had come downstairs. Buford answered the second call.

Donegal’s remained the preferred watering hole and refuge from family for an older generation of uptown crooks. Carney’s father had been a regular, and on more than one occasion had left young Ray on a barstool for a few hours while he went out on “business.” The clientele was older, but Carney felt at home among these retirees and fellow dropouts from the game. They traded gossip about the big scores, the latest capers, and dispensed wise and rueful jokes about raw deals, bonehead crooks, and the nefarious workings of the metropolitan law enforcement apparatus.

Buford tended bar Tuesdays, but sometimes he didn’t. Carney finally drew a good card after a day of busted hands. Buford was an answering service for criminal associates, his yellow reporter’s pad by the cash register an almanac of crooked enterprise. If the cops had been able to break his code—which was not really a code but a species of atrocious penmanship—they’d close a thousand cold cases, decades worth of confidence games, executions, and hijackings big and small.

In this case, Carney asked him to deliver a message instead of taking one, and the bartender was glad to oblige, seeing as he owed Carney for a sweet deal on a dinette set last December. Buford had reconciled with his long-lost daughter and wanted to host a proper Christmas dinner for the first time since that “fateful winter of ’46.”

Carney had never seen the man outside Donegal’s. The barkeep shuffled sheepishly through the furniture store, ashamed to be caught in a square activity like browsing. Buford said, “I want classy, but not stuck-up.”

Carney said, “Gossamer by Egon.”

Buford’s ability to get in touch with Notch Walker’s people was self-evident. He’d suggested they hit Nicky Boots first, who’d settled up half an hour before and should’ve been home by then. “We’ll wake his ass up.” Nicky Boots was out of the game, unless some trifling penny-ante shit came up, which he found irresistible. He lived off his military pension. His sister’s boy was roguish and sold dope for Notch Walker. Nicky Boots thought his ten years in Sing Sing might deter his nephew but it proved unpersuasive. He’ll get the word through, Buford told Carney.

“Make sure they enter where they can’t be seen from the top floors,” Carney said. “He’ll be watching.” He propped open the interior door of the vestibule with an A&P flyer. Four minutes later he and Munson were eating ham and cheese.

Munson’s mouth worked silently as he reconstructed Carney’s betrayal. He shrunk. “I would have let you go,” he said. “I just needed a hand.”

Carney looked away, to the statue. Of Munson’s several errors this night, informing his captive that there was “probably a bounty” on the cop was particularly ill-advised.

Malik Jamal’s lieutenant covered the detective while Notch’s men looked for the money. They emerged with the briefcase and the sample cases and opened them up on the couch. Notch Walker whistled. “Anyone you didn’t fucking rob today, nigger?” He nodded to his men, which they interpreted as an order to toss the place. They started with the bedroom.

“They said you beat up Long James,” Notch said. Carney took this as a reference to the pimp on Lenox.

Munson glared at Notch and Carney in turn, unable to decide which man he hated more.

“What for?” Notch said. “He never hurt anyone.”

“Of course he did,” Munson said.

“As far as pimps go…” Notch shrugged. No point in nit-picking. He noticed Carney. “My mom bought a living room set offa you. Way back. Still has it.”

“I like to think people come back because it reminds them of home.”

“Nicky Boots says you’re a fence.”

“Formerly.”

“Because I have some stuff I’m trying to off—nice stuff.”

“I’d be happy to find it a nice home. For your mother.”