Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)(38)
Sometimes at street corners or next to a vacant lot that had once been a cherished place, he was Aaron Flood again, before Zippo came along. He toured his spots: the playground on 131st, whose gravel or broken glass was still embedded below his knee like war shrapnel; outside Jimmy’s Tap on 135th, where according to family lore his mother first kissed his father. Dewey’s, the soda shop she took Zippo to after his father’s funeral, was a record store now. He’d ordered Rum Raisin in his dad’s honor and forced down every wretched bite. He hated Rum Raisin. None of those places made it into the movie. Everyone maintains a private reel.
Location scouting was no excuse that final night, as the next day was the start of shooting. The pretext served to get him uptown again, wandering his old neighborhood, and then past it. He finally found the place he’d been looking for all along: the perfect location. He was over by the East River, on avenues beyond the map of his experience. The entire block had been bulldozed except for one three-story townhouse. Corner to corner the rubble rose and fell in red waves, flotsam of wood slats and iron pipes breaking the surface. Exposed masonry on the lone holdout’s exterior indicated where the adjacent buildings had been. Zippo imagined they’d been swept away by a river of bricks.
The plywood across the front door proved to be unattached. Others had preceded him. No one was inside now; Zippo searched the building from the basement to the top floor. He chose a former bedroom, third floor, rear. Four blocks away he’d come across a tweed overcoat dangling out of a junker and sensed it might come in handy. It did. He kicked some newspapers on the floor into a pile and added the balled-up overcoat. He withdrew the can of kerosene from his bag. Took a whiff. Naughty-pantie. It brought him back. He heard the sound of the match against the box before he struck it—his audio track was off. As it prospered and fed itself, the fire put him back in sync.
Zippo watched the flames. It had been years. Good luck heat, good luck smoke. The flames tickling the ceiling snapped him out of that old, comfortable delirium and he beat it to the street while he was still able.
Tomorrow when he called Action, the idea in his mind would begin its passage into this world. With art, it wasn’t enough to conceive of it; you had to make it. It was like that with fires, too, sometimes. Sometimes you need it right there in front of you, crackling, dancing, devouring: more alive than you will ever be.
TWO
It all went south after that night in Carney’s Furniture. Pepper had been working security for a week, since Day 4 of shooting. Two tungsten lights—rented—vanished while being loaded onto a production van, disappeared by fleet-footed scavengers. Word had it the criminals swooped down with the speed and ferocity of a seagull snatching french fries from the Coney Island boardwalk.
“That’s fast.”
“Coney Island seagulls? Fuck it.”
Zippo hired Pepper. The thieving stopped.
Pepper sat and watched. Before the production moved to Carney’s that afternoon, they put in a few hours outside Nicky Tavern on Amsterdam, an episode where Nefertiti beats up a snitch. He had hoodwinked her, Pepper gathered, and now she had to beat the truth out of him. Once they got to the furniture store, Pepper set up a stool on the corner of 125th and Morningside, radiating menace. Would-be robbers considered easier prey. The job reminded Pepper of Newark, of the old days working the door at those Barbary Coast spots. His technique: glaring with his arms loosely crossed; lifting a skeptical eyebrow when civilians got too close to the perimeter; the occasional grunt to warn someone off. He was a six-foot frown molded by black magic into human form. It sufficed.
“You’re getting paid to be yourself,” Carney said. “Not bad.” That sarcastic smile of his appeared for a moment. He handed Pepper a 7UP.
Pepper grunted.
Carney stopped smiling once the crew arrived and started fucking with the joint. After an establishing shot of the showroom—Zippo wanted the store as is, save for mirrors that cast reflections—the invasion began in earnest. The white men of the Secret Agent: Nefertiti production team were long-haired hippies with gnarled beards; ransacking, malnourished Vikings, from Carney’s reaction. They relocated a bank of sofas to the other side of the room, rolled up rugs into dusty tubes, cast a dark network of electrical cable across the floor. Carney recoiled. “Watch the floors!” “The chandelier!” Over the years, Pepper had seen the man patrol the showroom, making imperceptible adjustments, arranging his merch in harmony with his secret order. This was a disaster movie. “The mentality that sets a Sterling ottoman next to an Egon club chair,” Carney muttered. Pepper didn’t know what he was talking about.
Pepper hunched in the front door, clocking the street while taking in the shooting prep. The effort required to get something up on the screen. Nagra, f-stop—it was a different language. This white girl named Lola ran around doing things like “continuity”—making sure the actor’s scar was in the same place scene to scene. In Pepper’s experience your scars stayed put.
Zippo had vamoosed to meet a potential investor. Over by the far wall of the store, the gaffer plugged a gigantic lamp into a socket that had been obscured by a long, low, burnt umber sectional. Carney said he didn’t know the socket existed. Pop—the store lights flared and the juice cut out. When Carney and the gaffer returned from the basement, Rusty told his boss to go for a walk. “I’ll handle it,” Rusty said. “The furniture, it’s too close. Too close to your heart.”