Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)(42)
Zippo said, “It means, the beautiful woman has come.”
Pepper didn’t care for fanciness, whether it was Strivers’ Row fanciness or Park Avenue or Hollywood, but once he met Lucinda, he conceded the justice of the name. She had an hourglass figure, not in its shape but in the melancholy reminder that time is running short and there are things on this Earth you’ll never experience. Although they’d only spoken once, his first day, her brief smile every morning was an unexpected comfort, like a nod from the clerk at the corner bodega or the waitress at the greasy spoon, the newsstand guy. A quick neighbor, even though her costumes declared her from outer space.
For the furniture store scene, they’d put Lucinda in white leather pants and a shimmering midnight blue blouse under a black leather cape. Lucinda’s round face was framed by her large Afro wig, set like a brown jewel. The wig itself was an audacious number that opposed the laws of physics and was pinned by a headband embroidered with odd symbols, hieroglyphics that represented Zippo’s “myth system.” Pepper nodded off whenever the director explained them. On anyone else the ensemble was a Halloween getup. She pulled it off.
The actress tottered into the office. Lucinda was tall, and the ruby red platform boots made her more impressive, even if they provided a technical challenge to kicking chumps in the throat; the myriad chump-kicking and -stomping had required multiple takes in previous days. She perched on Carney’s desk and leaned over to inspect his signed picture of Lena Horne. She approved.
Lola chased everybody off the set so Zippo could break down the scene with his actors. Carney and John joined Pepper at his Morningside post, where a patch of sidewalk gave the boy a partial view of the office. Carney’s hand rested on his son’s shoulder. Pepper realized that John was about the same age Carney had been when he met him. Twenty-five years ago? The boy was helping out in the store some afternoons, Pepper knew, but he looked bored whenever the subject came up. He wasn’t a crook and he wasn’t a salesman—so far.
Whoever he might be one day, tonight he was a boy on a film set. Carney asked him what he thought of the whole operation and John hopped like a damn puppy.
In the office, Zippo explained his grand design. As usual, Lucinda was soft-voiced and retiring between takes; she turned into a mean dervish once they started rolling. Mr. Shakespeare listened and nodded soberly. He asked a question. Zippo ran down the backstory of the store owner, Mr. Dudley.
Carney stiffened. “Did he say the man has a furniture store that’s a front for his fencing operation?”
“Sounded like,” Pepper said.
Carney walked into his office and ordered everybody out except for Zippo. Troy, the director of photography, scowled and took a seat on a showroom Sterling. Pepper extended a don’t-worry-about-it shrug to John. The set was clear, but the electrical cables propping the doors allowed those nearby to hear the tirade.
Zippo called everyone back in. “So he’s a bookie,” he explained to Mr. Shakespeare. “More ZIPPO.”
They shot the scene where Larry lets her in and set up for Nefertiti’s confrontation with the bookie. Still quiet on Morningside at this hour. Once the night orchestra struck up with gusto, they’d have to contend with a full menu of racket from outside. Pepper shooed away a wino and the man hooked a U-turn toward 126th, crooning mangled Motown. Most passersby crossed the street to avoid their setup, uninterested. The movie lamps pushed out a cold and unsettling light, an eerie bubble onto the street. 125th was its standard hurly-burly but up Morningside the streetlights were busted, the lights in the church across the street were out, the abandoned tenements down the block dark, and no one was home in the house on the corner. Like the street was a darkened theater, and the rectangle of the office door the glowing movie screen. Soon they’d be done shooting and on to the next location and then finished altogether and where would Pepper be then? In the dark seats again, between shows.
Zippo called for one last take and it was a wrap.
Carney took John home after the boy wrangled autographs for him and his sister. Pete the Grip and his fellows loaded the van and it chugged around the corner. The wind had come up. Pepper split for the subway. How was the take? Let’s go for one more take. Like they were ripping off a bank. Filmmaking was a heist, same animal. To knock over a warehouse or hijack a truck or shoot a scene you had to wrangle all the variables, the landscape, the players, and bend them to your will. Setup and execution broken down into pieces. What’s the quality of light at that time of day, the access points, the pedestrian and vehicle traffic. Everybody’s got their special role, following the script. One guy to punch out the safe, another at the wheel. Wardrobe, lighting, boom mike. The obsession with the clock—after money, time was the favored currency, in a bank vault and on location. Do you have enough time to pull it off? And if you pull it off, is it the jackpot you thought it was?
All the work they put in. On a film if you fucked it up, you got to do it over. They weren’t going to shoot you in the face.
And like a heist, just when you think it’s going according to plan, everything goes to shit. The day after Carney’s they set up outside one of the CCNY gates. Nefertiti enters campus, and then there’s a bit in an empty classroom where she consults with Dr. Beryl Boyle, a professor of nuclear physics, about sinister diagrams on microfilm. The crew was anxious, it was in the way they moved and spoke to each other. Pepper registered the trembling web like a spider. No Zippo. He asked Pete the Grip what was up. “It’s Miss Cole,” he said. “She’s missing.”