Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)(6)
He took the stack of Memorial Day Sale signs off his desk and dropped them in the trash can. The sale had gone gangbusters, he’d make it an annual thing. When Carney heard they were renaming Decoration Day and moving it from May 30th to the last Monday in May, he hadn’t seen the point. He sure did like the receipts, though. Three-day weekend, time on your hands, sometimes the mind starts thinking about home goods. It was the first time since he could remember that he approved of something the government had done.
Above Carney’s desk, left of the window onto the showroom, hung the Polaroid that Rusty had taken of him and Elizabeth and the kids in front of the store in 1961. May was four, John maybe two. No matter when a picture was taken, Elizabeth looked the same: lovely and imperturbable. It had been a nice Saturday, the four of them enjoying one another and the weather. May’s mouth curved the way it did when she suppressed a smile.
He didn’t want to disappoint her, but he’d run out of leads. He called Larry over.
“What’s up, baby?”
Carney told him the Jackson 5 were playing Madison Square Garden next month.
“That’s a hot one,” Larry said, in a weary, insider tone. He had “friends in the industry” from a former incarnation and occasionally doled out improbable gossip to him and Rusty and Marie during slumps. A tidbit about the harmonica player on War’s third album, or scout’s-honor intelligence from Aretha Franklin’s dentist.
“May’s been asking.”
Larry shook his head. “If I had that in, I’d be going myself.”
Carney’d made the rounds. The Dumas Club was a bust. Inside dope on pending legislation, who to bribe downtown, when influence was the currency and when it was cash—these things the Dumas members excelled in. They were not so savvy when it came to Jackson 5 tickets. Lamar Talbot, whom people called “the Black Clarence Darrow” for no reason Carney could discern, had represented the Garden in a wrongful death suit. Construction worker killed while laying the foundation, Afro American lawyer at the table might smooth it out. No dice. “I save their bacon, and look how they do me.”
He specifically remembered Kermit Wells bragging that Berry Gordy, the father of Motown Records, was his first cousin. He cornered him after a scotch tasting. Wells claimed that Carney had misheard; his wife’s friend was related to Berry Gordy, but she and his wife had had a falling-out. Plus, Kermit added, if he had an in, he’d grab those tickets for himself.
Carney’s father-in-law, Leland Jones, cooked the books for sundry entertainment lawyers and managers who’d kept him in orchestra seats for decades. It shriveled his pride, but Carney hit him up. For May’s sake. Whenever he heard Leland’s voice nowadays, the trembling delivery announced how much the years had diminished the man. Had Carney despised him once? Strong emotions were wasted at this point. He asked after his showbiz contacts.
“I haven’t talked to Albert in quite some time,” Leland said. “And Lance Hollis passed away years ago.”
Lately Carney was afraid to turn on the radio, lest one of their goddamn songs remind him of his failure. Who had he forgotten?
Munson. It had been a while.
Carney usually left a message when he called the 28th Precinct. The man was a rambler. Today someone picked up on the third ring. “Anyone seen Munson? Who’s this?”
Another siren. He said his name.
Munson got on the phone. “Carney,” he repeated, as if trying to place him. The detective’s voice scraped: “Why didn’t I think of it before?”
And like that, in the time WALK turns to DONT WALK, Carney was out of retirement.
TWO
Carney caught the 1 train at 125th Street and grabbed a seat on the east side of the car. The Manhattan viaduct lifted the train tracks one hundred and sixty-eight feet above Broadway and 125th, and if you didn’t have your nose in a book or the daily paper or a tattered ledger of regrets, the view was a pleasant reprieve from the gloomy tunnel. It held no charm for Carney. If he sat on the opposite side he was liable to see his old place, catty-corner to the tracks, which for many years had made him a captive audience to the viaduct’s longest-running show. It was the same performance repeated without variation, the curtain rising multiple times an hour, relentlessly exploring through choreography and noise a single theme of the human condition: You Can’t Afford a Better Apartment.
Rumble rumble. He didn’t take the 1 train as often as he used to, since they’d moved to Strivers’ Row, off Seventh. Enough time had passed that he now associated the line above 125th with that crooked period in his life and its steady complexities. One day it was an elaborate handoff with a thief too afraid to show his face on the street, the next a transaction with a paranoid diamond dealer who drew his rendezvous tactics from spy thrillers. It was a relief to be done with those men, that secret world and its dumb rituals.
He refused the implication that moving to Strivers’ Row had made him quit. That he was so shallow of character that a little respectability made him renounce his ways, made him think he had risen above the unruly elements that had formed him. It would take more than a dignified facade of yellow brick and limestone to hide his premises.
Elizabeth never complained about their first apartment. When a train screeched into the station across the way, she paused and allowed it to pass before she resumed speaking, a portrait of regal poise. “Like Queen Elizabeth waiting for a fart to clear,” Carney teased one time, and from then on she arched an eyebrow for effect, a hint of disdain that made her twice as elegant. Look—the place was a dump. A rat slinked out of the toilet one time, whiskers dripping. Murderous arguments between men and women resounded above and below. The subway vibrations made the building’s nails hop in their holes. She showed miraculous restraint. Now that the apartment was years behind them, Elizabeth allowed that it “definitely had character.”