Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)(75)
Their regular bartender, Buford, only worked Mondays and Tuesdays now, leaving anyone who used the bar for messages to the inconstant attentions of Toomey. Toomey’s father was Italian, and he drew his Sicilian heritage into service as an excuse when called for fucking up everybody’s messages. “I got my mind on other things, you know?” Meaning, ladies. Meaning, it’s 1976, why don’t you get an actual fucking answering machine, you cheap bastard?
On the TV, the wrestlers had migrated outside the ring to duel with folding chairs. “I haven’t seen Mr. Fuji in a while,” Toomey said.
“He still wrestles,” Pepper said.
Pepper looked good. He was on his feet again, after having thrown his back out “carrying an unconscious body.” If it had been anyone else, Carney would have asked for an elaboration, but he knew one was not forthcoming, plus it sounded like business as usual to be honest. The old crook was bedridden for six weeks. Carney had John run up chicken and puzzle magazines, missions from which his son returned bewildered. Uncle Pepper was a professor of esoteric disciplines.
Now he was back. If anything, Pepper seemed more formidable after his recovery. Always a deliberate creature, he moved and talked half a beat slower now, and it made him more dangerous, like a lion appreciating a pack of gazelles at a watering hole, mulling over the menu. All the time in the world.
Carney asked if he’d ever joined his father on a fire job.
Pepper never criticized Carney’s father in front of him but didn’t hold back a blink of disgust. “You do something, maybe you don’t do something else.” Big Mike Carney put a match to a motherfucker’s house on occasion, but that was personal, not business. He glanced at Toomey. Toomey was tight, he wasn’t going to run his yap to anybody, but he was less adept than Buford at pretending not to eavesdrop. “But it wasn’t like it is now,” Pepper resumed. “In the Bronx you have to sleep with your shoes on. People setting fires every night, and not just guys in it for the insurance.”
Carney had heard about that—blowback from another dumb city policy. If you were on welfare and wanted to move from your vermin-infested, crumbling-down, city-owned apartment into another, you could qualify for a couple of grand for moving expenses and furniture—if your place burned down. Says it right there on big signs at the welfare office, like instructions. What was a striving soul to do? As with everything in the city, there were small-time plays and big-scale scams, and the savvy player knew which ones deserved your attention.
A redheaded walrus capered around the ring, surprisingly fleet-footed, bells drooping on his big jester’s hat. “Who’s that?” Pepper asked. The wrestler threw his hat into the crowd and beat his chest King Kong style.
“The Big Fink,” Toomey said. “New guy out of somewhere.”
Pepper kept his eyes on the match. “I don’t have a handle on what you’re asking me, Carney,” he said.
Carney explained again about Mrs. Ruiz’s son, and the hospital, and his rage that whoever torched the place was getting away with it. “I want you to find out who did it.”
“Why?”
“For the kid.”
Toomey sensed Pepper’s gaze on him and resumed stacking the coasters.
“Just curious,” Carney said.
“Nobody’s just curious. People only say ‘just curious’ when they’re the opposite of that. Doing legwork for cops again?” This was a reference to the first time Carney had retained Pepper’s services, which had involved shadowing a drug dealer named Biz Dixon. It ended with Pepper giving Carney a black eye.
“I’m not going to the cops,” Carney said. “It’s for the kid. He lives upstairs. He deserves better.”
“Everyone deserves better. This guy you mentioned—Oakes? You figure to nail him for it?”
“No, he used to work downtown and probably looked the other way when someone asked him, but I mentioned him because he’s the type of person who would do something like this. Get this—Elizabeth and May are campaigning for him.”
Pepper sighed. “And when I come up with the guy who did it?”
“I got it.”
“Got what?”
“Let’s start there.”
Pepper finished his beer and Toomey poured him another. “How much?” Pepper said.
They did a deal for the Arson Job and caught the next match, a Terry Sanchez and Huck Jablonsky tag team against two pikers in gold spandex. Carney tried to figure out what differentiated a wrestling outfit from a ballerina outfit. Flummoxed.
John had called Carney into the living room two weeks ago when Muhammad Ali made a surprise appearance on Championship Wrestling. The setup was Gorilla Monsoon grappling with Baron Mikel Scicluna while Ali watched from the front row. Supposedly Monsoon weighed four hundred pounds, but that had to be PR, for there was no way that black leotard could have contained such abundant majesty. The Baron went down and Ali, outraged at the shenanigans, ripped off his tie and shirt and climbed into the squared circle to taunt Monsoon. They danced around each other like sleepy bears, Ali tossing a few jabs, until Monsoon swooped in, snatched the heavyweight, and lifted him onto his shoulders for some airplane spins, round and round…It was all promo for the upcoming “The War of the Worlds,” a money-grab match between the boxer and Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki.