Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)(85)

“The borough president, he gets a say in who gets those redevelopment contracts?”

“Officially, no. The borough president is your voice in city hall, ha ha. In practice, he’s a member of the Board of Estimate, along with the other BPs and the mayor and the comptroller, and it’s the actual smoke-filled room of guys carving up the city, just like in the old days. Boss Tweed shit. Occasionally you hear rumblings from the Feds about suing to break up the Board of Estimate on constitutional grounds, but until then it’s the Wild West.”

Carl the waiter cleared his throat and asked if they wanted another round. Pierce ordered another scotch and Carney a club soda.

“Let’s just say the borough president has a big bucket and a big ladle and he’s doling out whatever to whomever he wants. For some consideration…A lot of our fellow members are banking on Oakes getting in there. They probably already owe him for looking the other way when he was a prosecutor, and he’s the type of man who keeps track. You saw Ellis Gray at the fundraiser, licking his chops. You don’t think Sable Construction wants in on those low-income housing contracts? Dave Parks? Newsome? There are a bunch of guys waiting on an Oakes regime. That second generation of Dumas gentlemen.” He raised a glass to the portraits on the wall. “Their daddies did it, now it’s their turn.”

“Envelopes moving around,” Carney said. Self-perpetuating graft, like the self-perpetuating fires. Once it gets going, it doesn’t stop. “And what about you?” he said. “Now that you’re hanging your own shingle?”

“I do work for the city. I’m happy to represent all different kinds of clients.” He grinned. “When it comes to politics, I write checks same as everybody else. Like you.”

Carney shrugged. “I didn’t have much of a choice.”

Pierce stubbed out his cigarette. “Who does?”



* * *



***

Carney arrived home at ten minutes past ten o’clock. Trouble was making good time to his front steps. He beat it by twenty minutes.

Dark windows. He still said “Hello?” as he stepped into the hallway. The echoes made him glum. He’d gotten used to not having May around the house, and now John was out more often, working at Baskin-Robbins or off with his friends. Elizabeth was scarce more nights. She said she’d be late tonight, but the specifics escaped him. It was only him in the house these days, more and more, like on 127th, after his mother passed and his father gave himself to the streets. He couldn’t place her in the apartment anymore, her face a dark blur. Carney flicked on lights as he moved through the rooms, as if he’d discover his family on the couch or chairs, waiting for him.

The kids had left a note on the kitchen table—Daryl Clarke was having a party up the street. Next to it was a phone message John had taken: “Marie called. She says ‘Albert is off the ventilator.’?”

Wonderful news. Should he send a card? Flowers? He’d ask Marie on Monday, maybe even walk up to the apartment himself to see if there was anything he could do.

Elizabeth came home—she closed the front door in her signature fashion, firm and final, to shut out anything gaining on her. He hollered from the kitchen.

“How was your day?” She saw John’s note. “Daryl Clarke’s house?”

“Aren’t they away?” Carney said. James and Baby Clarke had aggressively talked up their West African vacation for months. They had booked it through a Seneca rival, Motherland Tours. Whether Baby was sticking her thumb in Elizabeth’s eye was up for debate.

Elizabeth was unconcerned about what the kids might be up to. “Sometimes you have to let them think they’re getting away with something.” She asked after Pierce, and he said the lawyer had droned on about the responsibilities of running his own shop. Carney didn’t mention the omissions in her candidate’s campaign literature regarding graft and extortion.

Elizabeth’s eyes shined: tipsy. She wore a blue-and-green summer dress that she’d put in the back of the closet because it had grown tight. It fit again. Was she growing her hair out again? It was the longest it had been since her mother passed.

“Janet and I went for a drink at the Whistle Stop after the meeting,” Elizabeth said.

Right. Janet was another member of Women for Oakes. She had recently moved from Texas after a divorce and had an active social life, Carney was coming to understand.

“It’s a nice place. They don’t play the music loud.”

That last part came out as a kind of lament. The campaign was more than helping out a childhood friend, he saw now. It gave her purpose as Seneca receded from her life. She’d gone to work for Dale at Black Star soon after college and made the travel agency into the thriving operation it was today. Dale was in no hurry to retire, and when he did, he’d never put a woman in the top position. Even if Elizabeth basically ran the joint. She’d finally realized that fact last year—that it wasn’t hers, and never would be. It was Dale Baker’s, and then whichever one of his sister’s idiot kids from the Miami office he handed the keys to.

When Carney knocked Oakes, and the campaign, he was knocking her hopes for herself. Oakes was crooked, but Elizabeth didn’t know that. She believed what she set down in the Women for Oakes pamphlets: that change was coming.

Elizabeth read Marie’s message. “Ventilator?”