They were cousins, mistaken for brothers by most of the world, but distinguished by many features of personality. Like common sense. Carney had it. Freddie’s common sense tended to fall out of a hole in his pocket—he never carried it long. Common sense, for example, told you to not take a numbers job with Peewee Gibson. It also told you that if you took such a job, it was in your interest not to fuck it up. But Freddie had done both of these things and somehow retained his fingers. Luck stepped in for what he lacked otherwise.
Freddie was vague about where he’d been. “A little work, a little shacking up.” Work for him was something crooked, shacking up was a woman with a decent job and trusting nature, who was not too much of a detective when it came to clues. “How’s the store going?”
“It’ll pick up.”
Sipping beers. Freddie started in on his enthusiasm for the new soul food place down the block. Carney waited for him to get around to what was on his mind. It took Dave “Baby” Cortez on the jukebox with that damn organ song, loud and manic. Freddie leaned over. “You heard me talk about this nigger every once in a while—Miami Joe?”
“What’s he, run numbers?”
“No, he’s that dude wears that purple suit. With the hat.”
Carney thought he remembered him maybe. It wasn’t like purple suits were a rarity in the neighborhood.
Miami Joe wasn’t into numbers, he did stickups, Freddie said. Knocked over a truck full of Hoovers in Queens last Christmas. “They say he did that Fisher job, back when.”
“What’s that?”
“He broke into a safe at Gimbels,” Freddie said. Like Carney was supposed to know. Like he subscribed to Criminal Gazette or something. Freddie was disappointed but continued to puff up Miami Joe. He had a big job in mind and he’d approached Freddie about it. Carney frowned. Armed robbery was nuts. In former days his cousin stayed away from stuff that heavy.
“It’s going to be cash, and a lot of stones that’s got to get taken care of. They asked me if I knew anyone for that and I said, I have just the guy.”
“Who?”
Freddie raised his eyebrows.
Carney looked over at Bert. Hang him in a museum—the barman was a potbellied portrait of hear no evil. “You told them my name?”
“Once I said I knew someone, I had to.”
“Told them my name. You know I don’t deal with that. I sell home goods.”
“Brought that TV by last week, I didn’t hear no complaints.”
“It was gently used. No reason to complain.”
“And those other things, not just TVs. You never asked where they came from.”
“It’s none of my business.”
“You never asked all those times—and it’s been a lot of times, man—because you know where they come from. Don’t act all, ‘Gee, officer, that’s news to me.’？”
Put it like that, an outside observer might get the idea that Carney trafficked quite frequently in stolen goods, but that’s not how he saw it. There was a natural flow of goods in and out and through people’s lives, from here to there, a churn of property, and Ray Carney facilitated that churn. As a middleman. Legit. Anyone who looked at his books would come to the same conclusion. The state of his books was a prideful matter with Carney, rarely shared with anyone because no one seemed very interested when he talked about his time in business school and the classes he’d excelled in. Like accounting. He told this to his cousin.
“Middleman. Like a fence.”
“I sell furniture.”
“Nigger, please.”
It was true that his cousin did bring a necklace by from time to time. Or a watch or two, top-notch. Or a few rings in a silver box engraved with initials. And it was true that Carney had an associate on Canal Street who helped these items on to the next leg of their journey. From time to time. Now that he added up all those occasions they numbered more than he thought, but that was not the point. “Nothing like what you’re talking about now.”
“You don’t know what you can do, Ray-Ray. You never have. That’s why you have me.”
A bunch of hoods with pistols and what they got with those pistols was crazy. “This ain’t stealing candy from Mr. Nevins, Freddie.”
“It’s not candy,” Freddie said. He smiled. “It’s the Hotel Theresa.”
Two guys tumbled through the front door, brawling. Bert reached for Jack Lightning, the baseball bat he kept by the register.