After their initial discussion of the job, Pepper hadn’t tried to talk him out of helping Freddie. Carney had enough doubts with outside encouragement. The debacle of Bella Fontaine and Mr. Gibbs aside, Freddie had brought danger close again. When they were children, when he’d brought down parental wrath and they sat in the bedroom waiting for the belt, Freddie would croak out a pitiable, “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.” It never occurred to him that things would go wrong, that the caper would go sideways and there would be consequences. There were always consequences.
Carney didn’t have to do it anymore. Freddie was a grown man. What to call this operation: the Freddie job, the Van Wyck job? Maybe it was the Carney job, because he wanted to prove that he could move a big rock like that, stick it to the rich bastards again. Rich white bastards this time. This wasn’t a broken radio some strung-out loser had grabbed from a widow’s apartment. This necklace was mythic, a piece out of legend.
He scored a seat on the train. Carney pulled out the flyer and unfolded it—he’d rediscovered it in his wallet when he bought tokens. Last week in the middle of the protests, this young woman, college kid, had stopped him as he surveyed 125th Street. It was Monday morning and Carney was getting his first real look at the weekend carnage. She wore white slacks with a green-and-white-striped top. Given the uneasy mood on the street, her cheer and purpose were a declaration of principles. She grabbed his wrist and tucked a leaflet in his hand:
INSTRUCTIONS:
ANY EMPTY BOTTLE
FILL WITH GASOLINE
USE RAG AS WICK
LIGHT RAG
TOSS
AND
SEE THEM RUN!
When he looked up she had vanished. Who’d print such a thing? It was dangerous, the product of a demented mind. Back at the office he folded the flyer and tucked it away. He wasn’t sure why.
The white lady next to him on the subway read it over his shoulder. She frowned. That’s why you shouldn’t read over people’s shoulders. He returned the paper to his wallet. No harm in keeping it. As a talisman or a crooked hymn kept close for reference.
Back to the setup: Freddie was lamming it in Brooklyn, Pepper minded the store in case anyone showed up. Next up was Moskowitz. Did the man have enough cash in that Hermann Bros. safe of his or did Carney have to wait a few days? He had kept it cryptic on the phone; that plus the uncustomary afternoon meeting would warn the jeweler that it was serious.
In midtown there was no indication that New York City had been besieged one week prior. The black city and the white city: overlapping, ignorant of each other, separate and connected by tracks.
Moskowitz’s was busy—Carney passed four customers as he went up the stairs. Ari, the nephew who sat next to Carney during his lessons, nodded hello and excused himself from the young couple gawking at the diamond necklaces. There was another man by the Ventura display buying something for his mistress. One of Moskowitz’s more engaged lessons had dissected the differences in posture when a customer was buying something for a wife versus a mistress, and how to adjust one’s sales pitch. Ari rapped on the office door and stuck his head in, then waved in Carney.
Moskowitz stood at the window, taking in the manic boil of Forty-Seventh Street. Two fans were trained on his executive chair, they swiveled to and fro and nudged the hot air. The jeweler let down the blinds and greeted Carney with his usual reserve.
“It’s a lot this time,” Carney said.
“I gathered,” Moskowitz said. “Your uptown associates getting ambitious?”
Carney didn’t like the tone. He opened the satchel and set the Van Wyck necklace on Moskowitz’s desk blotter next to the overflowing ashtray.
The jeweler withdrew. “Put it away,” Moskowitz said.
“What?”
“I had to see it, but I don’t want to look at it. You know why.”
Carney returned the necklace to the leather satchel.
“It’s too hot,” Moskowitz said. “People are inquiring. You must know that. I couldn’t move that five feet.”
“You had a visit?”
“Anybody who can move that knows not to touch it. Toss it in the East River and don’t look back. I’d say return it and ask forgiveness, but I don’t think it would be forthcoming.”
You might say it wasn’t a rosy picture. “That’s it?” Carney said.
“It’s best you don’t come back.”
Ari waved goodbye as Carney departed. Carney didn’t notice.
It had gotten hotter outside. Carney wiped his neck with his handkerchief in the middle of the sidewalk stream. You can have all sorts of craziness in your head and people will walk right by you as if you are a normal person. Moskowitz. He’d been threatened. Had someone linked the two of them or had they come at him because he handled heavy weight?