“I’m starving,” Pepper said.
“What?”
“We should eat before,” Pepper said.
“He didn’t say bring somebody.”
“Did he say don’t bring somebody? We’re old friends, me and those Van Wyck dudes.”
They drove to Jolly Chan’s on Broadway. It was getting dark, every day as summer contracted it grew dark earlier. Dinner service at the restaurant was in full swing. At the door, a young woman in one of those long Chinese dresses welcomed “Mr. Pepper.” She had an air of brusque confidence and led them to where Pepper and Carney had sat last time, pulling out the table so that Pepper could take his preferred seat. Back to the wall, as Carney’s father used to say, so nothing can sneak up on you. Carney hadn’t appreciated the wisdom until recently.
“Chan died,” Pepper said. “That’s his daughter. She runs the place now.” He ordered fried chicken and fries, Carney pork fried rice. A young boy with untied shoelaces deposited a pot of tea on the table and quickly bowed.
Carney opened the briefcase. What did Van Wyck want? He examined the power of attorney. Linus had signed his rights over to his father three years ago. In and out of the booby hatch, dope problem—smart play is to take your son out of the family business. Had Linus been looking for the document, or did it happen to be in the safe? With his death, it was void—his family had control of his estate. Unless he had a will, but did young men get wills drawn up? If you had money, maybe.
“What’s that?” Pepper said.
“Love letters,” Carney told him. He held up the Valentine’s Day card from a girl named Louella Mather—the handwriting and the date said she and Linus had been kids at the time—and a letter.
Carney read out sections to Pepper, summarizing. The thing was out of Elizabeth’s dime novels, the ones with a white lady in a flowing dress running from a cliff-side castle, candelabra in hand. Young Miss Mather expounded upon the night with Linus on the patio, the bonfire at the beach. “Counting down the days until we can see each other again on Heart’s Meadow.” Heart’s Meadow—it reeked of gazebo confessions in splintered moonlight. Romantic letter aside, Linus and the young lady didn’t end up together, he knew that.
A woman in shiny red hot pants strolled by on the sidewalk and distracted Pepper, which Carney took as an indication to stop reading. He was returning the letter to the yellowed envelope when he noticed the folded piece of paper. It was new and didn’t belong with the old letter. The heavy white office bond contained five rows of numbers, typewritten. Carney held it up to Pepper.
Pepper grunted.
“What is it?”
“From the number of digits, numbered bank accounts,” Pepper said.
Carney looked them over again. “How do you know?”
“Where do you think I keep my shit?” Pepper said.
Carney couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. Money stashed abroad. Laundered? Tax evasion? Is this why they were chasing Freddie down? The last item in the briefcase was the 1941 Double Play baseball card featuring Joe DiMaggio and Charley Keller. But it’d be ludicrous to go through all this for a baseball card.
Pepper and Carney killed time in the Chinese joint. Instead of offering prophecies or lucky numbers, the white slips inside the fortune cookies advertised United Life Insurance. Pepper left an inordinate tip.
They walked over to Carney’s truck. Carney had gotten a new paint job for the Ford but the sounds it produced when he turned the key betrayed its age. He had stopped selling gently used furniture years ago and mostly used the truck to make the rounds of the swap meets, to off-load old coins or watches on specialists. Given the way his business was going, and Elizabeth’s, they could afford a new car, a sporty but practical number, but he liked the truck because it felt like a disguise. The kids could still squeeze in the front seat and it made him happy to have the four of them in a line, chopping his hand to restrain them at a sudden stop.
Pepper said, “Still runs.” He closed the door.
“It’s a good old truck.” He decided: Get a proper car for the family at the end of the summer, before May and John got too big. And concentrate on the job at hand.
When he and Pepper left the furniture store that afternoon, Pepper had put a steel lunch box by his feet. Now he opened it up and took out the two Colt Cobras inside. “They dropped these,” he said. He checked them.
Carney pulled out his own gun. “From Miami Joe,” he said. He’d found it under the sofa a few months after Pepper killed the man in his office. It had remained untouched in the bottom drawer of his desk, beneath a copy of Ebony with Lena Horne on the cover, until today.