Pepper was unsurprised. “Know how to use it?”
There had been one time in high school when his father was out and these rats had been squealing for hours behind his building. That anyone could hear it and not go crazy was inconceivable. He knew where his father kept his gun. On the closet shelf where his mother had kept her hat boxes, Big Mike had a shoebox with bullets and knives and what Carney later figured out was a makeshift garrote. And this month’s gun. The day of the rats it had been a .38 snub nose that sat like a big black frog on Carney’s thirteen-year-old palm. It was loud. He didn’t know if he hit any of the critters, but they scattered and Carney lived in fear for weeks that his father would find out he’d been in his stuff. When he opened the shoebox months later, there was a different pistol inside.
He told Pepper he knew how to use it.
Pepper grunted. He put one of the Colt Cobras into a pocket inside his nylon windbreaker.
Now that they had arrived at the Park Avenue meet, Miami Joe’s gun seemed silly. For the last five years, Carney had told himself that if anything bad went down, there was the gun from under the couch for protection. Secret security, like get-out-of-town money you keep in a shoe just in case. But they were on Park Avenue. One of the most expensive streets in the world. The building Van Wyck had chosen for the handoff was worth tens of millions of dollars; it was a token of the man’s concentrated power, the capital and influence that scaffolded his greed. As for Carney, he had a dead man’s gun and a worn-out crook who was too cheap to buy new pants.
“Ready?” Carney said.
“I was checking out the Egon one.”
Carney looked at him.
“The Egon recliner with the EZ-Smooth Lever Action. In your office, the catalog. And a standing lamp.”
“Of course,” Carney said. “It’s usually four to six weeks.”
A tiny latch secured the plywood doors in front of 319 Park, next to a sign that read van wyck realty: building the future. Pepper and Carney moved beyond the fence and the sounds of the city magically hushed. The bronze plate was already up: VWR. White tape crisscrossed the newly installed glass of the lobby entrance. Dusty cardboard covered the floors and gray clouds of plaster mottled the walls.
A white security guard sat on a folding chair by the bank of elevators. He removed his reading glasses—he had been scratching at a book of word jumbles—and regarded Carney and his partner with irritation. His hand dropped to his waist, in the vicinity of his holster. He pointed to the glass case containing the building directory, where white letters floated on an expanse of black felt: suite 1500. The lone occupant.
Inside the unfinished elevator, a bare plate awaited the inspection certificate. Still time to turn around. “How do you know which bank?” Carney asked.
“Was wondering when you’d ask,” Pepper said. Weary. “You like this heat?”
Carney thought, Let Freddie lie in the bed he made. And then what? Raid the maybe bank accounts and run off to an island somewhere like Wilfred Duke? It was a short-lived fantasy, a brief excursion between floors: Elizabeth would leave his ass in a second when she found out about his crooked side. Call the cops herself if thugs came knocking on Leland and Alma’s door looking for them.
The elevator produced a crisp, cheerful ping and opened its doors.
The hallway of the fifteenth floor was carpeted in red, sturdy pile and a series of faux-marble panels ran its length. The ceiling lights, Carney noted, were encased in those Miller globes that had caught on in office buildings. A thin brass arrow pointed to suite 1500.
“High up,” Pepper said. “The last time I was above the tenth floor…” He pulled out the Colt Cobra from his windbreaker. Carney had left his gun in the glove compartment after telling Pepper about it. He wasn’t going to use it so it didn’t make sense to bring it. In due course, the stupidity of this argument made itself evident.
The lights were on in reception. No one present. Ed Bench yelled, “In here, gentlemen,” from down the hall. It smelled of paint, so fresh that the pale green walls looked like they’d smudge on you from a foot away. Chest-high dividers cut the big rooms into individual work areas, but the desks, chairs, and everything else were missing. Businesses had moved into Pan Am before it was finished, Carney remembered. There was so much urgent business to be done that the buildings couldn’t keep pace, the money pushed on ahead. Next week these rooms and sub-rooms would be full of men in pinstripe suits barking into receivers.
A different sort of deal had to be concluded before that.