Miami Joe operated in New York City for five years after departing his hometown in the wake of an escapade. He found work as a collector for Reggie Greene, maiming welshers and shopkeepers who were miserly with protection money, but he tired of such easy game and returned to thieving. At Nightbirds Freddie had recounted to Carney some of Miami Joe’s more recent capers—a trailer full of vacuum cleaners, snatching the payroll of a department store. The flashy, efficient scores were the ones he chose to advertise, alluding to a host of others kept private.
Freddie and Miami Joe drank together at the Leopard’s Spots, the last to leave, the nights unfinished until the duo had been converted into rye-soaked cockroaches scurrying from sunlight and propriety. Freddie never failed to wake with a fear over what he’d revealed about himself. He hoped Miami Joe was too drunk to remember his stories, but Miami Joe did remember—it was more evidence for his unsentimental study of the human condition. The day Miami Joe brought him in, Freddie had recently quit running numbers for Peewee Gibson.
“But you’ve never done a robbery before,” Carney said.
“He said I was going to be the wheelman, that’s why I said yes.” He shrugged. “What’s so hard about that? Two hands and a foot.”
The first convocation of the crew was held in a booth at Baby’s Best, on the brink of happy hour. In the dressing room the strippers covered their scars with powder; blocks away, their faithful customers waited to punch out of straight jobs. The lights were going, though, spinning and whirring, perhaps they never stopped, even when the place was closed, red and green and orange in restless, garish patrol over surfaces. It was Mars. Miami Joe had his arms spread on the red leather when Freddie walked in. Miami Joe, sipping Canadian Club and twisting his pinkie rings as he mined the dark rock of his thoughts.
Arthur was next to arrive, embarrassed by the meeting place, like he’d never been in this kind of establishment before, or spent his every hour there. Arthur was forty-eight years old, hair corkscrewed with gray. He reminded Freddie of a schoolteacher. The man favored plaid sweater vests and dark slacks, wore bookworm glasses, and had a gentle way of pointing out flaws in aspects of the scheme. “A policeman would spot that phony registration in a second—is there another solution to this problem?” He’d just finished his third stint in prison, thanks to a weakness for venal or otherwise incompetent comrades. Not this time. Arthur was “the Jackie Robinson of safecracking,” according to Miami Joe, having busted the color line when it came to safes and locks and alarms, generally regarded as the domain of white crooks.
Pepper showed up last and they got to business.
“What about this man Pepper?” Carney asked.
“Pepper.” Freddie winced. “You’ll see.”
Cocktails at the Hotel Theresa were a hot ticket, and Miami Joe often installed himself at the long, polished bar with the rest of the neighborhood’s criminal class, talking shit. He took out one of the maids every once in a while, a slight, withdrawn girl named Betty. She lived at the Burbank, a once-dignified building on Riverside Drive that had been cut to into single-room accommodations. A lot of new arrivals washed up there. Betty liked to stall before she let Miami Joe into her bed, which meant a lot of talking, and in due course he had enough information to plan the robbery. The job struck him the first time he laid eyes on the hotel. Where others saw sophistication and affirmation, Miami Joe recognized opportunity, for monetary gain, and to bring black Harlem down a notch. These up-North niggers had an attitude about Southern newcomers, he’d noticed, a pervasive condescension that made him boil. What’d you say? Is that how y’all do it down there? They thought their hotel was nice? He’d seen nicer. Not that he’d be able to provide an example if challenged on this point. Miami Joe was strictly hot sheet when it came to short-term accommodations.
The hotel bar closed at one a.m., the lobby was dead by four, and the morning shift started at five, when the kitchen staff and laundry workers punched in. Weekends were busier, and on Saturday nights the hotel manager ran gambling rooms for high rollers. Which meant bodyguards and sore losers—too many surly men walking around with guns in their pockets. Tuesday night was Miami Joe’s lucky night when it came to jobs, so Tuesday.
He allotted twenty minutes for the takeover of the lobby and the raid of the vault. “Vault?” Freddie asked. It wasn’t a real vault, Miami Joe told him, that’s what they called the room containing the safe-deposit boxes. Since they were smashing the boxes open, Arthur wouldn’t be able to use his expertise, but he was dependable, a scarce quality. He was cool with it. He cleaned his glasses with a monogrammed handkerchief and said, “Sometimes you need a pick, sometimes a crowbar.”