“What’d they say to you?” Miami Joe asked Carney.
“Keep on the lookout for a necklace.”
“If they knew who we were, we’d know,” Arthur said. “If they connected Mr. Carney to us, they wouldn’t have left it like that.” He crossed his legs and pinched his pants leg so it fell correctly over his ankle. “You can expect a visit from the cops,” he told Carney. “Whoever he’s got on the payroll at the precinct. Sniff around, see if they can get a rise out of you.”
Carney had explanations ready for cops about some of the items in the store, but they wouldn’t hold up if they really wanted to put the screws to him. Cross-check the serial number of a Silvertone TV with a list of stolen merchandise. He glared at Freddie.
“None of you said shit?” Miami Joe asked. “No one?”
Silence. Pepper stuck a toothpick in his mouth and a hand in his pocket.
“We’d know if they knew,” Arthur repeated.
Miami Joe said, “Who’d you tell about it, Freddie?”
“I didn’t tell anybody, Joe,” Freddie said. “What about you? The girl from the Theresa who tipped you off? Where’s she?”
“I got her out of town to visit her mother. Living at the Burbank, with those niggers running their yaps all day, she had to go.” Miami Joe turned his attention to Carney.
Carney shook his head. It was like Arthur said—if anyone had talked, they wouldn’t be in his office acting civilized. Semi-civilized. People had been talking on him, not the other way around, the way Carney saw it. One of the crooks who’d brought a gold watch or a Zenith portable into the furniture store had added Carney’s name, finally, to the underground roster of middlemen. It had to happen sooner or later.
The last time Carney had this many people in his office was that odd afternoon when he confronted the very laws of physics: how to get the goddamned convertible sleeper out of the basement. The sofa had been left there by Gabe Newman, the previous tenant, before he split town. Obviously Newman had carried the orange sleeper in through the metal grate in the sidewalk, or down the stairs through the trapdoor in the office. Unless he’d used a matter transporter machine, like in that movie The Fly, or a voodoo spell, unlikely propositions. But no one could figure out how to get it out, not Carney and not the four Italian men from Argent, who needed the room to finish the spring delivery. They heaved and grunted. The oversize sofa did not break down, it did not yield, it refused to clear both sets of stairs no matter what ancient, time-honored furniture-moving tricks they tried. Profanity provided no solace. The afternoon ground on and Carney got the fire ax and chopped the fucker up. It was an off-model and thoroughly unloved. The whole thing remained a mystery.
Now men had assembled in the office again and it was only a matter of time before they turned their attention to that other thing that didn’t fit: Carney. He hoped the ax wouldn’t make a return appearance.
A siren approached, crawling east down 125th Street. No one moved until they were sure it was a fire engine and not a cruiser. They were hard men, and then some breeze came along and they got scared their little match might blow out.
Miami Joe loosened his tie. It was hot. The fan wasn’t much use. “What I want to know is,” talking to Carney again, “can you handle what we got? I never heard of you before Freddie put your name in. Small-time or what—I don’t know shit about you.”
The man had a point, more than he knew. For Carney was not a fence.
Yes, a percentage of his showroom was stolen. TVs, radios back when he could still unload them, tasteful modern lamps, and other small appliances in perfect condition. He was a wall between the criminal world and the straight world, necessary, bearing the load. But when it came to precious metals and gems, he was more of a broker. Freddie came into his office with stuff, and Carney hoofed it downtown to Canal and his man Buxbaum. Buxbaum pulled out his loupe and scale, appraised the goods, and gave Carney fifty cents on the dollar to give to Freddie. Carney got five percent out of Buxbaum’s cut. It allowed the Jew to serve colored clientele without going uptown, without meeting them at all, and it gave Freddie—and the few local characters who came in with gem-encrusted bracelets or silver—another outlet for their goods, away from the Harlem drama.
Carney didn’t go into what happened to the rings and necklaces after his cousin brought them in. Freddie never asked, same way Carney never asked where they came from. If he believed Carney had secret supply lines to the midtown and Canal Street diamond districts, so be it. If it took Carney a day to come up with the cash, he was good for it. They were blood. These men in Carney’s office, however, were not blood, and they were not going to hand over hundreds of thousands of dollars in stones to a stranger and trust that their fifty cents on the dollar was “on the way.” Plus Buxbaum couldn’t carry that weight, far as Carney knew.