“I know,” Carney said. He was thirteen during the riots of ’43. A white cop shot a Negro soldier who’d intervened in the arrest of a Negro lady who’d had one too many. For two nights Harlem was aboil. His father went out “shopping” and returned with new duds for the two of them. Shopping of the sort where you step over the broken glass of the front window and don’t need help from the salesclerk. He wore that porkpie hat until the day he died, chocolate brown with a green feather in the brim that he wicked up whenever he left the house. Carney outgrew the slacks and sweater sooner than that. To this day whenever he walked past T. P. Fox or Nelson’s, he wondered if his father had stripped the clothes from their mannequins.
“Good days,” Pepper said. Dropping bombs on the cops from above. He chuckled and gazed off wistfully, recalling some caper. Carney recognized the look from his father. “Then your cousin Freddie showed up,” Pepper said. “Was it Chink? Is he onto us, or did Arthur have it coming from some old buddy? I told Freddie to get you and I went to find Miami Joe. But that nigger’s trying to be Houdini.”
Hence this Saturday-morning excursion. Freddie was probably still sleeping it off after getting his ashes hauled down in the Village. He’d shown up at Carney’s place, nervous as all get-out, and then split for the subway after delivering the news about Arthur. Too afraid to go to his mother’s—what if they were staking it out? Freddie had this blond chick on Bank Street, a Fordham co-ed he’d picked up one night at the Vanguard. The first time he took her out she asked if he had a tail. Her daddy had told her stories about Negroes and their monkey tails. “I showed her something else, I’ll tell you that.”
Freddie was safe or not safe, downtown in a different neighborhood and its other perils. Carney had gone back upstairs to the apartment—should he take the girls and leave town? Twice he’d driven up to New Haven for a swap meet and there was this little motel off the highway. Blinking sign. Whenever he saw it, he joked to himself that if he ever had to lam it, that’s where he’d go. color tv swimming pool magic fingers. Less funny now, when it involved explaining things to Elizabeth.
Lack of sleep made him foggy at the wheel. Pepper said, “Grady Billiards on 145th Street,” and broke down the situation. If it was Chink Montague was onto them, that was one thing. “But if Miami Joe is pulling a cross, that’s some other shit,” Pepper said. “Who has the loot?” Either way, Carney was part of the crew now and had to pitch in, the way Pepper saw it.
Carney squeezed the steering wheel, let go, squeezed harder. Over years this ritual had stilled the tremors when he got anxious. “Fucking truck is haunted,” he said under his breath.
“What’s that?”
“Hundred and Forty-Fifth Street,” Carney said.
If they wanted a lead on where Miami Joe hung his hat, they had to talk to some people. Pepper didn’t know Miami Joe well, first met him when he came over to him at Baby’s Best and said he had a job Pepper didn’t want to pass up. “Baby’s—you spent time in that place? Anything that starts there ends up in the pigsty.” Pepper should have known then that it’d go south, he said. He tapped the lunch box.
First up, a pool room on Amsterdam. Carney had walked the block many times and it was impossible that he’d never seen the joint before, but there it was with sooty windows and an ancient sign: Grady Billiards. Older than him. Pepper had him wait in the car. Carney thought he heard a loud crack, but a round of honking—a green sedan stalled out at the light—covered the noise. Pepper emerged, wiping blood on his dark blue dungarees. He got back in the passenger seat and opened his lunch box. Inside were an egg sandwich in wax paper, a faded thermos, and a pistol. He didn’t say anything while he ate half the sandwich and gulped down some coffee. “Three blocks up there’s another guy,” he said, finally.
Next stop was one of those Puerto Rican grocers. Carney nabbed a spot out front with a view inside. Pepper ignored the guy at the cash register and disappeared past the Employees Only door at the back. He came out nodding a minute later. Neither he nor the guy behind the counter acknowledged each other.
After that was a barbershop—Carney couldn’t see from his angle but caught the five customers duck out after Pepper walked in—and another pool room Carney had never noticed before. Places in Pepper’s city that were nowhere on his own map.
“We going to Mam Lacey’s after-hour’s spot,” Pepper said. “You know where that is?”