“Once Chink started looking for us,” Miami Joe said, “I didn’t want to wait until Monday for the split. Then I had to think about which one of you dummies would talk in the meantime. Your idiot cousin. And if I had to shut one nigger up…” He rubbed his temple as if shaving down the rough edges of a headache. “You know what? Half those stones was paste—ain’t that a bitch? What kind of dumb nigger locks up their fake shit in a safe-deposit box?”
“I have a family,” Carney said.
Miami Joe nodded, bored. “I’m sick of it up here anyway,” he said. “The winters are cold as hell. And y’all have a stuck-up attitude. I hate stuck-up people who ain’t got nothing going on. It’s nonsensical. You got to earn your attitude, you ask me. No, you can keep it. I’m descended from African people—I need to be in the sun.” He sat up and rubbed his chin with the gun barrel. “I want you to call Pepper at Donegal’s—he uses the joint for messages. Call him up and tell him you got a line on me and he has to get his ass down here, toot-sweet. We can wrap this up. You two, then Freddie. I grab the stash at Betty’s, then I’m on the next train out of this dump. Where’s your cousin at?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know. And once I take care of that nigger Pepper, I’ll get it out of you.”
Carney rang the bar as instructed. It was loud, but once he mentioned Pepper’s name, the bartender told everybody to shut up. He said he’d deliver the message.
“Where do you keep the money?” Miami Joe asked.
Carney pointed to the bottom drawer of the desk.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Miami Joe chuckled. “Family, whew! I had a cousin like that—my cousin Pete. We got into some shit, boy. All kinds of shit. But he was dumb as a donkey and got hooked on that junk. Can’t rely on a man once he gets on the needle.”
Miami Joe’s hand dangled as he remembered, then he trained the gun on Carney again. “I did what I had to do. Buried him at this fishing spot we used to go to. He always liked it there. Sometimes, they see it coming, and they know it’s a mercy. Especially when it’s family.”
Carney had to turn away. He saw the record of Rusty’s big sale again. An entire Collins-Hathaway living-room set. It was enough to put him over on the rent.
They both saw Pepper pop up from the basement at the same moment, but Miami Joe was unable to get off a shot. The first bullet hit him above the heart and the second, his belly. He fell back on the couch, tried to stand, and tumbled onto his face. Pepper climbed the final steps into the office and kicked the man’s pistol away. Carney found it a week later when sweeping up.
“I was across the street,” Pepper said. He waved the gun smoke away from his face, bothered. “Someone was going to show up,” he said. “If it was you or your cousin, I had a spare hand for the hunt. Midnight shift. If it was him, I’d finish it.” He tilted his head toward the street. “You’re going to need a new lock on that door in the sidewalk.”
Miami Joe’s blood crept out in a slow tide toward the desk. Carney said, “Christ,” and got a towel from the bathroom.
“Make a little dam, that’s what I do,” Pepper said. He stuck a toothpick in his mouth. “Where’s this Betty live?”
Carney made a dam. “At the Burbank,” he said, “140th Street.”
“What apartment?”
“I don’t know.”
Pepper shrugged. “Your cousin’s okay, sounds like.”
“He usually is.”
Pepper walked into the showroom.
“Wait,” Carney said. “What do I do with him?”
Pepper yawned. “You got a truck, right? You’re Mike Carney’s son. You’ll figure it out.”
Carney leaned against the office doorway as Pepper closed the front door. He headed for the river. Two young men passed by the front window going the other way, joking and howling.
The night proceeded down its avenue. It was physics.
His father’s truck came in handy. By sunrise he had dumped the body in Mount Morris Park, per the local custom. From the way the newspapers wrote about the park, he thought there might be a line. It was easier than he thought, getting rid of a body, or so he told Freddie when his cousin returned from his vacation down in the Village. Carney was almost caught by two men copulating under a birch tree, a worn-out hooker scouting wee-hour johns, and a man in a priest’s collar who cursed at the moon and did not sound like a man of God at all. Plus he was out the money for the Moroccan Luxury rug he rolled the crook up in, but still: easier. If there was one thing he’d learned in recent days, it was that common sense and a practical nature are a great boon in the execution of criminal enterprises. Also that there are hours of the night when other people are less visible, so vivid are one’s private ghosts. He cleaned up the blood in the office. He climbed into bed next to Elizabeth and May. Out cold two seconds later.