The A1 page of the Times had a couple of columns on Mayor Wagner announcing that he was running for a third term, and tossing Tammany Hall off his back. All that city hall intrigue was over Carney’s head. Like shopping when you go into a white store—the rules were different downtown. Uptown, the machine’s man was on the ballot and that was that. He didn’t have a strong opinion on Wagner. Did the mayor like black people? He wasn’t out to get us, that was the important thing. The recent antidrug push was meant to save white people, but its immediate beneficiaries were the good people who were too scared to walk their own neighborhood, who worried over their children when they disappeared past the front stoop. Someone helps you out by accident, it’s still help.
Carney had finished his ham and cheese when Freddie finally showed up.
“Ain’t you supposed to be at work?” Freddie said.
“Late lunch. Why don’t you order something?”
Freddie shook his head. Freddie was in one of his lean periods, belt cinched. Carney was used to his cousin’s spells. What was new was Freddie’s indifference to his appearance. The rumpled gray polo shirt was borrowed and he needed to get his ass to D’s Barbershop. It was possible that he’d just gotten out of bed.
Reading Carney’s frown, Freddie said, “Elizabeth told me you’d be in a bad mood.”
“What?”
“I saw her on the street. She said you were in one of your moods.”
“You work hard every day, sometimes you’ll be in a bad mood.” He wondered what was on her mind—his mood or his new hours.
“I wouldn’t know,” Freddie said. They chuckled. The waitress walked over and muttered something. Freddie winked at her, plucked a sandwich crust off Carney’s plate, and gobbled it up. When she retreated, Freddie said, “What’s on around town?”
That meant gimme dirt, in his lingo. With regards to crooked characters of their mutual acquaintance, Carney told him that Lester and Birdy had been pinched and were currently cooling it in Rikers. Lester lost his head over girls, ever since they were kids. This time he wasn’t chasing tail—he’d stabbed his girlfriend’s sister at a Memorial Day barbecue in Gravesend for making fun of his pants. “The ambulance took her away and then they went back to eating that chicken.”
As for Birdy, he fell off a fire escape while sneaking out of a third-floor apartment, Carney informed his cousin. Dude was out cold on the sidewalk when the police found him, somebody else’s wallet sticking out of his pocket.
“Zippo got picked up for kiting checks,” Freddie said. “Arrested him at his mom’s house.” The cousins groaned and grimaced.
“He should stick to the movies,” Carney said.
Before Zippo fell on hard times and started bouncing checks, he took boudoir photos, or “glamour shots,” he called them, with a sideline selling stag movies to those interested in that sort of thing. Last spring he’d hired this young lady who wanted to make some extra money, and her man caught wind and made a mess. Smashed his equipment, and Zippo’s face. That was three months ago and Zippo was still trying to get back on his feet.
“How’s business with you?” Freddie asked.
Freddie hadn’t been by since the renovation, part of which involved carving out a door in the wall between Carney’s office and the street. It allowed Carney to exit onto Morningside between 125th and 126th and bypass the showroom. And have people enter that way, too, after six p.m. when he sent Rusty and Marie home.
“They think I’m a good boss because I never let them work late,” Carney said. The cousins laughed again, as if over one of their shared jokes from the old days, like quoting James Cagney from White Heat—“Top of the world!”—when some mope did something especially stupid.
He wasn’t sure if he should mention it, but he did anyway: Chink Montague had had some falling out with Lou Parks, his longtime fence, and was now referring business Carney’s way. For a cut. “So now Chink gets his weekly envelope from me and then a finder’s fee on top,” Carney said. “He’s worse than Uncle Sam.”
It was a reversal. Time was, Freddie was the one who had stuff cooking. “Good for you,” Freddie said. “If that nigger only knew.” They rarely mentioned the Theresa job, the last two years. Freddie still undertook the odd petty theft, but it was jewelry now, bracelets and necklaces, no appliances. He hadn’t brought Carney in on a job after that one time, and as far as Carney knew, hadn’t worked with a crew since. Until last winter, Freddie had been a runner for Chet Blakely, handling a nice route on Amsterdam in the 130s, with two old-age residences and traffic from the college. But Chet Blakely got clipped on New Year’s Day outside the Vets Club, and that was the end of that upstart operation. Carney didn’t know what his cousin had been up to since then. This meeting had only come to pass after he’d left half a dozen messages at Nightbirds, having tried everything else.