Carney was surprised by two things: how much Buxbaum had scammed him, and Moskowitz’s refusal to do the same. Perhaps such easy game was beneath the Forty-Seventh Street merchant. The first time Carney showed up with stones—Buxbaum’s name vouched, down came the blinds—the jeweler asked what Buxbaum would’ve offered. Carney said a number.
“You have no idea what any of this is worth, do you?” Moskowitz said.
The white man’s tone pissed Carney off, before he learned it was straight shooting and not condescension.
“Buxbaum wanted to keep you dependent,” Moskowitz said. “You schlepp all the way down here, I’m going to deal with you straight.”
Yes, Buxbaum had ripped him off, but the new contact and his more favorable rates took the sting out. He quickly made up the shortfall.
One night, Moskowitz asked Carney what kind of cash he had on hand. “Look,” he said, “you’re letting a lot of money fall out of your pockets.” Under the Buxbaum arrangement, Carney was a messenger and got paid like one. He go-betweened with street hoods, put his legit enterprise on the line, ferried the goods and money back and forth—for a measly five percent.
“You go to Buxbaum,” Moskowitz said, “and he turns around and kicks up the stuff to the dealers he works with—his gold guy, his precious-gem guy, whatever. Sometimes it’s me.” If Carney could maintain this volume, and if the furniture salesman was able to front the money to his “associates”—the jeweler’s term for Harlem’s lowlife element—he should rightly take Buxbaum’s cut. “You got that kind of cash?”
“I do.”
“I figured. Let’s do it like that, then.” They shook on it. “And the khazeray you know I’ll toss back, there’s no need to bring it here. It wastes both our time.”
Buxbaum had taken everything, even the junk. Moskowitz couldn’t be bothered. He delivered a line like “I’m not even touching that, sir,” with the scorn that the object deserved.
“I’ll pay you to school me,” Carney said. “To give me the eye.”
“School you?” Moskowitz said.
“I have a degree in business from Queens College,” Carney said.
The jeweler’s smile was either bemused or flattered. They shook on this as well.
Moving up the supply chain cut into the Carney family apartment fund, but not for long. He was no longer a mere errand boy for uptown crooks but a proper middleman. How had he suffered the old arrangement for that long? Part of moving up in the world is realizing how much shit you used to eat. He got a tip about a guy in Hunt’s Point who’d take his junk pieces, the club rings and costume stuff, and another guy who dealt in rare coins. Soon he had outlets for everything Moskowitz turned his nose up at.
The jeweler raked it in, even with Carney’s increased share. Most of the illegal side of Moskowitz’s operation ended up overseas. A guy from France came in twice a month and took it off his hands. From there it went who knows where. Despite Moskowitz’s international concerns, he didn’t skimp on the small stuff, like Carney’s lessons. For six months, Carney locked up the furniture store, took the downtown 1 train, and endured the smoke from Moskowitz’s hand-rolled cigarettes. The jeweler tutored him in color, clarity, and cut. Explained how a bead setting showcased faceted stones, why a bezel lent itself to high-karat gold. Carney had picked up a lot in the last eighteen months without knowing it; Moskowitz gathered all the unmoored lingo and half-formed notions floating in Carney’s head and tethered it to solid objects. He had a good sense of the precious and the fake, the worthy and the chintz; Moskowitz encouraged him to trust his instincts. “You got a nose,” he told him. “Anyone can train the eye. But a nose? You need a nose.” He did not elaborate.
Most of the knowledge he imparted was less ethereal. How to distinguish a Burmese ruby from a Thai ruby, good-quality lapis lazuli from the cheap dyed lapis that was everywhere these days. Then there was the elusive science of culture and fashion that governed how things went in and out of style, the myriad ways in which history left its mark. “The Great Depression,” Moskowitz said, “produced a lot of extravagant design, so that your wife’s dress could look like a million bucks, even if she’d made it herself.” What caused the boom in costume jewelry after the war? “People wanted to show off their money, whether they had it or not. It didn’t matter if it was real or fake, it was how it made you feel.”