Carney told Elizabeth he was taking a night course in marketing. Sometimes one of Moskowitz’s nephews, an apple-cheeked young man named Ari, sat in for his apprenticeship in the crooked side of the family business. Carney’d catch Moskowitz looking at the two of them studying some rock, side by side, the Negro and the Jew, and the jeweler got this queer smile on his face, as if delighting in this turn in his life. Teaching a colored gentleman and his sister’s youngest boy the ropes of his illicit trade. Ari and Carney got along fine in class. The boy pretended not to know him if his cousins were around.
“That’s all you need to know for your purposes, I think,” Moskowitz told him at the end of one meeting. The teacher produced a bottle of sweet sherry. They toasted.
For his purposes. The hoods who came in the side door of Carney’s furniture had a station, Moskowitz had one, and Carney had his.
* * *
*
Moskowitz priced tonight’s haul and they did a deal for the stones. Now came Carney’s favorite part of a Moskowitz visit, apart from the cash: the ceremonial opening of the Hermann Bros. safe. The Hermann was an imposing tank, a square-door number of black metal that tiptoed on improbably dainty feet. The utilitarian shell hid the luxury inside, the walnut drawers with brass fixtures, the silk-lined compartments. The dial said click click click click. Carney felt like the second mate on a grand ship—the combination dial was a compass pointing the route, the five-spoke handle a ship’s wheel to steer them to an uncharted continent of money. Land ho!
He had asked after the safe’s provenance once and the jeweler told him they didn’t make them anymore. Hermann Bros. had been based in San Francisco. Houdini appeared in their advertisements, wearing a sad face as the Hermann product line confounded him. Aitken bought them and then phased out their consumer lines of safes and vaults. Carney was not naturally prone to envy, but each time he saw Moskowitz’s safe he got a real hankering.
“If you get a new one,” Moskowitz had said, “make sure it’s a proper size. A man should have a safe big enough to hold his secrets. Bigger, even, so you have room to grow.”
The jeweler removed a brick of cash from the safe and counted the money. Then he lovingly placed Carney’s offerings in their designated drawers inside the metal box. The walnut drawers whispered in and out, so elegant it made Carney wince.
“My wife thinks we should see that Sidney Poitier movie,” Moskowitz said.
“The reviews are good. The Times. He’s good in it, they say.”
“She knows I don’t go to movies, I don’t know why she says it.”
“What’s up?” Carney said.
“Buxbaum got seven years.”
“Oh.”
“The lawyer, he was not the best.”
“Up the river,” Carney said.
The two men did not express sympathy or speculate over what information Buxbaum might share. He hadn’t ratted yet. They had to satisfy themselves with that.
Moskowitz closed the door to the safe and spun the handle. “My friend from France is coming in, end of the week.”
Carney said, “Good.” He stood to go.
“You look good,” Moskowitz said. “Business is good?”
“Business is good,” Carney said. “So I’m good.”
When he got to back to Broadway, it was almost one-thirty a.m. The sidewalks nearly dead. Soon it would be news-truck hour, bread-truck hour, night-shift clock-out-and-scatter time. Carney yawned, that dorvay spell wearing off. Time to get back home.
There was a camera store next to the subway. Carney tried the door and chuckled. The store had closed long before—not everyone was keeping his loopy hours. He satisfied himself with window-shopping. Had Pierce mentioned what camera he used for his family photos? Carney couldn’t remember, and he wasn’t going to ask that slick motherfucker for nothing.
He disapproved of the crowded display. What’s the point if no one can see it? But with Times Square foot traffic, the widening market, the various types of camera customers these days, maybe it made sense to cram it in. It was the same in his field, home furnishings—there was too much of everything these days. He scanned the gizmos. The Nikon F featured something called “Automatic Reflex.” Whatever the hell that is. “When using Preview Control it is impossible to cause an accidental exposure.” He wasn’t an aficionado, he wanted something simple.
Two white drunks tottered at the corner. They dashed into Broadway after a Checker cab. Carney carried a lot of cash these days, a briefcase full of stones or gold or cash, what used to be a year’s salary, but he didn’t want to get to where he stopped being vigilant. Back to the window. Everybody was talking about Polaroid and their instant film, it was the new thing. In the Polaroid Pathfinder display, a white family enjoyed a picnic by a deep blue lake. White folk on picnics were everywhere in ads these days. The Interstate Highway System and where it’d take you. All smiles in the poster in the window, the dad in a striped polo shirt directing his brood.