Some jobs, it was like Burma again. People whose faces you never saw, who you never talked to, plan the setup and you have to hope they have their shit together. When you know they don’t. He never met the bankroller of the Brooklyn robbery, or the finger, the man inside with the info on the wholesaler’s cash flow. Pepper’s partner was Roper, a lock man he’d worked with a couple of times. Roper had his head screwed on straight; that it went south that one time had been no fault of his. The brains behind the setup brought Roper in, Roper brought Pepper in, and if Pepper didn’t get the other names on this job it was fine as long as he got his share.
The moon was full. A breeze huffed out humid air to Jersey. It was a beautiful night to be out in the city and up to no good. Pepper subdued the night man and got him out of the way. Roper punched out the safe. There was a guard dog at some point. The main thing being that nothing went sideways, they were back in the Chevy Bel Air and on the bridge like that and two days later when it was time for Pepper to pick up his cut, he used Carney as an answering machine. Pepper only used the furniture store when things were in the clear. As in the clear as things could be, given his line of work. He didn’t want to mess things up for Carney if he could help it. If he couldn’t, fuck it, point was he wasn’t going out of his way to bring down heat on the man.
Roper had left the address for Pepper’s money. Carney delivered the instructions. He cleared his throat. “I’d like to bring you in on a job.”
“What, you need to move a couch?”
“No, it’s a job.”
Pepper said he’d head over. After he picked up the money.
He checked in on the store occasionally. If he was going to go-between Carney from time to time, it behooved him. Plus, it was Big Mike’s son.
The expansion looked smart—the furniture side was doing well for Junior. Rusty, the employee, had got himself a gal who looked like she’d snuck out in the back of a potato wagon. Pure country. The new secretary carried a wounded look on the street but put on a smile when she opened the door to the store. Pepper would have done the sign different, though. Make the letters blockier, so you can see it, put some red in there. He read an article that said red was a color favored by nature to make animals take notice, and you had to be part animal to live in New York City. Made sense to use red in signs, Pepper thought. But no one was asking him.
The door Carney put onto Morningside Avenue was handy, providing another exit. He refrained from commenting on the safe.
“That other rug had to go?” Pepper said. Carney most likely rolled up Miami Joe in it and dumped him in Mount Morris. That’s what he would have done.
“Yes, it’s a new rug,” Carney said.
The furniture salesman explained the job. At first, it didn’t sound like Carney. But then, Big Mike had tended his crop of grudges like a farmer, inspecting the rows, taking care they got enough water and fertilizer so that they grew big and healthy.
“You want dirt to blackmail him,” Pepper said.
“Blackmail is when you try to get something from somebody,” Carney answered. “I want to burn his house down.”
“But not really torch it. You want to fuck him up.”
“Yes, not an actual torching, but a real burning down.”
“Didn’t know you did it like that.”
Carney shrugged.
Like father, like son. They did a deal for the stakeout and the general surveillance.
Pepper had never heard of this Duke character. “Guess we run in different circles,” he said to himself. Leaning against the greasy spoon opposite the Mill Building on 125th, he had a clear shot of the banker’s office window and the entrance to the building.
His grandpa Alfred had kept a steel-drum smoker out back in Newark, on Clinton Ave. He’d do ribs, brisket, make his own sausage. Grandpa Alfred’s father had been a butcher and cook on an indigo plantation in South Carolina and passed down the mysteries. “You throw chops on some coals,” Pepper’s grandfather said, “that’s one way to cook a piece of meat. Few minutes later, you got that black on it, you’re done. But barbecue is slow. Put it in that smoke, you got to be ready to wait. That heat and smoke is going to do its work, boy, but you got to wait.”
One was fast and one was slow, and it was the same for stickups and stakeouts. Stickups were chops—they cook fast and hot, you’re in and out. A stakeout was ribs—fire down low, slow, taking your time.
Pepper was a gourmand in that he liked chops and he liked ribs. He hadn’t planned a job in years, with the legwork that entailed: casing the place; clocking passenger and vehicle traffic, and how often the prowl car made the rounds; the schedule of the staff, managers, and security guards. Figuring out when to take a piss. He’d enjoyed that side of things once—conception, pulling it all together, choosing a crew. Nowadays he let the ebb and flow of jobs take him. He wasn’t as sharp or as hungry as he used to be. Stuff fell into his lap, or didn’t. Some cat got out of Dannemora and wanted back in, or another dude was cooking up a big score. Maybe Pepper wasn’t as sharp these days, but the quality of hood they turned out now? He was sharp enough. No, he hadn’t made ribs in a while but it came back quick.