Waiting and watching on Carney’s dime. He found his old stash of tiny notebooks he used for planning jobs. The good weather helped. Those weeks in June were hot but it barely rained at all. The first two days Pepper borrowed Tommy Lips’s Ford Crestliner, but lucky for him it turned out Duke was a walker, one of those short guys who had a complex about size and had to rooster-strut everywhere. Little head poking up over a car’s steering wheel probably made those bully taunts come back. Lucky because Pepper hated Tommy Lips’s Crestline, it was a fucking lemon.
The days passed. A new version of this corner of 125th had sprung into being when he wasn’t looking, with a lot of old hangouts erased and sleek cafeterias and electronics stores and record stores popping up. Not the most sentimental of men, Pepper nonetheless allowed himself a reminiscence of his last visit to the Mill Building. Or he tried to reminisce. Pepper had definitely dangled the mope out the window by his ankles （black wing tips and black socks held up by garters） and threatened to drop him on Madison Avenue （the window had an eastern exposure）， that much he was sure of. He recalled the man’s name, Alvin Pitt, and that he was an osteopath by profession, but for the life of him Pepper couldn’t get a handle on why he was bracing the guy. He was at a loss. Perhaps when this job was over, he’d pay Alvin Pitt a visit, ask the man himself what the fuss had been about.
Weekdays at noon Duke departed to dine with muckety-mucks of equal rank. Pepper recognized some of them from the papers: judges, lawyers, politicians. They ate at famous Harlem places Pepper had never set foot in, chowing down on lobster thermidor at the Palm and beef Wellington at the Royale, and drinking brandy at the Orchid Room in the Hotel Theresa. Then it was back to the Mill Building. The banker belonged to the Dumas Club on 120th Street, which observation proved to be a variety of shitheel factory. Duke’s rooster-strut wobbled after a Dumas Club visit, so Pepper assumed there was a rich man’s happy hour going on. Then it was back home to Riverside Drive, one of those monument buildings with a sleepy doorman and service entrance with a broken lock. Once Duke returned home, he was in for the night.
That was it, except for a twice-weekly rendezvous with a hooker named Miss Laura who worked out of a floor-through at Convent and 141st. Once Pepper got Duke’s schedule down, Carney put him on the girl.
“Yeah, but what do you want me to do to the banker?” Pepper asked. He was at a pay phone in the lobby of the Maharaja Theater on 145th and Broadway. Currently on the marquee: Doctor Blood’s Coffin and Creature from the Haunted Sea. It had been a glamorous vaudeville house back in the day. Now its most prominent virtues were the bank of pay phones in the lobby and the dark auditorium beyond. A convenient venue for freelance individuals in which to conduct business.
“Nothing,” Carney said. “Just watch the lady on Convent.”
Lady. “Someone else is taking the banker out?”
“No. I’m getting the lay of the land.”
Pepper hung up, opened the phone-booth door. The light went out. The Maharaja had gotten run-down lately, now that he looked at it. This time of day the lobby was mostly junkies and hookers. Pushers and johns. Anyone in the auditorium was either getting sucked off, sucking off, or tying off, cinematic triumph of Doctor Blood’s Coffin or no Doctor Blood’s Coffin.
Did he have to find another place? Or was everywhere like this now—shabby and sad and dangerous? Last time Pepper was here he observed two gray rats fucking in the popcorn, rutting in that greasy yellow case. Maybe he should have heeded that sign.
The phones still worked and there was never a line. He’d be back.
Pepper adopted a regular table at the Big Apple Diner, a better-than-average uptown hash joint on Convent. Good grub, the waitresses were nice, with a view of 288. He wasn’t surprised when the pimp showed up for the trick money and it turned out to be Cheap Brucie.
Cheap Brucie was the kind of cat who set up his girls in apartments, with regulars. He’d been plying that particular trade a long time, since before Pepper returned from the Pacific theater. The man was ageless; his women put on miles quick. Pepper’d heard more than one story about him dumping bodies in Mount Morris. Six years ago he saw Cheap Brucie cut one of his women across the face, three a.m. at the Hi Tempo Lounge. Unzipped her cheek. One of those long nights that would’ve gone longer if not for that shriek. Sobered you up quick.
Miss Laura had a couple of appointments a day. Her johns brought her things he watched her shove into the garbage cans later: big bouquets of flowers, red boxes of candy from Emilio’s. The ones getting their ashes hauled twice a week, like Duke, tended to be better-dressed. The better they dressed, the emptier the hands.