Carney told Rusty to go home early. Now that Rusty had two kids he was less eager to lock up, and the nocturnal stakeouts had made for a long week. On Tuesday, out of riot-night boredom, Carney gave him a new title: associate sales manager. Knowing his boss wouldn’t get around to it, Rusty went ahead and ordered the name tag. While he awaited its arrival, he taped an interim version onto a Pan Am Junior Captain pin he’d obtained somewhere.
“What do you think?”
It looked okay. “It looks great,” Carney said. Business was slow anyway.
Elizabeth had bought some books for Rusty’s little ones and Carney handed them over. “What’d you, loot these?” Carney had asked when she pulled them out of the shopping bag. That would be a sight: Elizabeth climbing into the window display, stepping over broken glass to grab some shit. Wouldn’t put it past her, if she’d been born a few blocks over.
Rusty thanked him for the gift and then it was a dead two hours except for cop cars drifting by like slow death out there.
Carney settled at his desk after he locked up to work on a pitch for the new Amsterdam News advertisement. The old one was getting hoary and on riot watch he’d ruminated.
The Argent sectional…Carney preferred to be hands-on with advertisements, but there was resistance. The newspaper’s in-house man Higgins laid out the ads and he was a stubborn sort, with an imperious streak one associated with the lowest rungs of New York City civil service. “Is this the message you want to send to the public?” As if Higgins were acquainted with the whole history and contemporary reality of home furnishings. One time Carney used the word divan and it turned out Higgins had a cousin named Devon, and the assistant accounts manager had to break up the scuffle. Bottom line: A man has a mind to place an ad and possesses the means, you run the ad. Save the censorship for the front page.
Carney grew punchy.
Designed with today’s Rioter-on-the-Go in mind…
After a long day of fighting the Man, why not put your feet up—on a new Collins-Hathaway ottoman.
Presenting the new Collins-Hathaway Three-Point Recliner—finally a sit-in we can all agree on!
Someone thumped on the Morningside door. None of his regulars had arranged a meet, but it was Saturday evening and a fellow might want some money in his pocket for the night ahead. Carney slid back the cover and looked out the keyhole. He let his cousin in, making sure that no one came up behind.
“What’s up?” Freddie hadn’t been this scrawny since seventh grade—he had existed as a chicken-armed creature until puberty. His skin was sheened, his red-and-orange-striped T-shirt sweated through. He clutched a leather briefcase with gold-tone hardware and a tiny clasp lock.
“Where you been?” Carney said. He put his arm on Freddie’s shoulder to test that he was actually there.
Freddie wriggled loose. “I wanted to check in and see how you were doing—how all you were doing.” He claimed the club chair and leaned back. “People up to some madness the last few days.”
“We’re fine,” Carney said. “The kids. You talk to Aunt Millie?”
“I’m heading there right after I see you. Surprise her.”
“She’ll be surprised all right.”
Freddie cradled the leather briefcase to his chest. Gentle, like he kept a rooftop coop and the briefcase was his prize flier. Carney asked him what it was.
“This? I know, right! Listen, I have to tell you how I found out what was going down—I was in it! It was Saturday night, you know, the big one.”
Freddie had trekked to Times Square to see The Unsinkable Molly Brown—his partiality for Debbie Reynolds was durable and verified—and on the ride uptown a weird vibe swallowed up the train. Everyone jumpy, looking around. The heat sent people barking at one another. Since the murder, the news had been running stories about flocks of youth rampaging through the subway, harassing white people, threatening motormen.
“It was nine o’clock,” Freddie said. “I get out of the subway to look for a sandwich and the streets are full of people. Raising their fists, waving signs. Chanting, ‘We want Malcolm X! We want Malcolm X!’ and ‘Killer cops must go!’ Some of them hold pictures of the killer cop like, Wanted: Dead or Alive. I’m hungry—I don’t want to deal with all that. I’m trying to get me a sandwich.”
The Congress of Racial Equality had been out in front since the boy was killed, organizing a rally on Friday, and another on Saturday at the 28th Precinct. “Someone said they were at the station house doing speeches, and I thought to myself—maybe I’m an activist. Why not? You know I like those little CORE girls, all serious and shit, talking about change. Last time I was in Lincoln’s I started rapping with this girl from CORE. Looked like Diahann Carroll? Could have been her sister. But she wasn’t having it. Says she wants herself a college man and I said, I went to college—”