“UCLA,” Carney helped out.
“That’s right—University of the Corner of Lenox Avenue!” The old joke.
Freddie followed the crowd to the station house on 123rd, where a CORE field secretary with dark horn-rimmed glasses and a red bow tie listed demands: Police Commissioner Murphy must resign; set up the long-requested civilian review board. “Got these Negroes out there yelling ‘Killer! Killer! Killer!’ this way, over that way this young brother has a bullhorn going, ‘Forty-five percent of the cops in New York are neurotic murderers!’ It was a ruckus—I should have stayed in the subway, all this going on up here. And you know those cops ain’t having it. They got barricades up, herding people. Wearing those helmets because they know people are going to fuck over them. Fucking cop pulls out the special cop bullhorn and tells us, ‘Go home! Go home!’ And everybody shouted back, ‘We are home, baby!’
“This old lady elbows me in the stomach, we’re packed in. Hot. All these angry Negroes in one place, and they are pissed—but all I want is a sandwich. I start heading back up to 125th and people are all buzzing, saying the police have beat up and arrested some CORE people. That was that! Boom—it was on! Knocking over the barricades. Niggers on the roof raining down shit on the cops—bricks, soda bottles, pieces of roof. Rocking cars, throwing shit through windows.
“I’m like, how am I going to get my sandwich in all this mess?
“On 125th, everybody’s closed or closing up early because of the unrest. That Cuban place with the pickle they put on the meat is closed. Jimmy’s, the Coronet’s got its lights out. That’s when I really got hungry—you know how you want something more when you know you ain’t going to get it? Negroes are wrapping chains around those security gates and then pulling the gates off with their cars. Then they break the glass and step inside. I’m a simple man. Put something between two slices and I’m happy. But how am I supposed to get a motherfucking sandwich with all that going on? People running up and down, screaming. I’m like, damn, this riot stuff will cramp a brother’s style.”
Freddie had no recourse but to split uptown and hit Gracie’s Diner. “Got my ass a turkey sandwich, finally. And it was good, too. But that was some wild shit, man,” he said. “You don’t want to be out in that, hell no. Me and Linus decided to ride it out at our place.”
“Ride it out.” Drop out of the world and get high for a few days.
“Beats getting beat upside the head. What’d you do?”
Carney said, “Elizabeth and the kids stayed inside mostly. Their day camp was canceled—it’s on the same block as the station house, so it was in a hot spot. I was here. Rusty was with me a lot.” He told Freddie about the vigil. A mob marched past going east, then returned into view stampeding in the other direction, followed by a gang of white cops. Back and forth. In the end, the store was unscathed, as Freddie could see. “So what’s in there?” Carney asked again.
“This? I need you to sit on this for a few days,” Freddie said.
“Freddie.”
“Linus and me, we pulled this rip-off and it got some people mad. These heavy dudes. And now we got to lay low for a spell. Can you do that for me?”
“What is it?”
“There’s a lot of heat, that’s all I can say.”
“You’re nuts,” Carney said. They had extra cops cruising the neighborhood to keep a lid on, prowl cars and cops on corners, and Freddie is walking around with a Madison Avenue briefcase that obviously wasn’t his. Was it drugs? He wouldn’t bring that into his place, would he? “What are you getting me into?”
“I’m your cousin,” Freddie said. “I need you to do it. I don’t have anyone else.”
You couldn’t hear the subway from 125th and Morningside, but Carney heard this train. Following its cursed schedule and already pulling into the station and opening its doors whether you were ready or not. “Okay.”
“What else is that thing for?” Meaning the safe.
“I said okay.”
“I’ll be around in a few days to pick it up.”
“I said okay.”
Carney spun the handle of the Hermann Bros. safe and slid the briefcase inside. He closed it and rapped on the dark metal for effect. “Where will you be?”
Freddie gave him the address of an SRO way uptown on 171st Street, room 306. “I’ll pick this up in a few days, Ray.”