“What if I open it?”
“You don’t want to do that. Something might fly out.”
Carney slammed the Morningside door behind Freddie. He regarded the safe.
It came to him: A comfortable sofa outlasts the day’s news—it’s built for a lifetime.
Carney knew Mr. Diaz, the owner of MT Liquors, from meetings of the 125th Street business alliance. He was a Puerto Rican immigrant, gentle-natured except on the topic of crime. He despised druggies, purse-snatchers, and muggers. Public urination was a personal crusade, arguing from the anti position.
When they smashed his front window on Saturday night, Mr. Diaz replaced it the next day. He replaced it when they smashed it the next night. Never mind that the store had been cleaned out and there was nothing to steal but the empty, busted cash register. They broke the window again. He replaced it. They smashed it four times and four times he replaced it. Was he a monument to hope, or to insanity? He was a man grasping after an impossible solution. How long do you keep trying to save something that has been lost?
TWO
The next day was Sunday. The plan was to pop out after lunch and check out this season’s Bella Fontaine line at New Century down in Union Square. Get a feel in person, beyond the catalog, a laying on of hands. All-American on Fifty-Third was closer, but he didn’t want to be recognized. For fear of sabotage, or ridicule, for fear their enthusiasm over the product would make him feel rotten if things fell through. The company decal was a spiffy item—bella fontaine authorized dealer encircling an image of Poseidon erupting from the sea, clenching a gold trident. In his mind’s eye he’d already stuck one in his front window, on the left as you walk in. For everyone to see.
Bella Fontaine had been on a hot streak ever since Life magazine ran those photographs of Jackie perched on their settee in the sunroom of the Kennedy Hyannis Port compound. Carney had dug their stuff since the ’56 Home Furnishings Association convention. It was the first and last time he attended the HFA’s annual shindig—too many white people, too many toupees and plaid sports jackets—but the rush of the convention floor that first day remained. It was like venturing into Futurama at the World’s Fair, that same boggling wonder and plenty. “Bold yet avuncular minimalism.” Scandinavian modern and the new plastics. He wended his way through the booths and exhibits—last year’s Miss Montana in a bikini, perched on a St. Mark patio set—until he arrived at Bella Fontaine’s display. Bring on the sunbeams and heavenly chorus, for surely a divine apparition has manifested inside the Bridgeport Convention Complex off Interstate 79.
Bella Fontaine’s Monte Carlo Collection gently twirled on the rotating platform, the birch finish of the dining-room set aglow under the fluorescent tubes. The sleek drop-leaf table; the roomy, multi-door sideboard; the slim hutch with the beveled edges and hidden cocktail station—they subverted notions vis-à-vis domestic entertaining. The company tagline was a lullaby from a kingdom of luxury: Furniture that looks beautiful, feels beautiful, stays beautiful—furniture for a whole new way of life. Carney whispered those words into May’s ear when she was a baby, to calm her colic. Start with two pieces and add on later. It usually worked.
The chatter and hustle of the convention floor started up again. Carney approached the rep to snag a promo catalog. The rep was a pink-faced white man in a powder blue suit who greeted him with a familiar look of racial contempt. “We don’t cater to Negro gentlemen,” he said, and turned his back to attend to two portly men with Texas accents.
Eight years later, Carney had finagled a face-to-face with Mr. Gibbs. All across the country, one observed signs of racial progress; perhaps the home-furnishing industry kept pace with the changing times.
Carney was halfway to the downtown subway when a man grabbed his arm and said, “Hold it, brother.”
The grip was light. The tone held Carney fast. The man was slender, with red-brown skin like he hailed from the islands. When Carney turned to look at him, he twisted Carney’s arm around behind his back, painfully. He wore James Bond sunglasses and a blue-and-white Hawaiian shirt over a white tank top. Not lacking a certain style.
Carney had never been robbed. His low profile helped; no one knew exactly what kind of volume Carney carried. The crooked side of the business remained discreet and off-hour. He cut off the crazies and junkies as soon as their natures expressed themselves. Moskowitz knew what he was pulling in on the high end, but not the rest, the coins and whatnot he laid off on separate brokers across the boroughs. Compared to your typical, flashy uptown crook, Carney looked like, well, a furniture salesman.