The July swelter plus the heat from the mammoth dryers made the room unbearable. You couldn’t hear a word above the machines and the fans that shoved the hot air around. Which was probably the point.
last wash 7 p.m. Today it sounded like a warning.
Chet the Vet steered Carney into the office, past the vending machine that dispensed boxes of Salvo, Biz, and Instant Fels. The back room was dim and most of the light came from the door to the alley. Chink Montague sat in a wheeled, green leather executive chair, one leg crossed over the other, his hands interlaced. Gigantic diamond rings bulged on his fingers like warts.
Chink Montague had made his fearsome reputation with a knife, but no longer conjured the image of a fleet, balletic slasher. People still remembered the audacious sadism of his first campaign, after Bumpy Johnson got sent to Alcatraz. That initial bloody exercise in ambition had served him well over the years, but he’d learned other means of control. Take the publicity trick with the hams. Bumpy had started the Christmas goodwill giveaway, handing out turkeys to the Harlem needy from the back of a truck. Chink followed suit, tossing out free hams the day before Easter, sometimes to people who were unaware that he’d killed their husband or son. Or were too hungry to care. These days he was more likely to hold court than to press steel to some mope’s throat, presiding over his minions at the Hotel Theresa bar or buying a round for everyone at one of his clubs, the 99 Spot or the Too True.
And this place, behind one of the city’s innumerable fronts, where the operators of power worked their levers and pedals. Sometimes business wasn’t business unless rubes and squares walked outside, oblivious to how they were getting fucked over inside.
The manager of the laundromat was a scrawny man in a saggy undershirt painted with sweat stains. Launderer, heal thyself. He leaned against the bathroom door and scratched his neck. Chink Montague snapped his fingers and the man scurried away.
The mobster explained that he was getting the floors refinished at his office upstairs at the 99 Spot. “Contractors,” he said. “They promise and promise it’s going to take not so long, and then you have to double it. It’s hot in here today, but I like the sound of the thumping machines. Like someone’s getting worked over in the next room.”
A customer hollered through the door to complain that a machine stole his money. Chet the Vet stuck his head out. Whatever his expression was, it ended the dispute.
“First time we met,” Chink told Carney, “I was telling you to find something. People told me there was a new fence uptown, keeping his head down.”
“I try to stay out of things,” Carney said.
“And I was helping out a young starlet—Miss Lucinda Cole. She’s in Hollywood now. You seen any of her movies?”
“That one about the orphanage, with the singing.”
“Miss Pretty’s Promise. She wasn’t bad at all in that. Should have been the lead, but they have their own way of thinking.” He smiled to himself. “I could tell them a thing or two about who she really is, anyone wants to listen.”
There was a poster of Sid the Sud King above the desk, him standing in a genie pose, as if he’d zapped the clean into the clothes of a mom and her two kids, who smiled grotesquely. The yard was one of those you saw in articles about those new Long Island developments, like Levittown or Amityville, that didn’t sell or rent to Negroes. Carney thought, Do I need a mascot?
“Never did find that property of hers,” Chink said, “but you and me started our association, so good came out of it, right?”
Carney nodded.
“You pull a big score, you best give me a taste. And if it turns out someone needs a fence, I might send him by that furniture store on 125th. Something falls into my lap and I think you’re the one to call, I call you, right?”
Their arrangement had paid for the expansion of Carney’s store and for the move to Riverside Drive. Carney and Chink had only talked face-to-face once before, six months after the Theresa job. Yea Big and Delroy swung by for the envelope and brought Carney out to a cherry red Cadillac parked outside. Chink was in the back. He rolled down the window, looked over his sunglasses, and gave Carney a once-over. “All right, then,” the mobster said, and the Cadillac pulled away. All right, then was a binding contract, signed in ink or blood, take your pick.
“It’s been profitable,” Carney said. “And your end has always been reasonable. I hope you’ve been satisfied.”
“That’s why I told Delroy and Chet to be polite. This guy sells couches, bring him by the laundromat and we’ll have a chat.” He rolled up his sleeves. “It’s about your brother. He’s been messing around and I’d like a word.”