Also like TV wrestlers: They liked to lay it on thick.
Which would have been fine if Mr. Gibbs had not been present.
At Carney’s request, the cops displayed their badges with petulant resignation. The cow-faced one, Garrett, appraised Mr. Gibbs as if he’d stumbled on a narcotics transaction. Mr. Gibbs’s mouth fell open and he started blinking rapidly.
Fitzgerald pulled out a notebook. Garrett checked his watch and exhaled loudly.
“Look, I’m in the middle—” Carney said.
“I should be going,” Mr. Gibbs said, rising.
They stepped aside to let him pass.
Carney trailed the regional sales manager across the showroom. Marie and Rusty stood by the maroon Collins-Hathaway armchair, dumbfounded. She covered her mouth with her palm.
“Perhaps this visit was not meant to be,” Mr. Gibbs said. He weaved through the floor models. “Last week. The unpleasantness.”
“This is—” Carney began. He stopped.
He wasn’t going to beg this white man for a goddamn crumb. Fuck him. Fuck the cops, too.
Mr. Gibbs walked two yards onto the sidewalk and stared into the Harlem hurly-burly. His shoulders slumped. “How do I get out of here?”
“Rusty!” Carney yelled. As the associate sales manager delivered Mr. Gibbs into the embrace of the New York City Taxi Commission, Carney returned to the detectives. There would be plenty of time for rage if he made it past this new, unscheduled interview.
Carney sat at his desk and the detectives loomed in the doorway. Fitzgerald did the talking while his partner used his X-ray vision to scan on the sidelines. “A young man died last night in a transient house on 171st,” Fitzgerald said. “The Eagleton? His name was Linus Van Wyck. We believe you knew him?”
“Van Wyck?”
“Like the expressway.”
Carney was confident in his salesmanship, especially on his home turf. Today’s specials: surprise and sadness and curiosity. Yes, he knew Linus, he was a friend of his cousin Freddie. “What happened?”
“If we knew, do you think we’d be here? Your cousin is Frederick Dupree?”
“Yes.”
According to the building manager, the detective said, Freddie was the last person to see Linus alive. “He was picked up a while back on drug charges—did you know that?”
Because Freddie had been eating a meal with Biz Dixon when the police arrested the drug peddler. The arrest Carney had set up. Carney shook his head. Garrett prowled the office. He bent to peer at the items on the bulletin board, inspecting.
“The case was dropped,” Fitzgerald said. “Didn’t say why. Is your cousin a user of narcotics?”
“Not that I know of.”
Fitzgerald peered up from his notebook. “What about you?”
“What about me? I met Linus once.”
Garrett stood before the safe and gave an idle tug on the handle. It didn’t budge. “When was that?”
“Years ago.”
“Your father was Michael Carney?” Fitzgerald said.
“We weren’t close.”
The detectives looked at each other. “Rough character, he’s the one I’m thinking of,” Garrett said. He dislodged some food in his back teeth with his tongue. “When’s the last time you saw Frederick Dupree?”
Carney answered their questions. Once it was clear that the man at the Eagleton hadn’t fingered him yet, he dummied up. He’d dummied up his whole life, covering for Freddie. All of it practice for this: Chink Montague, the cops.
Who else was coming for Freddie?
Garrett stiffened. “What’s that?” he said.
“What?” Carney said.
“That.” He pointed into the showroom.
Carney didn’t have a lot of cop customers, as far as he knew, but they usually went for the decorative accent pieces for some reason. In the two months the Egon sculpture had hung on the wall no customer had ever remarked upon it. The metal sunburst was four feet in diameter, with three layers of copper spikes that radiated from a polished brass center. The perfect finishing piece for a contemporary living room, or so Carney said to himself. But nobody bit, even after Marie affixed the sale tag. Detective Garrett asked him to put it on hold for him until Wednesday, payday, plus he had all this overtime due from the riots.
“We still want to hear from your cousin regardless,” he said. “This Linus character came from a big Park Avenue family. Did you know he was from money?”
“Only met him the one time.”