Where’d you get this beautiful birthday cake?
Beautiful Cakes, of course!
Munson darted inside after bowing for a young woman steering a baby carriage. She had a prodigious ass. He let her pass, smiling, and winked at Carney.
Gibbs. Carney hadn’t heard from the man since the aborted meeting. The hotel switchboard took his messages, which went unanswered. Bella Fontaine headquarters in Omaha only offered that he was out of town on business. When Carney got back from Aunt Millie’s apartment, he rang up Wilson at All-American, to see if Gibbs had made it to their sales meeting. Carney had to endure some Condescending White Man humor about uptown mayhem. “Heard you had some weather the last few days…” Once that was out of the way, the midtown salesman offered no insight. “No, he didn’t mention anything. How’d it go? He’s a straight shooter, isn’t he?”
What was Carney going to tell Gibbs, anyway? The dead man was my cousin’s junkie partner, but it was an accidental OD—unless it wasn’t—and as you can see the foot traffic on 125th Street is quite impressive.
The white cop dallied longer in the bakery than he had in his previous stops. Carney remembered Pepper taking him on his hunt for Miami Joe, the fronts and hideouts the crook had exposed during their search for the double-crosser. That time, places Carney had never seen before were suddenly rendered visible, like caves uncovered by low tide, branching into dark purpose. They’d never not been there, offering a hidden route to the underworld. This tour with Munson on his rounds took Carney to places he saw every day, establishments on his doorstep, places he’d walked by ever since he was a kid, and exposed them as fronts. The doorways were entrances into different cities—no, different entrances into one vast, secret city. Ever close, adjacent to all you know, just underneath. If you know where to look.
Carney chuckled and shook his head. The way he phrased it, like he wasn’t a part of it. His own stores, if you knew the secret knock, were hip to the password, granted you entrance to that criminal world. You could never know what was going on with other people, but their private selves were never far away. The city was one teeming, miserable tenement and the wall between you and everybody else was thin enough to punch through.
Munson returned, burping and rapping his chest with his fist as if stricken with heartburn.
“Cakes,” Carney said. “Let me guess—it’s a whorehouse?”
Munson said, “You don’t want to know, Carney. Which reminds me of the other reason you’re on your own with Fitzgerald and Garrett.”
“A minute ago you were sorry and now I’m on my own?”
“You read the paper today?”
“What makes you think we read the same papers?”
Munson reached back for the Tribune. He flipped to page 14 and gave it to Carney.
Police are investigating the death of Linus Millicent Percival Van Wyck, of the Van Wyck real estate dynasty. Van Wyck, 28, a cousin of Robert A. Van Wyck, who served as New York City’s first mayor in 1898, was found dead in a Washington Heights hotel Sunday night…
Hotel—that was a kindness. Raised in Manhattan, a graduate of St. Paul’s School and Princeton University, and last employed by the law firm Betty, Lever and Schmitt. Some fancy old-school outfit, Carney gathered, worthy of a monogrammed leather briefcase. How long ago? Before Linus met Freddie. The exact cause of death has yet to be determined, but authorities have characterized it as suspicious in nature. Any information…The picture accompanying the article depicted a teenage Linus with a crew cut and a smug, yacht-club grin.
Millicent Percival—enough to turn even the hardiest among us to narcotics.
“That’s the public version,” Munson said. “What you don’t see is the mayor getting chewed out in his office by the Van Wyck family counsel. Your cousin’s friend—he’s Park Avenue. Was.” He shrugged. “And now they’re applying pressure. Applying pressure like, when I step on a cockroach with my shoe I am applying pressure. Mayor’s office rings up Centre Street to chew them out, and then the commissioner makes his own call, to his own men, all pissed off. Shit rolls downhill. They want Van Wyck’s friend and what he stole.”
Van Wike—Munson pronounced it correctly, as Pierce had. “Stole what?” Carney said.
“You tell me.”
It hit him: Munson had been interrogating him this whole time.
“Why not walk?” Carney said. “Why are we driving one block, parking, going another block. It’s dumb.”