Munson rolled his arm and flexed to test the injury. Usable, if painful, his thumbs and fingers. The caveman: opposable thumb on one hand to hold a club, middle finger on the other hand to flip ’em the bird. He stretched and winced. Turned to Carney. “You’re married, right?”
“You fucking know that.”
“I ain’t trying to jump to conclusions,” Munson said. “The family unit is complex in the ghetto, I know that. You got a wife, you know no matter how much you love her, no matter how great she is, she’s going to drive you batshit sometimes. With how she walks and talks, how she chews her fucking food, fucking breathes. Sometimes. All the time, if you’re unlucky.” A beer can materialized in his hand. “That’s what it’s like having a partner. Sitting in the car, babysitting some scumbag, it’s cold, he’s telling the same story you heard a hundred fucking times, you’re telling a joke you told a hundred fucking times, smelling each other’s farts, staring in the darkness—it’s a marriage. Same shit.”
Munson’s guest frowned. He glanced at the front door, as if for reassurance it still existed. “Did you get divorced or something?”
“Divorce,” Munson said. “That’s what I’m saying, you have to ride out the bumps. Step back. Cool off. Otherwise, you’re going to tear each other’s eyes out.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “You know what a pad is?”
“The Serpico thing,” Carney said. “It’s how a precinct divvies up bribes.”
Everybody knew about Frank fucking Serpico. Last year, The New York Times ran a whole series on police corruption, starring Serpico as “the Whistleblower.” Serpico was straight, everyone else in his precinct was bent. The little things that made the job bearable—meals on the arm, cooping, pocketing twenty bucks to rip up a speeding ticket—Saint Frank found distasteful. Which made big things, like the pad—a marvel of grifting ingenuity—morally unacceptable. Serpico tattled to his superiors, who did nothing （no surprise）， went all the way up to the mayor’s office, who did nothing （ditto）， until they got wind the Times was about to publish. Then Mayor Lindsay got the Knapp Commission together to study “the problem.”
Among the freebie meals and shakedowns of bar owners, working girls, and any unlucky fool who believed they could operate for free, the pad underwent particular scrutiny. “Everybody pays money to operate,” Munson explained to Carney, “since time immemorial. Even if they called it something different, shekels or whatever. A couple of years ago a wise man said, Why don’t we organize this? In the station house. That’s the pad—everybody’s envelopes made nice and orderly. On collection day, two bagmen make the rounds for the whole division. They hit up the local sports book, the numbers joint, the man behind the big dice game. Then that big stack of money that gets divided up according to who you are, your rank and seniority. Patrolman, let’s say he’s getting six hundred extra a week, a sergeant makes eight hundred, up to the captain, who gets a share and a half.”
In Harlem, anyway, Munson added to himself. That’s why they called it the Gold Coast. It’s why Munson transferred up from vice, no-brainer. Patrol the streets, making twelve grand a year if you’re lucky, the Gold Coast brings a nice bonus. In the good old days when Munson was the bagman for his division he ran a scam where he inflated the number of plainclothes. The bookies forked it over. Since Munson was the one who divvied up the pad, he pocketed the made-up shares. Wasn’t a bad racket.
“Guys like me,” Munson said, “I get my nut, but I also work nights, you might say. I extract additional tribute from certain parties for my own private contracts. Like you. Chink Montague. Notch Walker now. He pays the station house to operate, and gives to me to keep it running smooth. One’s gasoline in the tank, the other is the oil.”
“It runs smooth until it breaks down,” Carney said. “Serpico got shot in the face. They said it was cops.”
“Bent hates straight, Carney. Putting on airs—You think you’re better than me?” The detective shrugged. “Only a matter of time before someone tried to clip him.”
Carney got up to open the window more. It didn’t budge.
“You want to know why Webb jumped you,” Munson said. He lit a cigarette. “Two weeks ago, the BLA shot those two men on patrol and declared open season on cops. The whole force is mobilized to put them down—what’d Malcolm X say?—by any means necessary. It’s a holy mission. Webb and I are running all over the city. Get a tip about some militant assholes who use a soup kitchen for a front. We go in, bust some heads—”
“Soup kitchen?”
“You ever read that Panther paper? Soup kitchens are how they get a foothold in a neighborhood. Giving people what they need. A lot of these people are from out of state, out-of-state agitators. California, Oakland. And they come in with their talk and try to turn our own blacks against us.”
“Yours?” From Carney, the tone qualified as incensed.
Munson put up his hands: People were so touchy these days. “Point is, we’re all over town following leads. Last Friday, I get a tip from a guy I know—breaks kneecaps for Notch Walker. Sometimes feeds me stuff, I don’t know his game yet. I meet him in the back of Baby’s Best and he asks me if I’m still looking for those cop killers. What do you think? He gives me the address of this place one of their girlfriend’s at.”
Munson and Buck sat on the apartment, a five-story tenement on 146th between Amsterdam and Convent. The third-floor window didn’t have a curtain. The apartment was lit, shadows play on the walls. The detectives waited in the car.
Two colored guys came rolling up the street. They carried themselves differently than the local talent, a different species entirely. Munson and Webb looked at each other: Okay. The men didn’t buzz up or produce keys—the front door was busted. They went upstairs to join the party.
Munson sighed. “I should point out that me and Buck, our relationship is showing signs of strain. We’ve ridden together for many years, have kicked down doors and collared every brand of knucklehead on God’s green earth, but like I said, a partner is eventually going to get on your nerves. Buck’s on my case. ‘You’re really putting away the booze, maybe you should lay off the bennies, stop burning the candle at both ends.’ I go, who are you to talk—”
“I get the gist,” Carney said.
“Point is, you know how when your wife starts yelling at you about ABC, it’s never A, B, or C that’s actually pissed her off, it’s really Z, the last thing on her list? But she can’t say it until she goes through the whole alphabet?”
“Grab your Alpha-Bits and come with me, we’ll eat through the Alpha-Bits A to Z.”
“What?”
Carney shrugged.
“Buck’s going through the whole alphabet,” Munson said, “and finally he gets to Y, which is how much money I’m making. Why didn’t you cut me in on this, why didn’t you cut me in on that, naming shit I haven’t thought of in a long time. People been dead for years, old deals from way back. What does he expect? I’m enterprising.