By now Lonnie and Nelson Wright were certain they recognized the second gunman. Lonnie thought he was that stickup guy who liked to drink himself into a smudge at the Blossom, back when he worked there. Later that night, Wright decided he knew him from church, alto in the choir. Both men had purchased items at Carney’s Furniture in the past, Lonnie an Egon dresser and Wright a Sterling Dreamer recliner.
Purvis said, “Oh, my lands.”
Munson kept his gun on his captives. He chomped a roast beef sandwich from the spread, then reached down for the big metal box and set it on top of the bar. He gestured at Lonnie with his .38 and ordered him to get the key from Corky Bell.
Between dealing cards and tending bar, Lonnie had been embroiled in three stickups and three proper robberies in his life, on top of untold tantrums abetted by lethal props. He had dealt at tables where a bad beat or a suspicious flush had sent men reaching for their pistols, watched in muted wonder when Blackjack Martin pulled a .22 on the Accountant for flipping two pair. Each time he was certain he was going to die. His father, a button man for Caesar Mills back in the ’40s, had been rubbed out and dumped in Mount Morris Park, over by the seesaws. Lonnie avoided the park and its reminders, and had been unsettled the entire weekend due to the proximity. He was sure, looking at the detective’s gun, that Mount Morris was about to claim the latest member of his unfortunate bloodline.
Corky Bell opened his waistcoat and glared at the wall opposite. Lonnie reached into the man’s pocket and extracted the key.
“We paid off the cops.” Corky Bell sulked. “We paid you off.”
“Lodge a complaint at the precinct.” Food tumbled from Munson’s mouth as he spoke. He ordered Lonnie to unlock the metal box. Munson had him covered if his hand emerged with a piece. It did not. Who wouldn’t smile at all that cash? Players had cashed out, come and gone, but from the chips on the table there was more than a hundred grand. His estimate was correct. Four days of dinks, dummies, and whales splashing money around? A hundred grand easy.
Munson said he might as well take the box. “Beats wrapping it in my jacket.” He closed the lid and commenced his retreat to the exit. His wounded arm—the weight of the box made him squint in pain. The players didn’t move, and neither did Lonnie or Corky Bell and especially not Arnie the guard, who was making his bid for being the Laurence Olivier of playing possum.
Munson reminded his companion to hold up his gun. He did so. By the time they reached the door, the black man’s arm was limp again.
Corky Bell said, “This is a Corky Bell game, goddamn it.”
Munson cursed and charged back to the poker table to smack Corky Bell across the face with the butt of his gun. Corky Bell shrank to the floor and covered his head against the next three blows.
It was 10:49 P.M. on Tuesday, June 1st. The black robber had departed. Munson told the players to go back to their cards and wished them good luck. As the front door closed, they heard him shout after his partner, “Where do you think you’re going?”
SEVEN
Munson was cashing out. Ditching the force, his shakedown network, the city of his birth, and presumably his wife to start over far away. Carney assumed far away—you didn’t split across the river to the Jersey suburbs after a burn like this. “I’ve had big scores, sure,” Munson explained. “Plenty. But a real jackpot? Tonight I have to carve it out of the rock.” He rat-a-tatted on Carney’s briefcase, which was half full of stones and cash. Room for more.
Carney had stopped hearing the sirens when Webb slugged him. After Edgecombe, they filled the night again, each one a warning.
At the corner WALK turned into DONT WALK. Do it—drive the Cadillac into that diner, crash through the plate glass. That was one way to kill this evening in the crib.
Munson had murdered his partner minutes before. He dry-swallowed a pill. A species of upper, from his behavior. “How long have you been planning this?” Carney said.
“Thought I had a few more weeks. Mulling shit over. Then I got the subpoena, and it had been such a lovely weekend, like I told you, that I thought maybe it was a good New York weekend to go out on.” He worked his jaw. “There’s nothing here now.”
Buck Webb said he wanted to “straighten it out like two white men.” He got his wish. Was bumping him part of the plan or an improvisation? At some point, when Munson got in his partner’s car or earlier, he’d considered whether or not the Knapp Commission could break his friend. Decided in the affirmative.
Munson allowed Carney to breathe as long as he was useful. Carney had an idea to call Calvin Pierce to ask the lawyer about his legal options. Such as: Was he now an accessory to a murder? He’d been a murder accessory before, once or twice—he’d lost count, frankly—but not to rubbing out a cop. Call Pierce—like Munson would let him pull over at a phone booth. Like he’d survive the night.
He intended to. His wife was coming back from a trip tomorrow and he missed her. “That—” Carney began.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Munson said. “I have a list of errands. Some final collections. Then you drive me down to the Philly airport and I wave goodbye.”
“Sure,” Carney said. No point in asking where he was flying to. Bimini or Buenos Aires. Knowing which airport was too much information, given what Carney had just witnessed.
No, Munson was not going to let him go at the end of this. Like father, like son—the cops shot Big Mike Carney to death during a drugstore robbery.
The detective directed him downtown, to an address off Mount Morris, a wide Italianate brownstone. The Aloha Room? He’d heard of it. On the parlor floor, top of the stairs, bright light squeezed out of cracks in the thick curtains.
Munson held out a .38.
Carney stared.
“It’s not loaded. It’s not a trick.”
Carney took it. “I’m not.”
“You hold it. The more convincing you look, the less likely they are to fuck with you. Like most things in life.”
“No.”
“I already lost one partner tonight.”
Carney’s mouth flattened to a line.
“Joking,” Munson said. “We go in, you just stand there.”
“If they start shooting?”
“Avoid the bullets.”
Conscientious objector. That was the term Carney was looking for. Because of my moral constitution, I must decline to serve. This was Munson’s war, not his. He took the revolver.
First stop was the Aloha Room. His arm was so heavy it sank, he couldn’t help it.
Second stop was the pimp. A crime of opportunity, as they put it.
They were on 126th and Lenox. Munson’s last order after he locked the poker haul in the trunk: “Drive.” Carney took them north, toward the 157th hideout. Perhaps they were done.
Munson said, “Pull over there.” Pointed to two men on the corner.
The flamboyant quotient in Harlem was at a record high these days, thanks to manufacturing innovations in the synthetic-material sector, new liberal opinions vis-à-vis the hues question, and the courageousness of the younger generation. The line between the stylish and pimpified was unstable, ill-defined, but everybody was having too much fun to complain. The men on the corner were pimps, no doubt, given the warm night and the superfluous layers. The taller one wore a purple suit with silver piping, and a white, spangled broad-brimmed hat. His companion’s long black leather trench coat draped on his shoulders like a cape. The tiger-fur pattern on his shirt and red, white, and blue cowboy hat created a macabre circus effect.