Munson directed the three men over to the icebox. Carney frisked Driscoll and Popeye, a procedure he conducted gingerly, to glares and half-muttered malice. He apologized.
“Watch those knives,” Munson said. There was a knife block on the yellow Formica counter, next to a line of ceramic jars. Carney moved it out of reach.
“What’s the joke, Munson?” Driscoll said. He looked at Carney and tried to place him.
“The joke is, give me the fucking money. The joke is, you think I won’t shoot you.”
Next up, the DJ put on “Maybe Tomorrow.” Evidently they had stumbled into a Jackson 5 block. No one else can make me cry the way you do, baby. The song saddened Carney when May sang it at the top of her lungs, cavorting on her pink-and-yellow blanket in her room. What did she know of heartbreak and disaster? She didn’t understand the truth of the words yet; she would. All the sorrows he met on the road remained at their stations, waiting for his children to come along. You sing the sad songs first, then you act them out.
If he was doing anything right as a father, however, his children would be spared kidnapped-by-homicidal-policeman. Few songwriters took this up as a subject.
Driscoll said, “You don’t want to fuck with Chink.”
“Chink will take it out of your hide,” Earl added.
“Chink,” Munson said. “They call him Chink because he’s got eyes like a Chinaman. You think he likes that? It’s disrespectful.”
Driscoll frowned. He possessed the ability to articulate perfect sentences with a cigarette embedded in his mouth. It was stuck to his lip by saliva or a special epoxy, Shakespeare monologues couldn’t budge it. To Carney: “Who are you?”
Carney resumed his don’t-shoot gesture, as if pushing away something hot or sharp. “I’m just here,” he said.
“What’s your name?” Driscoll said.
“He’s going to need something to put it in,” Munson said. “The money.” He pointed to the sample cases next to the counting table. Not the first time they had been stuffed with the lifeblood cash of Harlem. He ordered Driscoll to tend to the safe. Carney handled cases.
Driscoll glanced at Popeye: What to do? If someone was going to rob Chink Montague on your watch, might as well have it be a cop. You were protected in a way, like when a bank got hit and the teller handed over the goods—it’s insured. Nothing you could do. Popeye’s sour expression did not change. Driscoll kneeled before the Eureka safe and began his supplications.
Popeye spoke for the first time: “You touch that money and see.” He had a high voice, womanish. Carney sized him up like a customer. Popeye appreciated that you didn’t come back from a transgression like this. Chink paid good money to operate. If Munson let this crew live, Chink would be hunting for him inside an hour. Him and Munson’s cop buddies, too, for fucking with the pad. Depending on Corky Bell’s mood after the Aloha robbery, maybe the cops were already after him.
Next up the radio in the other room played the Jackson boys’ “Ready or Not.” Carney was certain that the night had driven him mad, and now he heard Jackson 5 songs all the time between sirens. He was thankful May didn’t want Archies tickets. Ready or not, here I come, you can’t hide. DJs sometimes played tapes to take a break, to have a cigarette on the roof or eat a sandwich in peace, let a girlfriend sit on their lap. It occurred to him that the DJ had stepped away from his booth, stepped away like God, and left them to interpret and endure his choices, like God. Set it up, roll the spools, let it happen.
“You guys don’t know Detective Munson, like I do,” Popeye said. “We know each other from his vice days, right, Munson? How long ago was that?”
Driscoll paused when Popeye spoke, turning from the dial to figure out his role in what was about to happen. Just as the barbershop was a front for the numbers operation, Driscoll’s agreeability covered Popeye’s vicious character. Something was going to happen; after riding with Munson all night, Carney was attuned.
“Keep going,” Munson told Driscoll. The detective concentrated: Popeye and Earl by the icebox, the other one by the safe. Interpreting muscle twitches and tiny movements of the eye.
“What was that lady’s name?” Popeye said. Outraged, not over the story but because his place of work had been defiled. He sneered a line of gold teeth. “Pimp name of Prince Mike had this sweet piece, worked those midtown hotels. What was her name, Munson? I know you remember. What you did. If you forgot, the Devil will tell you—it’ll be on his list.”
From the opposite side of the room, the low flame beneath the pot was undetectable. Popeye grabbed the handle and launched the contents of the pot—greens in oily, boiling water—across the room. It scalded Munson’s face and hands and he screamed. He recoiled and fired, first at Popeye, and then at Earl, who had taken advantage of the distraction to grab a chair from the dining table and toss it at the detective. The chair hit Munson’s chest, throwing off his aim. His shot missed Earl, but it stopped his insurrection; the man shrank back to the stove. Popeye fell and grabbed his leg, leaning against the icebox. The bullet had hit him below the knee.
Driscoll hadn’t made a move. His face remained blank and bovine.
Munson said, “People in this fucking city. They will test you.” He looked over his red hands. His skin ran scarlet, but he had not been badly burned. “Hurry the fuck up,” he said. He shot a hole into the avocado icebox in revenge.
The safe unlocked with a sprightly click. Munson told Driscoll to join his companions on the other side of the room. He nodded at Carney. “Go ahead, brother.”
Carney hadn’t seen this much cash in one place since his extracurricular days. His own Hermann Bros. safe released a cold, metallic scent when opened, one that Carney associated with money. He had expected that scent here. Rubber bands tied the bricks of cash. He started transferring them to the first case.
“You got Stepin Fetchit here doing your business,” Popeye said. He regarded the blood on his hands. “Notch put you up to this? You his nigger now?”
Munson shot Popeye three times, hitting him once in the chest and twice in the head. Three more holes in the Frigidaire; they were going to have to replace it. Everybody hit the ground, noses to linoleum. Only Munson stood, gun drawn, immobile. Carney peeked through his fingers. He thought the cop looked like a statue. A bronze figure off in the corner of a tiny city park, commemorating a man of power and influence, covered in pigeon shit. A name on a street sign. You pass it every day and never stop to see who it was you were supposed to remember.
EIGHT
Ask the hungry dreamers to define jackpot and you’ll get a thousand different answers. The waitress at the hash joint playing her same three numbers every day, the safecracker squinting through sparks, the hijacker kicking the driver from the cab and steering the truck to the drop—what’s a jackpot? One says, hitting the jackpot means escape, the exit from miserable circumstances. Another offers that a jackpot is enough money that you never have to worry about money again, logic so circular as to be impregnable. Others might interpret jackpot in light of a different sort of fortune—good fortune, like a comfortable life, or a loving family, or a surfeit of luck in a terrible world. As he helped Munson bring the haul up to the 157th Street pad, Carney arrived at a more practical definition: If you need two men to carry it, it’s a jackpot.