Heavy money. Carney held his briefcase. It contained the jewelry-store goods and the bodega cash. Munson carried the two black sample cases from the barbershop, into which the bottle-club money had been added. It had started raining, a tentative drizzle, foretold by cool winds around corners since the Aloha Room.
The front door of the building on Edward M. Morgan Place didn’t lock. As Carney waited in the vestibule for Munson to open the second door, he checked out the ceiling. A new habit of his since he visited Aunt Millie one day and stumbled on a guy shooting up in the entrance. To flush the syringe of blood, junkies aimed upward and pushed the plunger. Over time the ceilings of certain vestibules and bathroom stalls and elevators—whatever removed you from the eyes of the world for a minute—became mottled with crimson spots. They lurked above everybody’s heads, unseen, these sordid constellations.
Carney and Munson crossed the black-and-white tile of the lobby to wait for the elevator. It was a loud one, rattling in the shaft like a coffee can full of nails. “Don’t apologize when you frisk someone,” Munson said, “it’s poor form. Hold a gun or don’t. Frisk a man or don’t.”
“I sell home furniture.”
The detective tested the weight of the cases, pleased. “The point is, choose—you’re in or you’re out.”
“When did you choose to take out Buck?”
Munson shut up the whole elevator ride. When they got to the apartment, he said, “He wasn’t the same man. They would have broken him.”
The detective lit a cigarette. The briefcase and the sample cases perched on the coffee table like primitive totems. “Anyway, it’s after midnight,” Munson said, “so that’s a yesterday thing. Today is about waiting for the man who’s bringing me a new name and a new ID. We hit the airport and I’m out of your hair. Can you handle that?”
Carney said yes.
Munson made like he was going to open one of the cases and count the money. He looked at Carney and stopped himself. “There’s a twenty-four-hour joint up the block on Broadway—why don’t you pick up some sandwiches?”
“I won’t run?”
“We both know that. And some beer—more beer.”
Carney was the only person on the street. The streetlight changed with a foreboding thunk, and a handful of cars surged forward. Out this late, he was usually more aware of what was going on around him, per his father’s lessons. In Mike Carney’s world, the city was overrun with nasty characters out to “knock you upside your head.” Vigilance was paramount. After a few hours of being Munson’s partner, he’d take getting knocked upside the head.
Two men killed tonight. Munson had stopped his rampage after dropping Popeye—no one, including Munson, had known which way it was going to go. Carney emptied the barbershop safe and they were out on the street a minute later. No curses or oaths from the remaining men followed them, just the chipper harmonies of the Jackson 5 singing “Stand!”
A few hours earlier, Munson didn’t permit Carney to be alone in the car with the keys. At the bottle club and the bodega, he let Carney keep them. Now Carney was solo, headed up Broadway to the only establishment open on this stretch, a corner bodega with a red-and-yellow awning and blinking lights: El Charrito Grocery Deli.
Maybe he and Munson were partners now, after all Carney had seen. Certainly Carney was sick of him, one of Munson’s signs. He recalled that first ride with the cop in ’64, when Munson bragged about infiltrating activist groups. Who would Carney tell? Family man like him, with vulnerabilities. Who would listen? Munson was invincible.
He gestured to the clerk through the bulletproof glass and waited for the two ham and cheese and the two six-packs of Rheingold. El Charrito was the terminus of the leash, the boundary of the game. The rain snuck under his collar.
How did Freddie put it? “It’s not the same if you don’t cheat a little.”
* * *
***
They gobbled up the sandwiches, Carney on the couch and Munson slouching in the director’s chair. “The guy’s a genius,” Munson said. “Forge anything—I’ve seen it. From the Ukraine, now he lives out by Coney Island. He’s always going on about Nathan’s. His granddaddy used to make sausage, and he says the Nathan’s hot dog is a perfect forgery of what he used to get back home. He aspires to the art of Nathan’s.” He dislodged a nugget of gristle from his teeth. “Anything in the world, you can find in this city. Or that used to be true.”
Munson pointed at the red-and-black ceramic imp and claimed to have a funny story about how it came into his possession. Carney had been correct—it was a souvenir of a big night out, in this case when Munson and Webb put the squeeze on a massage parlor in Chinatown. He tuned out the story, distracted by what awaited as morning approached.
“You want it?” Munson said. “Maybe sell it in your store as a decorative piece.”
Carney declined.
“I’d have to get my cut.”
“You take your cut, Munson.”
“You’re looking at me like, why all this tonight?” Given the night’s adventures, his face remained untroubled. “The money comes in, the money goes out. I have a boat. It is a very nice boat, keep it in Bay Shore and I can’t take it on the plane. You know how it is. You bought those two buildings?”
“Yes.”
“Heard about that. I had a piece of a building once.” Munson lit a cigarette. “They have a saying at the DA’s office: Detectives are poor in their twenties, rich in their thirties, and in jail in their forties. Which is a fucking insult, because I made plenty of money in my twenties.”
“There’s still the jail part.”
“We’re here to head that off at the pass.”
The bedroom door had been closed since Carney returned from El Charrito. The money was no longer on the table, so he assumed that’s where it went. How much did Munson take in tonight? Enough to find a hidey-hole and fix it up nice, and off the jewelry when he got settled. He noticed one of Munson’s guns on the rickety coffee table, next to two empty beer cans. Was the other one in the ankle holster? He couldn’t tell.
Munson rose to get a better view of the street. “That him now?” It wasn’t. “The view from our place—my place—on Fifty-fourth is something out of a postcard, but I’m starting to like this one better.” He yawned. “It’s not so lit up this late, so it’s like a person: getting shut-eye, looking peaceful after a long day.”
The snub nose of the building reminded Carney of the prow of a ship. The director’s chair wasn’t the helm but the crow’s nest, allowing a survey of the dark blue motion of the city night. Munson’s head dipped drowsily. Carney saw him fight it off. For all his bravado, the vicious front tonight, the detective was spent. The days when the streets were his streets and he swaggered through with rude and rowdy charisma were over. He wasn’t the same man he’d been ten years before. It was 1971 and the man and his city were versions of themselves, embers burying themselves in layers of their own ash.
“Here he is,” Munson announced. “Charging me an arm and a leg for the rush job and the schlep.” The Ukrainian rang the buzzer half a minute later.