But now it was 1976, and the city had cut back on most services, including larger-than-life crooks, to say nothing of legendary incendiarists. It was hard to generalize about criminals, Pepper had learned. He’d worked with shaky, pencil-necked dudes who went stone-cold when they kneeled before a safe, and bloodthirsty hit men who were thoroughly henpecked. But every firebug he’d met—save Big Mike, who was a generalist—had been furtive and squirrelly both on and off the job. The profession attracted nutjobs. The type of guys Pepper sought were single-room-occupancy men, hot-plate men, shitty tippers who never passed a pay phone without checking for errant dimes, and they dreamed of fire.
Pepper took a run at the finisher first. The New York Post article named the shady owners: Excelsior Metro. Right there in the phone book. They rented an office above a TV repair shop on Broadway and 135th, the same space Sammy Johnson used to operate out of before the lawyer got put away for extortion. Sammy had bankrolled a few jobs Pepper had been involved with, fronting the setup money for a cut. Ghostly black-and-gold paint on the windowsill spelled out I’ll See Them in Court on the half-moon window.
Pepper went on stakeout for a couple of hours—the bench in the Broadway median had a sad elm for shade—before he went up and picked the lock for a look-see. The two rooms were a front. Blank walls, rolled-up carpet, the desk drawers and rusty file cabinets empty except for mouse droppings and misspelled travel brochures, probably from the tenant between Sammy and Excelsior Metro. Some addresses were made for crime. Crooked lawyer, fly-by-night travel agency, slumlord HQ—it was like how certain soil was good for producing wine because of the minerals, or so he’d read. Suite 2 of 3341 Broadway produced a rich grift vintage.
The owner of the repair shop waved bills in Pepper’s face when he asked about the neighbors upstairs: “You tell them I got their mail!”
Pepper moved on to the men with the matches. It wasn’t like the firebugs were all hanging out at some firebug club, talking combustion rates and airflow. He started with an old acquaintance—Mose Hamilton, who’d torched a chunk of Harlem in his heyday. His last fire was in ’59, when he lit up a building on 167th and killed four people. Two kids. It was Christmas, a quiet news day, so the papers milked it and the chief of police took an interest. After a sixteen-year bid upstate he found a gig sweeping up at a pool room on Seventh Ave, Manny’s.
Manny’s was a mile and a half from Martinez Funeral Home. After being laid up for six weeks, Pepper relished a good walk. He hadn’t popped pain pills in days, and after a lifetime of wearing the same style of black Keats shoes, had finally bought a pair of canvas sneakers. For years his various partners had suggested lighter footwear as a practical matter. They were miraculously comfortable. Pepper had reached an age where an “I told you so” was met with a thank you, as opposed to a punch in the nose, his preferred response since youth.
In his convalescence he sat by the window as mourners gathered and dispersed below, and took in the tokens of the stirring spring: hookers switching to lighter, more breathable fabrics; second-story men dawdling before fire escapes, considering their chances; the latest, worse generation of pigeons. They slapped up bicentennial shit everywhere, as if every day in Harlem started with the Pledge of Allegiance and a salute to Plymouth Rock. It said in the paper that on July Fourth a hundred old-timey ships were to parade through New York Harbor—who cares about some candy-ass ships? Then Memorial Day it got hot, like someone hit a switch: Summer in New York City, here the fuck we go again.
He had missed two jobs while laid up, which turned out to be a lucky break. The jewelry-store heist in Brooklyn Heights got real bloody, and the pigs pinched the entire crew at the Astoria warehouse rip-off—silent alarm. His injury was his guardian angel looking out for him. Church Wiley had reached out about a job; they were going to meet up next Monday. This looney arson gig for Carney was a way to get back in shape. White man ain’t killed you yet, a little exercise won’t either.
When Pepper caught up with Mose, he was in the back of Manny’s, leaning against the Wurlitzer and drinking a Yoo-hoo. The jukebox was broken—a junkie had stolen the turntable—and the fluorescent tubes overhead blinked out What a Dump in Morse code. 11 A.M. at Manny’s. The midnight shift of hustlers and die-hard idlers was sleeping it off, and the daytime crew had yet to punch in. Mose nodded at the bartender, who sized up Pepper and decided he had no problem if the codger grabbed a five-minute break. Mose wiped a funky rag over the small table by the john and they sat.
Prison had shrunk Mose, his neck and wrists bobbing in collar and cuffs, but he still maintained one of the city’s great goatees, something you might find adorning the chin of an old midtown locksmith. Pepper asked about it. Some guys had heroin smuggled into the joint, or reefer; Mose’s connection kept him in tubes of Dick Hyde’s Beard and Mustache Oil.
He didn’t want to revisit the whole fire thing. “I’m out, Pep,” Mose said. “Look at me.” He touched a singed spot behind his ear where the hair didn’t grow, to remind himself.
“There are firebugs who do it for kicks because they’re sick in the head, your basic pyromaniac. Handsy priest fucked them up, mommy slapped them around when they were little, whatever—they got a screw loose.” He tendered the example of Fuzzy Pete, who’d lived in a flophouse down the street from Mose when he was a kid. His contribution to the genre? The “Fuzzy Bomb”： a cigarette and a matchbook, wrapped in cotton from a mattress, all secured by a rubber band. Cigarette burns down, ignites the matches—there you go. This was no insurance play—Fuzzy targeted his former teachers and social workers. Like many a firebug, he liked to watch the show. “That’s how they finally got him,” Mose said. “Smoking a cigarette across the street while his old principal’s apartment went up. He’d knocked him out and left him on the kitchen floor before he splashed gasoline around and lit the fuse.”
But Pepper wasn’t looking for a nutcase. Mose said, “After the psychos, you have what you might call freelancers. A gentleman needs a fire for a onetime thing, he offers a work-for-hire gig. That’s what I did—freelance jobs. My name came up if you asked around. You know me, Pepper—I’m steady.”
Pepper grunted. They had worked together a few times, nothing worth mentioning.
“I liked the planning,” Mose said. “The setup—it wasn’t too far from pulling a big robbery job, juggling all that shit. Don’t look at me like that. How many times you been pulling a heist and it goes down the toilet because of the other guys? Torch job, I don’t have to rely on nobody but me.”
Pepper was skeptical of the comparison, and expressed it using off-color language. “I’m not looking for a one-off operation. This guy is in a crew.”
“Yes. Could be any number of people.” A large man in a Hawaiian shirt entered the pool room. Mose paused. The customer went up to the bar and ordered a rum and Coke: harmless. “These arson gangs today,” Mose said, “in Brooklyn, the Bronx, all over uptown, they got the whole racket down, better than how we did it in the old days. They have regular guys they use. Young guys. Everybody I used to know is in the can or dead.” He said he’d ask around. One or two names popped into his head, give him time to pin down the details. “What’s it to you?”