The streetlight penetrated the parlor window in a sheer purifying beam. The silence and calm put him in a renouncing frame of mind. He was done.
Dropping the thieves and heisters was no problem. Chink Montague and Munson were another matter. Carney rendered unto Chink an envelope every week for permission to operate. Mobsters by and large did not respect conventions like two weeks’ notice. Carney informed Delroy, Chink’s bagman, that he no longer dealt in previously owned merchandise but would continue his weekly contribution to express gratitude for all their good work together. The envelope was recategorized as protection, like Carney was just another schlubby shopkeeper getting leaned on. Which, to be sure, he was and ever had been.
Carney invited the detective to Nightbirds and Munson toasted his retirement: “To the most famous nobody in Harlem.” He came by for his handout the next week, and the one after that, but trailed off. After a time Munson only showed up at Carney’s office at Easter and Christmas to collect for the “Widows and Orphans Fund.” He hadn’t visited in three years.
Apart from tending to his extensive shakedown network, cultivating criminal alliances, and occasional forays into police work, Detective Munson was an accomplished fixer. Sometimes that meant ushering a state senator out the back fire stairs of a Lexington Avenue whorehouse during a bust, or handing some mope’s blabbermouth mistress a one-way ticket to Miami on the Silver Meteor. Doubtless he had dumped a body or two in Mount Morris Park when it was all the rage.
Sometimes a fix entailed snagging that week’s hot ticket for someone—the Frazier–Ellis fight at the Garden, or whatever big act was in town. Carney remembered Munson gloating over taking his wife to see Sinatra, taking his ex-partner’s ex-wife backstage to meet Vic Damone, and taking one of his young girlfriends to see the Dave Clark Five at Carnegie Hall. Carney had no idea what the detective was into these days, the nature of his schemes and scams, but if Munson had half as much juice as in the old days, there were Jackson 5 tickets coming his way.
At what price, he didn’t know.
* * *
***
As instructed, Carney waited by the phone booth across from the 157th Street subway station, northwest exit. The tiny triangular park contained six decrepit pigeons and three benches. Comidas, Farmacia. From the signs and stores, this stretch of Broadway had grown more Puerto Rican and Dominican since his last visit. On 125th, it was Jews and Italians out, blacks in, and up here the Spanish replaced the Germans and Irish when they split. Churn, baby, churn.
Carney had time to kill. He called home and told John that he’d be back late. “There are Swansons in the freezer,” he said. “Your mom is back tomorrow and she’ll probably make you something good. If she’s not too tired.” The train from Chicago got in around noon—it could go either way. May cackled in the background. “Tell May she’s in charge.” He hung up.
When May was younger, there was a face she’d put on when she got intemperately excited, this mask of joy. The face drew from Elizabeth’s features, but Carney was proud to have contributed. He didn’t realize how much he missed it until the Jackson 5 came along. Half her conversation these days came from 125th Street flyers: “It all goes back to the miseducation of the Negro, Daddy.” Black Power guys and their pamphlets were worse than Jehovah’s Witnesses. Stopping him on the street: “Where do you stand on Mozambique?” What did he know about Mozambique? But when Carney hollered across the house that the Jackson 5 were on Flip Wilson, or the jaunty opening chords of “ABC” capered from the living room Panasonic, it conjured that face from bygone days. He was going to get her tickets.
Busy boys, the Jackson 5. He didn’t know if they were sexually active, but they were certainly promiscuous, with sponsorship deals with no less than three breakfast cereals. May and John crooned their Alpha-Bits commercial all the time, in constant harassment: “Grab your Alpha-Bits and come with me, we’ll eat through the Alpha-Bits from A to Z!” The lyrics made sense, Carney allowed, but they were dumb. Fold-out posters from Super Sugar Crisp boxes covered May’s room, joining those from Flip and Tiger Beat. Her bedroom was a glossy temple to the Boys from Gary, Indiana. Jumping, dancing, lounging in the park, solo and in group shots, bounding onstage in funky harlequin outfits and silvered space-age jumpsuits, every image equipped with their otherworldly smiles.
May entered a Teen Beat contest to “Win a Banana Split Date with Michael!” in March, and Tiger Beat’s “Win a Roller Skating Date with Michael!” in April. She was passed over, despite her impressive essay on why she deserved the honor: “Michael is for the people, like me.” To one-up Super Sugar Crisp, Alpha-Bits started including flexi 45s of “ABC” and “I Want You Back” in their boxes, which in turn drafted Honeycomb into the novelty collectibles arms race. Honeycomb’s secret weapon: balloons in the shape of the Jackson 5’s heads and imprinted with their likenesses. Macabre tokens all, but May would not be complete until she got the Michael.
The quest continued for weeks. Supermarkets were declared “lucky” or “dead,” corner grocers struck off the list or patronized with feverish dedication. Word among the junior set held that a bodega on 132nd had cracked the code. Carney received orders to check it out.
He ripped the top off the cereal box and rummaged. “The Michael!”
“It’s Marlon.”
“It looks like Michael.” The latest Marlon joined the sagging menagerie （four Jermaines, three Jackies, sundry Titos and Marlons） on her windowsill. It took fourteen purchases. Like everything in life, the Jackson 5 promo was rigged. Carney approved: Teach ’em early.
The pay phone rang. “Smile for the birdie.”
Carney searched around. Across the street was a restaurant called El Viejo Gallo. He squinted. Perhaps there was a phone in the vestibule as you walked in. He looked up—Munson could be in any of the buildings surrounding the park.
“Behind you,” Munson said.
The nine-story building sat at the southern tip of a wedge-shaped block. The eastern side was a street he’d never heard of—Edward M. Morgan Place, which ran for a block and a half before it turned into Riverside Drive. A block and a half, shit. Morgan should have killed more Indians or stolen more money, everybody knows that’s how you get the long streets. Munson buzzed Carney in.
The detective was holding the apartment door ajar when the elevator doors opened, posture indicating a gun held out of view. He motioned Carney over with a jerk of his head and made sure no one else stepped out of the car.
The one-bedroom apartment had been cut out of a larger unit, the decorative moldings terminating at the new walls. Munson told him to make himself at home and returned the .38 to his duty holster.
The place was a mess—if Carney lived there, his kids would be pushing a broom to earn their goddamn allowance. Last he knew, Munson lived downtown somewhere with his wife. This joint was a hideout, with just enough furniture to make it habitable. Bring a girl here, maybe, if you straightened up. Nothing personal in sight, save for a three-foot-tall ceramic imp, red-and-black in a Chinese style, which had the markings of a souvenir you’d swipe at the last stop of an all-day bender. It was set at a forty-five-degree angle to the wall, as if sneaking away from something unsavory.