The man was not running for head of the block association, in other words.
Word had it Leon put two buildings on the south side of 118th to the match, diagonal from 371, where Carney’s tenant was injured. He worked at Cooper’s Fish on 125th. At lunch and supper their line went up the block. Every five years Pepper gave their fish sandwiches another chance and each time he got sick. No one else complained. Cooper’s was also a fishmonger, with rows of porgies, snapper, and flounder on ice that slowly melted and dribbled pink water into white buckets. Winter days the reek bordered on unholy and come summer descended into full blasphemy, despite the exertions of three gigantic standing fans.
Leon worked the fryer. Sweat-sheened, twitchy, and beady-eyed, he did little to rebut a negative firebug stereotype. Pepper had been informed of the man’s frequent cigarette breaks, when Leon padded out two doors down to smoke and stink of fry oil. His target soon stepped outside.
It was two on a Friday afternoon, just after the lunch rush, the sidewalks of 125th a furious stream. Sometimes it was prudent to brace a man when there was no one around and other times it was nice to slug him in front of witnesses to underscore the desperation of the man’s position—an entire Apollo’s worth of people could be watching and no one would help. Pepper and Leon hadn’t even gotten into it and already men and women were clearing a spot, just picking up on vibes, alerted to impromptu mayhem by their city survival systems.
“Leon!” The cook tried to place Pepper. He immediately apprehended the nature of this encounter. There was no hiding Pepper’s personality, which was December when the days got shorter and shorter: cold and relentless. Inevitable. He didn’t like Christmas trees, or babies, or owing anybody anything. Any smile that broke out on his face was a mutiny swiftly put down. He was not there to present you with an oversized check from the sweepstakes company or a dinner invitation from Raquel Welch. Pepper was an emissary from the ugly side of things, to remind you how close it was.
Leon didn’t wait for Pepper to speak. He ripped off his hairnet and snarled.
Pepper blinked. Toe-to-toe with a fry cook on the One-Two-Five. Thanks, Carney. The firebug emitted a stench of hot oil and sweat, and Pepper was momentarily back in Newark, a little boy watching his stinking father return from a shift in the hotel kitchen. With the smell in Leon’s corner, it was two against one. Leon charged. Pepper gave in to his fate, took one on the chin. The arsonists he’d met this week had not been fighters. Starting with an intimation of violence set the stage for a quick confession. Not here. Leon knew how to fight. They danced around. Passersby formed a doughnut. How many tussles did 125th see every day, how much blood? He got a few licks in. Leon dove for a Coke bottle in the gutter. Pepper did not approve and brought his sneaker down on the firebug’s head. His old black shoes would’ve been more useful, he noted.
The crowd whooped. An old man threw a carrot into the ring. Muffin crumbs flew from a church lady’s yap: “Show him! Show him!” Rooting for him or for Leon?
Pepper’s back held up, that was the main thing. Nary a twinge.
“The fuck do you want, anyway?” Leon said.
Pepper stared down the crowd. They got the hint. He helped Leon to his feet and they withdrew under the green canopy of Triple-A Travel. Pepper told him what he was after.
Leon rubbed his tongue over his bloodstained teeth, spat a red glob on the sidewalk. He squinted. “Come to my place of work asking about some fire somebody did?”
“No one told you to raise a fist.”
“I lose my job, there will be hell to pay, I promise you that,” Leon said.
He asked Pepper to repeat the particulars. Leon told Pepper that he was in the Tombs last Thursday night. Picked up for a scuffle in Happy’s. “Not that it’s any of your damn business.”
Pepper believed him—a call to Happy’s later that afternoon confirmed matters—and once again he doubted his fit for this assignment. Sometimes Pepper beat the wrong man, and the man happened to wear a hairpiece. If this man was black, he picked up the man’s knocked-off hairpiece and returned it in a form of reluctant apology. He was cold, but not without feeling. He had developed a little ceremony at this point, like when the military presents the American flag to the family of a dead soldier: thusly. Pepper felt a quiver in his back as he bent to retrieve the hairnet from the pavement and put it in Leon’s greasy hands.
* * *
***
Somebody named Joe left a message at the bar. They gave a time and an address. Buford would have demanded more information, but Toomey was filling in, and when it came to saloon answering services these days you got what you paid for. Pepper moseyed over.
He’d been wrong about Mose, that they’d never worked anything big together. On his way to the meet he remembered the alarm-company deal back in ’52. People still talked about it, like Don Larsen in Game 5 or seeing Jackie Robinson on TV for the first time. Old-timers, anyway.
The brains behind the Bulldog Security Co. job was a young man named Uncle Rich. Uncle Rich’s brief career in Harlem crime had been outlandish, flashy, and memorable. If Donegal’s had a Hall of Fame that consisted of more than initials scratched into the wall above the urinal, surely Uncle Rich’s portrait would have been up there next to greats like Grady Cooper, Vic Thurman, and the Count. In his youth he got sent up the river for stealing a bundle of New York Timeses from a midtown newsstand. Ten-year bid. On the inside he commenced his studies—analyzing the big scores and botched break-ins, the spectacular heists and life-ruining debacles, interviewing madmen and broken masterminds alike—and emerged into the free world as the architect of visionary capers.
It couldn’t last and it didn’t, but before he got taken out Uncle Rich brought Big Mike and Pepper in on schemes. That first job had its origins in the postwar alarm-company boom. Everybody was getting their establishments good and wired—doors, windows, vaults. Any serious business maintained a dedicated line to one of the big security companies. “We’re in an arms race,” Uncle Rich told Pepper and Big Mike. They were in the basement of Saint Andrew AME Church over on 147th. The church rented out space, and the crook was interviewing prospective crews in fifteen-minute slots.
“Johnny Law comes up with an advancement,” Uncle Rich said, “we figure out the countermeasure, and the game continues.” He removed his specs and rubbed them with a handkerchief. Everything about him was precise: his movements, his diction, how long he maintained eye contact. As if he had timed it out and rehearsed it all before you knew you were going to meet. “I got to thinking,” Uncle Rich said, “what if instead of deactivating the alarm system, you deactivated the alarm company?”
Bulldog’s representatives wore down shoe leather poaching clients from the Big Three: Argo, Top Lad, Valiant. Bulldog was out of Chicago, where they’d sewn up an exclusive contract with Ma Bell; like mobsters expanding their territory, they were moving in on established players. The sign-up deals for switching were pretty generous, and they gave you a nice sticker to put in the window to identify you as a client. And a target. “That’s how I got the idea—it says, they all use the same key for the front door.” Gideon Gem & Diamond on Broadway defected, and Fabrizio, and a few other uptown jewelry outlets that maintained a substantial overnight inventory.