One day Uptown Gardens finds an envelope on their doorstep—whistleblower from inside the institute. “Remember Daniel Ellsberg? He’s the RAND guy who slipped the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. It was like that. It was all in there—their own internal study on urban policy over the last thirty years, all the shit I was just talking about. The system is broken. The firehouse closures were going to make it worse. They buried the report, and went ahead.”
From Pierce’s tone, the story wasn’t going to end with justice served. “They get to Miller,” Carney said. “Some hush money?”
Pierce lit another cigarette. The ashtray was a huge crystal knob on top of a pedestal, a solid piece of ash disposal. “We had it in black-and-white. Moynihan’s ‘benign neglect.’ In ’68, Lindsay’s planning commission says it outright—if East Harlem and Brownsville burn up, think of how much money we can save on slum clearance before we redevelop it. Cheaper to let it burn and they can rebuild. We had them dead to rights on the race angle.” He glanced around to see if implicated parties were enjoying a Friday-evening drink. “But then we get a call. Uptown Gardens has dropped the suit. Mr. Kwame Miller moves to fucking Bimini, and a couple of weeks later the city terminates the RAND contract. Not saying it’s all connected but—yes, that shit is definitely connected.”
Carney made his hands into fists as Pierce talked. He was getting angry but didn’t know what set him off. Pierce wasn’t describing anything new. Was it the kid? You see things from up in the clouds and you miss how it plays out in the street. What puts the Ruiz boy in the hospital—the fire, or everything that made the building empty in the first place?
“That’s how the city works,” Pierce said. “Look at Oakes—last time we were here we were opening our checkbooks for him. But when he was a prosecutor, I didn’t see him taking down these slumlords and crooked insurance agents. Arson case hits the DA’s office, that’s the last you’re going to hear about it. City buys up that dead property, or seizes it outright through eminent domain, and sells it to a developer for cheap, or an organization like Homes 4 Harlem assumes control—there’s a lot of money in ‘urban renewal.’？”
“The borough president, he gets a say in who gets those redevelopment contracts?”
“Officially, no. The borough president is your voice in city hall, ha ha. In practice, he’s a member of the Board of Estimate, along with the other BPs and the mayor and the comptroller, and it’s the actual smoke-filled room of guys carving up the city, just like in the old days. Boss Tweed shit. Occasionally you hear rumblings from the Feds about suing to break up the Board of Estimate on constitutional grounds, but until then it’s the Wild West.”
Carl the waiter cleared his throat and asked if they wanted another round. Pierce ordered another scotch and Carney a club soda.
“Let’s just say the borough president has a big bucket and a big ladle and he’s doling out whatever to whomever he wants. For some consideration…A lot of our fellow members are banking on Oakes getting in there. They probably already owe him for looking the other way when he was a prosecutor, and he’s the type of man who keeps track. You saw Ellis Gray at the fundraiser, licking his chops. You don’t think Sable Construction wants in on those low-income housing contracts? Dave Parks? Newsome? There are a bunch of guys waiting on an Oakes regime. That second generation of Dumas gentlemen.” He raised a glass to the portraits on the wall. “Their daddies did it, now it’s their turn.”
“Envelopes moving around,” Carney said. Self-perpetuating graft, like the self-perpetuating fires. Once it gets going, it doesn’t stop. “And what about you?” he said. “Now that you’re hanging your own shingle?”
“I do work for the city. I’m happy to represent all different kinds of clients.” He grinned. “When it comes to politics, I write checks same as everybody else. Like you.”
Carney shrugged. “I didn’t have much of a choice.”
Pierce stubbed out his cigarette. “Who does?”
* * *
***
Carney arrived home at ten minutes past ten o’clock. Trouble was making good time to his front steps. He beat it by twenty minutes.
Dark windows. He still said “Hello?” as he stepped into the hallway. The echoes made him glum. He’d gotten used to not having May around the house, and now John was out more often, working at Baskin-Robbins or off with his friends. Elizabeth was scarce more nights. She said she’d be late tonight, but the specifics escaped him. It was only him in the house these days, more and more, like on 127th, after his mother passed and his father gave himself to the streets. He couldn’t place her in the apartment anymore, her face a dark blur. Carney flicked on lights as he moved through the rooms, as if he’d discover his family on the couch or chairs, waiting for him.
The kids had left a note on the kitchen table—Daryl Clarke was having a party up the street. Next to it was a phone message John had taken: “Marie called. She says ‘Albert is off the ventilator.’？”
Wonderful news. Should he send a card? Flowers? He’d ask Marie on Monday, maybe even walk up to the apartment himself to see if there was anything he could do.
Elizabeth came home—she closed the front door in her signature fashion, firm and final, to shut out anything gaining on her. He hollered from the kitchen.
“How was your day?” She saw John’s note. “Daryl Clarke’s house?”
“Aren’t they away?” Carney said. James and Baby Clarke had aggressively talked up their West African vacation for months. They had booked it through a Seneca rival, Motherland Tours. Whether Baby was sticking her thumb in Elizabeth’s eye was up for debate.
Elizabeth was unconcerned about what the kids might be up to. “Sometimes you have to let them think they’re getting away with something.” She asked after Pierce, and he said the lawyer had droned on about the responsibilities of running his own shop. Carney didn’t mention the omissions in her candidate’s campaign literature regarding graft and extortion.
Elizabeth’s eyes shined: tipsy. She wore a blue-and-green summer dress that she’d put in the back of the closet because it had grown tight. It fit again. Was she growing her hair out again? It was the longest it had been since her mother passed.
“Janet and I went for a drink at the Whistle Stop after the meeting,” Elizabeth said.
Right. Janet was another member of Women for Oakes. She had recently moved from Texas after a divorce and had an active social life, Carney was coming to understand.
“It’s a nice place. They don’t play the music loud.”
That last part came out as a kind of lament. The campaign was more than helping out a childhood friend, he saw now. It gave her purpose as Seneca receded from her life. She’d gone to work for Dale at Black Star soon after college and made the travel agency into the thriving operation it was today. Dale was in no hurry to retire, and when he did, he’d never put a woman in the top position. Even if Elizabeth basically ran the joint. She’d finally realized that fact last year—that it wasn’t hers, and never would be. It was Dale Baker’s, and then whichever one of his sister’s idiot kids from the Miami office he handed the keys to.