Reece attended both. His nose, chin, and ears came to a ratlike taper, with a hungry malevolence glinting in his eyes. He’d stolen the Black Panthers’ style—black leather coat, turtleneck, and occasional beret—but his sneering mouth, full of gold, hipped you that he did not devote the majority of his energies to social activism. Reece wasn’t a bad poker player in Pepper’s estimation. An ungracious winner. Intimidating in the showdown, from the other players’ expressions when they went heads-up. Corky had tipped Pepper as to who he was: Notch Walker’s right-hand man. On call to remind those who trespass how power preserves itself: swiftly, bloodily. “If he acts funky, take it outside quick, is all I’m asking.” Reece didn’t cause any trouble and they’d had no interaction.
As he rocked in the rocking chair, in the hot room on Strivers’ Row, Pepper remembered the weasel Reece brought with him. Confronted with a big bet, Reece leaned back in his chair and gossiped with his flunky, both smirking, to get in his opponent’s head. He was medium height, compactly built, with big, red-brown curls on his head and jug ears. Both his profession and cologne were criminal. Dan Hickey was his name; Pepper inquired when the pair returned for the ’74 game. The next time Pepper saw Hickey, he was hitting him with a baseball bat, the less powerful of the two sluggers in a post-beating assessment. A fact that suggested Hickey was the one they should brace first. Church Wiley and his job would have to wait.
In this era of Notch Walker’s empire, its structure and routines were well documented. After the death of Chink Montague, Notch seized his nemesis’s territory, consolidating the south Harlem rackets with his own Sugar Hill operation. A realignment of that size causes ripples: this night spot is taken over, that bar changes from a Montague hangout to one controlled by Walker goons, back-room business changes addresses. Those whose livelihoods and survival were determined by the new geography of power—criminals—maintained maps of where it was safe to go and where it was not safe to go, where this Walker operative spent his nights and where another had acquired a controlling interest. Best keep track.
Civilians registered these transitions as routine phenomena; they were in fact local expressions of higher-level forces. The bar across from Eddie’s closed. It was a Montague front made redundant in the new order. That Italian restaurant we went to on your birthday has really gone downhill. The plan is to strip it and torch it for insurance three months from now.
It was not lost on Pepper that Notch Walker was now king of the Harlem underworld because he had killed Chink Montague a few years back.
Dan Hickey spent most of his days at Optimo on 107th and Madison. As a mid-level operative in Notch Walker’s operation, his habits were no secret. Carney ventured inside on reconnaissance and was surprised to discover a stocked and functional tobacco and stationery store, not a jive, half-assed front. Hickey had a real cashier up front, and appeared to keep his illicit business confined to the back room.
He was Reece’s bagman, rounding up protection money Monday afternoons. Pepper would nab him when he departed on his rounds. Until then he and Carney sat and watched in Buford’s new Buick LeSabre. Pepper shook his head when Carney told him that May had borrowed the family car to go to Great Adventure in New Jersey. Elizabeth had promised that she and her friends could take the car to the amusement park weeks ago.
The Buick was a sweet ride. Chocolate with a beige hardtop, and a string of weird buttons on the instrument panel that did God knows what. Take your temperature, read your palm.
“Elizabeth still sore?” Pepper asked.
“I’d say she’s glad you’re doing better. That’s the important thing.” Carney tapped the steering wheel. “She knows all about my father and that you worked with him. I’ve never gone into detail and she’s never made a big deal about it. Main thing is, she considers you family. She doesn’t want anything bad to happen to you.”
Pepper pointed. Hickey hit the street, strutting in red, white, and blue shorts and a lime-green guayabera. His red hair—and big ears—stuck out from under his straw porkpie hat. He was eating a pear, slowly, cheerfully savoring the fruit.
He didn’t see Pepper coming. One rarely did. Pepper hooked his arm around Hickey’s neck in a way that appeared friendly to bystanders, before Hickey’s face collapsed as he registered who had him, and the .38 poking his rib cage. Pepper led him to Buford’s car, cooing menace into those jug ears all the way. Hickey dropped the pear.
Carney drove them over to 132nd and Twelfth Ave. Their destination was a three-story building situated in misery between the elevated sections of Riverside Drive and the Henry Hudson Parkway. The two overpasses cursed this area, which hunkered in the shadow of one for part of the day, then the other as the sun traversed. Some warehouses limped along, loading bays opening and closing in last-gasp commerce; most were abandoned. At night the desolate stretch by the river was ceded to dark elements and dire business.
If he could help it, Pepper only came here during the daytime. Carney told him he’d only passed overhead in a car. Until today.
Pepper made out the faded letters on the brick: Liberty Biscuit Co. It had been a long time since the premises had been associated with anything sweet. A high-end Spartan Inc. combination lock—out of place in this run-down patch—secured the metal gate covering the door to the factory offices, and once it was unlocked, the gate had to be thumped in two places before it unstuck and allowed access. The late Paul Miggs showed Pepper the trick when they divvied the Castle Island haul.
The usual urban scavengers had taken over and defiled the factory floor. A mountainous tangle of machinery had been heaved against one wall, preventing access to the managers’ domain. Which meant the offices were musty but hadn’t been broached by the druggies and vagrants. It was a good hideout. You could split a take there if you were a paranoid type or lamming it, and it served as a quiet place to beat information out of an individual.
The Liberty Biscuit Co. hoarded days of heat, and walking inside was like entering a giant, funky sneaker. Pepper stifled his smile at Carney’s reaction. He explained the place wasn’t his, he was borrowing it. “Though can you borrow from a dead man?” Hickey dragged his feet. Pepper smacked his head.
They set up in the former reception area. The coffee table featured a Time magazine moon shot extravaganza, and Sidney Poitier beamed from the cover of Ebony—it had been a long time since the orange leather couch had welcomed someone on biscuit-related business. A section of grimy burlap lay over the receptionist’s desk, covered with rust-mottled tools—pincers, an assortment of hammers, serrated things with handles. A vise was clamped on a corner of the desk where a Rolodex should have been, and a shrine of crumpled Burger King bags rose between two dead plants. Old ad campaigns featuring the Liberty Biscuit Baby covered the wood paneling, enlisting the big, monstrous, blue-eyed infant as a material witness to what transpired in the room, and sometimes soaked into the dirty beige carpet.
A wood-grain nameplate on the floor in the corner read MS. LOON.
Pepper considered Ms. Loon’s desk and chose a humble crowbar.
Hickey hadn’t spoken since Pepper nabbed him. “Who’s he?” he asked. Carney at that moment was wiping dust on his pants.