Pepper said, “My lawyer.” He took off his windbreaker, folded it in half, and laid it on the coffee table. “You like a bat. I like a crowbar. Different strokes.” It began.
Carney retreated to the doorway and crossed his arms. Winced. Flinched. Turned away.
Dan Hickey gave it up.
Leon Drake had called them last Thursday night, he said. Hickey wiped his bloody nose with his hand and leaned back on the leather couch. They met at Optimo. When he heard what Leon had to say, he rang Reece and had him come over. “Leon, he’s pissed off,” Hickey said. “？‘I do good work for you, I’m not trying to get hassled at my day job over some fire years ago.’ Reece tells him to slow down. Leon says this guy came to the fish store, trying to pin a fire on him. Why’s this guy asking about 118th, we haven’t done shit there in years. Leon doesn’t know. None of us does. Next day, Reece is like, ‘Bring this guy in, we’ll ask him.’？”
Carney perked up. “Leon does arson jobs for you, but not last week.”
“He’s cuckoo, one of these die-hard firebugs. I get a load of his face the first time it comes to pay him, I said, ‘This man digs fires.’ Piss him off and you wake up in a bed full of gasoline, you know?”
Pepper scratched his jaw. “You do the legwork—find the firebugs, fix it up tidy.”
“It’s a side thing. You work for Notch Walker, he keeps you busy. But sometimes you need extra money.”
“Sure,” Pepper said. He glanced at Carney. Carney knew about sidelines.
“Like 118th. We took care of some tenements there a couple of years ago. Absentee landlord, city can’t track him down. Building inspector goes in to check it out and he falls through the floor, that’s how fucked up the place is. Someone wanted it burned out. We take care of it. City of New York seized the plot, flips it to this community group cashing in on all this urban renewal money—you know, help us clean up the ghetto and we’ll write you a check. Look at the place now, you’d never know how fucked up it was. It looks pretty nice.”
“And last week?” Carney said.
“Wasn’t us.”
“？‘Us.’ I get you’re in the arranging business, but who are you arranging it for?”
“Oh,” Hickey said. “I don’t know.”
“Nah?” Pepper said.
Hickey shook his head.
Pepper tapped the crowbar on his thigh.
Hickey said, “A man named Alexander Oakes. He’s connected. Development money from Albany, downtown. He tells us where to hit and, you know, things happen after that.”
Carney overcame his shyness. He stepped into the room. “Hold on.”
One thing Pepper had learned from working with the family over the years, you’d have an easier time grabbing a bone from a junkyard dog than getting a Carney man to let go of a grudge.
SIX
Carney got up that morning with a plan to head to the office, finish the summer ad buy, take Robert to McDonald’s for lunch, and spend the rest of the afternoon going over the books. Drop in on Mrs. Ruiz—can’t forget that. He didn’t know he’d be leaving with Pepper. Payback had healed the old crook—planning, anticipation, execution, and basking in his bloody ingenuity afterward. When her mother passed, Elizabeth got a copy of that book On Death and Dying, which identified the Five Stages of Grief. When Pepper was laid low, the Four Stages of Putting Your Foot Up Somebody’s Ass provided similar comfort.
The old crook had recovered overnight. Pepper had stayed in his room all weekend, sleeping most of the time. The kids brought soup and sandwiches upstairs and they played checkers. They tried to teach him that board game Risk but it didn’t take. “I never heard of half these goddamn countries.” Monday morning Pepper came down the stairs, creaky but resolute. If Elizabeth hadn’t left for work, she would’ve marched him back upstairs. Carney sized him up. Pepper scowled back.
Hours later they were in a disused baked-goods factory in one of those parts of the island that seem on the verge of falling into the sea. There were whole stretches of the city where it pretended to be sane and civilized, Carney thought, and places where that pretense broke down, and the biscuit factory resided in one such place. In a zone of harsh static between radio stations playing zippy tunes. He’d never had the pleasure of walking around there before, but it was a day of novel experiences. Pepper had introduced Carney to half an alphabet of felonies over the years, Class A felonies, Class B, F. Kidnapping was a new one.
Inside the factory, Dan Hickey’s mention of Oakes stirred Carney from his state of mortified unease. He asked how Hickey got mixed up with him.
Reece got pinched on an extortion charge back in ’72, Hickey told them. Facing a lot of time. His lawyer comes in for a meeting one afternoon and says that a small fee will bury the charges. Reece didn’t get the name of his guardian angel until months later. Oakes walked into Ted’s 127 Bar, a Walker hangout on Eighth, and introduced himself. There was a tenement on Convent he wanted removed. That was the start. “Sometimes it was an insurance play and Reece got a cut. Sometimes there was Albany money that’d show up years later once construction started, and after a while Reece asked for a cut on that back end instead of up front.” As a prosecutor, Oakes took money from landlords and shady insurance guys to look the other way on the arson jobs, but when he left city hall he got on that redevelopment gravy train, and that’s when he hit the jackpot. “？‘Antipoverty funds.’ It sure was anti our poverty!”
“What else?” Carney said.
Hickey interpreted his interest as a sign he might avoid further punishment and became an avid raconteur. “He used to brag,” Hickey said. “That’s why we had to talk to him a few times, he runs his fucking mouth too much.” One night they were in his office on 135th waiting for Reece to show up. “He’s on the phone, acting all hard. He gets off and started going on about how this guy thought he had something on him, insurance adjuster trying to juice him. Oakes is like, ‘You’re the one who’s got to watch out.’？” He tells Hickey how he goes to his safe, pulls out his ledger, and starts reading off dates. “？‘April 2nd, 1973. Ring any bells? May 15th. Ring any fucking bells? You do insurance—I know about insurance, too.’ That shut him up, he says.”
Hickey didn’t know if Oakes’s performance was showing off or a message to not fuck with him. “I was going to warn him not to get in Reece’s face with that shit, but that ain’t my job.” He paused. He looked at Pepper. “It was Oakes who told—recommended—that Reece pick you up. See what your angle was.”
Carney snorted. Pierce had said, “He’s the type of man who keeps track.”
Pepper said, “What’s your boss’s boss think about all this?”
Hickey was tentative. “Most things, Notch don’t care as long as you give him a taste.”
“Is he getting a taste of this action?”
“No.”
Carney caught Pepper scanning the room, as if to confirm that it was a room without windows, and that there was no one to hear. “Don’t,” Carney said.