Munson walked past Carney and shut the bedroom door before he could get a look inside.
“Dead body?”
“Some of those Laugh-In girls sleeping it off.”
They sat on the couch, a sad, shoddy piece you’d carry out same day from a discount store. Munson sunk in with a sigh. He looked terrible. Pale, unshaved, blond hair spiking around the new bald spot on his scalp. When they first met, Munson had been stout and solidly built, one of those cops you think twice about starting with. The detective had softened over the years as he availed himself of the myriad perks of his job, the steaks on the house and the free rounds. Lumpy, like an army bag full of soiled laundry that had sprouted legs. Now he’d shed some of that bulk and looked harrowed, slimmed down in a way that you’d mistake for an exercise regimen if you didn’t know it was from running from something that was gaining on him.
Munson took a big swig from his can of National Bohemian.
“Taking a break from the manhunt?” Carney said.
Munson tossed him a beer can, which Carney set on the table.
“Matter of time. Those scumbags took their service revolvers, did you know that?” Munson burped. “That’s like someone taking your dick.”
“One imagines.”
“Everybody’s working the streets, trying to get those poor guys’ pieces back, find those assholes. The same way you hope they’d do it for you.”
“Don’t you have people on the inside? Like with the Panthers?”
Munson looked disgusted. “You saw how that trial went. Should have made that case, but they yanked it too soon.”
Back during the ’64 protests, Munson had told Carney about the young officers he’d sent to infiltrate CORE and SNCC, to strangle the protests. The white detective didn’t take Carney into his confidence out of trust but because the furniture salesman was no threat. What was he going to do, write a letter to the Amsterdam News? White cops did as they pleased. Crooked white cops? Untouchable.
Munson had emerged one day like a wart, self-generating. Before the Theresa job in ’59, Carney’s fencing business had been small-time in every way—appliances, the odd emerald pendant off an old widow’s bureau. For a small cut, he acted as the middleman between uptown crooks and a gem guy on Canal. Then Chink Montague put out the word that he wanted to recover a Theresa item—a necklace he’d given his girlfriend Lucinda Cole. The uptown fences were put on notice, and Carney got added to the criminal Yellow Pages.
Munson showed up for weekly tribute soon after, half to put the bite on Carney and half to hit on his secretary Marie, before she got married. The detective came in handy years ago during Carney’s revenge campaign against Wilfred Duke, the crooked Harlem banker, but they hadn’t been up to anything nefarious in a while.
“Got something for you to see,” Munson said. He disappeared into the bedroom, pulling the door behind him.
By now, Carney was sure there was at least one dead body in there. The things you do for your kids.
He walked to the snub nose of the room, where the building tapered to a wedge. Eight stories up, the windows had a spectacular view down Broadway, the Hudson peeked out here and there to the west, and over the tops of the shorter tenements St. Nicholas Park huddled in gorgeous green. A good sentry spot, with its survey of the subway entrances and the little triangle park. The lookout came with a director’s chair and a milk crate to hold an ashtray and empty beer cans.
“To see who’s coming,” Munson said, returning. He held a brown paper bag.
“You hiding out?” Carney had reached Munson at the station house, but the man acted like he was lamming it.
“I have to take care of some things.” The detective swept the pile of newspapers and balled-up sandwich wrappers from the coffee table. Inside the paper bag was another scrunched paper bag, out of which Munson scooped handfuls of long diamond loops. High karat, set in glimmering gold and platinum. He coughed and scratched his stubble.
Carney kneeled by the mound of jewelry. Disentangled the pieces, shaking his head at the disrespect. He was rusty, but the majority appeared to be 1940s pieces by Marjorie Baxter in Boston, some swanky cocktail and bib necklaces. The smaller pieces were the same vintage, American designers, like the two Raymond Yard ruby-and-diamond bracelets and the Louis Long chokers. The kind of assortment you’d get if you knocked over a collector who specialized, or smashed a glass display case and grabbed what you could while the alarm blared. “This what you’re up to these days?” Carney said.
Munson took a big swallow. He was hunched over in the director’s chair like a rooftop gargoyle, not taking his eyes from the jewelry. “This is a one-off. What do you think?”
“Somebody had a nice score.” In the old days, Carney would have been up on the latest robberies and known their origin.
Munson asked how nice.
“Rough guess—a couple of hundred thousand. Depending on who takes them.”
Munson slapped his hands together. “Great. I need it tonight.”
Some shylock putting the squeeze on him, or a bookie. Munson had the same look in his eyes that time years ago when he hit up his route for their envelopes a few days early. A shit bet at Garden State Park, bum tip. It was rare to see that look on the detective’s face—just another civilian, subject to higher, more powerful forces. Carney stood. “I’m out, Munson.”
“Think of it as a one-off.”
Carney’s posture said no. “I have to head to the office.”
“You don’t want to do that.”
Carney didn’t like the tone. “You don’t need me.”
“Things are a little hot these days, tell you the truth. You read in the papers about the Knapp Commission? Looking into cops?”
“You?”
“Who, me?” The grin was mischievous. “I got to find some work-arounds for a while. But you—you’ve been out. Nobody’s looking your way.”
“Nobody looking my way because there’s nothing to see.”
“Jackson 5,” Munson said.
“For my kid.”
“You have a kid?”
“You fucking know that.”
“I get tickets. I get tickets to everything,” Munson said. “I tell you I went backstage at Vic Damone? He’s from Brooklyn, he didn’t put on airs. Some of these cocksuckers…”
Brown paper bags. It was undignified. Took away the romance. Because Carney was smitten with those beautiful stones. “Good tickets,” he said. “Up close.”
“I know everybody and everybody owes me.” Munson smiled. “How long will it take?”
They did a deal for the concert tickets. Carney departed with the paper bags, supporting the bottom like they held leaky coffee cups.
THREE
You knew the city was going to hell if the Upper East Side was starting to look like crap, too. Things were in decline here and there at the edges of Carney’s vision: half-finished graffiti on the metal grate of a closed-down drugstore; a crop of overflowing garbage cans past due for pickup; the aftermath of a smashed windshield, glass squares on the asphalt like knocked-out teeth. It was carved into the faces of the Upper East Siders, where something more downcast had replaced the smirks, and behind the eyes one discovered a vague and unformed hopelessness instead of the standard entitled cheer. Things were definitely in decline all over, across zip codes. Strike threats and work stoppages, the yellow stain of pollution above and dangerous fractures in the infrastructure below. It was creeping on everyone, like a gloom blowing over the East River and into the vast grid, the apprehension that things were not as they had been and it would be a long time before they were right again.