Carney said, “She know you’re a crook?”
“It’s all there?” Reece said.
“So far,” Oakes said.
“You got my name on anything, I want it in my hand.”
“You don’t have to worry about it, Mr. Brown.”
“Okay,” Reece said. “Let’s get on with it.” He aimed at Pepper’s head.
Carney said, “Hey.”
“We agreed not in here,” Oakes said.
Reece shot Oakes in the eye. The candidate tumbled back against the liquor bottles and brought down a cascade of whiskey and gin with him when he dropped to the floor.
The enforcer backed up, watching Pepper and Carney. He moved behind the bar, feeling around Oakes’s body with his feet. He gathered the mouth of the black garbage bag and cinched it. “Ran his mouth too much. It was either now or later. Notch comes down on me, or the cops.” He sniffed. “Who needs him, I got this?” He stopped. “Something burning?”
They all smelled it, the smoke from fires Leon set upstairs. He had wandered through the luxurious rooms on the third and fourth floors, the sitting room with the mounted heads of the animals Ambrose Hemmings killed on his African safari, the library and its stained-glass scene of Harlem in farmland days. It was nothing like he’d pictured when he was little, observing the smartly dressed men disappear inside, gazing up at the curved windows. It was so fancy, he noted bitterly, so beyond his imaginings as to prove the smallness of his experience, his poverty in every sphere. No matter. He took out his gasoline. The Dumas Club, although sophisticated and refined, was nothing special when he thought about it. No more or less abhorrent than any other building in his neighborhood, a mere container for his hatred. Leon wrote his name in gasoline and when he felt that click in the back of his mind, that little latch closing, he lit a match and joined the men in the parlor.
Reece cursed.
Leon said, “I said there’d be hell to pay if you fucked with my job. Fuck all y’all.” He seemed to snap his fingers and the wick on his little bomb caught. He tossed it at Reece, who fired back at Leon, tagging the armchair behind him. The firebomb—a glass ball the size of a Christmas ornament—exploded against the bar, splashing fire.
Pepper jumped over the leather sofa, crouching between it and the fireplace. Carney followed suit. He had long admired the geometric pattern of the parlor room’s parquet floor—it alluded to the Moorish, or Arabian, provided a glimpse into another culture. Now Carney got to examine the floor close-up, real close. It was ridiculous to die in here. They had to get to the door.
Reece yelled at Leon and fired. A bullet whistled through the couch between Carney and Pepper. Pepper nodded toward the big window onto 120th. The thick drapes covered it, but the drop wasn’t far. They crawled toward it. One of Leon’s firebombs detonated on the drapes. The heat pushed against Pepper’s face.
He peeked over the top of the sofa. Reece fired at Leon two more times, but the firebug was hidden behind the club chairs and the baby grand at the back of the room. Reece spotted Carney and shot at him, missing. He noticed that the black garbage bag had caught fire and frantically smacked at the flames.
Pepper rose, emerging from his hiding spot like a grizzly rearing up on hind legs. He charged and swung. The pedestal ashtray captured Reece right under his jaw. If this had been a baseball game—that was Carney’s first association, a powerful slugger at bat—Reece’s head would’ve been out in the parking lot. As it was, it （Reece’s head） incurred spectacular damage. The enforcer went down.
Leon flung open the parlor door. Black smoke made a roiling advance into the room. The firebug stood on the threshold and cackled. “I told you not to fuck with my job!” He pitched his next bomb at the painting of Clement Lanford, founding member. It exploded against Lanford’s sober face and launched tendrils of liquid fire.
Leon ran out, laughing.
Carney grabbed Pepper by the arm. The old crook was looking down at Reece. Notch’s lieutenant was not going to get up. Carney nodded at the black garbage bag. Perhaps there was something to salvage.
“Fuck this place,” Pepper said. They left the burning bag and made for the door.
The grand staircase was ablaze—the floors above were an inferno. The right side of the hallway rippled with flames. Carney and Pepper ran to the front door, stooped on account of the dense black smoke.
Out on the corner, Carney said, “I have to call the fire department.” The dark drapes twisted behind the glass on the top floors, burning, dropping from view to expose the conflagration inside. The bay windows blew out. Shards crashed and hopped on concrete.
“Why?” Pepper started up the street.
“It’s on fire.”
“So?”
Carney caught up and they trotted to the Buick.
“They’ll be along,” Pepper said. “We got to get to Donegal’s anyway. See which of those motherfuckers ratted us out.”
Carney was dead tired. “Right.”
“They’ll be along.”
In the old days, a neighbor would’ve spotted the fire before it got out of control. Mr. Edwin Powell across the street, for example, had been a true night owl and noted busybody. He grew up in Alabama, fled north in the back of a pickup truck, bouncing with five cousins. In New York City a colored man could be a man, a human being. Eventually he found a job mopping up at the Department of Motor Vehicles and a room overlooking the stately Queen Anne across the street. Edwin admired the Dumas Club and the Negro achievement it represented. He would’ve noticed a fire straightaway, but he passed ten years ago, the final cousin, and the other apartments emptied one by one until the vagrants got a foot in. So many houses on that block, same story. The city was going down the toilet. In the old days, someone would have called in the blaze before it got too wild. In the old days, people looked out for each other in Harlem.
NINE
Jimmy Gray from Sable Construction was supposed to come over that afternoon to inspect the buildings for the preliminary estimate of how much to gouge him. Carney was avoiding the premises, so he sent Robert with the keys to let Jimmy in. He was still paying the boy though the store had been destroyed, to teach him a lesson about commitment and follow-through, keeping one’s word…he wasn’t sure what the lesson was, but he liked giving the boy money and hoped he’d waste it on something stupid, like Freddie would have.
Carney was a few blocks away at the time of the appointment picking up his new ulcer medicine. He decided to check on the boy. Robert stood outside the store in his polo shirt and Levi’s, playing with his Twist-O-Flex watchband. Plywood covered where the front window and doors had been. By the time the plywood saw its first sunrise, it had been completely covered in graffiti. No profanity or dicks or tits, so Carney let it be.
“Hey, Uncle Ray.”
“Robert. He’s inside?”
Not yet. Ellis Gray, Sable’s founder, jerked you around over how long and how much, but he showed up on time. This was the first time Carney had dealt with the son, now that Ellis was handing over the business. Carney cut him slack. Jimmy had warned him it was a busy month, the city being where it was these days.
“I’ll take the keys,” Carney said. “When Mr. Gray comes, tell him I’m inside.”