“You’re going in?” Everyone knew he’d been staying away.
“I’ll be inside.”
He went around. There was time to get the mural up on the Morningside wall before the Fourth. One of May’s friends from college was “a really gifted artist” and would love the chance to get his work out there, she said, but Carney didn’t have it in him. It had come to Carney one night after the fire: His version of The Spirit of ’76. They wanted bicentennial flavor, here goes. Drums, fife, same shell-shocked stubbornness, but the musicians are black. Beat down, skulls full of dead-end thoughts, they keep playing. Preserving the color palette of the original, city gray and smog brown, with a background of three-story tenements, bleak and dark-windowed and “the pigeons circling above like vultures.” This is their march—folly, fortitude, and that brand of determination that comes from ignoring reality. Up on the wall for all of Harlem to see: This is what we sell in here.
Carney’s Spirit of ’76. When he told people about it, they looked at him like he was nuts. The pigeon thing, for one. Throw up a mural, and those kids are going to scribble graffiti over it. Carney realized he was going to spend a lot of time explaining his intentions, so he dropped it. Instead, two dumpsters from Bellucci Sanitation sat against the wall, half filled with debris from the fire and whatever Harlem decided to contribute during the course of the day—bent floor lamps, busted toasters, pink slippers. Given the state of things, it was only time before someone dumped a corpse in there, but so far he had been “blessed,” as Elizabeth joked.
He pressed his forehead to the Morningside door. Held it there. The metal was hot. He didn’t care that he looked like a nutjob. It was his door. He glanced up the ave where he and Elizabeth had sat. Weeping in public—his dad would’ve slapped him. Yes, he’d wept in public, and also kidnapped a man and watched two others get snuffed that day, so perhaps that “made up for it,” balanced the manhood scales, what have you. He unlocked the door.
Carney had stayed away. The American Eagle inspection put a stop to excursions into his ruined store. The white insurance man had been so calm as he rendered his assessment, so cool in his postmortem, that Carney had been thoroughly defeated. The buildings might be saved—“You’re lucky they have good bones”—but it was going to be a brutal undertaking. See there, where the ceiling looks like it’s buckling? An engineer’s going to have questions about that.
When the insurance man departed that afternoon, Larry was outside. He’d quickly found himself another job, music studio in midtown, A&R Recording. “Experience? My whole life is experience,” he told Carney. He’d come by to give Carney treasure rescued from the wreck—his diploma from Queens College and his picture of Lena Horne. Larry had found them on the office floor, scorched by fire, warped by water. Carney thanked him, and threw them in the trash on the way home. He’d write the school for a replacement and search for a new photo of Lena. Something more recent. She was older, now. He was too.
That had been a week and a half ago. Bellucci hauled away the burned recliners, charred residue of rugs, kindling dining-room pieces, the cindered sofa frames with springs poking out. Carney’s scorched metal desk and the waterlogged artifacts in the basement. He spent most days knocked out at home on his trusted Argent sofa, that little modernist dinghy bearing him above the waves. Between shifts on the Argent, he dealt with the American Eagle adjusters （“You say he threw Molotov cocktails into your store?”）， cops （“Sure you don’t know who threw Molotov cocktails into your store?”）， the fire squad （“This kind of pattern is consistent with Molotov cocktails”）， and the other entities who appear when someone throws Molotov cocktails into your place of business. There are procedures.
Amid the inquiries, he found time to settle up with Pepper for two days of arsonist hunting and Dr. Rostropovich’s bill. “Expenses.” Carney reminded him to release Dan Hickey. “Right.” He assumed Pepper did so. He didn’t bring it up the next time they talked—no one likes a nag. By then, the police’s interest had tapered off. In a long season of fires, the Carney’s Furniture blaze was among the stranger, but not the strangest, and not the largest or most fatal. It was eclipsed that night by the Dumas fire, and the discovery that a Democratic candidate for borough president was one of the victims.
To their credit the police did eventually arrest the owners of Excelsior Metro for the fire at 317 West 118th. The papers identified the firebug as “known arsonist Gordon Bellmann, of Bensonhurst.” Carney tried to imagine what the man looked like, without success.
They beat the rap.
* * *
***
Carney attended Alexander Oakes’s funeral, though Elizabeth said he was off the hook. It was the least he could do, as one who was with him at the end. He liked going to funerals that were bigger than the one he’d have one day. They reaffirmed his modest lifestyle.
Elizabeth was torn up by her friend’s murder. A city that was the stage for such twisted and inexplicable crimes needed men like Oakes, men of courage and commitment. “They’ll never catch his killer,” she said. “Who was that other body they found? Your store. People get away with these things, and we’re just supposed to take it and go on with our lives.”
“It’s a terrible situation,” Carney said. They were driving home from Evergreens Cemetery. The boxes of campaign pens to replace the first batch that had been misprinted had arrived at Strivers’ Row that morning. What was she supposed to do with them? What was she supposed to do, go into work tomorrow and smile for Dale Baker like a good little girl and pretend everything was normal? Letting off steam after the funeral.
“Do you know how many women run travel agencies this size?” she said. “Black women? None—unless they’ve started it themselves.”
“Maybe you should do that.”
“What?”
“Start your own thing.”
“My own company.”
“I have some money put away. Think about it.”
She was silent then as Riverside Drive scrolled past. They’d revisit this topic soon. He didn’t have that much money put away but he knew where to get some. What else was an ongoing criminal enterprise complicated by periodic violence for, but to make your wife happy?
On that matter, Carney promised Elizabeth he was out of the secondhand rug business. She was right; it was dangerous. He’d have to take care in the future so she didn’t worry.
“We’ll probably never know why that psycho torched the store,” he told her.
“Hmm.”
* * *
***
Carney stepped into his ravaged office. The walls were charred and scored, girders exposed like bone. The smoke and sooty water generated a rank atmosphere. The only thing left in the room was the safe. His Hermann Bros. safe looked unscathed, but the heat had warped the door shut. Time for a new one. How did Moskowitz put it? A man should have a safe big enough to hold his secrets. Bigger, even, so you have room to grow. The technology had come a long way since he was in the market. He looked forward to the hunt.
The light switch in the showroom didn’t work. There were no lights. Sunlight snuck between the seams of plywood. He didn’t want a good look anyway. It was terrible. Christ, what was the point? He rebuilds. They knock it down again. Last time he was here, strips of the ceiling hung down, burned insulation peeled from the walls. The sanitation crew had ripped all that away, exposing the blackened drywall, studs, and beams. It looked like it had been abandoned to the elements for decades.