Crook Manifesto

Although both John and May refused Ray’s offers of work at his furniture store, his nephew Robert agreed. Robert is the son of Ray’s late cousin Freddie. He lives with his mother, Ellen, his stepfather, Booker, and Booker’s two children. Ray adored Freddie and wants to be a positive role model for Robert.

After buying Robert some new clothes, Ray heads to Donegal’s to meet Pepper. Recently recovered from a back injury, Pepper looks better than ever, and the two watch a boxing match while they talk. The bar, a longtime hangout for old-school crooks, is emptier than it used to be. Ray muses that the old generation is dying off, the neighborhood changing. He tells Pepper about the fire and the injured boy. He asks Pepper to locate the arsonist. Dubious about Ray’s intentions, but open to the job, Pepper agrees to investigate.

Happy to be out of bed, he gets right to work. He begins by checking out Excelsior Metro, the burned building’s listed owners. Their office is an obvious front, so he moves on to an old acquaintance named Mose Hamilton. Mose is a retired arsonist and might have some information. He tells Pepper that arson is now a different game than it was during his era. It has become more organized. Crews work alongside landlords, insurance companies, and crooked city workers. He gives Pepper a few names, and Pepper moves on.

Pepper visits an arsonist named Wilmer Byrd. Pepper punches Byrd once, and the man talks. Byrd has an alibi, and Pepper’s search becomes frustrating. He runs all over town, chasing down men who, in addition to their illicit jobs, maintain legal working status for their parole officers. He vows to quit the job as soon as he can begin something else, even if he is unable to furnish Ray with a name. Leon Drake, his next interviewee, also has an alibi, although Drake is more pugilistic than Byrd, and he and Pepper get into a fight that spills over into the street. After leaving Drake, Pepper reminisces about the good old days. Thinking back to past jobs and the way that the extra-legal world once operated in Harlem, Pepper’s mood sours. Chasing potential arsonists all over the neighborhood pales in comparison to the “real” jobs he’d pulled as a young man. His world is in flux, and he prefers the past to the present. He is so lost in thought that he fails to notice that he is being followed, and he is hit from behind with a baseball bat.

Meanwhile, Ray meets with Martin Green at the Subway Inn in midtown. Ray believes the meeting is simply a chance for the two old friends to catch up, but Green proposes a job—a risky jewel heist. Telling Green that he isn’t in that line of work, Ray declines and leaves, heading to the Dumas club. There, he runs into an attorney named Pierce, and the two talk fires, Harlem, and urban decline. Pierce is quick to blame urban blight in Harlem and other boroughs on city administration. Initially frustrated by Pierce’s interest in “sociology,” as he prefers to blame the arsonists themselves, Ray begins to listen to Pierce.

Pierce argues that arson is just the most visible manifestation of the city’s decline, rather than the cause of it. He cites “urban-renewal” projects and policies like redlining as the true source of Harlem’s troubles, noting that new expressways always find their way through Black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods, never white ones. He cites the city’s willingness to bulldoze “slums,” a practice that decreases the supply of affordable housing and removes the factories and warehouses that offer good, blue-collar jobs. He notes the impact of white flight on communities, on the way that properties in neighborhoods decimated by “urban-renewal” programs are labeled as “high risk,” so would-be homebuyers, who are typically Black, are unable to secure mortgages, while their white counterparts in the suburbs easily obtain loans to purchase homes. He scoffs at the useless RAND Corporation and other organizations tasked with “fixing” the problems of America’s cities, blaming the deep corruption at city hall for allowing such harmful policies to be enacted. He mentions that Oakes, when he was in the district attorney’s office, often turned a blind eye to prosecuting arson, because those newly clear building sites could be redeveloped in the name of progress. Ray thinks about the way bribes circulate among corrupt men in power and realizes that it isn’t just the arsonists at work destroying Harlem: The city is crooked through and through.

When Ray returns home, it is late and the house is dark. John has left a note that he is at a friend’s party. Elizabeth arrives shortly after Ray, and the two talk about her evening. She’s been out for drinks with a girlfriend also working on the Oakes campaign. Just then, the doorbell rings. It is Pepper, deposited on their stoop by his attackers, bruised and bleeding.

Pepper regains consciousness in Ray’s apartment and explains that Reece Brown, one of Notch Walker’s enforcers, attacked him. Ray and Elizabeth insist that he spend the night in their spare room. Ray arranges for a doctor to visit him. The doctor provides Pepper with some medication, and Pepper remains in the Carney home to convalesce.

Three days later, he and Ray discuss Pepper’s recent assault. Pepper mulls over the events, trying to piece together what happened based on his own hazy memory and what he knows of Reece Brown. He’d met Brown while working security for Corky Bell’s poker game years ago. In the time since, Brown had gone to work for Notch Walker, and had risen through the ranks to become Walker’s right-hand man. To Pepper, Notch represents the new kind of organized criminal in Harlem. Heavily involved in drugs, gambling, and robberies, Walker is also part of the group of men, both criminals and those in city hall, responsible for arson and insurance scams. Pepper and Ray are searching for another of Walker’s men, Dan Hickey. When they find him, Pepper takes him by surprise and the two bring him to the abandoned Liberty Biscuit Co. building for questioning. Hickey tells them that Pepper was assaulted because Leon Drake, the man with whom Pepper had gotten into a fight in the course of his work for Ray, had complained to Notch Walker. Although a notorious arsonist, Hickey claims that Drake had not been responsible for the fire that injured young Albert Ruiz. He does tell them that Alexander Oakes is behind many neighborhood arson jobs. Oakes provides crooks with a location, and arsonists “finish” the job.

This piece of information piques Ray’s interest, and he asks for more detail. Hickey became involved with Oakes years earlier, while facing an extortion charge. For a small fee, Oakes (who was then in the district attorney’s office) had waived the charge, but their interactions hadn’t ended there. Oakes would show up periodically with the address of a building he wanted burned down. Sometimes it was part of an insurance scheme. Sometimes the address, once its building had been razed, would be slated for redevelopment funds. Other times, Oakes would accept clandestine payments from building owners who wanted to be rid of problem properties. The corruption ran deep.

Ray, Pepper, and a safe-cracker-turned-chemistry-teacher named Enoch Parker meet, planning to break into Oakes’s campaign office and dig through his records. They hope to find incriminating evidence that would link Oakes to his crimes. It is after 10:00 p.m., and Ray knows that Oakes will not be in the building. Parker gains entrance easily and is in and out quickly. The next morning, Ray is at his furniture store. His nephew shows up to work a few minutes early, as usual. Marie asks him how he is doing. It has the appearance of a normal day. Right as he finishes speaking to Marie, a firebomb explodes.

Two men in a red Cadillac hurl Molotov cocktails through the front window of Ray’s store. The fire ignites quickly, and although Ray and his employees attempt to extinguish it themselves, Marie calls the fire department. Ray hastily searches for his employees, and then evacuates his tenants from their homes in the units above the store. Later, he and Elizabeth discuss the fire. She tells him that she’s known for years that not all his business dealings are legitimate. She notes that even her father did his own fair share of shady deals back in the day. She wonders if the firebombing is linked to Ray’s work as a fence, but he thinks otherwise.

Ray and Pepper return to the Liberty Biscuit Co. building to question Dan Hickey further. Hickey believes Leon Drake threw the Molotov cocktails into Ray’s store. He also tells them that Reece works with Oakes as well as Notch Walker. Walker would not have been aware of the firebombing, but would certainly want his cut of anything Reece is involved in. Ray wonders if he can put this information to use somehow. He’d successfully sold out Munson to Walker a few years prior, but he’s unsure if he can parlay knowledge of Reece’s backdoor deals with Oakes into help from Walker. Ray and Pepper learn that Oakes wants to meet with them and would like his files back. They agree to the meeting, and the two head to the Dumas Club, concerned that it is after hours, meaning that they will be alone in the building with Oakes, Reece, and the hired muscle.

Pepper and Ray are ushered into the building quickly and quietly. Oakes is behind the bar, fixing himself a drink. Reece is also present. Shortly after their arrival, Leon Drake enters the room. Oakes speaks candidly to Ray, bragging that his own criminality vastly outshines that of his father. He then recalls the difficult days of Ray’s application to the Dumas Club, mentioning that he, like Ray’s father-in-law, had voted against Ray’s acceptance. He chuckles at the thought that the old power brokers had, although they had no proof, correctly identified Ray as a crook. He asks Ray if Elizabeth is aware of his illegal activities. Ray turns the question around, asking Oakes if Elizabeth is aware of his crimes. The final battle happens quickly: Reece fatally shoots Oakes, noting that his big mouth was a liability and that Walker would have gotten around to his murder eventually. Although Reece also tries to kill Pepper and Ray, Pepper shoots him first, and he and Ray escape just as the Dumas Club goes up in flames. Leon Drake, of course, lit the fire.

Ray meets with his insurance adjustor to assess the damage to his building. He’s told that he’s lucky that the site has “good bones,” and that he can rebuild. He plans to expand the showroom into the basement, repurpose the upper floors, and rearrange his layout. He hopes to help Elizabeth finance her own travel agency. He thinks about the various, extra-legal jobs he can take on to maintain a steady cash flow while his store is being rebuilt. Although the city and his store will never be the same again, life moves on in Harlem.