American Gangster Read Online Free PDF Page B

shook his head as he reached for the check. “There are reasonable ways to make money, Tango . . . and then there’s this way. Bumpy never took twenty percent.”
    â€œBumpy’s fuckin’ dead.”
    Frank studied Tango’s dark eyes and the hard, determined cast of his jaw. This was a stubborn man and a stupid man. Also dangerous. But mostly stupid.
    Taking out his money clip, Frank peeled off a five to cover the check; then he peeled off a one, and flipped it over in front of Tango.
    â€œThere you go,” Frank said. “Your twenty percent.”
    Frank got up and went out. He could feel Tango’s eyes on him, but he wasn’t really concerned. He knew what he would do about this problem; he just had to pick the right moment.
    Sitting in his apartment, which was nicely but not ostentatiously furnished mostly in shades of brown, Frank leaned back in a comfortable chair with a pencil in one hand and a spiral pad in the other.
    On the yellow paper he did the math—for a guy who never graced a schoolroom door, he was a whiz at it. Just for the hell of it, he worked out what it would cost to accommodate Tango. After all, Frank had no desire to work the protection racket, which had been fine in days of Bumpy Johnson and Dutch Schultz and Al fucking Capone, but today it was a dying game to be sure.
    And there was just no way.
    After he paid the Italian suppliers, and Red Top and everybody else who worked for him, Frank would be a goddamn pauper. This shit
would
be his hobby. . . .
    His first instinct, even though it had been tinged by an emotional response to Tango’s disrespect for Bumpy, had been correct. Tango had to go.
    But inadvertently Tango had opened Frank’s eyes to a basic problem in the supply-and-demand scheme of things. Frank was working on way too slim a margin. The dope trade, for all the money that rolled in, was a pie getting cut up too many ways; and then there were those crooked fucking cops who were squeezing the goombahs by the nuts.
    Something had to change.
    And Frank had to change it.
    Throughout his life Frank had developed a method of dealing with tight situations. He was not an impulse buyer in the showroom of life; he liked to mull, and mold his options.
    He’d been known to lock himself in a hotel room, shut off the phone, yank down the blinds, take room service and just think. Isolation helped him get a clear view, he could look back over the past, backtrack fiveyears if need be and think about everything he’d done and everyone he’d encountered and everything he’d heard, and search every nook and cranny of his memory for information and answers.
    This time, however, he did not check himself into a room; instead he took the German shepherd he’d inherited from Bumpy out on the beach at Coney Island, and together man and beast had walked under a bleak gray-blue sky along a beach where seagulls fought for scraps in the sand. This time of year the place was all but deserted, a handful of screaming kids riding a roller coaster barely competing with the sound of surf rolling in and gulls cawing as they circled to provide a mostly soothing soundtrack for his thoughts.
    Frank and Bumpy and, for that matter, the dog had often come here and walked and talked.
    Bumpy had never come right out and said that some day Frank would take his place, if not in the protection business then in the black world that was Harlem. But the older man would dispense advice, without really saying why he was offering it or indicating what Frank was to do with it.
    Drifting over the waves and into his thoughts came the memory of Bumpy’s resonant voice: “
A leader is like a shepherd, Frank. He sends the fast, nimble sheep out front, and the others follow. And the shepherd? He walks quietly behind. Watching. Guiding.
”
    Where the tide rolled in, Frank picked up a stick that seemed perfect for the dog to fetch. He hurled it and the animal