r/bookclub • u/nicehotcupoftea World Reader Leader | 🎃🧠🥇 • 10d ago

Ray Carney series [Discussion 1/4] Bonus Book | Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead (The Harlem Trilogy #3) - Start through City at Night Chapter 6

Hello readers! Welcome to the first discussion of Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead, the final book in the Harlem Trilogy. Today we are discussing from the Start through City at Night Chapter 6.

Please mark spoilers for anything from the first two books by using > ! your text here ! < (without the spaces), as it’s possible that not everyone has read them.

So how is Ray Carney going in the 1980s? He’s older, but is he any wiser? Let’s find out! I’ve summarised this section below, if you need a refresher, and questions will be in the comments. Next week u/ColaRed will lead us through City at Night Chapter 7 - Here Comes Sue Simmons Chapter 4

Schedule

Marginalia

Here's a video describing New York in the 1980s

ONE

Ray Carney has won a Dealer of the Month award from Sterling, a furniture company, and an interview in their magazine which was a secret dream. It is five years since the major blaze, so when the interviewer asks him to describe a moment when he was tested, he mentions reopening the store. Carney reflects that as a black man in America, he is always being tested. When asked about the best moments, his first thoughts are of the wads of cash he stacked in his safe and recalling his near escapes, but instead describes his customers’ satisfaction. He has been summoned to see Martin Green to see some new samples. Carney heads to the station and watches the attempts at cleaning away the abundant graffiti on 42nd Street. He notices all the new construction going on. Development was the City Hall's cure for the fiscal crisis. The budget was cut, services reduced, but development brought in new players. Carney enters Green's building with its fake/decoy reception area. Outside his office, he finds Green handcuffed to the chair with two men pointing guns at him. The men check with Green that Carney is the fence, and they ask about Uncle Rich. When Carney denies knowing who he is, one of the men holds up the sapphire Dwayne had given him.

TWO

Carney realises that “Dwayne” was actually Uncle Rich. It started when Flinch, a small-time thief, called him. Carney needed more money because Elizabeth had resigned from her job and had begun her own business, Carney Travel. Now child-free, she had ambitions to expand. However she was having trouble getting the loan approved because Carney's signature was required. When her former boss sued her for poaching clients, Carney gave her the money for the retainer, but then had to find it. Carney met Flinch, who showed him a quality diamond necklace, claiming to have acquired it from a deceased associate. Carney agreed to the deal and completed the transaction in a back room at a suspicious video game arcade. Flinch introduced a calm man named Dwayne, who was in charge. “Dwayne” asked Carney why he accepted the deal and offered him more work. This led to Carney acquiring the sapphire. Carney had been set up through Flinch; the diamond necklace was just a test to see if Carney was interested in getting back in the game. Rich offered Carney further work and gave him a number. Back at Green’s office, Buzz and Orson, the two men threatening Green, ask Carney where Green got the diamond from. Buzz explained that Uncle Rich had ripped him off and he wanted to pay him back, and set up a plan to catch him. Carney explained his arrangement with Uncle Rich whereby displaying a particular plaque in his front window would signal Uncle Rich to call him. Buzz instructs him to tell Rich to meet him at the nearby chicken shop. They release Green and depart.

THREE

Carney and Green catch up, and it becomes apparent that Green is trying to live a more conventional suburban life. Carney explains that Uncle Rich was a big time crook in the 1950s, and the stolen pieces of jewellery were linked to Rich's past criminal activities. Green says they might have come from a Tanzanian shipment of sapphires some years ago. Carney notices the empty safe, but recognises that Green didn't betray Carney despite the beatings. Carney thinks about his family; Elizabeth was currently out of town and his kids were out of the line of fire. They had no interest in being part of the family business. He's angry that all that he's built up with his reputation is now at risk. The plaque in the window was not actually an arrangement, but a story invented by Carney as a way of contacting Rich. He reflects on Rich faking his death and wonders why he was back in the game. He takes a taxi to a phone booth and calls Betty's beauty salon, who calls back with an address. He finds Rich and a group plotting a major robbery.

FOUR

Carney meets Rich in his hideout, a building waiting for renovation. Rich explains that he used to see the world through a thief's lens, but rival criminals and the police got in the way. So he faked his own death and disappeared overseas. He travelled around financing his lifestyle with the odd robbery. When he was living in Baja, he read about a Tanzanian sapphire mine, and became interested. The stones had come from the Minton Sapphire mine in southern Tanzania and were being shown around by Brent and Lovejoy, a big jewellery company in the 1950s. Sometimes Rich devised plans which he sold to other criminals to carry out, but occasionally they double-crossed him. He pitched the job to Buzz Caldera, their mutual acquaintance. The job required cooperation between Black and white criminals. They planned the robbery meticulously, but Rich made one fatal mistake. He told Buzz about his legendary status, which diminished Carney’s admiration for him. He admits to Carney that he failed to follow his own philosophy of taking the ”Muskrat” approach. He describes the robbery, where Buzz and his crew, disguised as painters, worked in the office next to the target vault. Buzz’s helper disabled the alarms, and they entered through a private elevator to drill into the vault. Rich was supposed to drive the getaway car through the alley and collect the loot, but Buzz and his crew carried out the robbery a week early to cut Rich out. In response, Rich tracked down Buzz’s stash hidden under the floorboards of a ranch house, stole the sapphires, gold, and diamonds, and went into hiding. Buzz has been hunting him ever since. Rich explains that he resurfaced because his girlfriend wanted him to settle down. He has planned six jobs in six months and already has his eye on a house. Suddenly, gunfire breaks out.

FIVE

Carney, despite his excellent spatial intelligence, had failed to notice he was being followed from Martin Green's office to Rich’s hideout by two of Buzz's men, Fenton and Benedetto. They would have lost him had it not been for Carney's guide lighting up a smoke. Buzz's men alerted their boss that their target had emerged on the other side of the block. When the shooting began, Carney ducked for cover, but Rich seemed to thrive on the excitement and reached for his gun. Rita, who is on Rich's team, appears and confirms that their material has been relocated. Rich asks Rita to take Carney to safety. Carney had made some sexist assumptions about Rita before realising she was a bodyguard. They escaped from the building through a pre-planned route through backyards. Carney finds a dumbbell and picks it up while Rita overcomes Fenton. Carney flees with the dumbbell and takes a taxi home. Entering via the back alley he glances at an article Elizabeth has left him on Empty Nesters, a condition she has diagnosed him with. The article recommended re-engaging with his professional interests. He thinks they probably didn't mean his criminal activities. He observes a man in a car outside watching him. Carney reflected that he was different from Uncle Rich and Pepper, his father's associate, because he valued his family. In the past it was bad influences like his cousin Freddie who led him into trouble, but this time he had chosen his path because he enjoyed it. He leaves the house via the back alley to call the lady from Betty's Beauty Salon, from the phone booth.

SIX

Carney and Uncle Rich are driving a stolen 18-wheeler towards a New Jersey warehouse complex to commit a robbery. They park at the Microtonics warehouse and Jeff, who is Rita's brother, jumps from the back of the trailer, landing like a Jet or a Shark in West Side Story. Carney and Rich had met that afternoon at Grand Central Station. He was in awe at the station's grand architecture, lamenting the modern era's mediocrity. Rich reveals he has plans for a series of six jobs, half are for financial obligations and half for personal satisfaction. Rich compares Carney to Jesse Owens. At the warehouse. Rich explains that one tenant, Con-American Insurance, stores valuable property there, making it a prime target. This warehouse shares a wall with TCN Electronics which has weaker security, and they plan to drill through it. Rich explains his preference for reliable low profile criminals and Carney reflects on his own trusted workers Rusty and Marie. At the station, Uncle Rich had discussed the history of private rail and Carney had reflected on the hidden systems that keep the modern world moving. Carney calls this process Churn, the unseen forces that move goods and property through the world. It represented a cycle of death, rebirth and transition, where nothing remains static. After having been a father and businessman, Carney felt himself being pushed towards an uncertain future. Rich tells Carney about Track 61, a secret rail line under Manhattan that once allowed FDR to secretly enter the Waldorf Astoria Hotel undetected).

Rich questions Carney why he has chosen to participate in the robbery. Carney describes a persistent sense of darkness and hollowness since his shop was firebombed, and a loss of purpose. He used to blame his father and past associations for his choices, but now accepts responsibility for his current actions. Rich reveals he invited Carney along out of curiosity, intrigued by the contrast between him and his father, questioning whether it was nature or nurture. Rich reveals his next target: there was an upcoming exhibition of high value sports memorabilia including a Jesse Owens gold medal at the Waldorf Astoria. They discussed the nature of value contrasting society's materialistic assessments with personal value. He asks Carney what is really worth stealing. Carney contemplates his double life while Elizabeth is away. He is drifting back to his dangerous criminal impulses. Rich invites him on a heist that night at the Waldorf, where Rich is planning to correct a historical wrong done to Jesse Owens. The crew head to Manhattan.

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