Cool Machine is the final book in Colson Whitehead’s delightful crime trilogy following the life and times (and crimes) of furniture salesman and fence Ray Carney. The first book, Harlem Shuffle, had three short stories set in the 1960s. The follow up – Crook Manifesto – brought Ray into the 1970s. Cool Machine follows the same pattern. Three individual (but related) stories set in 1981, 1983 and 1986, each one zeroing in on a different aspect of crime in New York.
The first story – City at Night – plays out as a heist. In the summer of 1981, Ray ends up falling in with notorious criminal Uncle Rich, and despite his better judgement agrees to help him with a couple of jobs. This is despite the fact that Ray is usually off the tools – he makes his money as the middleman between criminals and those who can offload their goods. This story plays out with rival gangs, secret railway tunnels and an audacious heist of some significant memorabilia. The second story – Here Comes Sue Simmons – is the spiritual follow-up to Nefertiti T.N.T., the second story in Crook Manifesto. As with that story, the focus is on Ray’s cousin Pepper, in this case trying to track down a suitcase full of stolen money and a valuable African mask while also being tailed by a dead-eyed, violent assassin. The third story – No Radio – brings the focus back to Ray as he tries to help his nephew who is on the run after witnessing a mafia killing. Each of these three stories is a gem in itself but there are plenty of callbacks to earlier characters and events producing a feeling of richness that extends beyond the page.
Ray is once again at the centre of these stories and is a complex character. He has his official side – running a successful furniture business in Harlem. To the point where he is being lauded as Salesman of the Month in the first story and is to be featured in the company newsletter. Ray is a family man now with two grown children who are both on the straight and narrow. But he also has his criminal side. Something that Uncle Rich acknowledges and draws on:
Yes, the fence was working out fine. A cool machine. It was in the man’s blood. Ruthless and cunning, even if he didn’t want to admit it to himself.
And in the two stories in which he features most, Ray has to draw on those qualities to get through.
Once again, the other main character of these stories is New York city itself. And in the 1980s New York was a boom town, bursting with new building, full of yuppies but also prone to corruption. Whitehead continues to chart the way that the city and its people were changing particularly through Ray’s eyes and his concept of “churn”.
… Carney came to recognise churn in the streets and avenues, in the very structure of the city itself. Tenements and townhouses went up, were demolished, were replaced by new buildings, which were replaced in turn. Ethnic tribes arrived, struggled, moved on, were replaced by the next group of strivers… The enclaves and ghettos rose, fell and were reborn.
The most amusing aspect of this comes from the title of the third story which refers to the stickers that people would put on their cars to alert would-be thieves that they had taken their radio with them. Suffice to say none of the characters who comment on this (and all of them do, including an ageing Mafia hitman) are complimentary about those people.
Cool Machine is a triumphant conclusion to Whitehead’s Harlem trilogy. Whitehead once again delivers three short, sharp and crime stories that take readers around New York and each build to tense conclusions. But overall this is another love letter to a complex multi-layered city reflected in the life and adventures of a complicated character.
Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead
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