Colson Whitehead’s Long Con

A professional slight kicks off Colson Whitehead’s third crime caper. Harlem merchant Ray Carney has just wrapped up an interview with a furniture magazine he adores when he’s called downtown to meet with an, ahem, associate. Carney, who moonlights as a fence, assumes the rendezvous will engender some new criminal opportunity, but it’s a trap. His colleague is a hostage, and the armed captors don’t initially recognize Carney as a fellow crook. “Don’t want to beat up the janitor,” one says after Carney is identified—a baldly racist remark. The quick-thinking salesman manages to wiggle out of the setup and save his partner, but the encounter nettles him. “He had rebuilt his store at considerable financial and psychological cost, received an industry honor, and in five minutes these white men had wrung all pleasure from his victory,” Whitehead writes. “He was fucking Regional Dealer of the goddamn Month,” Carney thinks to himself, setting the record straight.