CBR15 Bingo Hold Steady
So Harlem in the 60’s. Everyone’s just trying to get by. Ray Carney’s worked his way from a hardscrabble youth to being a solid family man with an up and coming furniture store on 125th. But there is his cousin and best friend, Freddie. Ray’s mother was long gone and his dad was always sketchy. But Freddie and his mom, Aunt Millie, they were his family. Freddie, however, always ran a bit on the wild side, and when he shows up from time to time with some typewriters that fell off of a truck, or even a fine necklace, Ray does him the favor of adding it to the store’s inventory. But things go along fine until the night the Hotel Theresa, the “Waldorf of Harlem”, gets robbed, an insult to the entire community.
The red carpet outside the Waldorf of Harlem was the theater for daily and sometimes hourly spectacles, whether it was the sight of a heavyweight champ waving to fans as he climbed into a Cadillac, or a wrung-out jazz singer splashing out of a Checker cab at 3 A. M. with the devil’s verses in her mouth.
Freddie has managed a peripheral assignment in the robbery, and has offered his cousin’s services as a fence, most unwelcome news to Ray. To his distress, he is being pulled into a whole lot of mess he really doesn’t need in his life right now. Not to mention that he has managed to score a rare Harlem visit from Mr. Gibbs from the Bella Fontaine furniture company with their space-age styling. Let’s just say that Mr. Gibbs has never paid a visit quite like this one. But at the end of the day, Ray’s a good family man and doing the best he can under trying circumstances. Freddie isn’t as lucky.
