50 pages • 1 hour read
Colson WhiteheadHarlem Shuffle
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3, Chapters 6-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Cool It Baby | 1964”
Part 3, Chapter 6 Summary
Ray meets Pepper in a bar and explains Freddie’s predicament. He wants to hire Pepper as security while Freddie escapes the city. They make “a deal for the security and miscellaneous manhandling” (254); Pepper wants a recliner chair from the store as part of his fee. Ray gives Pepper the keys to his store that evening, having sent Freddie to a “new hidey-hole” (255) in Brooklyn. Ray’s family passes by, and Elizabeth invites Pepper to dinner. Despite Ray’s hesitation, she insists. At dinner, Elizabeth gets “more out of Pepper” (257) than Ray ever managed.
Part 3, Chapter 7 Summary
Ray takes the emerald necklace to Moskowitz’s store. He rides the subway, reading a leaflet given to him during the riots. The leaflet contains instructions on how to make a Molotov cocktail. He leaves it in his wallet as “a talisman or a crooked hymn kept close for reference” (261). Moskowitz tells Ray that the necklace is too hot, meaning that no one in the city will pay him money because it is connected to powerful, dangerous people. Outside the jewelry store, Ray is stopped by a lawyer named Ed Bench who represents the Van Wyck family. Bench is accompanied by a heavyset man named Mr. Lloyd who points a gun at Ray. Bench looks inside Ray’s briefcase but seems more concerned about the “other items” (263) besides the necklace. Ray runs from Bench through the busy New York streets. He gets away, but the necklace is gone.
While Ray takes the jewel to Moskowitz, Pepper remains in the store as a security guard. Later, as Pepper is still nursing an old stab wound in his stomach, he spots two young men approaching the store. They carry safecracking tools and break in through the front door. Pepper fights the men, trashing the interior of the store. Ray finds Pepper among the mess. He takes the briefcase and its mysterious remaining contents, as well as all the money he had in the safe. After closing the store, Ray and Pepper drive to Ray’s house. Ray makes sure that Elizabeth and his children are safe, and she passes him a message from Ed Bench: the Van Wyck lawyer has Freddie.
Part 3, Chapter 8 Summary
Ray and Pepper drive to the uptown address given by Ed Bench. They enter an under-construction skyscraper, taking the elevator up to the half-finished 15th floor. As they ate dinner before the meeting, Ray examined the contents of the briefcase. He found paperwork giving Van Wyck power-of-attorney over Linus, love letters between Linus and a woman, a page containing five type-written numbered bank accounts, and an old baseball card, which the Van Wyck lawyers have promised to swap for Freddie.
Ray and Pepper ride the elevator to the fifteenth floor, where they are greeted by Ed Bench. He ushers them into an office, where the two henchmen who broke into Ray’s store are waiting with guns. Ray watches from the window as a limp Freddie is dumped into the back of his truck on the street below. Pepper takes offense to a comment by Bench and shoots one of the henchmen in the mouth. The other returns fire, catching Pepper in the hip before Pepper kills him. Ray hands over the briefcase to a horrified Bench and then helps Pepper out of the building. They return to the car, where Freddie is found savagely beaten but alive. Pepper drives to the hospital but does not enter. He stumbles off as Freddie is taken inside.
Part 3, Chapter 9 Summary
A year and a half later, Ray ventures downtown on the day that he mails his contract with Bella Fontaine. Freddie died because of his injuries and his last words were to Ray at the entrance to the hospital, explaining that he never meant to get his cousin “in trouble” (285). Ray thinks about Freddie often; Detective Munson tells him that the case against Freddie is being quietly dropped. Pepper survived and collected his recliner chair as payment. Uptown, Ray watches the construction of a new skyscraper, the latest Van Wyck real estate venture. In the wake of Linus’s death, Ray deduced that the Van Wyck company was putting buildings in Linus’s name “as a tax dodge” (288). Ray reflects on the changing nature of the city, where old neighborhoods are being torn up to make way for new real estate ventures. Aronowitz’s old repair store is one of the victims of this wave of development. He plans to see his rare-gem dealer and then visit a house viewing with Elizabeth on Striver’s Row.
Part 3, Chapters 6-9 Analysis
Throughout Part 3 of Harlem Shuffle, Ray is convinced that the emerald necklace is the focus of his enemies’ ire. After seeing the necklace, he understands that it is worth far more than anything he has ever sold in his lifetime. However, the Van Wyck family hardly cares about the necklace. Ray’s conversation with Ed Bench reveals to him that the paperwork in the briefcase is worth far more than any shiny trinket. Having originally dismissed the paperwork, Ray reexamines it. He discovers that the paperwork is vital to a tax avoidance scheme concerning real estate in New York City. The reveal is a reminder to Ray that no matter how much he strives to better himself or to make money from his crimes, he will always be operating at the lowest rungs of the ladder. The Van Wyck family is committing crimes on a level which he cannot even imagine, and they are insulated from any real repercussions due to their wealth. As evidenced by the fight with Linus, Ambrose Van Wyck is a weak and fragile old man who would not last two minutes on the streets of Harlem. However, in the moneyed world of New York real estate, wealth is far more important than physical strength. By the end of the novel, Ambrose gets everything he wants. He reclaims the paperwork, he loses the son who he hated, and he continues to build property all over New York. The villain of the story triumphs, but not because of any innate skill. Ambrose emerges victorious from the plot because the sheer scale of wealth and prejudice which exist in the world of Harlem Shuffle mean that he will always win. His institutional advantage is baked into the system from the start.
Even despite the apparent success of Ambrose Van Wyck, Ray does achieve some degree of success. He expands his furniture business and positions himself as the first African American dealer of a prestigious furniture brand, a pioneering moment which fills him with pride. Furthermore, he is considering moving into the building which he always fantasized about when he was poor. The opportunity to move to Striver’s Row shows that Ray has achieved success that he never thought possible. Unlike Ambrose, however, Ray is forced to pay a cost. He loses Freddie and his in-laws suffer the financial consequences of his actions. While Ambrose is permitted to commit crimes and still enjoy unrivalled success, Ray must pay a heavy price for his gains.
The final scenes of the novel show the degree to which the world is changing. Ray has succeeded, showing how a dark-skinned African American man from a poor background can succeed in a situation where everyone dismissed him. Part of his ability to succeed is rooted in the changing nature of the world around him. The old foundations of New York and Harlem are being ripped apart to make way for rampant capitalistic growth. The family stores are shuttered, torn down, and replaced by skyscrapers. While social progress in the form of civil rights might be slow to arrive, Ray is enjoying the bounty of the increased capitalization of the world. He believes the lesson is that, when so many people want to make money, hard work and intelligence can allow an African American to triumph in a racist world—as long as one is willing to break the law and at great risk to themselves, given the extent to which even innocent people of color may be targeted by the police. Yet while Ray’s closing scenes show that he is on the precipice of a changing world, it is not necessarily a world which is becoming fairer, more moral, or less violent. At the end of the story, Ray comes to the cynical and pessimistic realization that profit will always triumph. And while capitalism may help individual African Americans like Ray succeed, but it is no answer to the systemic racism that placed so many obstacles in his path to begin with.
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