Colson Whitehead’s Long Con
Like its predecessors, Cool Machine is divided into three novellas that each take place in a different year. The structure makes the books episodic, with one scheme and its particular players driving each section, but also can stunt the momentum as the story repeatedly resets. That’s still somewhat the case in Cool Machine, which follows Pepper in its middle novella, but the framework is more rewarding this time, as Whitehead actively threads together the stories. If crime is a canvas for Uncle Rich and Carney, a means for self-expression and actualization, for Pepper it is toil, and following him after the high of the first novella offers a sobering contrast.
A World War II veteran who ran with Carney’s late father Big Mike, Pepper is Whitehead’s wry and subtly moving take on the hardboiled hood. First introduced in Harlem Shuffle, he resides cozily in the underworld, and Whitehead often uses that immersion for comedy. Pepper, constitutionally intimidating and alert, always sticks out. He calls normal people “civilians,” and in one exchange, in which a character asks if he’s a mass murderer, he replies, “What’s mass?”
In Cool Machine, Pepper, previously a source of bottomless might, is introduced as severely overworked. “He had gutted, garroted, grappled with his enemies, and been brutalized, bludgeoned, and manhandled in turn,” Whitehead writes. “Shot and stabbed, half strangled and wholly concussed. Beaten with bats, chains, and a hardware store’s worth of ad hoc weapons; thrown out of cars, thrown out of many types of moving vehicles, tossed into pits, ditches, and ruts; and one time even subjected to a modern update of an ancient Aztec torture ritual (this was in Delaware).” The irony is as grim as it is humorous: Work has been steady for Pepper, but so has pain. He’s got no paunch for all his efforts, just aches.
