“Where you been?” Russo asks him.
Malone looks at his watch. “Noon tour, I’m on time.”
He’s on time, but his head is fucking reeling. Booze hangover, drug hangover, sex hangover, fear hangover.
They’ve got him by the fucking balls and he doesn’t know what to do.
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Russo says. “You haven’t changed your clothes. You smell like booze, weed and pussy. Expensive pussy, but still . . .”
“I been at my girlfriend’s,” Malone says. “That okay with you?”
It’s the first lie.
To his partner, his best friend, his brother.
Tell him, Malone thinks. Take him and Monty out into the alley and tell them. You got your dick caught in the Piccone thing, you’re going to work it out, they got nothing to worry about.
But he doesn’t.
“You went to your girlfriend’s?” Russo laughs. “Looking like that? How’d that go?”
“Like it looks,” Malone says. “It’s okay with you, Mom, I thought I’d shower here, change.”
If he looks like hell, Levin looks like hell lined with shit. He’s hunched over on the bench, trying to tie his shoes, but it seems like too much for him. When he looks up and sees Malone, his face is white.
And guilty.
Like a perp in the room ready to go.
Levin will make a good cop, Malone thinks, but he’ll never be an undercover. Can’t keep the guilt off his face.
“Bowling Night isn’t for pussies,” Malone says.
“Just pussy,” Russo says. “But you already know that, don’t you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Poor Emily,” Russo says.
“Amy.”
“As in ‘Don’t tell Amy,’” Monty says.
“The fuck’s the difference?” Russo says. “Don’t worry, Dave—what happens in Manhattan North stays in Manhattan North. No, wait, that’s Vegas. What happens in Manhattan North, we tell everybody.”
Malone goes in, takes a shower. Pops two go-pills, changes into a blue denim shirt and black jeans.
When he gets out, Russo says, “Sykes wants to see you.”
Malone goes up to the captain’s office.
“You look like hell,” Sykes says. “Out celebrating?”
“You should be, too,” Malone says. “You closed Gillette/Williams, the noose is off your neck, the Post and the News have woodies for you.”
“The Amsterdam News is calling me an Oreo.”
“You care?”
“Not really,” Sykes says.
But Malone knows he does.
“I’m pleased about Gillette/Williams,” Sykes says, “but it doesn’t solve the bigger problem. In fact, it only makes it worse—if Carter gets those weapons, he’ll hit back hard.”
“I talked to him,” Malone says.
“You did what?”
“I happened to bump into him,” Malone says. “So I took the opportunity to ask him to stand down.”
“And?”
“You’re right. He won’t.”
More lies of omission. He doesn’t tell Sykes that he knows for a fact one of his detectives is on Carter’s pad, running interference, in fact, on the gun deal. Can’t tell him, because Sykes would slap Torres in cuffs. So instead, he says, “We’re on it.”
“You want to be a little more specific?” Sykes asks.
“We’re placing a visual surveillance on 3803 Broadway, where we believe Teddy Bailey is setting up the deal.”
“Can that get us Carter?”
“Probably not,” Malone says. “You want the guns or you want Carter?”
“First the one, then the other.”
“We get the guns,” Malone says, “Carter is going down anyway.”
“I want him arrested,” Sykes says, “not killed by Carlos Castillo.”
“Does it matter?” Malone asks.
“I won’t have the Task Force perceived as operating on behalf of one drug operation versus another,” Sykes says. “This is New York, not Mexico.”
“Jesus Christ, Captain,” Malone says. “You want these guns or you don’t? We both know DeVon Carter isn’t going anywhere near them. Just like we both know these homicide clearances are going to buy you a little time, but not a lot before One P is up your ass again.”
“Get the guns,” Sykes says. “Just be aware that your team is serving as the point of the Task Force spear, not a loose cannon of your own.”
“Don’t worry,” Malone says. “When the bust goes down, you’ll be in on it.”
You’ll be there to spike the ball for the touchdown celebration.
But you don’t want to know how I get you to the red zone.
He walks downstairs into a nasty freakin’ ambush.
It’s Claudette.
Two uniforms have her by the elbows and try to move her gently out of the lobby, but she ain’t havin’ it.
“Where is he?” she says. “Where’s Denny?! I want to see Denny!”
Malone comes through the door to see this.
She’s jonesing. She was high and now she’s jangling, her nerves starting to jump ugly at her.
She sees him, too. “Where have you been? I looked for you last night. I called you. You didn’t answer. I came to your place, you weren’t there.”
Most of the uniforms look appalled and scared. A couple smirk, until Monty turns his gaze on them.
“I got this,” Malone says.
He takes Claudette from the officers. “Let’s go outside.”
But she has that strength that crazy gives a person and won’t budge. “Who is she? You smell like pussy, you motherfucker. White pussy, some ratchet?”
The desk sergeant leans out from the counter. “Denny—”
“I know! I got it!”
He picks Claudette up by the waist and carries her to the door as she kicks and screams, “You don’t want your friends to see me, asshole?! You’re ashamed of me in front of your cops?! He fucks me, y’all! I let him fuck me in the ass when he wants! In my black ass!”
Sykes is standing on the stairs.
Watching this.
Malone wrestles Claudette out the door into the street. Plainclothes guys coming in stare at them.
“Get in the car,” Malone tells her.
“Fuck you.”
“Get in the fucking car!”
He shoves her through the passenger door, slams it, walks around and gets in. Hits the lock button, rolls up her sleeves and sees the needle mark.
“Jesus, Claudette.”
“Am I under arrest, Officer?” Claudette asks. “Gosh, Officer, is there something I can do to avoid going to jail?”
She unzips his fly and bends over.
He straightens her up. “Knock it off.”
“Can’t get it up? Your whore wear you out?”
He takes her chin between his left thumb and forefinger. “Listen to me. Listen to me. I cannot be having this. You cannot come here.”
“Because you’re ashamed of me.”
“Because it is my place of work.”
Claudette breaks down. “I’m sorry, Denny. I got so desperate. You left me alone. You left me all alone.”
It’s an explanation and an accusation.
He gets it.
A junkie goes into the alley alone with the disease, it’s the disease that walks out.
“How much did you shoot?” he asks.
He’s scared because it’s a new world out there—the dealers are mixing fentanyl with the smack—it’s forty times stronger and if she got a dose of that she could OD. Junkies are dropping out there, dying like gays back in the worst of the AIDS days.
“Enough, I guess,” she says. And repeats, “You left me alone, baby, and I couldn’t take it so I went out and scored.”
“Who fixed you?”
She shakes her head. “You’ll hurt him.”
“I promise, I won’t. Who?”
“What difference does it make?” she asks. “You think you can threaten every dealer in New York?”
“You think I can’t find out?”
“Then find out,” she says. “I’m hurting, baby.”
He drives her home. Grabs a get-well bag from under the dashboard and brings it up with him.
“Go into the bedroom and shoot,” he says. “I don’t want to watch.”
“It’s my last, baby,” she says. “They’ll give me some come-down shit at the hospital, I know a doctor. I’ll step it down, I promise.”
He sits on the sofa.
If I go to jail, he thinks, she dies.
She’ll never make it alone.
Claudette comes out a few minutes later. “Tired now. Sleepy.”
Malone lays her on the sofa, goes into the bathroom, kneels down and pukes into the toilet. He’s violently sick until there’s nothing left to throw up and he dry heaves. Then he sits on the black-and-white tile floor, reaches up to the sink for a hand towel and wipes the sweat off his face. After a couple of minutes, he gets up, splashes cold water on his face and the back of his neck.
He brushes his teeth until the vomit smell is gone.
Then he takes his phone and punches in the number.
Hears “Hello.”
O’Dell must have been sitting by the phone, the smug bastard, waiting. Knowing I was going to cave.
Malone says, “I’ll give you lawyers. But no cops, you hear me?”
I will never give you brother cops.