“I messed up,” Claudette says.
Part of him hadn’t even wanted to walk through the door, afraid of what he’d find.
But he decided he had to check up on her.
He owes her that.
And he loves her.
Now she’s in that remorseful phase he’s seen a hundred times. She’s sorry (they both know she is), she won’t do it again (they both know she will). But he’s motherfucking exhausted. “Claudette, I can’t do this right now, I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”
She sees the mark on his neck. “What happened to you?”
“Someone tried to kill me.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Look, I need a shower. I need to clear my head.”
He goes into the bathroom, strips and steps into the shower.
His body aches.
Malone scrubs his skin until it hurts. Can’t scrub off the welt, can’t scrub off the filth he feels on his skin, in his soul. His old man used to come home from the Job and step right into the shower—now he knows why.
The street stays with you.
It sinks into your pores and then your blood.
And your soul? Malone asks himself. You gonna blame that on the street, too?
Some of it, yeah.
You’ve been breathing corruption since you put on the shield, Malone thinks. Like you breathed in death that day in September. Corruption isn’t just in the city’s air, it’s in its DNA, yours, too.
Yeah, blame it on the city, blame it on New York.
Blame it on the Job.
It’s too easy, it stops you from asking yourself the hard question.
How did you get here?
Like anyplace else.
A step at a time.
Thought it was a joke when they warned you at the Academy about the slippery slope. A cup of coffee, a sandwich, it leads to other things. No, you thought, a cup of coffee was a cup of coffee and a sandwich was a sandwich. The deli owners were grateful for your service, appreciative of your presence.
What was the harm?
There wasn’t really.
There still isn’t.
Then there was 9/11.
Jesus, don’t blame it on that. You haven’t sunk so low you’d blame it on that, have you? A dead brother, twenty-seven dead brothers, a shattered mother, a broken heart, the stench of burned corpses, ashes and dust.
Don’t blame it on that, ace.
You blame it on that you can never visit Liam’s grave again.
Plainclothes is where it really started.
You and Russo walked into a stash house, the skels took off and there it is—money on the fucking floor. Not a lot, a couple of grand, but still, you had a mortgage, diapers, maybe you wanted to take your wife out someplace that had tablecloths.
Russo and you looked at each other and you scooped it up.
Never said anything about it.
But a line was crossed.
You didn’t know there were other lines.
At first it was targets of opportunity—money left by fleeing dealers, cash or freebies offered by a madam in exchange for looking the other way or looking out, an envelope from a bookie. You didn’t seek it—you didn’t hunt, you gathered, but if it was there, you took.
Because what harm did it do? People are going to gamble, they’re going to get laid.
And okay, maybe then you went to a burglary or a store break-in and maybe you took something the thief didn’t. Nobody got hurt except the insurance company and they’re bigger crooks than anybody.
You’re in court all the time—you see how incompetence, inefficiency, and shit yes, corruption, turn loose guys you risked your life to put on trial. You watch them walk away and grin at you, grin in your face, and then one day a defense lawyer comes up to you outside the courthouse and says we work in the same system anyway, maybe we can make it work for both of us, and he gives you a card and says there’s a taste in it for you if you send me referrals.
And why the hell not? The accused is going to get a lawyer anyway and everyone in the system is getting paid but you so why shouldn’t you take a piece if it’s offered? And then if he wants you to bring an envelope to a willing prosecutor to let a guy walk who’s probably going to walk anyway—shit, you’re just taking more of the dealer’s money.
You took advantage of crimes, you didn’t set crimes up to take advantage, and then . . .
It was a crack mill on 123rd off Adam Clayton Powell. You hit it by the book, a warrant and everything, and the dealer didn’t run—he just sat there calmly and said, “Take it. I walk away and you walk away and we’re both better off.”
And now you’re not talking one, two grand, you’re talking fifty, you’re talking serious money, the kind of money you put it away, it puts your kids through college. Like the dealer ain’t going to get himself a Gerry Burger and walk anyway? Shit, at least you punished him, cost him some money, issued a fine—why should it go to the state instead of in your pocket, where it can do some good?
So you let him walk.
You don’t feel good about it but you don’t feel as bad as you thought you would because you got there step by step. Why should the lawyers make the money? The court system? The prisons?
You shortcut the whole process and issue justice on the spot.
What kings do.
But there was still a line you hadn’t crossed. You didn’t even realize you were walking toward it.
You told yourself you were different, but you knew you were lying. And you knew you were lying when you told yourself that was the last line you’d cross, because you knew it wasn’t.
Used to be you’d cheat on the warrants to make righteous busts—take dope and criminals off the street. Then came the time when you cheated on the warrants to make busts so that you could make rips.
You knew you’d make the transition from scavenger to hunter.
You became a predator.
An out-and-out criminal.
Told yourself it was different because you were robbing drug dealers instead of banks.
Told yourself you’d never kill anyone to make a rip.
The last lie, the last line.
Because what the fuck were you supposed to do when you went into a mill and they wanted to slug it out? Let yourself get killed or gun them down. And then were you supposed to not take the money, not take the drugs, just because some dirtbags had been taken off the count?
You took money with blood literally on it.
And you took the dope.
And let them call you a hero cop.
And half believed it.
And now you’re a drug dealer.
No different from the dirtbags you came on the Job to fight.
Now you’re naked and you can’t wash the mark of Judas off your body or out of your soul and you know that Diego Pena wasn’t drawing his gun to shoot you, you know that you flat-out murdered him.
You’re a criminal.
A skel.
The shower door slides open and Claudette gets in. She stands under the water with him and traces her finger down the fading scar on his leg, then the livid scar across his throat.
“You’re really hurt,” she says.
“I’m indestructible,” he says, wrapping his arms around her. The spray of the shower mingles with tears on her soft brown skin.
“Life is trying to kill us,” she says.
Life, Malone thinks, is trying to kill everyone.
And it always succeeds.
Sometimes before you die.
He gets out of the shower and dresses. When she comes out, he says, “I can’t come back here for a while.”
“Because I’m using again?”
“No, that ain’t it.”
“You’re going back to your wife, aren’t you?” she says. “The redheaded Irish Staten Island mother of your children. No, that’s good, baby, that’s where you belong.”
“I’ll decide where I belong, ’Dette.”
“I think you have.”
“It’s not safe for you to have me here,” Malone says. “Some people are coming after me.”
“I’m willing to risk it.”
“I’m not.” He clips the Sig Sauer at his hip.
The Beretta 8000D in an ankle holster.
A 9 mm Glock in a shoulder holster.
Then he slides an extra-large black T-shirt over all of it and slips the SOG knife into his boot.
Claudette stares at him. “Jesus Christ, who’s coming after you?”
“The City of New York,” Malone says.