In the morning, Malone walks down Broadway past a newsstand on the corner.
He sees his face on the cover of the New York Post with a screaming headline, two heroes shot, a picture of Malone standing with Russo and Monty in the aftermath of Pena.
Monty’s image is highlighted in a white oval like a halo.
The Daily News shouts one elite cop killed, another wounded and has a slightly different photo of Malone, and a photo of Malone from the Pena bust with a subline reading dirty denny? did he feel lucky?
The front page of the New York Times doesn’t have his picture but a headline reads with latest bloodbath, is it time to reconsider elite police units?
The byline is Mark Rubenstein.
Malone hails a taxi and goes to Manhattan North.
Russo looks sharp.
Pressed Armani suit, white monogrammed shirt with cuff links, red Zegna tie, Magli shoes shined to a high polish. Summer, he ain’t wearing the retro overcoat but he has it draped over his arm, making it awkward for O’Dell to cuff him.
At least he does it in front, not behind his back.
Malone lays the overcoat over the cuffs.
The media’s outside Manhattan North. TV trucks, radio, print guys with their photographers.
“You have to do that?” Malone asks O’Dell. “Make him do the perp walk?”
“I didn’t.”
“Someone did.”
“Well, it wasn’t me.”
“And you had to do it here,” Malone says, “in front of other cops.”
“Did you want me to do it at his house, in front of his kids?” O’Dell looks angry, tense. He should be—every cop in the station is eye-fucking him and the other feds.
Eye-fucking Malone, too.
He could have skipped this—O’Dell told him to—but Malone thought he had to be there.
Deserved to be there.
To watch them put bracelets on his brother.
Russo keeps his head up.
“Good-bye, you fucking donkeys,” Russo says. “Have fun waiting out your pensions!”
The feds take him out.
Malone walks with him.
Cameras click like machine guns.
Reporters press forward but the uniforms keep them back. The guys in the bags are in no mood to take any shit. Seeing another cop go out in cuffs makes them sick and scared.
And angry.
After the cop shootings, the Blue went into the projects in waves and with bad intent.
The uniforms disabled the dash-cam systems on their cars so the video cameras wouldn’t work and then went to town.
You had a warrant, a no-show parole date, a complaint for littering—you were going. You had as much as a roach on you, an old needle, a pipe with a grain of old rock in it, you’re going. You resisted arrest, you talked smack, you as much as looked at a cop sideways, you caught a bad beating and then you got thrown in the car with your hands cuffed behind your back but your seat belt unfastened and the cops would speed up and then hit the brakes so your face smashed into the security screen.
The Three-Two went through St. Nick’s twice—looking for weapons, dope, most of all information, trying to get someone to snitch, to drop a dime, to sell a name.
Da Force—what’s left of the motherfuckers anyway—came in right behind and they weren’t looking for collars, they were looking for payback, and the only way to stay out of the equation was to give them information and then you were stuck in a jam between Da Force and DeVon Carter and the thing is, Da Force is going to come and go.
DeVon Carter stays.
You got to catch a beating, you catch it with your mouth shut like it’s wired, which it might well be by the time Da Force and their plainclothes dogs got done with you.
The people in St. Nick’s were wondering why they were catching the shit when everyone knew it was the Domos who massacred those cops, all the way over on the other side of Harlem.
So when the word got out that a cop from Da Force was heading out in cuffs, an eager crowd gathered out on the street.
Hooting, hollering.
If the cameras weren’t there, the uniforms might charge them, clean their clocks, shut their fucking mouths.
Russo slips into the backseat of a black car.
Waves to Malone.
Then he’s gone.
Malone walks back into the house.
A few cops look at him sideways. No one talks to him.
Except Sykes.
“Clean out your locker,” he says. “Then come to my office.”
The desk sergeant looks down, cops turn their backs as Malone walks past.
He goes down to the Task Force locker room. Gallina is there with Tenelli and Ortiz, a couple of plainclothes sit on the bench, shooting the shit.
They shut up when Malone comes in.
Everyone finds a reason to look at the floor.
Malone opens his locker.
And sees a dead rat.
He hears suppressed laughs behind him and whirls around. Gallina is smirking at him, Ortiz coughs into his fist.
Tenelli just stares.
“Who did this?” Malone asks. “Which one of you assholes?”
Ortiz says, “This place has vermin. It needs an exterminator.”
Malone grabs him and slams him into the opposite lockers. “Is that you, huh? You the exterminator? You want to start now?”
“Get your hands off me.”
“Maybe you got something else you want to say.”
“Let go of him, Malone,” Gallina says.
“Stay out of this,” Malone says. He gets right into Ortiz’s face. “You got something to say to me?”
“No.”
“What I thought,” Malone says. He lets him go, cleans out his locker and walks out.
Hears laughter behind him.
Then he hears, “Dead man walking.”
Sykes doesn’t ask him to sit down.
Just says, “Your shield and your gun on my desk.”
Malone takes off his shield, sets it on the desk, then puts his duty weapon beside it.
“I guess I always knew that you were a dirty cop,” Sykes says, “but I didn’t think the legendary Denny Malone was a rat, too. I had some respect for you—not much, but some—but now I don’t have any. You’re a crook and a coward and you disgust me. The King of Manhattan North? You’re the king of nothing. Get out. I can’t stand to look at you.”
“If it helps, I can’t either.”
“It doesn’t,” Sykes says. “My replacement is on his way. My career is over. You took it from me, just like you stole the reputations of thousands of decent, honest cops. I know you made a deal, but I hope they put you under the jail anyway. I hope you rot there.”
“I won’t last long in prison,” Malone says.
“Oh, they’ll keep you safe,” Sykes says. “They store you at Fort Dix, haul you out to testify. You have three or four years of informing on your brothers before they put you in an actual facility. You’ll be fine, Malone. Rats always are.”
Malone walks out of his office and then out of the house.
Eyes follow him.
So does silence.
McGivern’s waiting for him out on the street.
“Did you give me up, too?” McGivern asks.
“Yeah.”
“What do they have?”
“Everything,” Malone says. “They have you on tape.”
“Your father would be ashamed,” McGivern says. “He’s rolling in his grave.”
They reach Eighth Avenue.
Malone waits for the light.
It turns green and he starts to cross. He hears McGivern behind him, yelling, “You’re going to hell, Malone! You’re going to hell!”
No question about it, Malone thinks.
It’s a slam dunk.
The receptionist remembers him.
“The last time I saw you,” she says, “you had a dog.”
“He pulled the pin.”
“Mr. Berger will be right with you,” she says. “If you’d like to have a seat.”
He sits down and leafs through GQ. It tells him what the well-dressed man is going to be wearing that fall. A few minutes later, the receptionist shows him into Berger’s office.
It’s bigger than Malone’s whole apartment. He sets the briefcase down by Berger’s desk. The lawyer will know what it is.
“Would you like a drink?” Berger asks. “I have some excellent brandy.”
“No, I’m good.”
“You don’t mind if I indulge,” Berger says. “It’s been a day. I understand that Russo is in federal custody.”
“That’s right.”
“And you felt it necessary to be present,” Berger says, pouring himself a drink from a crystal decanter. “Tell me, Malone, does your masochism know no bounds?”
“I guess not.”
“I’ve heard,” Berger said, “that something like two-thirds of the firefighters and police who ran into the Towers that day took Last Rites. I wonder if that’s true.”
“Probably.”
“If you are going to be a star witness,” Berger says, “you are going to have to be more prolix. That means—”
“I know what it means.”
“Better already.” Berger tosses down his drink. “I guaranteed O’Dell that I would surrender you by three o’clock. That leaves a couple of hours. Do you have any business to take care of? Anything you need?”
“I have my toothbrush, but we have some business,” Malone says. “There’s a woman named Debbie Phillips. She just had a baby, Billy O’Neill’s son. Share of that money needs to be doled out to her, a little at a time. All the information’s in there. Can you do that?”
“I can,” Berger says. “Anything else?”
“That’s it.”
“Well, no time like the present then.”
The receptionist sticks her head in. “Mr. Berger, you asked to be informed. They’re about to make an announcement on the Bennett investigation.”
Berger flicks on a television mounted to the wall. “Shall we?”
The DA appears behind a lectern, flanked by the commissioner and the chief of patrol.
“This was an unfortunate incident,” the DA reads into a microphone, “but the facts are clear. The deceased, Mr. Bennett, refused Officer Hayes’s lawful order to stop. He turned, advanced toward Officer Hayes while taking from his jacket what appeared to be a handgun. Officer Hayes discharged his weapon, fatally striking Mr. Bennett. Tragically, what Officer Hayes perceived to be a weapon was eventually determined to have been a cell phone. But Officer Hayes acted lawfully within the parameters of proper procedure. Had Mr. Bennett obeyed the lawful order, the tragic consequences would not have followed. That being the case, the grand jury has declined to press any charges against Officer Hayes.”
“Judicially correct,” Berger says, “but politically idiotic. Totally tone-deaf. The ghettos will be burning by sunset. Are you ready to go?”
Malone’s ready.
Berger’s driver takes them down to the FBI field office at 26 Federal Plaza. Who the fuck knew, Malone thinks, I’d go to hell in a chauffeured limo?
The building is a tower of glass and steel, cold as a dead heart. They go through the metal detectors, then up to O’Dell’s office on the fourteenth floor, sit on a bench in the hallway and wait.
O’Dell’s office door opens and Russo comes out.
Sees Malone sitting there.
“So you didn’t put one in your head,” Russo says.
“No.” Should have, maybe, he thinks.
Didn’t.
“That’s okay,” Russo says. “I did it for you.”
“The fuck you talking about, Phil?”
“I told you last night,” Russo says, “I was going to do what I had to do.”
Malone doesn’t get it.
Russo leans over, speaks right into his face. “You gave me up to save your family. I don’t blame you. I’d have done the same thing. So I just did, Denny.”
Then it hits him—Russo had only one card to play, and he’d laid it down.
“Yeah, Pena,” Russo says. “I told them you murdered him. Shot that spic motherfucker in cold blood. Now I testify, I’m the star fucking witness at your trial, I walk, I go sell aluminum siding in Utah and you get the life without parole.”
A fed comes out of the office, takes Russo by the wrist and starts to lead him away.
“No hard feelings, Denny,” Russo says. “We each did what we had to do.”
O’Dell opens the door and gestures for Malone to come in.
“Our deal is off,” O’Dell says. “Your client will be charged with capital murder. His testimony will no longer be required as we have Phil Russo for everything we need. And Sergeant Malone will have to find new legal representation, as you will no longer be able to function in that role.”
“How’s that?”
“You’ll be conflicted out,” Weintraub says. “We’ll call you as a prosecution witness to testify as to Malone’s considerable personal animus against Diego Pena.”
O’Dell cuffs Malone and takes him to the Metro Correctional Center down on Park Row and puts him in a holding cell.
The door shuts and just like that Malone is on the other side.
“Why did you have to kill him?” O’Dell asks.