It’s the old Mount Morris neighborhood.
The old Harlem of graceful brownstones that once housed the doctors, the lawyers, the musicians, artists and poets.
The riots haven’t touched this neighborhood.
Now Malone knows why.
DeVon Carter ain’t having it.
Malone pulls up across the street from his building. Carter’s sentries make him as soon as he gets out of the car. One of them says, “You got balls, white cop coming up here.”
Malone says. “Tell Carter I want to see him.”
“Why?”
“Why are you asking why?” Malone says. “All you have to do is go tell Carter that Denny Malone wants to talk.”
The bouncer eye-fucks him for pride and then goes in. He takes about ten minutes, comes back and says, “Come on.”
He leads them upstairs.
DeVon Carter is waiting in his living room. The apartment is large, open and spare. Bone-white walls feature large black-and-white photos of Miles Davis, Sonny Stitt, Art Blakey, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Thelonious Monk. A floor-to-ceiling bookcase, painted gloss black, holds volumes of mostly art books—Benny Andrews, Norman Lewis, Kerry James Marshall, Hughie Lee-Smith.
Carter wears a black denim shirt, black jeans, black loafers with no socks. He sees Malone glance at the book spines. “You know African American art? Oh, that’s right, you have a black girlfriend. Maybe she taught you something.”
“She taught me a lot,” Malone says.
“I just bought a Lewis at auction,” Carter says. “A hundred fifty K for an untitled work.”
“You’d think for that kind of money they’d slap a title on it,” Malone says.
“It’s upstairs if you want to see it.”
“I didn’t come here to admire your art collection.”
“What are you doing here?” Carter asks. “I heard you were behind bars. Something about you selling a large weight of heroin to the Dominicans. And here I thought we were friends, Malone.”
“We’re not.”
“I would have paid you more,” Carter says.
“You needed it more,” Malone says. “Now you don’t have the heroin and you don’t have the guns, so you don’t have the money and you don’t have the people. Castillo is going to hose you off the street like the garbage you are.”
“I got cops.”
“The old Torres crew?” Malone asks. “If they haven’t already gone over to the Domos, they will.”
It won’t be Gallina, Malone thinks. He doesn’t have the brains or the guts.
It’ll be Tenelli.
Carter knows he’s right. He asks, “So what are you offering me? Your crew, or what’s left of them? No, thanks.”
“I’m offering you the whole fucking department,” Malone says. “Manhattan North, the Borough, Narcotics, the Detective Division. I’ll throw in the mayor’s office and half the motherfuckers on Billionaires’ Row.”
“In exchange for what?”
“The Bennett video clip.”
Carter smiles. Now it all makes sense to him. “So your bosses let their nigger out of his cage to come fetch it.”
“That’s me.”
“What makes you think I have it?”
“You’re DeVon Carter.”
He has it.
Malone can see it in his eyes.
“So you want me to sell out my people,” Carter says, “to buy whites’ protection.”
“You’ve been selling out your people since you put your first dime bag on the street,” Malone says.
“This from a dirty, dope-slinging cop.”
“That’s how I know,” Malone says. “We’re the same, you and me. We’re both dinosaurs, just trying to buy ourselves a little more time before we go extinct.”
“Human nature,” Carter says. “A man wants to breathe for as long as he can. A king, he wants to stay on the throne. We were kings, Malone.”
“We were that.”
“We should have worked together,” Carter says. “We’d still be kings.”
“We still can.”
“If I give you that tape.”
“It’s that simple,” Malone says. “You give me that tape, we’ll run Manhattan North together. Nobody can touch us.”
Carter stares at him, then says, “You know the best thing about these riots? They burn down things you wanted taken down anyway—slum buildings, dirty bodegas, shabby bars. Then you buy low, build nice things and sell high. Let me give you some advice, Malone. You take some of your dirty dope money, put it into real estate, you become a pillar of the community.”
“Does that mean we have a deal?”
“We’ve always had a deal.”
“I need to see the clip.”
Carter has a beautiful flat-screen monitor.
He jacks an iPhone in.
The images are painfully clear.
Michael Bennett is a typical street kid in a gray hoodie, baggy jeans and basketball shoes. He stands in the middle of the street arguing with a uniformed officer, Hayes.
Hayes goes to cuff him.
Bennett turns and runs.
He’s fast, like a fourteen-year-old, but he isn’t faster than a bullet.
Hayes pulls his service weapon and empties it.
Bennett’s body spins so the last two shots hit him in the face and the chest, the exact reverse of what the ME said.
Jesus Christ.
It’s just murder.
Black lives matter, Malone thinks.
They just don’t matter as much as white lives.
“You made copies,” Malone says.
“Of course I did,” Carter said. “Mrs. Carter didn’t raise herself any stupid black babies. You tell your bosses that if anything happens to me, this clip will be released on fifty major media outlets and the Internet. Then the whole city will burn. Make the same deal for yourself, I don’t mind. I want you back on the street.”
He hands Malone the phone.
“The riots will die down, they always do,” Carter says. “You and me, we’ll go back to keeping the lid on, because we always do. Make Manhattan North safe for real estate. Now you run and go tell Massuh Anderson as long as I get room to make my play, he doesn’t have to worry about the video.”
Malone puts the phone in his pocket.
“Are we good?” Carter asks.
“Let me ask you something,” Malone says. “Who was Benjamin Coombs?”
Carter looks puzzled. Searches his brain for the name, as if it’s some African American painter he hasn’t heard of. But it doesn’t come to him, and he’s annoyed when he has to ask, “Who?”
Malone pulls his gun.
“Nasty Ass,” he says.
He shoots Carter twice in the chest.