Malone and Torres sit across a table from DeVon Carter above a hardware store on Lenox the dope slinger uses as one of his many offices. He’ll abandon it after this meeting, won’t come back for months, if at all.
So it tips Malone that Carter has something to gain from the meeting, if he’s willing to burn a location.
“You wanted to talk,” Carter says. “Talk.”
“You just took out an innocent old lady,” Malone says. “What’s it going to be the next time? A kid? A pregnant girl? A baby? You strike back for Mookie, sooner or later, that’s what it’s gonna be.”
“If I don’t answer back for Mookie,” Carter says, “I will lose respect.”
“I don’t want a war on my turf,” Malone says.
“Tell that to the Dominicans,” Carter says. “You know who they sent up here? Cat named Carlos Castillo, a certified headhunter.”
“It wasn’t a Dominican who shot Mookie,” Malone says. “It was a brother, maybe a Spade.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about your Spades flipping on you and going over to the Dominicans,” Malone says. “Maybe they punched their ticket by doing Mookie.”
Carter is good at holding himself in, but there’s just a momentary look in the eye that tells Malone it’s the truth.
“What do you want me to do?” Carter asks.
“Call off the deal with the bikers,” Malone says. “Tell them you won’t be needing any more of their guns.”
Carter’s voice takes on an edge. “You stay out of that.”
He looks over at Torres.
So Torres knows all about the gun deal, Malone thinks. “No, I’m going to be all up in that.”
“I can’t fight the Domos without weapons,” Carter says. “What do you want me to do, just die?”
“Let us handle the Domos.”
“Like you handled Pena?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
Carter smiles. “And what do you want for these services? Three thousand a month, five, a flat fee? Or just the ability to rip as much as you can get your hands on?”
“I want you out of the business,” Malone says. “Go to Maui, the Bahamas, I don’t care, but you retire and no one comes after you.”
“I just give up my business and sail away.”
“How much more money do you need to live?” Malone asks. “How many cars can you drive? How many houses can you live in? How many women can you fuck? I’m giving you an out.”
Carter says, “You know better than that, Malone. You of all people should know that kings don’t retire.”
“Be the first.”
“And leave you king?”
“Diego Pena killed your boy Cleveland and his entire family,” Malone says. “You didn’t do shit about it. That ain’t the DeVon Carter of legend. I think you’re past it already.”
“You know what I hear?” Carter asks. “I hear you’re dipping your pen in the inkwell. And I hear you ain’t the only white horse she ride, your Miss Claudette.”
He taps the back of his hand on his forearm.
Malone says, “You or any of your chimps go near her I’ll kill you.”
“I’m just saying”—Carter smiles—“if she gets sick, I can get her well.”
Malone gets up. “My offer stands.”
Torres follows Malone down the stairs. “What the fuck, Denny?!”
“Go back to your boss.”
“You leave the guns alone,” Torres says. “I’m warning you.”
Malone turns around. “Warning me or threatening me?”
“I’m telling you,” Torres says. “Leave the fucking guns alone.”
“What, you got a piece of that deal, too?”
He knows the bikers—white don’t like to deal with black, but they’ll deal with brown to deal with black.
Torres says, “For the last time, stay in your lane.”
Malone turns and goes down the stairs.
Manhattan North is a zoo.
You got the usual animals, but you also got a herd of suits up from One P, and a pack of functionaries from the mayor’s office.
McGivern is there.
He meets Malone at the door.
“Denny,” he says, “we have to get this under control.”
“Working it, Inspector.”
“Work it harder,” McGivern says. “The Post, the Daily News . . . the ‘community’ is all over us.”
From two directions, Malone thinks. On the one hand, they want the violence in the projects to stop; on the other, they’re out there protesting against the police sweep of the gangs that’s been going on since the Gillette-Williams murders this morning.
Well, which do they want, because they can’t have both.
Malone works his way through the crowd to the briefing room where Sykes leads a meeting of the Task Force.
“What do we have?” Sykes asks.
Tenelli says, “The Domos are denying right, left and center they had anything to do with the Gillette shooting.”
“But they would,” Sykes said. “They didn’t anticipate the Williams killing and the heat from that.”
“I get it,” Tenelli says, “but this is more than the usual ‘I din’t have nothin’ to do with it.’ They proactively sent people to tell us it wasn’t one of them.”
“It wasn’t,” Malone says. “They subcontracted it out to the Spades.”
“Why would the Spades take that job?”
“Price of admission to join the Dominicans,” Malone says. “They figure that Carter can’t supply them with high-quality product, guns or people. They jump off now or get stuck on the sinking boat.”
Babyface takes his pacifier from his mouth. “Concur.”
“The question is why now?” Emma Flynn asks. “The Domos have been quiet since the Pena bust. Why do they want to start a shooting war now?”
Sykes throws a surveillance photo on the screen.
“I reached out to Narcotics and DEA,” Sykes says. “Their best information is that this man, Carlos Castillo, has come up from the Dominican to get the organization back in shape. Castillo is a full-blooded narco. He was born in Los Angeles, like a lot of the narcos of his generation, so he has dual Dominican and American citizenship.”
Malone looks at the grainy image of Castillo, a small, suave man with caramel skin, thick dark hair, a hawk nose and thin lips, clean-shaven.
Sykes says, “DEA’s had him on the radar for years but has never had enough for an indictment. But it all makes sense—Castillo is here to get the NYC heroin market straightened out. Vertical integration, from the DR to Harlem, from factory to customer. They want it all now. Castillo is here to lead the final charge on Carter.”
Flynn looks over at Malone. “You really think the Dominicans have coopted the Spades?”
Malone shrugs. “It’s a workable theory.”
“Or the truce between the Spades and the GMB simply broke down,” Flynn says.
“But we’re not hearing that on the street,” Babyface says.
Sykes asks, “What information do we have linking this shooting to the Spades?”
A lot.
The holding cells in the Three-Two, Three-Four and Four-Three are full of gangbangers—GMB, Trinitarios and Dominicans Don’t Play. They’ve been picked up for everything from littering to outstanding warrants, parole and probation violations, simple possession. Those that are saying anything are telling the same story that Oh No Henry did: the shooter—a few say it was shooters, plural—was—or were—black.
“I don’t imagine anyone is giving up names,” Sykes says.
He knows the GMB bangers wouldn’t give up a Spade shooter to the cops because they want to handle it themselves.
“All right,” Sykes says, “tomorrow we do verticals in the North buildings. Shake out the Spades, start hauling them in, see what falls out of the trees.”
“Verticals” are random patrols of project stairwells that the uniforms usually reserve for winter nights when they want to get out of the cold.
Malone can’t blame them—it’s dangerous and you never know when you might get shot or shoot some kid in the dim light, like that poor cop Liang who panicked and killed an unarmed black guy and claimed at his trial that his “gun just went off.”
The jury didn’t believe him and came back with a manslaughter conviction.
At least they didn’t send him to jail.
Yeah, the verticals are treacherous. And now they’re going to roust the Spades.
One of the mayor’s hacks says, “The community is not going to like that. They’re already up in arms about the last round of arrests.”
“Who dat?” Russo, eyeballing the guy who just spoke, asks Malone.
“Yeah, we seen him before,” Malone says, trying to dredge up a name. “Chandler somebody, somebody Chandler.”
“Some people in the community are not going to like it,” Sykes answers. “Other people in the community are going to pretend not to like it. But most of them want the gangs shut down. They want—and deserve—safety in their own homes. Is the mayor’s office really going to argue against that?”
Good for you, Malone thinks.
But the mayor’s office is apparently going to argue against it. Chandler says, “Couldn’t we do something more surgical?”
“If we had a named suspect, possibly,” Sykes says. “In the absence of that, this is the best option.”
“But the community is going to perceive arresting a large group of young black men as profiling,” Chandler says.
Babyface laughs out loud.
Sykes glares at him and then turns to the mayor’s guy. “You’re the one profiling here.”
“How so?”
“By assuming all black people are going to object to this operation,” Sykes says.
He and everyone else know why the mayor’s office is playing both sides against the middle—minorities are his voter base and he can’t afford to alienate them.
He’s in a tough spot—on the one hand he has to be seen to be trying to suppress the violence in the community; on the other hand, he can’t be allied with what will be termed heavy-handed police tactics against that same community.
So he pushes for an arrest while preserving for the record that he argued against the tactics that might best produce that arrest. At the same time, he’ll use the issue to deflect attention from his scandal onto the police department.
Chandler is saying, “After the Bennett shooting, we can’t afford to further alienate—”
McGivern, standing in the back of the room, says, “Do we really want to have this discussion in front of the entire Task Force? It’s a command matter, and these officers have work to do.”
“If you’d prefer,” Chandler says, “we can take this discussion to—”
“We’re not taking this discussion anywhere,” Sykes says. “We invited you to this briefing as a courtesy and to keep you in the loop, not to participate in decisions that are the department’s to make.”
“All police decisions are political decisions,” Chandler says.
He’s done his job.
If the operation results in an arrest on the Williams murder, the mayor’s office will claim credit. If it doesn’t, the mayor will blame the commissioner, preach against racial profiling and hope the papers cover the Job’s problems instead of his.
“Get some rest,” Sykes says to his cops. “We’ll go in tomorrow morning.”
The meeting breaks up.
The mayor’s rep comes over to Malone and hands him a card. “Detective Malone, Ned Chandler. Special assistant to the mayor.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“Would you have a minute for me?” Chandler asks. “But maybe not here?”
“What about?” It’s fucking treacherous, being seen with a guy his captain just took on.
“Inspector McGivern thought you might be the person to talk to.”
So that’s that. “Yeah, okay. Where?”
“You know the Hotel NYLO?”
“Seventy-Seventh and Broadway.”
“I’ll meet you there,” Chandler says. “Soon as you’re done here?”
McGivern is standing next to Sykes, waving Malone over.
Chandler walks away.
“You just put your neck in the noose,” McGivern tells Sykes. “You think these Gracie Mansion sons of bitches will hesitate to pull the trap?”
“I’m under no such illusion,” Sykes says.
He isn’t under any illusion, either, Malone thinks, that if there’s a hanging, McGivern won’t be in the crowd cheering, glad it’s not him. That’s why he had Sykes running the meeting instead of himself. If things go right, McGivern will take the credit for his talented subordinate; if it goes sick and wrong, he’ll be in there whispering, “Well, I tried to tell him . . .”
Now McGivern says, “Sergeant Malone, we’re counting on you.”
“Yes, sir.”
McGivern nods and walks out.
“How’s Levin doing?” Sykes asks.
“I’ve had him for about seven hours,” Malone says, “but so far, fine.”
“He’s a good cop. He has a career in front of him.”
So don’t fuck him up, is what Sykes is saying.
“What progress have you made on the guns?” Sykes asks.
Malone fills him in on what he knows about Carter, Mantell and the ECMF deal. No shipment has come up yet, but negotiations are ongoing. Carter is fronting the deal through Teddy from an office over a nail shop on Broadway and 158th. But without a wiretap . . .
“We don’t have enough for a warrant,” Malone says.
Sykes looks at him. “Do what you need to do. But remember we’ll need probable cause.”
“Don’t worry,” Malone says. “If they hang you, I’ll pull on your legs.”
“I appreciate that, Sergeant.”
“My pleasure, Captain.”
The team is waiting for Malone out on the street.
“Levin,” Malone says. “Why don’t you go home and take a nap. The grown-ups need to talk.”
“Okay.” He’s a little miffed, but he walks away.
“What do you think?” Malone asks.
Russo says, “Seems like a good kid.”
“Can we trust him?”
“To do what?” Monty asks. “His job? Probably. Some of the other things? I don’t know.”
“Speaking of which,” Malone says, “I got the go for a wire on Carter.”
“Did you get a warrant with that?” Monty asks.
“Yeah, a nod warrant,” Malone says. “We’ll set it up after tomorrow’s op. I gotta go see this guy from the mayor’s office.”
“What about?” Russo asks.
Malone shrugs.
Malone sits in the bar of a trendy West Side boutique hotel called NYLO and sips a club soda. He’d have a real drink except the guy he’s there to meet is from the mayor’s office and you never know.
Ned Chandler bustles in a minute later, looks around, spots Malone and sits down at his table. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
“No problem,” Malone says. He’s annoyed. Chandler is the one with the ask, so he should be there on time if not early, he thinks. You don’t come for a favor and then make the guy you want something from wait for you.
But Chandler is from the mayor’s office, Malone thinks, so I guess the rules don’t apply to him. The guy tilts his chin at the waitress as if that’s going to get her immediate attention, which in fact it does.
“What do you have for single malt?” Chandler asks.
“We have a Laphroaig Quarter Cask.”
“Too smoky. What else?”
“A Caol Ila 12,” the waitress says. “Very light. Refreshing.”
“I’ll do that.”
Malone has known Ned Chandler for maybe forty seconds and already wants to smack the elitist asshole. Guy has to be in his early thirties, wears a checked shirt with a knit tie under a gray cardigan sweater and tan cords.
Malone hates him just for that.
“I know your time is precious,” Chandler says, “so I’ll get right at it.”
Anytime someone tells you that your time is precious, Malone thinks, what they really mean is that their time is precious.
“Bill McGivern recommended you,” Chandler said. “Of course, I know you by reputation—I’m impressed, by the way—but Bill said you were professional, competent and discreet.”
“If you’re looking for a spy in Sykes’s command, that’s not me.”
“I’m not looking for a spy, Detective,” Chandler says. “Do you know Bryce Anderson?”
No, Malone thinks, I don’t know a billionaire real estate developer on the city’s Development Commission. Fuck yes, I know who he is. He’s planning to inhabit Gracie Mansion once the current resident moves on to the governor’s office.
“I know the name, I don’t know him personally,” Malone says.
“Bryce has a problem,” Chandler says, “that requires discretion.”
He stops talking because the waitress comes over with his light and refreshing single malt.
“I’m sorry,” Chandler says to Malone. “I should have asked. Do you want—”
“No, I’m good.”
“On duty.”
“There you go.”
“Bryce has a daughter,” Chandler says. “Lyndsey. Nineteen, smart, beautiful, apple of her father’s eye, all that happy crap. Dropped out of Bennington to build her ‘lifestyle brand’ by being a YouTube celebrity.”
“What’s her lifestyle brand?”
“Damned if I know,” Chandler says. “She probably doesn’t, either. Anyway, little Lyndsey has a boyfriend, a real mook. Of course she goes for him to get back at Daddy for giving her everything.”
Malone hates it when civilians try to talk like cops. “What makes him a mook?”
“He’s a total loser,” Chandler says.
“Black?”
“No, she spared us that cliché, anyway,” Chandler says. “Kyle’s a white bridge-and-tunnel type who thinks he’s the next Scorsese. Except instead of making Mean Streets he has to shoot a sex tape with Bryce Anderson’s daughter.”
“And now he’s threatening to put it out,” Malone says. “How much does he want?”
“A hundred K,” Chandler says. “If that tape gets out, it will ruin this kid’s life.”
Not to mention her daddy’s chance at getting elected, Malone thinks. A law-and-order candidate who wants to come down on street gangs but can’t control his own kid. “This Kyle have a last name?”
“Havachek.”
“You have an address?”
Chandler slides a piece of paper across the table. Havachek lives up in Washington Heights.
“Is she living with him?” Malone asks.
“She was,” Chandler says. “Lyndsey moved back in with Mom and Dad and that’s when the blackmail threat came.”
“He lost his means of support and needs a new one,” Malone says.
“That’s my interpretation as well.”
Malone puts the paper in his pocket. “I’ll take care of it.”
Now Chandler looks nervous, like he wants to say something but doesn’t know how to do it politely. Malone would help him out, but he don’t feel like it. Finally Chandler says, “Bill indicated that you could handle this without . . . getting carried away.”
Malone wants to make him say it. Like a wiseguy making a similar request. I want the guy whacked. I don’t want him whacked. I want him punished, taught a lesson . . .
If it took this loser getting murdered to stop that sex tape going out, he thinks, they’d want me to murder him. If not, they don’t want the extra hassle, never mind something on their conscience.
Fuck, I hate these people. But he takes Chandler off the hook. “I’ll be appropriate.”
They love that word.
“So we’re on the same page?” Chandler asks.
Malone nods.
“In regard to paying you for your time—”
Malone waves it off.
That ain’t how it works.
Russo picks him up on Seventy-Ninth Street.
“What did the mayor’s guy want?” Russo asks.
“A favor,” Malone says. “You got a little time?”
“For you, sweetheart . . .”
They drive up to Washington Heights, find the address in a shitty building on 176th between St. Nicholas and Audubon. Russo parks on the street, Malone sees a kid on the corner, walks over and slips him a twenty. “This car—all of it—is here when we get back, yeah?”
“You cops?”
“We’re undertakers if this car gets jacked.”
Havachek lives on the fourth floor.
“Why is it,” Russo asks as they go up the stairs, “mooks can never live on the first floor? Or in buildings that have elevators? I’m getting too old for this shit. The knees.”
“The knees go first,” Malone says.
“Thank Christ, huh?”
Malone knocks on Havachek’s door and hears, “Who is it?”
“You want a hundred grand, you don’t want a hundred grand?” Malone asks.
The door opens a chain’s width. Malone kicks it in the rest of the way.
Havachek’s tall, skinny, has a man bun and a nasty bruise already forming on his forehead where the door hit him. He’s wearing a dirty jersey sweater and black skinny jeans over a pair of Chelsea boots. He steps back, puts his hand to his forehead to feel for blood.
“Get undressed,” Malone says.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m the guy who just told you to get undressed,” Malone says. He pulls his gun out. “Don’t make me tell you again, Kyle, because you’re not going to like the alternate request.”
“You’re a porn star, right?” Russo asks. “So this shouldn’t be a problem for you. Now get your fucking clothes off.”
Kyle strips down to his shorts.
“Everything,” Russo says, sliding his belt from its loops.
“What are you going to do?” Kyle asks. His legs are quivering.
“You want to be a porn star,” Malone says. “You need to get used to this.”
“All in a day’s work,” Russo says.
Kyle steps out of his shorts, covers his genitals.
“Now is that any way for a porn star to act?” Russo asks. “Come on, stud, show us what you got.”
He gestures with his gun and Kyle puts his hands up.
“How does it feel?” Malone asks. “Naked in front of strangers. You think that’s how Lyndsey Anderson might feel? She’s a nice girl, not some ratchet you put in a porn film.”
“She put me up to it,” Kyle says. “Said it was a way to get money out of her folks.”
“That’s not going to happen, Kyle,” Malone says. “You upload it yet?”
“No.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“It’s the truth!”
“That’s good,” Malone says. “That’s a good answer for you.”
He grabs the laptop, sees they’re above an alley, and opens the window.
“It cost twelve hundred dollars!” Kyle yells.
“Something is going out this window,” Malone says. “You or your laptop. Choose.”
Havachek chooses the laptop. Malone shoves it out the window and watches it shatter on the concrete below. “Lyndsey was in on this?”
“Yes.”
“Smack him, tell him ‘bullshit.’”
Russo swings the belt on the back of Kyle’s thighs. “Bullshit.”
“No, she was,” Kyle says. “It was her idea.”
“Smack him again.”
Russo smacks him.
“I’m telling the truth!”
“I believe you,” Malone says. “You just deserve some smacks. You deserve a lot more than that, but I’m going to be appropriate.”
“He’s very appropriate,” Russo says.
“But I’ll tell you this, Kyle,” Malone says. “This tape shows up anywhere, or I hear you pull this stunt on or with any other girl, we’re going to come back and you’ll remember these slaps with a sense of nostalgia.”
“As the good old days,” Russo says.
“Now, when Lyndsey texts you asking what’s up,” Malone says, “you’re not going to answer. You’re not going to answer her phone calls, her Facebook messages, you’re not going to call her or contact her, you’re just going to disappear. And if you don’t . . .”
Malone points the gun at his forehead.
“You’re just going to disappear,” Malone says. “Move back to Jersey, Kyle. You don’t have what it takes to play the game in the city.”
“Whole different game,” Russo says.
Malone puts his hands on Kyle’s shoulders. Fatherly, coachlike. “Now I want you to sit here naked for an hour and think about what a sleazy douchebag you really are.” Then he brings his knee up—hard. Kyle goes down into a fetal position, groaning in pain, sucking for air. “We do not treat women that way. Even if they ask us to.”
As they walk back down the stairs, Malone asks, “Was I inappropriate?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Russo says.
The car is waiting for them when they get there.
Intact.
Malone calls Chandler. “That thing is taken care of.”
“We owe you,” Chandler says.
Yeah, you do, Malone thinks.
Claudette just wants to bust balls tonight and that’s all there is to it.
And when a woman—black, white, tan, aubergine, whatever, Malone thinks—wants to bust balls, balls are going to get busted.
Maybe it’s the news on TV—footage of the cops rounding up black kids, the protesters, what-the-fuck-ever. Maybe it’s the fact that the TV stations have cleverly blended the project raids into the Michael Bennett case and Cornelius Hampton is at his accustomed spot in front of the cameras saying, “There is no justice for young African American men. I guarantee you that if Sean Gillette was white, gunned down in broad daylight in the middle of a white neighborhood, the police would have a suspect in custody already. Just as I guarantee that if Michael Bennett was white, the case against his killer would have gone to a grand jury long before this.”
With exquisite timing, the DA just brought the Bennett case to the grand jury, and now it will take weeks, if not months, to return a decision. Couple that with the killings in the Nickel, the community is seething.
“Is he right?” Claudette asks.
They’re sitting in front of the TV, eating some Indian takeout he brought back—chicken tikka for her, lamb korma for him.
“About what?” Malone asks.
“Any of it?”
“You think we’re not working hard to find out who killed those two people today?” Malone asks. “You think we lay back on it because they’re black?”
“I’m asking.”
“Yeah, well, fuck you.”
He’s not in the mood for this bullshit.
Claudette is, though. “Be honest, you going to tell me that, subconsciously at least, Gillette doesn’t mean a little less to you because he’s just another ‘Jamaal’? That’s what you call them, right? ‘Jamaals’?”
“Yeah, we call them ‘Jamaals,’” Malone says. “Also ‘idiots,’ ‘mopes,’ ‘skels,’ ‘bangers,’ ‘corner boys’—”
“‘Niggers’?” Claudette asks. “I’ve heard cops in the E-room, chuckling about banging some nigger ’longside the head. Tuning up some moolie. Do you talk that way, Denny, when I’m not around?”
“I don’t want to fight,” he says. “It’s been a day.”
“Poor you.”
The korma tastes like shit now and he feels the evil coming over him. “The only kid I beat up today was white, it makes you feel better.”
“Great, you’re an equal opportunity thug.”
“There were two people killed today,” Malone says, because he can’t seem to stop himself. “That kid and an old lady. And do you know why? ’Cuz a nigguh gots to sling his dope.”
“Now fuck you.”
“I’m working my ass off trying to close those cases.”
“That’s right,” Claudette says. “They’re ‘cases’ to you, not people.”
“Jesus Christ, Claudette,” he says, “are you trying to tell me that every patient who rolls in on a gurney is a fully realized human being to you and sometimes not just another job? Another piece of meat? That you try to save but at the same time, you don’t hate them just a little bit for bleeding their fucked-up, drunk, stoned, stupid-ass violent shit all over you?”
“You’re talking about yourself, not me.”
“Yeah, and it wasn’t all that pain, was it,” Malone says, “all those other people’s pain that made you shoot smack, was it?”
“Go fuck yourself, Denny.” She gets up. “I have an early shift.”
“Go to bed.”
“I think I will.”
She waits up long enough she thinks he’s asleep when she slips into bed and it almost feels like he’s back on Staten Island.
Malone has hellish dreams.
Billy O jerks on the floor like a downed power line.
Pena’s mouth gapes, his dead eyes stare vacantly and yet with accusation. Snow falls from the ceiling, white bricks spill out of the wall, a dog lunges on its chain, puppies whine in fear.
Billy sucks for air, a fish flopping on the bottom of the boat.
Malone weeps and pounds on Billy’s chest. More snow blows out Billy’s mouth onto Malone’s face.
It freezes on his skin.
Machine gun rounds explode in his head.
He opens his eyes.
Looks out Claudette’s window.
It’s jackhammers.
City workers in yellow helmets and orange vests fixing the street. A supervisor sits on a truck gate, smoking a cigarette, reading the Post.
Fuckin’ New York, Malone thinks.
Motherfuckin’ New York.
The sweet, juicy, rotten apple.
It wasn’t just Billy in the dreams.
That was just last night.
Three nights before it was that DOA back when he was in the Tenth. He answered the call and went up to the sixth floor in the Chelsea-Elliott projects. The family was sitting at the table eating supper. When he asked them where the body was, the father jerked his thumb at the bedroom door.
Malone went in and saw a kid lying on the bed, facedown.
Seven-year-old boy.
But Malone didn’t see any wounds, no signs of blunt trauma, nothing. He turned the boy over and saw the needle still sticking out of the kid’s arm.
Seven years old and he was shooting smack.
Swallowing his rage, Malone went back and asked the family what the hell had happened.
The father said the kid “had problems.”
Then went back to eating.
So there’s that dream.
There are others.
Eighteen years on the Job, you see things you wish you hadn’t. What’s he supposed to do, “share” that with some therapist? With Claudette? Sheila? Even if he did, they couldn’t understand.
He goes into the bathroom and splashes cold water on his face. When he comes out, Claudette is in the kitchen making coffee. “Bad night?”
“I’m okay.”
“Of course you are,” she says. “You’re always okay.”
“That’s right.” Jesus, what’s her fucking problem? He sits down at the table.
“Maybe you should go talk to someone,” Claudette says.
“Career suicide,” Malone says. She doesn’t know what happens when a cop voluntarily goes to a shrink. Desk duty—the rest of his career—because no one wants to be on the street with a potential whack job. “Anyway, I don’t see myself going to some shrink whining about I have bad dreams.”
“Because you’re not weak like other people.”
“Jesus shit,” Malone says, “if I wanted to hear what an asshole I am, I’d—”
“Go back to your wife?” she asks. “Why don’t you?”
“Because I want to be with you.”
She stands at the counter and puts together the salad she has for lunch, carefully arranging the ingredients in a plastic container. “I get you think that only other cops can understand what you go through. Y’all feel aggrieved because you’re blamed for killing Freddie Gray or Michael Bennett. But you don’t know how it feels to be blamed because you are Freddie Gray or Michael Bennett. You think people hate you because of what you do, but you don’t have to think that people hate you because of what you are. You can take that blue jacket off, I live twenty-four seven in this skin.
“Here’s what you can’t understand, Denny—what you can’t understand, because you’re a white man, is the sheer . . . weight . . . of being black in this country. The sheer exhausting weight that presses your shoulders down and tires your eyes and makes it hurt just to walk sometimes.”
She presses the lid on. “And you were right last night—sometimes I do hate my patients and I’m tired, Denny, tired of cleaning up the things they do to each other, we do to each other, and sometimes I hate them because they’re black like me and because it makes me wonder about myself.”
She puts the container in her bag.
“So that’s what we go through, baby,” Claudette says. “Every damn day. Don’t forget to lock up.”
She kisses him on the cheek and goes out.
An early spring has come to the city like a gift.
Snow has turned to slush, water runs in the gutters like little brooks. A trace of sunshine promises warmth.
New York is coming out of winter. Not that it ever hibernated; the city had just pulled its collar up and put its head down against the winds that whipped through its canyons, freezing faces and numbing lips. New Yorkers push through winter like soldiers through gunfire.
Now the city uncovers itself.
And Da Force gets ready to hit the Nickel.
“Take it easy at first,” Malone tells Levin. “Don’t try to prove yourself. Just lay back, watch, get the hang of things. Don’t worry, we’ll get you on the sheet.”
Get you an arrest, let you look good on the paperwork.
They’re going into Building Six in north St. Nick’s to do a vertical.
The gang already knows the cops are there, and in four other buildings. The ten-year-old wannabes sounded the alarms with shouts and whistles. People flee the lobby like Malone’s crew has anthrax. The couple who stay just give them sullen eye-fucks, and Malone hears one of them mutter, “Michael Bennett.” He ignores it.
Levin walks toward the stairwell door.
“Where you going?” Russo asks him.
“I thought we’re going to check the stairs.”
“You’re going to walk up the stairs.”
“Yeah . . .”
“Fucking moron,” Russo says. “We take the elevator to the roof and then walk down the stairs. Save the legs and then we’re coming in above any problems instead of below them.”
“Oh.”
“NYU, huh?”
An old lady sitting on a metal folding chair just shakes her head at Levin.
They ride up to the fourteenth floor and get out.
The walls are graffiti, gang tags.
The crew walks down to the metal door that leads to the stairs, opens it, and it’s chaos as four Spades scatter like a covey of quail because one of them has a gun. They take off down the stairs.
More out of instinct than anything, Malone starts to chase them, but then Levin vaults the railing and drops ahead of him.
“Newbie, hold up!” Malone yells.
But Levin is gone, pounding down to thirteen, and then Malone hears the shot. Hears it, hell, it echoes through the stairway, bruising his eardrums, rendering him deaf, and as his ears ring he flies down the stairs expecting to see Levin bleeding out, except what he sees is Levin chasing the guy down the stairs, then leaping like a linebacker and tackling the shooter from behind. Slams him onto a landing just as Malone gets there.
The banger tries to throw the gun down the stairs but Russo has caught up and he grabs it.
Levin is hyped. “Secure that gun! The asshole shot at me!”
He’s jacked on fear and adrenaline but wrestles the shooter into cuffs. Monty puts the shooter on the floor and kneels on his neck. Levin sits on the landing with his back up against the wall, breathing hard as the adrenaline drops.
“You okay?” Malone asks.
Levin just nods, too freaked out to talk.
Malone gets it, knows from experience that “I just almost got killed” feeling. “Catch your breath, then you take him to the Three-Two. I want you to get the collar.”
When Malone gets to the precinct, Levin is waiting for him. “Odelle Jackson. He had a warrant on a ten-to-fifteen crack bust. Why he took a chance winging a shot at a cop.”
“Where is he now?”
“Squad room.”
Malone goes up to the detective squad and sees Jackson in the cage.
Levin is sitting in the locker room.
“What the fuck, Levin?” Malone asks. “Jackson looks like he just got out of church.”
“What should he look like?” Levin asks.
“Like he caught a serious beating.”
“I don’t do that,” Levin says.
“He tried to kill you,” Monty says.
Levin says, “And he’ll go away for it.”
“Look,” Malone says, “I know you’re concerned with ‘social justice’ and you want ‘the minority community’ to love you, but if Jackson goes to Central Booking looking like he ain’t been tuned up, every mook in New York will think it’s okay to shoot at an NYPD officer.”
“If you don’t break out the gym set on this individual,” Monty says, “you’ll put us all in danger.”
Levin looks stricken.
“We’re not saying stick a plunger up his ass,” Russo says. “But you don’t fuck him up, no one in this house is going to respect you.”
“Go do the right thing,” Malone says, “or clean out your locker.”
Twenty minutes later they come downstairs to put Jackson on the bus to Central Booking. His head looks like a pumpkin, his eyes are slits, he’s limping and holding his ribs.
Levin did a job on him.
“You fell down the stairs when my guys busted you, right?” Malone asks Jackson. “You need medical attention?”
“I’m okay.”
Yeah, you’re okay now, Malone thinks. The jailers in Central Booking don’t like cops, so they’re going to leave you alone. Different story when you get to the joint, where the COs always feel their lives are threatened and take assaults on cops very seriously. You’ll be a hero in the population, but the guards are going to give you a ride down another set of stairs.
Levin, he looks sick.
Malone gets it—he felt the same way when an old-timer made him tune up his first perp.
If memory serves.
It was a long time ago.
Monty comes into the room and hands Malone a sheet of paper. “Mr. Jackson here is having a very bad day.”
Malone looks at the sheet. The bullet Jackson winged at Levin matches the bullet that ended up in Mookie Gillette’s chest.
Same gun.
“Hey, Sarge?” Malone says. “Unhook this guy, huh. We’ll be in Interview One. And call Minelli up in Homicide. He’s going to want in on this.”
Jackson’s hooked to a bolt on the table.
Malone and Minelli sit across from him.
Malone says, “You may be having the worst day in the history of days. You shoot at a cop and miss, and now you’re down for a double homicide.”
“Double? I didn’t shoot Mrs. Williams.”
“Well now, here’s an interesting theory,” Minelli says. “According to the law, your shooting of Mookie led directly to his shooting of Mrs. Williams. So you’re down for both.”
“I didn’t shoot Mookie,” Jackson says. “I was there, but I didn’t shoot him. I was just the walkaway.”
The shooter passes the weapon to a junior member, who walks away.
“You still have the murder weapon,” Minelli says. “And you used it again.”
“They gave it to me,” Jackson says, “told me to get rid of it.”
“And you didn’t,” Malone says. “Dumb shit.”
“Who gave you the gun?” Minelli asks. “Who was the shooter?”
Jackson looks down at the table.
“Look, you know how this works,” Minelli says. “You can go for the murders or someone else can. I don’t give a shit which. It clears my sheet either way.”
“I get it,” Malone says. “Killing Mookie gives you street cred. But do you really want to go down for Mrs. Williams?”
“I’m still going for the cop.”
“New York law,” Malone says. “Forty to life for shooting at a police officer. With two previous convictions, bet on life.”
“So I’m fucked anyway.”
“You give us the shooter,” Malone says, “maybe we can help you on the cop shooting. We can’t get you a walk, but we can have the ADA tell the judge you cooperated on a double homicide. Forty, you do fifteen, you still have a life. The other way, you die in there.”
“I give them up,” Jackson says, “they kill me inside anyway.”
Malone sees it in his eyes—the kid knows his life is over.
Once the machine has you, it doesn’t let you go until it’s chewed you up.
“You have a grandma?” Malone asks.
“’Course I got a grandma,” Jackson says. It’s at least ten seconds before he says, “Jamichael Leonard.”
“Where do we find him?” Minelli asks.
“His cousin’s.” He gives them the address.
Malone takes him back to get on the bus to Central Booking. “We’ll get in touch with your PD.”
“Whatever.”
They put him on the chain and load him on the bus.
“You want in on this collar?” Minelli asks Malone.
“No,” he says. “Too much ink makes us targets. Do me a solid, though. Give Levin an assist and bring Sykes in on it before you go pick him up.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, why not?”
As any good wiseguy knows, you want to eat, you don’t eat alone. You kick up, and there’s all kinds of coin.
He goes down to the locker room and finds Russo, Montague and Levin.
“If it makes you feel any better, newbie,” Malone says, “Jackson gave up the Williams shooter. You get an assist.”
It helps but it doesn’t fix it. He sees it in Levin’s eyes—the first time you give up a little bit of yourself to the street, it hurts. The scar tissue hasn’t formed yet, and you feel it.
“I think,” Malone says, “we’ve earned a Bowling Night.”