by Don Winslow
No desk clerk would take a second look at them.
The television is turned on to a Spanish-language channel, the volume low. An open MacBook Pro sits on the small desk.
Two nondescript used suitcases sit on the floor under the window.
“I’m going to pat you down, okay?” Cirello asks the man.
The man shrugs his acceptance.
Cirello frisks him, doesn’t feel a weapon or a wire and then says, “Her too.”
The woman gets out of the chair, turns around and puts her arms up, shoulder level, and Cirello knows this isn’t her first lap around the pool. He pats her down and she’s clean.
Cirello waves Darnell in.
It isn’t like it is in the movies, in some warehouse with squads of guys with machine guns on catwalks. It’s mundane—a dull-looking couple in a cheap motel room. They don’t carry guns because they’re not going to shoot it out with cops. They’re not going to shoot it out with hijackers, either. If that happens, they’ll give up the dope and the cartel will track the thieves down when they try to lay it off and deal with it then.
With prejudice.
No, they just load the dope into a car or a truck and drive from California, and the cartel trusts them not to steal it themselves because usually they have a close family member left in Mexico as hostage to their good behavior. There isn’t a parent in the world who’s going to run away with a million dollars in dope if they know it means their kid is going to be tortured to death. Even if there were—and Cirello really hopes there isn’t—where would they sell it?
What will happen is that Darnell will communicate to his supplier that he has the product, the hostage will be released from what is probably a luxury hotel suite somewhere, and these two will pick up a nice piece of change.
The woman says to Darnell, “Your friend sends his regards.”
“Send them back.”
Then she looks at Cirello. “I’m going to open a suitcase. Is that all right?”
“Just don’t put your hands inside.”
She bends down, opens one of the suitcases, and Cirello sees bricks tightly wrapped in plastic with supporting bands of heavy tape. Straightening back up, she says, “I’m not going to open one.”
Darnell shakes his head. “I trust my friend.”
Anyway, it’s too dangerous, Cirello knows. Cops and EMTs have been killed just coming into contact with fentanyl. If you have an open cut, or if you accidentally inhale some, it’s lights out.
“Two bags,” she says. “Ten kilos each. Do you want to weigh it?”
“Like I said, I trust my friend.”
She closes the suitcase.
What happens next that surprises Cirello is what doesn’t happen next.
No money is exchanged. Not a cent.
Darnell just picks up one of the bags, gestures for Cirello to pick up the other, and they leave.
They put the bags in the trunk of Cirello’s car.
Darnell gets on the phone. “Tell them we have it.”
Then back across the GW, north on Riverside Drive, a right on Plaza Lafayette and then a left on Cabrini Boulevard to Castle Village, a complex of five four-wing high-rise apartment and co-op buildings overlooking the Hudson.
A small two-bedroom goes in the high six figures.
Not the kind of place you’d expect to find a heroin mill, but again, Cirello thinks, that’s the idea.
Location, location, location.
A quiet, upper-middle-class neighborhood with easy access to Route 95, Route 9, and 181st Street going over to the bridge toward the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island.
Cirello pulls into the garage.
He and Darnell get out of the car, grab the bags full of dope and take the elevator to the top floor of the northernmost building.
Darnell bought all three apartments in the wing.
An armed guard meets them at the elevator and walks them to the door of an apartment. Cirello sees it’s sort of an office waiting room—a couple of chairs, a sofa, a television and racks of hazmat suits along a wall.
“Put one on,” Darnell says.
Cirello feels stupid, but he climbs into one of the white suits.
Darnell does the same and hands him plastic gloves.
A guarded door leads to the next apartment. The guard opens it and Cirello walks into the heroin mill.
Five women in hazmat suits are waiting like workers ready for their shift to start.
Which I guess they are, Cirello thinks.
He sets his bag next to Darnell’s on a folding table. One of the women walks up to Cirello and hands him a mask to go over his nose and mouth. Then slips a mask on her own face, opens one of the suitcases, takes out a brick and slices it open with a mat knife.
“Debbie has her a master’s in chemistry from NYU,” Darnell says. “I hired her away from Pfizer.”
Debbie carefully uses a swab to remove a small amount of the powder and move it into a test tube. Then she puts a test strip into the tube and removes it a few seconds later. “Eighty point five. Excellent.”
The women go to work, laying the bricks of fentanyl out on tables and cutting it into pans of heroin, then distributing the fire into the small glassine bags that will go out on the street.
Debbie takes the second suitcase and leads Cirello and Darnell into a third room. Tables are set up with several immaculate stainless-steel machines.
“RTP 9’s,” Debbie says. “Rotary tablet presses. State of the art. We can crank out sixteen thousand pills an hour with these.”
“Where did you get them?” Cirello asks.
“The internet,” Debbie says. “They’re made in the UK, but we get them from the Texas rep in Fort Worth.”
“You know how to use these?” Darnell asks.
“A child could do it,” Debbie says. “You pour the powder in here, it comes down to this rotary, is forced into these channels and comes out as pills. You want to watch?”
It’s as simple as she said.
Cirello has seen microwaves more complicated and he stands and watches as the machine starts spitting out pills like bullets from a machine gun.
They’ll be wrapped and out on the street tomorrow.
And tomorrow, someone will probably die.
The last room is a security station, for lack of a better expression. At the end of their shift, each employee has to come here, strip naked and stand for a cavity search. Then another guard runs a gloved finger inside their mouths to make sure that they haven’t “cheeked” anything.
“I know it all from V-Ville,” Darnell says.
“What do you do when you catch someone?” Cirello asks.
“Don’t know yet,” Darnell says. “It ain’t happened because they know they gonna be searched, and I pay well. Prevention always better than cure.”
“Hey, Darius?” Cirello says. “No one sticks their finger up my ass unless I ask them to, and I never ask.”
“Thought you was Greek.”
“That’s a racist stereotype.”
“Black man can’t be racist,” Darnell says.
Darnell leans out over the roof railing and looks out at the lights of Manhattan across the river.
“Took my boy to the zoo other day,” he says.
“The zoo?” Cirello asks.
“Bronx Zoo,” Darnell says. “He doing a paper on gorillas, so we go to the ‘Congo Gorilla Forest,’ look at the gorillas. The boy, he taking notes, there this little crowd around, looking at the gorillas, but me, I’m standing there and I realize I’m not relating to the other people, I’m relating to the gorilla. I mean, I know just what that gorilla thinking, looking out from inside a cage.”
“Yeah, but it’s not a cage, right? It’s one of those ‘environments.’”
“That’s the thing,” Darnell says. “It don’t look like a cage, but it still a cage. Those gorillas, they can’t leave, they got to be in there, let people stare at them. When I was in V-Ville, I knew it was a cage b
ecause I’m looking out through bars. Now I’m out, it don’t look like a cage, but it still a cage. I’m still the gorilla. Black man in this country, he always in a cage.”
Then, suddenly, he asks, “How I know I can trust you?”
Cirello’s stomach flips. Darnell sounds serious, not like he’s just goofing. “Shit, I saved your life, didn’t I?”
“How I know that wasn’t your game,” Darnell asks, “you ain’t on some undercover?”
“You want to pat me down, go ahead.”
“You too smart to wear a wire,” Darnell says. “Maybe I need you to do something you can’t do you’re ‘UC.’ You UC, you can’t do no felony, can you?”
“What do you have in mind, D?”
“They’s this old joke about shootin’ cans,” Darnell says. “Africans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans. Maybe I need you to shoot a Mexican.”
“I didn’t sign up for that.”
Darnell says, “This Mexican moving in on my turf, stealing my customers. I have to defend myself. Figure I kill two birds with one stone, defend my turf, find out if I can trust you.”
“I thought you already trusted me.”
“Got something big in mind for you,” Darnell says. “Need to know first.”
Darnell is showing me the open door, Cirello thinks. The way out of this fucking assignment. Just walk away and don’t come back. No one could blame you. Even Mullen won’t sanction a murder.
Even what’s-his-name, Art freaking Keller in DC, won’t okay a murder.
Walk toward the light, Bobby, he thinks.
Walk toward the light.
“I’m not down for murder, Darnell. Sorry.”
“You ain’t got kids,” Darnell says, “but you might someday. And they gonna be smart like you, they goin’ to college. You want them to graduate with all that debt on they backs or you want them to start they life debt free? I ain’t talkin’ about Fordham money, John Jay money. Kind of money I’m talkin’ about Harvard money, Yale money. Sleep on it, Bobby Cirello, get back to me.”
Cirello doesn’t sleep at all.
He lies there thinking.
He just put twenty kilos of fentanyl on the streets he swore to protect, and now he’s being asked to commit murder.
“What is it, Bobby?” Libby asks.
“I’m thinking of pulling the pin,” he says suddenly, surprising himself.
“I thought you loved being a cop.”
“I do,” Cirello says.
I did, anyway.
At least I think I did.
Hard to remember now.
The next night he stands outside the Word Enlightenment House of Jesus Christ next to the Umbrella Hotel in the Bronx.
Where Efraín Aguilar is staying.
Darnell was pleased when Cirello told him that he’d changed his mind. “Now you thinkin’, Bobby Cirello.”
Efraín Aguilar is basically a pharmaceutical sales rep from a competing cartel selling fentanyl; he’s undercut Darnell with three of his retailers in Brooklyn, and Darnell wants a message sent.
Cirello’s been on the motherfucker all day and now is waiting for him to come back from shopping at the Nine West Outlet across Third Avenue. Must be getting presents for the family or the girlfriend or something before heading back to Mexico with his order sheets filled.
Thought about taking him on Third but decided it was too busy. Besides, there’s a kids’ clothing store and a pet shop there and Cirello doesn’t want to take a chance on any kids getting hurt.
He feels bad about what he’s about to do but then decides fuck it. How many lives has Aguilar taken with his product? It’s like that old song, “God Damn the Pusher Man,” and there’s a special place in hell for the shit that slings this stuff.
Now he sees Aguilar coming up the street.
Yup, shopping bags in hand.
Cirello walks toward him.
Aguilar isn’t on his game, should see it coming, but doesn’t. Cirello’s on top of him before he notices, lets him pass, and then turns around and sticks the gun into his back and says, “See the white van parked up there, motherfucker? Walk to it and get in.”
“Please don’t shoot me.”
“Walk.”
Aguilar walks to the van. When he gets beside it, the door slides open and Cirello shoves him inside, gets in after him and shuts the door.
Hugo Hidalgo pulls the van out.
Cirello pushes Aguilar to the floor, jams a rag in Aguilar’s mouth and a hood over his head. Hidalgo drives to St. Mary’s Park, the two of them haul Aguilar out of the car and walk him along a footpath to an isolated patch of grass behind some trees, where Cirello pushes Aguilar to his knees, rips the hood off and presses the pistol barrel against his forehead. “Say good night now.”
“Please,” Aguilar says.
His eyes are red from crying, his nose is running, and he’s pissed his pants.
“You got one chance,” Cirello says.
“Anything.”
“Lie back.” Cirello pushes Aguilar onto his back, holsters his pistol, then takes a Roller Pen and inks a neat hole in the middle of his forehead. “Open your eyes wide and open your mouth.”
Aguilar does it.
Cirello takes his phone and snaps a photo.
He sends it to Darnell.
“Back to the van,” Cirello says. “You’re dead now. You tell anyone any different, we’ll find you and kill you for real. ¿Comprende?”
“I understand.”
“It’s better than you deserve, piece of shit.”
Hidalgo drives Cirello back to his car and then takes off with Aguilar handcuffed in the back.
“What did you do with him?” Darnell asks.
“You don’t mind if I don’t make you a potential witness against me, do you?” Cirello asks. Actually, D, Aguilar is on his way to some fort somewhere as a protected federal witness and is probably doing his best Freddie Mercury imitation for DEA right now. “Suffice to say you don’t have to worry about him anymore, and the message has been sent.”
“I ever get busted again I’m looking at life anyway,” Darnell says, “so the first name I give is yours, and the first story I tell is this.”
“Yeah, I get that,” Cirello says. “So what’s my big reward? Where’s my Harvard money coming from?”
“You going to Vegas.”
“That’s it?”
“To deliver money,” Darnell says.
To his supplier.
Maybe he feels guilty.
Maybe Cirello feels he owes them something, but he leaves Darnell, goes to see Mullen, and then drives out to the Starbucks on Staten Island.
Jacqui isn’t happy to see him.
“Can you take a break?” he asks.
“If I want to lose my job.”
“When is your shift over?”
“You said you’d go away,” Jacqui says.
“I lied,” Cirello says. “That’s what cops do. When is your shift over?”
“Four o’clock.”
“Travis picking you up?” When she nods, he says, “I’ll meet you both at four. Don’t make me come looking for you.”
He goes out and sits in his car.
At five past four, Travis’s van pulls up, Jacqui comes out and gets in. Cirello walks over and pounds on the door. When Jacqui opens it, he says, “There’s a Sonic on the next block. I’ll buy you a meal.”
“We have to go score.”
“A fucking burger. Ten minutes.”
They meet him at Sonic. He buys them burgers, milkshakes and fries and they sit down at a booth. He can see they’re both jonesing.
He and Mullen debated this. The chief was against it. “Why do you think you owe these kids?”
“I don’t,” Cirello said. “I just want to give them a chance.”
“You’re a cop, not a social worker.”
“They blur.”
“They shouldn’t,” Mullen said. “We need to keep a clear bright line.”
�
��With all respect, sir, there’s no such thing,” Cirello said. “What are we doing all this for, unless it’s to keep the needles out of their arms?”
“We do that by interdicting the supply.”
“And they gave me information to do just that.”
“Because you jammed them up,” Mullen said. “There are thousands of addicts out there, Bobby, we can’t put all of them into a program.”
“I’m not asking all of them,” Cirello said. “Just these two.”
“We are not budgeted to—”
“I have cash coming in all the time,” Cirello said.
“That money needs to be vouchered.”
“Or not,” Cirello said. “You have to love the irony, boss, you have to love the symmetry—using heroin money to treat heroin addicts.”
Cirello waited him out. He knows his boss, knows his heart. The man is a steel cupcake. Sure enough, after a long silence, Mullen said, “Okay, make the offer.”
So now Cirello sits across a table from the two addicts and makes his pitch. “I have a one-time, take-it-or-leave-it offer for you. If you want to kick, I can get you into a program. Both of you.”
“What is this, like an intervention?” Jacqui asks.
“Yeah, okay.”
“We don’t have insurance,” Jacqui says.
“There’s a fund for this kind of thing,” Cirello says. Well, there is now. “It’s a place in Brooklyn, it’s not some Malibu, sit-by-the-ocean-and-do-yoga spa. But if you want it, I can get you beds tonight.”
“Why are you doing this?” Travis asks.
“You want it or not?” Cirello asks.
“How long would we be gone?” Jacqui asks.
“I don’t know how long,” Cirello says. “I don’t know what color the walls are, I don’t know if they have basic cable . . . I do know they get results. You can detox in a bed instead of a cell, you can get clean.”
“I don’t know,” Jacqui says.
“What’s there not to know?” Cirello asks. “You’re junkies living in a van. You’re sitting in Sonic jonesing. You don’t know where your next fix is going to come from. I’m not sure what you think you’re giving up here.”