The Force

by Don Winslow

  Even still, Russo wouldn’t have gotten through without Malone. Russo could hit anything on the target range but he couldn’t fight for shit. He was always that way, even when they were playing hockey, Russo had soft hands that could tip a puck into the net, and he’d drop the gloves but then it was a catastrophe, even with his long arms, and Malone would have to come in and bail him out. So in the hand-to-hand PT at the Academy, they usually worked it out to get partnered up and Malone would let Russo flip him, get him into wristlocks and choke holds.

  The day they graduated—will Malone ever forget the day they graduated?—Russo, he had this shit-eating grin he couldn’t wipe off his face for nothing, and they looked at each other and knew what their lives were going to be.

  When Sheila pissed two blue lines, it was Russo that Malone went to first, Russo who told him there were no questions, only one right answer and he wanted to be best man.

  “That’s old-school shit,” Malone said. “That was our parents, our grandparents, it don’t necessarily work that way anymore.”

  “The fuck it don’t,” Russo said. “We are old school, Denny, we’re East Shore Staten Island. You may think you’re modern and shit, but you ain’t. Neither is Sheila. What, don’t you love her?”

  “I dunno.”

  “You loved her enough to fuck her,” Russo said. “I know you, Denny, you can’t be one of them jackoff absentee father sperm donors. That’s not you.”

  So Russo was his best man.

  Malone learned to love Sheila.

  It wasn’t so hard—she was pretty, funny, smart in her way, it was good for a long time.

  He and Russo were still in bags—uniforms—when the Towers came down. Russo, he ran toward those buildings, not away, because he knew who he was. And that night, when Malone learned Liam was under Tower Two and was never coming back up, it was Russo who sat with him all night.

  Just like Malone sat with Russo when Donna miscarried.

  Russo cried.

  When Russo’s daughter, Sophia, was born premature, two pounds something and the doctors said it was touch-and-go, Malone sat in the hospital with him all night, saying nothing, just sitting, until Sophia was out of the woods.

  The night Malone was stupid enough to get himself shot, running too far out in front to tackle a B&E perp, if it wasn’t for Russo that night, the Job would have given Malone an inspector’s funeral and Sheila a folded flag. They’d have played the bagpipes and had a wake and Sheila could have been a widow instead of a divorcée, if Russo hadn’t shot the perp and driven the car to the E-room like he stole it, because Malone was bleeding out internally.

  No, Phil put two in the perp’s chest and a third in the head because that’s the code—a cop shooter dies on the scene or in the “bus” on a slow ride to the hospital, with detours if necessary and the most possible potholes.

  Doctors take the Hippocratic oath—EMTs don’t. They know that if they take extraordinary measures to save a cop shooter’s life, the next time they call for backup it might be slow getting there.

  But Russo hadn’t waited for the EMTs that night. He raced Malone to the hospital and carried him in like a baby.

  Saved his life.

  But that’s Russo.

  Stand-up, old-school guy with a Grill Master apron, an unaccountable taste for Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Nine Inch Nails, smarter than shit, clanging fucking balls, loyal like a dog, be there for you anywhere anytime Phil Russo.

  A cop’s cop.

  A brother.

  “You ever think we should quit?” Malone asks.

  “The Job?”

  Malone shakes his head. “The other shit. I mean, how much more do we need to earn?”

  “I have three kids,” Russo says. “You have two, Monty three. All smart. You know what college costs these days? They’re worse than the Gambinos, they get their hooks in you. I don’t know about you, I need to keep earning.”

  So do you, Malone tells himself.

  You need the money, the cash flow, but it’s more than that, admit it. You love the game. The thrill, the taking off the bad guys, even the danger, the idea that you might get caught.

  You’re a sick bastard.

  “Maybe it’s time we moved the Pena smack,” Russo is saying.

  “What, you need money?”

  “No, I’m good,” Russo says. “It’s just that, you know, things have cooled down, it’s just sitting there not earning. That’s retirement money, Denny. That’s ‘fuck you I’m out of here’ money. Survival money, anything should happen.”

  “You expecting something to happen, Phil?” Malone asks. “You know something I don’t?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a big step,” Malone says. “We took money before, we never dealt.”

  “Then why did we take it if we weren’t going to sell it?”

  “It makes us dope slingers,” Malone says. “We been fighting these guys our whole careers, now we’ll be just like them.”

  “If we’d turned it all in,” Russo says, “someone else would have taken it.”

  “I know.”

  “Why not us?” Russo asks. “Why does everyone else get rich? The wiseguys, the dope dealers, the politicians? Why not us for a change? When is it our turn?”

  “I hear you,” Malone says.

  They sit quietly and drink.

  “Something else bothering you?” Russo asks him.

  “I dunno,” Malone says. “Maybe it’s just Christmas, you know?”

  “You going over there?” Russo asks.

  “In the morning, open presents.”

  “Well, that’ll be good.”

  “Yeah, that’ll be good,” Malone says.

  “Swing by the house, you get a chance,” Russo says. “Donna’s going full guinea—macaroni with gravy, the baccalata, then the turkey.”

  “Thanks, I’ll try.”

  Malone drives up to Manhattan North, asks the desk sergeant, “Fat Teddy get on the bus yet?”

  “It’s Christmas Eve, Malone,” the sergeant says. “Things are backed up.”

  Malone goes down to the holding cells where Teddy sits on a bench. If there’s any place more depressing on Christmas Eve than a holding cell, Malone doesn’t know about it. Fat Teddy looks up when he sees Malone. “You gotta do something for me, bruvah.”

  “What are you going to do for me?”

  “Like what?”

  “Tell me who’s on Carter’s pad.”

  Teddy laughs. “Like you don’t know.”

  “Torres?”

  “I ain’t know nothin’.”

  There it is, Malone thinks. Fat Teddy is scared to rat on a cop.

  “Okay,” Malone says. “Teddy, you’re not an idiot, you only play one on the street. You know with two convictions on your sheet, the gun alone, you’re going to do five. We trace it back to some straw purchase in Gooberville, the judge is going to be pissed, could throw you a double. Ten years, that’s a long time, but look, I’ll come visit, bring you ribs from Sweet Mama’s.”

  “Don’t be clowning me, Malone.”

  “Dead-ass serious,” Malone says. “What if I could get you a walk?”

  “What if you had a dick ’stead of what you got?”

  “You’re the one wanted to be serious, Teddy,” Malone says. “If you don’t . . .”

  “What you want?”

  Malone says, “I’m hearing that Carter has been negotiating for some serious weaponry. What I want to know is, who is he negotiating with.”

  “You think I’m stupid?”

  “Not at all.”

  “No, you must, Malone,” Teddy says, “because if I get a walk and you bust them guns, Carter he puts that together and I end up facedown.”

  “You think I’m stupid, Teddy? I work out the walk so it looks like business as usual.”

  Fat Teddy hesitates.

  “Fuck you,” Malone says. “I have a beautiful woman waiting, I’m sitting here with an ugly fat guy.”

  “
His name is Mantell.”

  “Whose name is Mantell?”

  “Cracker runs guns for the ECMF.”

  Malone knows the East Coast Motherfuckers are a motorcycle club deep in weed and weapons. Affiliate charters in Georgia and the Carolinas. But they’re racist, white supremacists. “ECMF would do business with black?”

  “I guess black money spend the same.” Fat Teddy shrugs. “And they don’t mind helping black kill black.”

  What Malone is more surprised about is Carter doing business with white. He has to be desperate. “What can the bikers offer him?”

  “AKs, ARs, MAC-10s, you name it,” Teddy says. “S’all I know, son.”

  “Carter didn’t get you a lawyer?”

  “Can’t get hold of Carter,” Teddy says. “He in the Bahamas.”

  “Call this guy,” Malone says, handing him a card. “Mark Piccone. He’ll get it squared away for you.”

  Teddy takes the card.

  Malone gets up. “We’re doing something wrong, aren’t we, Teddy? You and me freezing our asses off, Carter sipping piña coladas on the beach?”

  “Trill.”

  Trill.

  True and real.

  Malone cruises in his unmarked work car.

  There’s only so many places the snitch can be. Nasty prefers the area just north of Columbia but below 125th Street and Malone finds him skulking along the east side of Broadway, doing the junkie bop.

  Pulling over, Malone rolls down the passenger window and says, “In.”

  Nasty Ass looks around nervously and then gets in. He’s a little surprised, because normally Malone don’t let him in his car because he says he stinks, although Nasty don’t smell it.

  He’s jonesing hard.

  Nose running, hands trembling as he hugs himself and rocks back and forth. And Nasty tells him, “I’m hurtin’. Can’t find no one. You gotta help me, man.”

  His thin face is drawn, his brown skin sallow. His two upper front teeth stick out like a squirrel’s in a bad cartoon, and if it weren’t for his smell, he’d be called Nasty Mouth.

  Now the man is sick. “Please, Malone.”

  Malone reaches under the dash to a metal box attached with a magnet. He opens the box and hands Nasty an envelope, enough to fix and get well.

  Nasty opens the door.

  “No, stay in the car,” Malone says.

  “I can fix in here?”

  “Yeah, what the fuck. It’s Christmas.”

  Malone takes a left and then heads south down Broadway as Nasty Ass shakes the heroin into a spoon, uses a lighter to cook it, then draws it into a syringe.

  “That thing clean?” Malone asks.

  “As a newborn baby.”

  Nasty Ass sticks the needle in his vein and pushes the plunger. His head snaps back and then he sighs.

  He’s well again. “Where we goin’?”

  “Port Authority,” Malone says. “You’re getting out of town for a while.”

  Nasty’s scared. Alarmed. “Why?!”

  “It’s for your own good.” Just in case Fat Teddy is pissed enough to track him down and do him.

  “I can’t leave town,” Nasty Ass says. “I got no hookups out of town.”

  “Well, you’re going.”

  “Please don’t make me,” Nasty Ass says. He actually starts crying. “I can’t jones out of town. I’ll die out there.”

  “You want to jones at Rikers?” Malone asks. “Because that’s your other choice.”

  “Why are you being a dick, Malone?”

  “It’s my nature.”

  “Never used to was,” Nasty Ass says.

  “Yeah, well, this ain’t the used to was.”

  “Where should I go?”

  “I don’t know. Philly. Baltimore.”

  “I got a cousin in Baltimore.”

  “Go there, then,” Malone says. He peels out five hundred-dollar bills and hands them to Nasty Ass. “Do not spend all of this on junk. Get the fuck out of New York and stay there awhile.”

  “How long I gotta stay?” He looks desperate, really scared. Malone doubts that Nasty Ass has ever been to the East Side, never mind out of town.

  “Call me in a week or so and I’ll let you know,” Malone says. He pulls up in front of Port Authority and lets Nasty out. “I see you in New York, I am going to be mad, Nasty Ass.”

  “Thought we was friends, Malone.”

  “No, we’re not friends,” Malone says. “We’re not going to be friends. You’re my informer. A snitch. That’s all.”

  Driving back uptown, Malone leaves the windows open.

  Claudette opens the door.

  “Merry Christmas, baby,” she says.

  Malone loves her voice.

  It was her voice, low and soft, even more than her looks, that first drew him to her.

  A voice full of promises and reassurance.

  You’ll find comfort here.

  And pleasure.

  In my arms, in my mouth, in my pussy.

  He walks in and sits down on her little couch—she has a different word for it he can never remember—and says, “Sorry I’m so late.”

  “I just got home myself,” she says.

  Even though she’s wearing a white kimono and her perfume smells like heaven, Malone thinks.

  She just got home and she got herself ready for me.

  Claudette sits on the couch beside him, opens a carved wooden box on the coffee table and takes out a thin joint. She lights it, takes a hit and hands it to him.

  Malone sucks down a hit and says, “I thought you were four to twelve.”

  “I thought I was, too.”

  “Tough shift?” he asks.

  “Fights, suicide attempts, ODs,” Claudette says, taking the joint back from him. “Man came in barefoot with a broken wrist, said he knows you.”

  An E-room nurse usually on the night or the graveyard shift, so she’s seen it all. She and Malone met when he drove a junkie CI who had accidentally shot half his foot off straight to the hospital.

  “Why didn’t you call an ambulance?” she’d asked him.

  “In Harlem?” Malone asked. “He’d have bled out while the EMTs were at Starbucks. Instead he bled all over my interior. I just got the thing detailed, too.”

  “You’re a cop.”

  “Guilty.”

  Now she leans back and stretches her legs across his. The kimono slides up to reveal her thighs. There’s a spot just below her pussy that Malone thinks is the softest place on earth.

  “Tonight,” she says, “we had an abandoned crack baby. Left right on the front steps.”

  “Wrapped in swaddling clothes?”

  “I get the irony, Malone,” she says. “How was your day?”

  “Yeah, good.”

  Malone likes that she doesn’t press him, that she’s satisfied with what he tells her. A lot of women aren’t, they want him to “share,” they want details he’d rather forget than recount. Claudette gets it—she has her own horrors.

  He strokes that soft spot. “You’re tired. You probably want to sleep.”

  “No, baby, I want to fuck.”

  They finish their drinks and go into her bedroom.

  Claudette undresses him, kissing skin as she bares it. She goes to her knees and takes him into her mouth and even in the dark bedroom, with light coming in only from the street, he loves the look of her full red lips on his cock.

  She’s not high tonight, it’s just the weed, although it’s very good weed, and he loves that, too. He reaches down and feels her hair, then slides his hand down into the kimono and feels her breast, teases it and feels her moan.

  Malone puts his hands on her shoulders to stop her. “I want to be in you.”

  She gets up, goes to the bed and lies down. Draws her knees up like an invitation and then issues one. “Come here, then, baby.”

  She’s wet and warm.

  He slides back and forth across her body, across the full breasts and the dark brown skin a
nd reaches down with a finger to feel that soft spot as outside sirens blare and people shout and he doesn’t care, doesn’t have to care right now, only has to slide in and out of her and hear her say, “I love that, baby, I love that.”

  When he feels himself about to come, he grabs her ass—Claudette says she has no ass for a black girl—but he grabs her small tight ass and pulls her close and pushes himself as deep in her as he can go until he feels that little pocket in her and she grabs his shoulder and she bucks up and comes just before he does.

  He comes like he always does with her, from the tips of his toes through the top of his head, and maybe that’s the dope but he thinks it’s her, with that low soft voice and warm brown skin, slick and sweaty now, mixing with his, and maybe it’s a minute or maybe it’s an hour when he hears her say, “Oh, baby, I’m tired.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  He rolls off her.

  She sleepily squeezes his hand and then she’s out.

  He lies on his back. Across the street the liquor store owner must have forgotten to turn off his lights, and their reflection blinks red on Claudette’s ceiling.

  It’s Christmas in the jungle and for this short time, at least, Malone is at peace.

  Chapter 5

  Malone sleeps for just an hour, because he wants to be out in Staten Island before the kids get up and start ripping open the presents under the tree.

  He doesn’t wake Claudette when he gets up.

  He gets dressed, goes into the little galley kitchen, makes himself an instant coffee and then goes to his jacket and takes out the present he got her.

  Diamond earrings from Tiffany’s.

  Because she’s crazy about that Audrey Hepburn movie.

  Malone leaves the box on the coffee table and goes out. He knows she’ll sleep until noon and then make it to her sister’s for Christmas dinner.

  “Then I’ll probably hit a meeting at St. Mary’s,” she said.

  “They have them on Christmas?” Malone asked.

  “Especially on Christmas.”

  She’s doing well, she’s been clean for almost six months now. Hard for an addict working in a hospital around all those drugs.

  Now he drives down to his pad, on 104th between Broadway and West End.

  When he separated from Sheila, a little over a year ago now, Malone decided to be one of those few cops who lives on his beat. He didn’t go all the way up to Harlem, but settled for the outskirts on the Upper West Side. He can take the train to work or even walk if he wants, and he likes the neighborhood around Columbia.