by Don Winslow
“She’s paid to make you feel that way,” Russo told the guy. “That’s her job.”
“No, this is different,” the guy insisted. “It’s the real thing.”
“Don’t embarrass yourself,” Malone said. “Man up here—you have a wife and kids. You have a family.”
Don’t make me put her on the phone and tell you you have a dick like a golf pencil and bad breath, and that she tried to get Madeleine to send someone else the last time.
Now Madeleine welcomes them in and they take the little elevator upstairs to a tastefully furnished apartment.
The women are gorgeous.
Which they should be, at two thousand dollars a date.
Levin, his eyes bug out of his head.
“Easy there, College,” Russo says.
“I’ve selected your dates,” Madeleine says, “based on your previous preferences. But for the new guy, I had to guess. I hope Tara will make you happy. If not, we can go back to the book.”
“She’s beautiful,” Levin says, “but I’m not . . . partaking.”
“We can just have a couple of drinks and a good conversation,” Tara says to Levin.
“That sounds great.”
She leads him over to the bar.
Malone’s date calls herself Niki. She’s tall and leggy with a throwback Veronica Lake hairstyle and ice-blue eyes. He sits with her, has a scotch alongside her dirty martini, talks for a few minutes and then she takes him into one of the bedrooms.
Niki wears a tight black dress with a deep décolletage. She peels the dress down and off, revealing the black lingerie that Madeleine knows he likes without him asking for it.
“You want anything special?” she asks.
“You’re already special.”
“Maddy said you were a charmer.”
She starts to take off her stiletto heels but Malone says, “Keep them on.”
“You want me to undress you, or—”
“I’ll do it myself.” He gets out of his clothes and puts them on the hangers that Madeleine has provided so her married clients don’t go home with wrinkled suits. He takes his pistol and puts it under the pillow.
Niki gives him a look.
“You never know who’s going to come through the door,” Malone says. “It’s not a kink. If it bothers you, I’ll ask for someone else.”
“No, I like it.”
She gives him a two-thousand-dollar fuck.
Around the world in eighty minutes.
Afterward, Malone gets dressed, puts the gun back into its holster, and leaves five one-hundred-dollar bills on the side table. Niki puts her dress back on, takes the money and asks, “Buy you a drink?”
“Sure.”
They go back out into the living room. Monty is there with his date, an impossibly tall black woman. Russo isn’t finished yet, but that’s Russo.
“I eat slow, I drink slow and I make love slow,” he’s said. “Savor.”
Levin isn’t at the bar.
“Did the newbie bail on us?” Malone asks.
“He went to a room with Tara,” Monty says. “In the words of Oscar Wilde, ‘I can resist everything but temptation.’”
Russo finally comes in with a brunette named Tawny who reminds Malone of Donna. Classic, Malone thinks, the guy cheats on his wife with a woman who looks like his wife.
A few minutes later Levin comes in looking a little drunk, a lot sheepish and totally fucked out.
“Don’t tell Amy, okay?” he says.
They crack up.
“‘Don’t tell Amy’!” Russo says, wrapping his arm around Levin’s shoulder. “This kid, this fucking kid, he goes Batman on a Jamaal in a vertical and misses a bullet. Then he breaks the gym set out on him. Then he goes to cuff Lou Savino in front of his women and his crew in the middle of Gallaghers, then he wets his dick in thousand-dollar pussy, comes out and says, ‘Don’t tell Amy’!”
They all crack up again.
Russo kisses Levin on the cheek. “This kid! I love this fucking kid!”
“Welcome to the team,” Malone says.
They have another drink and then it’s time to go.
The women come with them up to 127th and Lenox.
A club called the Cove Lounge.
“Why do you listen to that moolie music?” Russo asks Malone on the way up there.
“Because we work with moolies,” Malone says. “Anyway, I like it.”
“Monty,” Russo asks, “you like this hip-hop shit?”
“Hate it,” Monty says. “Give me some Buddy Guy, BB, Evelyn ‘Champagne’ King.”
“How old are you guys?” Levin asks.
“Yeah, who do you listen to?” Malone asks. “Matisyahu?”
They pull up outside the Cove. The line outside sees the limo and looks for who gets out, expecting a hip-hop star. They see two white guys get out and they don’t like it.
Then one of them recognizes Malone.
“It’s the cops!” he yells. “Hey, Malone! Motherfucker!”
The doormen let them right in. The Cove is done in blue and purple light pulsing in beat with the music.
The other color is black.
Counting Malone, Russo, Levin and their dates, there are exactly eight people in the club who aren’t black.
They get stares.
But they get a table.
The hostess, a beyond beautiful black woman, leads them straight to the raised VIP section and sits them down.
Four bottles of Cristal come a minute later.
“Compliments of Tre,” the hostess says. “He said to tell you your money doesn’t spend here.”
“Tell him thank you,” Malone says.
Tre doesn’t officially own the club. The twice-convicted rapper/record producer couldn’t get a liquor license with a rocket launcher, but he owns the club. Now he literally looks down at Malone from a raised platform in the VIP section and raises his glass.
Malone raises his back.
People see it.
It chills things out.
If the white cops are good with Tre, they’re good.
“You know Tre?” Niki asks, impressed.
“Yeah, a little bit.”
The last time the Job wanted to talk with Tre, Malone brought him in personally. No handcuffs, no perp walk, no cameras.
Tre appreciated the respect.
Started to throw some security work to Malone, who does it himself or with Monty if it’s important. The more routine stuff he passes to other cops in Manhattan North, who are grateful for the money.
And Tre gets off on having racist cops as employees. Was sending them out for coffees and cheesecake and shit until Malone got wind of it and put a stop to it. “They are New York City police officers, there to protect your ass. You want a snack, send one of your flunkies.”
Now Tre comes down and slides in next to Malone.
“Welcome to the jungle,” he says.
“I live here,” Malone says. “You live in the fucking Hamptons.”
“You should come out sometime.”
“I will, I will.”
“Party with us,” Tre says. “The missus likes you.”
His black leather jacket has to go a couple of grand, the Piaget watch a lot more.
There’s money in the music, in the clubs.
“Black or white,” Tre says, “all money spends green.”
Now he asks Malone, “Who’s going to protect me from the police? Young black man can’t walk the streets anymore without getting shot by a cop, usually in the back.”
“Michael Bennett got shot in the chest.”
Tre says, “I hear different.”
“You want to play Jesse Jackson,” Malone says, “have a ball. You have some evidence, bring it on in.”
“To the NYPD?” Tre asks. “That’s what we would call a whitewash.”
“What do you want me to do, Tre?”
“Nothin’,” Tre says. “I’m just giving you a heads-up, is all.”
“I do.” Tre goes into his pocket, comes out with a cigar-sized blunt. “In the meantime, let this make you well.”
Gives him the blunt and leaves.
Malone takes a sniff. “Jesus fuck.”
“Light up,” Niki says.
Malone lights up, takes a hit and passes it to Niki. It’s primo shit, Malone thinks. Then again, coming from Tre, what else would it be? A sweet, mellow high—energizing—more sativa than indica. The blunt gets passed around the table until it hits Levin.
He looks at Malone.
“What,” Malone says. “You never smoked weed?”
“Not since I came on the Job.”
“Well, we’re not telling anyone.”
“What if I get tested?”
They laugh at him.
“No one told you about the Designated Pisser?” Russo asks.
“What’s that?”
“Not what,” Monty says. “Who. Officer Brian Mulholland.”
“That guy who sweeps up the locker room?” Levin asks. “The House Mouse?”
Most precincts have one—a cop who’s not fit for street duty but shy of retirement. They keep him inside, cleaning up, running errands. Mulholland was a good cop until he answered a call and found a baby who’d been “dipped”—held in a bathtub of scalding water. After that, he hit the bottle but it hit him back harder. Malone persuaded the captain at the Three-Two to keep him on the Job, hide him as the House Mouse.
“He’s not just the House Mouse,” Russo says, “he’s also the Designated Pisser. You get notice of a Doyle, Mulholland pisses into a baggie for you. Your piss is a hundred proof, but you test clean for dope.”
Levin takes a hit and passes it.
“Brings up another story,” Malone says, looking at Monty.
“Fuck all of you,” Monty says.
“Montague here,” Malone says, “had his PT coming up. And he isn’t exactly, shall we say, ‘undernourished.’”
“And your mamas,” Monty says.
“I mean, Monty can’t walk a mile,” Malone says, “never mind run one in the required time. So what he does is, he—”
Monty holds up a hand. “There was a rookie, a handsome and distinguished young African American gentleman, who shall go nameless—”
“Grant Davis,” Russo says.
“—who had been a track-and-field standout at Syracuse University,” Monty says.
“He had a tryout with the Dolphins,” Malone says.
“This was a double opportunity,” Monty says. “One, for me to pass the PT, and two, to prove that the Job cannot tell one black man from another, and furthermore, doesn’t care to.”
Malone says, “So Monty uses his big-dick gold-shield swag to convince this rookie to take Monty’s ID and run the test for him. The kid was scared shitless, which apparently made him run faster because . . . he broke the departmental record for the mile.”
“I didn’t think I needed to tell him to slack off a little,” Monty says.
“But no one catches on,” Malone says.
“Proving my point,” says Monty.
“Until,” Malone says, “some genius at One P decides he’s going to improve the relationship between the Fire Department and the Job by holding a friendly little . . . track meet.”
Levin looks at Monty and grins.
Monty nods.
“This commander has the records pulled and sees that Detective William Montague has a time in the mile akin to an Olympic athlete and figures he has his man,” Malone says. “The brass at One P start laying down money with their brethren of the Fire Department.”
“Those knuckle draggers take the bets,” Russo says, “because a few of them know the real William J. Montague and figure they have a sure thing.”
“Which they do,” Malone says. “Because there’s no way we can sub the fake Monty for the real Monty in front of all those cops and firemen who know him. Monty goes into training—which means one less cigar a day and easy on the barbecue sauce, and the big day rolls around. We show up in Central Park and the Fire Department has a ringer—a probie from Iowa who was the Big Ten champion in the mile. I mean, this kid—”
“White boy,” Monty says.
“—looks like a freakin’ god,” Malone says. “He looks like a Greek sculpture, and Monty, he shows up in plaid Bermuda shorts, a T-shirt hanging over his gut and a cigar in his mouth. The commander takes one look at him and about shits himself. He’s all, like, ‘What the fuck did you do? How much could you fucking eat in one month?’ The brass have thousands on this race, and they are pissed.
“They go to the starting line. The pistol goes off and for a second I think the commander shot Monty. Monty, he takes off—”
“If you can call it that,” Russo says.
“—gets five strides,” Malone says, “and topples over.”
“Hamstring,” Monty says.
“The Fire baboons start jumping up and down,” Malone says, “cops are cursing, handing their money over. Monty’s on the ground holding his leg, we’re laughing our asses off.”
“But didn’t you guys lose a lot of money?” Levin asks.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Russo asks. “I got my cousin Ralphie on the Fire Department to lay our money down against Usain Bolt-Down-His-Food over here, so we cleaned up. And the commander walks away totally disgusted, I hear him say, ‘One slow nigger in Harlem, and he’s mine.’”
Levin looks at Monty to see how he takes “nigger.”
“What?” Monty asks him.
“You know, the N-word,” Levin says.
“No, I don’t know the ‘N-word,’” Monty says. “I know ‘nigger.’”
“And you’re okay with it?”
“I’m okay with Russo saying it,” Monty says. “I’m okay with Malone saying it. Someday I might be okay with you saying it.”
“How does it feel to be a black cop?” Levin asks Monty.
Malone winces. This could go either way. Monty could blow, or he could get professorial.
“How does it ‘feel’?” Monty asks. “I don’t know, how does it feel to be a Jewish cop?”
“Different,” Levin says. “But when I show up, Jews don’t hate me.”
“You think blacks hate me?” Monty asks. “Some do. Some call me a Tom, a house nigger. But the truth is, whether they say it or not, most black people think that I’m trying to protect them.”
“How about inside the Job?” Levin asks, not letting it go.
“There are haters on the Job,” Monty says. “Haters are everywhere. At the end of the day, though, most cops don’t see black and white, they see blue and everyone else.”
“But by ‘everyone else,’” Levin says, “most people think we mean ‘black.’”
It gets quiet, then they all get that stupid high smile you get from powerful weed. That blunt gets them fucking blasted. Then they’re up and dancing. Which is a surprise to Malone, because he doesn’t dance. But he is now, bopping with Niki in the thick crowd of clubgoers, the music throbbing through the veins in his arms, swirling around in his head, Monty ultracool, black man cool beside him, even Russo up and dancing, they are all fucked up.
Dancing in the jungle with the rest of the animals.
Or the angels.
Or who could tell the fucking difference.
They drive Levin home, down to West Eighty-Seventh off West End. His girl, Amy, doesn’t look too thrilled when they carry her semiconscious boyfriend to the door.
“He got a little over-refreshed,” Malone says.
“I guess so,” Amy says.
Cute-looking girl.
Dark, curly hair, dark eyes.
Smart looking.
“We were celebrating his first collar,” Russo says.
“I wish he’d called me,” Amy says. “I like to celebrate.”
Good luck, smart Amy, Malone thinks. Cops celebrate with other cops. No one else understands what you’re
celebrating.
Being alive.
Taking down bad guys.
Having the best job in the world.
Being alive.
They toss Levin on the sofa.
He’s out.
“Nice to meet you, Amy,” Malone says. “I’ve heard a lot of nice things.”
“Same,” Amy says.
They dispatch Dominic to take the women back and then roll down Lenox Avenue in Russo’s car, with the stereo blasting and the windows open, singing along with N.W.A. at the tops of their lungs.
Searching my car, looking for the product
Thinking every nigga is selling narcotics.
Driving down this old street, this cold street, past the tenements, past the projects.
Malone hangs out the front window.
I don’t know if they fags or what
Search a nigga down and grabbing his nuts.
Russo lets out a demonic laugh and they all shout—
Fuck tha police
Fuck tha police
Fuck tha police
Fuck tha police!
Rolling through the jungle.
Stoned, drunk, high.
Through the hard gray of early dawn.
Yelling to the few startled people on the sidewalks—
Fuck tha police
Fuck tha police
Fuck tha police
Fuck tha police!
I want justice!
I want justice!
All together now—
Fuck you, you black motherfuckersssssssss!!!!!
Chapter 9
They take him as he walks toward his apartment.
A black car pulls over and three guys in suits get out.
Fucked up as he is, at first Malone thinks it’s the dope. Can’t really focus on them, doesn’t really care. Sounds like a bad joke, right, “Three guys in suits get out of a car and—”
Then a jolt—they’re hitters.
Pena’s people?
Savino?
He starts to reach for his gun when the lead guy shows his badge, identifies himself as “Special Agent O’Dell—FBI.”