by Don Winslow
These were heavy, well-dressed guys. Very calm, cool, arrogant. Malone knew they had to be Pena’s people.
“Get out of the booth,” Malone said. “Lie down on the floor.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” one of the men asked. “You’re wasting everyone’s time. None of these busts will stand up.”
Another grabbed his phone and pointed it at Malone.
Malone said, “Hey, Ken Burns, the only documentary you’re going to make is your own colonoscopy.”
The guy set the phone down.
“On the floor, lie down. Everybody.”
They eased out of the booth, but the women were reluctant to lie down because their skirts rode up too high.
“You’re disrespecting our women,” the first guy said.
“Yeah, they have a lot of self-respect, fucking pieces of shit like you,” Malone said. “Ladies, did you know your boyfriends kill little kids? Three-year-olds? In their beds. Yeah, I definitely think you should marry these honks. Of course, they’re probably married already.”
“Show some respect,” the guy says.
“You open your mouth to me again,” Malone said, “I’m going to bring a female officer in here to do an orifice search on your ladies, and while she’s doing that, I’m going to be kicking your brains in.”
The guy started to say something, but then thought better of it.
Malone squatted and said quietly, “Now when you make bail, you run and tell Pena that Sergeant Denny Malone, Manhattan North Special Task Force, is going to wreck his clubs, bust his dealers, roust his customers, and then I’m going to start getting serious. Do you understand me? You may speak.”
“I understand.”
“Good,” Malone says. “Then you call your bosses down in the Dominican and tell them it’s never going to stop. You tell them that Pena has fucked up and Detective Sergeant Denny Malone, Manhattan North Special Task Force, is going to hose their Dark Horse into the sewers as long as Pena is walking upright in New York City. You tell them they don’t run this neighborhood. I do.”
The uniforms were already downstairs when Malone got there—cuffing people, picking up vials of coke, pills, the guns.
“Everyone goes,” Malone told the uniform sergeant. “Possession of firearms, cocaine, Ecstasy, looks like a little smack . . .”
“Denny, you know these aren’t going to hold up,” the sergeant said.
“I know.” He shouted to the crowd, “Don’t come back to this club! This is going to happen every time!”
As he and the team walked out the door, Malone yelled, “May Da Force be with you!”
The captain then, Art Fisher, wasn’t a pussy, so he shouldered the weight.
The ADAs filed into his office screaming that they couldn’t and wouldn’t pick up a single case, the whole raid was a Mapp violation, a prime example of bad police tactics bordering on—no, crossing the line of—brutality.
When Fisher stonewalled them (“Are you afraid of some Chiquita suing you over an iPhone?”), the prosecutors went to their immediate boss, who in those days was Mary Hinman.
That didn’t work out so well.
“If you don’t want to take the cases, don’t,” she said. “But don’t make onions, either. Grow a pair and buckle up, the ride is going to get rougher.”
One of them said, “So we’re just going to let that Denny Malone and his crew of Neanderthals run roughshod over Manhattan North?”
Hinman didn’t look up from her paperwork. “Are you still here? I thought you left when I told you to go do your job. Now if you don’t want the job . . .”
IAB took a weak swing, too.
They were catching heat from complainants and the Civilian Complaint Review Board.
McGivern shut that down. He pulled from his desk a crime scene photo of the three children shot in the head and asked them if they wanted to see this on the front page of the Post with the headline INTERNAL AFFAIRS HALTS PROBE OF CHILD KILLERS.
They didn’t want that, no.
This was all before Ferguson, before Baltimore and the rest of those killings, and while the Latin community was offended by the nightclub raid, it had no truck with baby killers, and neither did the black community.
Malone kept at it.
His team hit bodegas, stash houses, cash houses, clubs and corners. The word got out on the street that if you were dealing or shooting anything but Dark Horse, the police were going to turn the other way, but if you had Diego Pena’s product, Da Force was coming straight at you on a collision course, no skid marks.
And they weren’t going to stop.
Not until someone gave them something they could use on Pena.
Malone, he took it to a whole new level, one that broke the unwritten rules that govern the relationship between cops and gangsters. A dealer going down on his third bust gave up where Pena was really living, and Malone found him up in Riverdale and staked it out.
He’d watch Pena’s wife take their two kids to the ritzy private school. One day, as she was walking from the car to the house on the way back, he walked up to her and said, “You have nice children, Mrs. Pena. Do you know that your husband has other people’s families murdered? Have a wonderful day.”
Malone wasn’t back at the station ten minutes before a civilian assistant came up to tell him there was someone downstairs asking for Sergeant Malone.
She handed him a card. Gerard Berger—Attorney-at-Law.
Malone went downstairs to see an elegantly dressed man who had to be Gerard Berger, Attorney-at-Law. “I’m Sergeant Malone.”
“Gerard Berger,” Berger said. “I represent Diego Pena. Is there someplace we could go to talk?”
“What’s wrong with here?”
“Nothing,” Berger said. “I just wanted to spare you potential embarrassment in front of your fellow officers.”
Embarrassment? Malone thought. In front of these guys? He’d seen some of them have contests to see who could ejaculate the farthest.
“No, this is fine,” Malone said. “Why does Pena need representation? Has he been charged with something?”
“You know that he hasn’t,” Berger said. “Mr. Pena feels that he is being harassed by the NYPD. Specifically you, Sergeant Malone.”
“Gee, that’s too bad.”
“Go ahead and joke,” Berger said. “We’ll see how funny you think this is when we sue you.”
“Sue away. I don’t have any money.”
“You have a home in Staten Island,” Berger said. “A family to take care of.”
“Keep my family out of your mouth, Counselor.”
Berger said, “My client is giving you a chance, Sergeant. Cease and desist. Otherwise we will file a civil suit and an official complaint with the department. I’ll have your shield.”
“Well, when you get it,” Malone said, “stick it up your ass.”
“You’re dog shit under my shoe, Sergeant.”
“Is that it?”
“For now.”
Malone went back up to his desk. The whole squad had already heard that the infamous Gerard Berger had paid a visit.
“What did that hump want?” Russo asked.
“He gave me the whole you’ll-never-work-in-this-town-again speech,” Malone said. “Told me to lay off Pena.”
“Are you going to?”
“Absolutely.”
What Malone did next will forever go down in the folklore of Manhattan North as “Dog Day Afternoon.”
Malone went to see Officer Grosskopf of the K-9 squad and asked to borrow Wolfie, an enormous Alsatian that had been terrorizing Harlem for the past two years.
“What are you going to do with him?” Grosskopf asked.
He loved Wolfie.
“Take him for a ride,” Malone said.
Grosskopf said yes because it was very hard, not to mention risky, to say no to Denny Malone.
Malone and Russo got Wolfie into the back of Russo’s car and drove to a food truck on East 117th that was technic
ally called Paco’s Tacos but was generally known as the Laxatruck, where Malone fed Wolfie three chicken enchiladas with chile verde, five mystery meat tacos, and a giant burrito called the Gutbuster.
Wolfie, normally held to the strictest of diets, was thrilled and grateful and fell instantly in love with Malone, licking him enthusiastically and happily wagging his tail as he got back in the car, eagerly awaiting the next gastronomic surprise.
“How long will it take to get there?” Malone asked Russo.
“Twenty minutes, no traffic.”
“You think we got that long?”
“Gonna be close.”
It took twenty-two minutes, during which time Wolfie’s joy turned to discomfort as the greasy food worked its way through his bowels and then demanded exit. Wolfie whined, giving the signal that Grosskopf would instantly have recognized as a need to get out.
“Suck it up, Wolfie,” Malone said, scratching his head. “We’ll be there soon.”
“This dog shits in my car . . .”
“He won’t,” Malone said. “He’s a stud.”
When they got there, Wolfie was twisting in discomfort and headed straight for the strip of grass outside the office building, but Malone and Russo took him inside, into the elevator and to the seventeenth floor.
Berger’s receptionist, a drop-dead gorgeous young woman that Berger was probably banging, said, “You can’t bring a dog in here, sir.”
“He’s a service dog,” Russo said, staring at her boobs. “I’m blind.”
“Do you have an appointment with Mr. Berger?” she asked.
“No.”
“What’s the matter with your dog?”
The answer became immediately apparent.
Wolfie whined, Wolfie whirled, Wolfie let loose an almost apocalyptic blast of steaming, chili-infused dog shit all over Gerard Berger’s (previously) white Surya Milan carpet.
“Oops,” Malone said.
Exiting to the sound of the receptionist retching, Malone patted the shamefaced but relieved Wolfie’s head and said, “Good boy, Wolfie. Good boy.” Then they took Wolfie back to the station.
The word got there ahead of them because they were greeted with a standing ovation, and Wolfie was lavished with pets, hugs, kisses and a box of Milkbone cookies tied up with a blue ribbon.
“The captain wants to see you,” the desk sergeant told Malone and Russo, “as soon as you get in.”
They returned Wolfie to a livid Grosskopf and went into Fisher’s office.
“I’m just going to ask you this once,” he said. “Did you take a police dog to shit all over Gerard Berger’s office?”
“Would I do something like that?” Malone asked.
“Get out. I’m busy.”
He was. His phone was ringing off the hook with congratulations from every precinct in New York City.
Grosskopf never really forgave Malone for abusing Wolfie’s digestive system, a hostility that was exacerbated by the fact that any time Malone came within fifty feet of Wolfie, the dog would try to go to him, because Malone had given him the best afternoon of his life.
Malone kept at it. Nasty Ass—and only God knew where he got this kind of information—told him that Pena’s wife was holding a surprise birthday party for her husband at Rao’s, the famous East Harlem eatery.
Pena, he was sitting at the big table with his family, his friends, more than one business leader, a few local pols, and he was opening his presents and took out a big package that was a framed photo of three dead children with a note: From Your Friends at the Manhattan North Special Task Force—No Happy Returns, Baby Killer.
Malone heard about it—from the wiseguys on Pleasant Avenue. He got invited to a sit-down with Lou Savino, whom he’d known since he was a beat cop in the bag. They sat outside a café with cups of espresso and the capo said, “You piece of work, you. You gotta cut this shit out.”
“Since when are you a message boy for the tacos?”
“I could be offended by that,” Savino said, “but I’m not going to be. We leave wives out of our business, Denny.”
“Tell that to Janelle Cleveland. Oh, that’s right, you can’t. She and her whole family are dead.”
“This is a pissing match between two sets of monkeys,” Savino said. “You got your brown monkey and you got your black monkey. What’s the difference which gets the banana? It’s nothing to do with us.”
“It better not be, Lou,” Malone said. “If any of your people are moving Pena’s product, all bets are off, I’m coming after them, I don’t care.”
He knew what he was doing—letting Savino know that if he wanted to deal smack, it had to be with anyone but Pena. It might prompt him to put in a call to the Dominican.
The key to staying alive in any kind of organized crime outfit is very simple—make other people money. As long as you’re making other people money, you’re safe. Start costing people money, you’re a liability, and crime organizations don’t keep liabilities on the books for very long.
It’s not like they can write them off on their taxes.
Malone was turning Pena into a liability—the man was costing his bosses money and trouble, and he was becoming an embarrassment, a guy who was letting himself be humiliated, his wife insulted, his businesses trashed; he became the subject of jokes.
You’re running for toastmaster general you want to be a comedian. You’re trying to take over the ghetto drug trade, last thing you want to be is funny.
You want to be feared.
And if people are going Celebrity Roast on you, even behind your back, they ain’t scared of you. And if they ain’t scared of you, and you’re not making people money, you’re just a problem.
Drug organizations don’t have HR departments. They don’t bring you in, counsel you, instruct you on how you can improve your job performance. What they do is they send someone you know, someone you trust, who takes you out to drinks or to dinner and tells you, Cuida de tu negocio.
Take care of your business.
“Just sit down with the guy,” Savino said, “is all I’m asking. We can work something out.”
“Three dead kids. There’s nothing to work out.”
“It’s always good to talk.”
“He wants to talk,” Malone said, “he comes in and confesses to ordering the murder of the Cleveland family, then he writes a statement. That’s the only way I sit down with him.”
But Savino played his trump card. “This isn’t him asking, this is us.”
Malone couldn’t refuse a direct request from the Cimino family. They were in business together, he had obligations.
They met in the back room of a small restaurant in the East Harlem neighborhood controlled by the Ciminos. Savino guaranteed Malone’s safety; he, in turn, promised that there would be no bust and he wouldn’t wear a wire.
When Malone got into the room, Pena was already at the table. White shirt, overweight, ugly, even in a thousand-dollar suit. Savino got up to hug Malone and started to pat him down. Malone knocked his hands away. “You patting me down? You pat him down?”
“He’s got no reason to wear a wire.”
“I have no reason to wear a wire,” Malone said. “This is not a way to start this sit-down, Lou.”
“Where’s the wire?”
“Up your mother’s twat,” Malone says. “Next time you eat her out, don’t say anything incriminating. Fuck you, I’m outta here.”
“It’s all right,” Pena said.
Savino shrugged and gestured at Malone to sit down.
“Who you taking orders from these days?” Malone asked Savino.
He sat down across from Pena.
“Do you want anything?” Pena asked.
“I’m not breaking bread with you,” Malone said. “I’m not drinking with you. Lou asked me to meet, so here I am. What do you want to say to me?”
“This all has to stop.”
“It stops when they stick the needle in your arm,” Malone said.
“Cleveland knew the rules,” Pena said. “He knew that a man puts not only himself on the line, but his entire family. That’s our way.”
“This is my turf,” Malone said. “My rules. And my rules are that we don’t kill kids.”
“Don’t try to be morally superior with me,” Pena said. “I know what you are. You’re a dirty cop.”
Malone looked at Savino. “Is that it? We’ve had our conversation now? Can I go, get something to eat?”
Pena set a briefcase on the table. “There’s two hundred fifty thousand dollars in there. Take it and eat.”
“What’s this for?”
“You know what it’s for.”
“No, you tell me what it’s for, you piece of garbage,” Malone says. “You tell me it’s for giving you a pass for murdering that family.”
“Pat him down,” Pena said to Savino.
“You lay a finger on me,” Malone said, “so help me God, Lou, I will wipe this floor with you.”
“He’s wired,” Pena said.
“You are,” Savino said, “you’re not walking out of here, Denny.”
Malone ripped off his sports coat, popped his buttons, opening his shirt, baring his chest. “You happy now, Lou? Or you wanna put on a glove, stick a finger up my ass, you wop faggot motherfucker?”
“Jesus, no offense, Denny.”
“Yeah, well, I’m offended, by you and by this baby killer.” Malone picked up the briefcase, threw it at Pena. “I don’t know what you heard about me but I know what you didn’t hear. You didn’t hear I was going to let some mutt kill three children on my beat and walk away. You offer me that briefcase again I’m going to shove it down your throat and out your ass. The only reason I don’t hook you up and haul you in right now is I promised Lou I wouldn’t. But that don’t extend to tomorrow or the day after or the day after that. I’m going to put you on a slab, if your bosses don’t beat me to it.”
“Maybe I’ll put you on a slab,” Pena said.
“Do it,” Malone said. “Come after me. Bring all your people, though. You call the wolf, you get the pack.”
Russo and Montague appeared in the door of the restaurant as if they’d been listening. They had—they’d been sitting out in a car taping the whole fucking thing with a parabolic ear.
“You have a problem, Denny?” Russo asked. He was sporting a smile and a Mossberg 590 shotgun.