by Don Winslow
Malone walks over to give his respects to Gloria Torres.
Assholes are too dumb to know what I did for them, Malone thinks. I got the feds and IAB locked into mutually assured destruction, I got the whispers about Torres silenced. With any luck, this thing gets buried with him and we all go back to living our lives.
Malone gets into the line to speak with the widow and when he gets up to her, he says, “I’m so sorry, Gloria, for your loss.”
He’s shocked when she whispers, “Get the fuck away from me.”
He just looks at her.
“Cancer, Denny?” she asks. “He had cancer?”
“I was protecting his reputation,” Malone says.
Gloria laughs. “Raf’s reputation?”
“For you, for the kids.”
“Don’t you talk about his kids.”
She stares at him, pure fucking hatred in her eyes.
“What—”
“It was you, you son of a bitch,” Gloria hisses.
Malone feels like he’s been hit in the face. Can’t believe he heard what he’s hearing. He forces himself to look at her.
She says, “Raffy told me.”
It was you.
Russo launches an overhand right at Ortiz and it connects.
Ortiz steps back, holding a hand up to his bloody mouth, but Russo isn’t through, he steps in about to follow with the left, but Malone hauls him off.
“You crazy?” Malone asks. “Here?”
With half the NYPD brass looking on?
“You hear what he said about you?” Russo asks, his face red and twisted in rage. “He called you a fucking rat!”
Russo tries to twist out of Malone’s hold, but now Monty has stepped in too, and walks them backward. Levin moves into the space between them and Gallina’s people. Monty keeps walking Russo back and away from the funeral, where cops are turning and staring.
“He called Malone a rat,” Russo says. “Says Torres told his wife.”
“If he did,” Monty says, “that’s Torres’s last gift of malevolence from the grave. Let the haters hate.”
Russo twists out of Malone’s grasp and holds his hands up. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”
He leans his hand on a headstone and catches his breath.
Levin comes over. “What’s going on?”
Russo shakes his head.
“Torres’s people are claiming that Malone was working with the feds,” Monty says, “and set him up.”
“That’s not true, is it?” Levin asks.
Malone lunges at him. “The fuck—”
Monty gets between them and grabs Malone. “We’re going to fight each other, too?”
“It’s bullshit!” Malone yells, almost believing himself.
“Of course it’s bullshit,” Monty says. “They put it out as a test, see how we’d react.”
“If it’s a test,” Levin says, “why say it was the feds, not IAB?”
It has the stench of truth, Malone thinks.
“Because we have IAB on the pad and they know it,” Russo says. “What the fuck you think you know about anything, newbie?”
“I don’t,” Levin says.
“You calmed down?” Monty asks Malone.
“Yeah.”
Monty lets go of him.
It’s happened in one minute, Malone thinks. One minute after the accusation and Monty’s become the leader and I’m damaged goods. He don’t blame Monty, he’s doing what he needs to do, but Malone can’t let that happen.
He says to Monty and Russo, “Go tell them—Charles Young Park, ten o’clock tonight. Everyone comes.”
Monty walks away through the headstones.
“That’s good,” Levin says. “We’ll get this straightened out.”
“You sit this one out,” Malone says.
“Why?”
“There’s shit you don’t need to know,” Malone says.
“Look, either I’m on the team or I’m—”
“I’m looking out for you,” Malone says. “One day you might have to take a polygraph and it would be good for you to say ‘I don’t know’ without ringing the bells.”
Levin stares at him. “Jesus Christ, what are you guys into?”
“Shit I’m trying to keep you out of.”
“I already took money,” Levin says. “Am I jammed up here?”
“You have a career in front of you,” Malone says. “I’m trying to protect that. None of this concerns you—be somewhere else tonight.”
Russo and Monty come back.
The meeting is set up.
“This is over!” Malone yells. “This is fucking over!”
“Calm down,” Paz says.
“You calm the fuck down!” Malone yells. “This rumor will be all over the Task Force—shit, all over the Job—by this afternoon! I’m a marked man! I have a bull’s-eye on my fucking back!”
“Deny it,” Paz says.
She leans back in her chair and looks at him calmly.
They’re up in the “safe house” on Thirty-Sixth Street, which Malone don’t think is so safe anymore.
“‘Deny it’?” Malone asks. “Torres told his wife.”
“That’s what she told you,” Paz says. “They might be just trying to flush you out.”
“And they recruited Gloria to do it?” Malone asks.
Paz shrugs. “Gloria Torres is hardly the grieving widow. And she has a rooting interest in making sure the flow of dirty money keeps coming in.”
Malone looks at O’Dell. “Did you give me up to Torres?”
“We played him the tape of the two of you,” O’Dell says. “But we told him we had the entire Task Force up.”
“So they know you fucking have me!” Malone says. “You goddamn fucking idiots! You goddamn fucking Southern District empty-suit morons! Jesus Christ . . .”
“Sit down, Malone,” Paz says. “I said sit down.”
Malone sits heavily on one of the metal chairs.
“We always knew,” Paz says, “that at some point in time you’d be exposed. But I’m not sure we’re there yet. As far as Torres’s people know, it could be anyone on the Task Force or no one. So, yes, deny it.”
“They won’t believe me.”
“Convince them,” Paz says. “And stop the whining. We didn’t put you in this situation—you did it to yourself. I advise you to remember that.”
“Save your advice for your girlfriends.”
“I don’t have any,” Paz says. “I’m too busy dealing with dirtbags like you and the late Rafael Torres. He was dirty—his team is dirty. You’re dirty and your whole team is dirty.”
“I will not—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Paz says. “You won’t do anything to hurt your partners. We heard you the fifteenth time. You want to protect your partners, Malone? You suck it up, you stay on the Job, you keep bringing us indictments.”
“We’re going to get him killed,” O’Dell says.
Paz shrugs again. “People die.”
“Nice,” says Weintraub.
Paz asks Malone, “What’s your play?”
“We have a meet tonight,” Malone says. “My team and Torres’s.”
“One-stop shopping,” Paz says. “You’re going wired.”
“Fuck that,” Malone says. “You don’t think the first thing they’re going to do is pat me down?”
“Don’t let them.”
“Then they’ll know for sure.”
“You know what I don’t like about, you, Malone?” Paz asks. “In addition to everything? You think I’m stupid. The real reason you don’t want to wear a wire to this meeting is that it will incriminate your partners. I have already assured you, I have put it on the record—if your precious partners have committed no other crimes than we already know about or can reasonably infer from your personal involvement, they get a walk, courtesy of your cooperation.”
O’Dell steps up. “If he goes to this meeting wired, and they pat him down, we will have succeede
d in getting him killed. If that doesn’t matter to you, Isobel, it will also mean that he won’t be available to corroborate any of the recordings.”
“There’s always that,” Weintraub says.
Paz says, “I want a full, truthful, signed affidavit from Malone detailing the meeting.”
“Do you want backup?” O’Dell asks Malone.
“What?”
“In case you get in trouble,” O’Dell says. “We can have people there to pull you out.”
Malone laughs. “Yeah—some feds are going to go into that hood and not get made by cops or the community. Fuck, you’d get me killed.”
“If you get yourself killed,” Paz says, “the deal is off.”
Malone can’t tell if she’s kidding.
Malone sticks the SOG knife in his boot.
The Sig Sauer is in a holster at his waist, the Beretta at the small of his back, and he’s taped extra clips to his ankles.
To meet with other cops, Malone thinks.
To meet with other cops.
Yeah, but they’re cops who want to kill me.
The Colonel Charles Young Playground is four baseball diamonds scraped out of the dirt between 143rd and 145th, east of Malcolm X and west of Harlem River Drive where the 145th Street Bridge comes off the Deegan. The 145th Street subway station is across Malcolm X, giving Malone another way out if he needs it.
As arranged, he meets the team on the southwest corner of 143rd and Malcolm and they walk into the playground together.
Russo’s wearing his leather overcoat and Malone knows he’s carrying the shotgun underneath. Monty has a Harris tweed jacket—the .38 bulge visible at his hip.
“It’s Runnymede,” Monty says as they cross 143rd toward the baseball diamonds.
“Runny who?”
“Runnymede,” Monty says. “The barons are challenging the king.”
Malone don’t know what Monty’s talking about—he only knows that Monty knows what he’s talking about, and that’s good enough. Anyway, he gets the gist—knows who the king is and who the barons are.
A couple of kids and a few junkies get the fuck out of the park when they see the cops coming.
Malone’s phone buzzes and he looks at the number.
It’s Claudette.
He should take it but he can’t, not right now. He feels a twinge of guilt—he should have gone over there or called her, but with everything that’s been happening he hasn’t had the time.
Fuck, he thinks, maybe I should take a second and call back.
Then he sees the Torres people come from the uptown side of the playground. They’ve been waiting, Malone knows, to see if we came alone.
Can’t blame them.
Malone watches them walk toward him at the middle of the diamonds. Knows they’ll be heavy, too.
It’s more like some shoot-out in an old western, Malone thinks, than freakin’ barons and kings. The two sides—fuck, we’re sides now—step up to each other.
“I’m patting you down,” Gallina says to Malone.
“Why don’t we all get naked?” Malone asks.
“Because we’re not rats.”
“Neither am I.”
“That’s not what we heard,” says Tenelli.
“The fuck did you hear?” Russo asks.
“Let’s make sure we’re not making a recording first,” Gallina says.
Malone stretches his arms out. It’s humiliating, but he lets Gallina pat him down for a wire.
“Now the rest of your team,” Gallina says.
“Everyone pats each other down,” Malone says. “We don’t know it ain’t one of you.”
It looks ridiculous, cops frisking each other, but they get it done.
“Okay,” Malone says, “can we talk now?”
“Haven’t you talked enough already?” Tenelli asks.
“I don’t know what Gloria told you,” Malone says, “but I didn’t give Torres up.”
“She said the feds played Torres a recording of him and you,” Gallina says. “He wasn’t wired, so it had to be you.”
“Bullshit,” Malone says. “They could have had a listening device from a parked car, or a rooftop, anywhere.”
“Then why haven’t they come for you?” Gallina asks.
“Or have they?” asks Tenelli.
“No.”
“Why is that?” Tenelli asks.
“They will,” Gallina says. “And then what are you going to do?”
“Tell them to go fuck themselves,” Malone says. “They don’t have shit on anyone else here, and they won’t.”
“Unless you give it up,” Gallina says.
“I won’t hurt a brother officer.”
Tenelli asks, “How do we know you haven’t already?”
“I’ve never hit a woman,” Malone says, “but you’re pushing me to it.”
“Come on.”
Gallina stops it again. “What’s that going to prove? If it wasn’t you, Malone, how did the feds get on us in the first place?”
“I don’t know,” Malone says. “You assholes were on Carter’s pad—maybe he flipped. You were running hookers, maybe that brought them on us.”
“What about the newbie, Levin?” Ortiz asks.
“What about him?”
“Maybe he’s the rat,” Ortiz says. “Maybe he’s working with the feds?”
“Get the fuck out of my face.”
“Or what?”
“I’ll get you out of my face.”
Ortiz backs off. “What now?”
“We stay clean,” Malone says.
“What about the Carter pad?”
“I’ll deal with Carter from now on.”
Tenelli says, “First you get Torres killed, then you take food off our tables?”
“Listen to me,” Malone says. “Raf put me in the jackpot, not the other way around, but I will deal with it. If I have to fall on the sword, I will. But we can all walk away with this if we’re smart. We have IAB in our pocket, they can’t hurt us without blowing themselves up. The Job has had too much bad publicity already, they’ll let this lie if nothing else comes up.”
“What about the feds?” Gallina asks.
“The long, hot summer’s just around the corner,” Malone says. “The Bennett report is going to come out, and if it exonerates that stupid shit, this city is going to blow up. The feds know that, they know they’re going to need us to keep this city from burning. Keep your noses clean, do your fucking jobs. I’ll get us through this.”
They don’t look happy, but none of them say anything.
The king is still the king.
Then Monty speaks up. “Police work is a dangerous job. We all know that. But if anything happens to Malone—if he catches a bullet, a concrete block falls on him, he gets hit by lightning, I’m going to come looking for the people on this playground. And I’ll kill you.”
Both sides walk away.
They go back to the co-op.
“Don’t discuss business with anyone outside us,” Malone says. “And don’t talk about anything in the house, in cars, anywhere we’re not one hundred percent certain is secure.”
“The feds have you and Torres on tape?” Monty asks.
“Sounds like it.”
“What have they got?”
“I only had two conversations with Torres that are incriminating,” Malone says. “One on Christmas, he came to see me about Teddy. The other was after the gun bust, he came to me about Carter. I don’t remember exactly what got said, but it isn’t good.”
Russo asks, “What if the feds do come after you?”
“I don’t give them anything,” Malone says.
Monty says, “That means jail.”
“Then it means jail.”
“Jesus, Denny.”
“I’m all right,” Malone says. “You’ll take care of my family.”
“Goes without saying.” This from Russo.
“Let’s hope it don’t come to that,” Malone says. “I
ain’t out of the game yet. But if it does . . .”
“We got your back,” Russo says. “What about Levin?”
“Jesus, you too?”
“All this shit happens when he came on the team,” Russo says.
“Post hoc, ergo propter hoc,” Monty says.
“What?”
“‘After this, therefore because of this,’” Monty says. “It’s a fallacy of logic. Just because this shit started after Levin came on doesn’t mean it started because Levin came on.”
“He took his cut of Teddy’s money,” Malone says.
“Yeah, but took it where?” Russo asks. “Maybe it’s vouchered with the feds.”
“Okay,” Malone says, “go to his place two or three in the morning, see if he has the money stashed.”
“If he doesn’t . . .”
“Then we have questions,” Malone says.
Malone goes out and walks to his car.
It’s time to move the smack.
It’s the worst fucking time to do anything risky, but he has to move the Pena smack.
Chapter 21
They meet in St. John Cemetery.
“The fuck we have to come all the way out to Queens for?” Lou Savino asks.
“You want to meet on Pleasant Avenue?” Malone says. “It’s a federal movie set. Here you can always say you were just paying respects to old friends.”
Half the major bosses from the Five Families are buried out here. Luciano himself, Vito Genovese, John Gotti, Carlo Gambino, Joe Colombo, even old Salvatore Maranzano, who started it all.
St. John is sort of the Gangster Hall of Fame.
And then there’s Rafael Ramos.
It doesn’t seem like two years have gone by since he and another cop, Wenjian Liu, were shot as they sat in their radio car in Bed-Stuy. The whack job who did it said it was revenge for Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Said he was putting “Wings on Pigs.” Had the sense to blow his own brains out before the NYPD got to him.
The gun he used came through the Iron Pipeline.
Where were the fucking demonstrations then? Malone wonders. Where were the signs that said “Blue Lives Matter”?
Malone was at Ramos’s funeral here—the largest in police history, over a hundred thousand people. A lot of cops turned their backs on the mayor when he delivered the eulogy.