The Border: A Novel

by Don Winslow

  “Time to do the walk of shame,” she says.

  “Let me drive you.”

  “I’ll take the subway.”

  “Is that your way of saying this was a one-night stand?” Cirello asks.

  “Look at you, Mr. Big-Shot Detective, all insecure,” she says. She kisses him on the lips. “It’s my way of saying that the subway is faster.”

  He tosses his coffee down. “Come on, I’ll walk you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Like I said, I’m a nice Greek boy.”

  At the top of the subway entrance she says, “You’d better call me.”

  “I’ll call you,” Cirello says.

  She kisses him lightly and goes down the stairs.

  Cirello stops at a newsstand, buys the papers, and walks to a diner for breakfast. He sits down at a booth, has a big cheese omelet with rye toast, and looks through the Times. There’s a prominent story about the actor who overdosed.

  And now, Cirello thinks, I have to reach out and sell myself to the people who killed him.

  Easy to say, harder to do.

  These people aren’t billionaires because they’re idiots. They don’t own cops in Mexico just because Mexican cops are easier to buy—they own cops because they have leverage on them. The offer isn’t “take it or leave it,” the offer is “take it or we kill you and your family.” That way they know they can trust the cop they bought—he isn’t going to flip on them.

  Doesn’t work that way up here.

  No wiseguy in his right mind would kill a New York City cop, much less threaten his family, because he knows he’d have thirty-eight thousand angry police up his ass. Even if he survived his arrest—which is unlikely—the Irish and Italian prosecutors and the Jewish judge would see that he did the rest of his life under the worst prison in the state. Worse, it would fuck up business, so the bosses make sure their troops don’t do that shit.

  The black and Latino gangbangers know better than to kill a cop, because it would shut their businesses down.

  Cops get killed, all right, too many, but not by OC.

  The Mexicans are going to be hinky about buying an NYPD cop because they won’t have the insurance policy on him.

  So you have to give them some.

  He goes to the garage, picks up his car, a 2012 Mustang GT, and drives out to Resorts World Casino.

  A week later he’s at a Starbucks in Staten Island listening to the barista sing the theme song from Gilligan’s Island.

  “You’re too young to know that show,” he says.

  “Hulu,” she answers. “What can I get you?”

  He looks at her name tag. “A latte, please, Jacqui.”

  “Just a latte?” she asks. “No annoying adjectives?”

  “Just a latte,” he says, thinking, And maybe some smack. The girl wears long sleeves and her eyes look as if she’s high.

  Staten Island is one of the heroin hot spots. They’re seeing three times the smack they did only two years ago. Used to be the drug was just in the northern, more urban part of the island, where it came on the ferry from Manhattan or over the bridge from Brooklyn, and you found it in the projects.

  Not anymore.

  Now it’s down to the single-family neighborhoods in the central and southern parts of the island, working-class neighborhoods with a lot of cops, firefighters, and city employees.

  And let’s be honest about it, Cirello thinks.

  White neighborhoods.

  Blue-collar neighborhoods.

  Why he’s here now.

  Because he’s white.

  Up in Manhattan and out in Brooklyn, drug trafficking is pretty much a gang thing. The black and Latino gangs dominate the trade in and around the projects and he knows he’s not going to break in with them.

  Not a white cop.

  Not even a dirty white cop.

  But out here the heroin trafficking is different—you have a lot of independent dealers, most of them users themselves, selling dime and even nickel bags they’re buying from wiseguy retailers who buy it from the mills uptown.

  Twenty years ago, maybe even ten, it would be worth your life to deal H to white kids in Staten Island, which is as mobbed up as it is copped up. Shit, Paul Calabrese himself lived out here, and there’s still a mob presence but it’s different. They don’t look out for their own like they used to, and that thing about the mob protecting white kids from dope is a long-gone myth.

  Cirello has heard that John Cozzo’s fucking grandkid is slinging dope out here. Which is really no big surprise when you consider that Cozzo killed Calabrese to clear the way for importing Mexican heroin.

  Anyway, Cirello knows he isn’t going to find his hook in the Bronx, Brooklyn, or Manhattan. He’s going to find it out here in white Staten Island—Heroin Isle—with users like Jacqui here.

  To lead him to the sharks.

  He’s thrown out the chum. Went to Resorts World and dropped three large at the blackjack table, betting stupid. Then he chased it with basketball bets—college and pro—and dropped five more. Then he drove up to Connecticut—Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods—dumped a few grand more and got drunk and loud so the word would get around the northeast OC community that a New York detective was off the leash, gambling heavy, losing heavy, drinking heavy.

  Blood in the water.

  Now he drinks his latte and watches Jacqui work behind the counter. She’s got a smile on her face and does her job but she looks a little shaky, walks a little jumpy, and Cirello knows she has maybe three hours before she needs a get-well fix.

  She has to be what, nineteen? Twenty, tops?

  What a world.

  Young people dropping like it’s World War I out here. Parents burying their kids. It’s unnatural.

  Other than this jacked-up assignment, his new life is pretty good. He’s been seeing Libby for a few weeks now and so far it’s working out. Their schedules match—she’s not available until late night or early in the morning and right now they’re both content with a triweekly late dinner and subsequent sex. She isn’t making any further demands and neither is he.

  It’s easy.

  He finishes his coffee and walks up the block to Zio Toto.

  The bar is empty and he pulls out one of the black stools, sits down and orders a Seven and Coke.

  Angie is late and Cirello knows it’s a power play.

  Make the other guy wait.

  Angie comes in about five minutes later.

  If he’s been a regular at 24 Hour Fitness, he’s hiding it pretty well, Cirello thinks. Angelo Bucci is still the same doughy slob he was when they went to Archbishop Malloy together in Astoria. He has his hair cut short now and wears a Mets jacket with jeans and a pair of loafers.

  Gives Cirello a hug, sits down at the bar and says, “The fuck did I have to come down to Alabama for?”

  “Don’t you live in Richmond now?”

  “Still a haul,” Angie says. “What, you don’t want to be seen with your old friends, now you’re a gold shield? What are you drinking? What’s that, a Coke?”

  “And Seven.”

  “I’ll have what he’s having,” Angie says to the bartender, “only make it a vodka straight up. And give this mezzo fanook another soda.”

  Cirello points at his empty glass to indicate he’ll have another. “How’s Gina?”

  “Well, she hasn’t stopped bustin’ balls, that’s what you’re asking,” Angie says. “The kids are growing like weeds. But you didn’t ask me down here to talk about my domestic life, Bobby.”

  The bartender brings the drinks. Angelo juts his chin, meaning he should find something to do at the other end of the bar.

  “I need to borrow some money,” Cirello says.

  “I was afraid of that,” Angie says. “How much?”

  “Twenty large.”

  “What the fuck, Bobby?”

  “Blame St. John’s,” Bobby says.

  “Who are you into?”

  “No one,” Bobby says. “I’m paid up
but I’m broke. Little shit like rent, car payments, food . . .”

  “More bets . . .”

  “I need cash, Angie. Not a lecture.”

  “You put money on St. John’s, maybe you need a lecture,” Angie says. “Jesus, Bobby, I don’t want to lend you money. I’d have to charge you vig.”

  “I know.”

  “And you go chasing that and lose . . .”

  “I make good money,” Cirello says.

  “Which is why you’re coming to me?” Angie asks.

  “Yeah, well, I thought we were friends.”

  “We are,” Angie says. “Which is why I don’t want to see you dig a deeper hole, for yourself, and . . .”

  “And what?”

  “How do I put this, Bobby?” Angie says. “Lending money to an NYPD detective . . . if you don’t pay me, how am I supposed to get my money back? I mean, I can’t lean on you, can I?”

  “First of all,” Cirello says, “I’m going to pay you back. But if I don’t, what you do is, you drop a dime to Internal Affairs, and my career is fucked. It’s good leverage.”

  “Yeah, maybe. I didn’t think of that.”

  “Good thing I’m here, then.”

  “Yeah, not so much,” Angie says. “Okay, thirty days at twenty points, the vig every Friday, regular as a priest with an altar boy. You miss, it compounds on the principal.”

  “I know how it works, Angie.”

  “I live off gamblers,” Angie says. “They put food on my table, clothes on my kids’ backs. I don’t want to live off you, Bobby. Shit, what would I say to your ya-ya? How is she, by the way?”

  “Good. Cantankerous.”

  “I should swing by there, say hello,” Angie says. “It’s been too long.”

  “She’d like to see you.”

  Angie gets up, finishes his drink. “Little League practice, would you believe that? You parked out front?”

  “Down the block.”

  “Come outside.”

  They walk out to Angie’s black Land Rover. Cirello gets into the passenger seat. Angie opens the console, takes out a stack of hundred-dollar bills and counts out twenty grand. “Don’t fuck me on this, Bobby.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You want a ride to your car?”

  “It’s just at Starbucks.”

  “Okay,” Angie says. “See you Friday. Pier 76, a bar up in St. George. You know it?”

  “I can find it.”

  “Five p.m. Don’t be late.”

  “This is just between us, right, Angie?”

  “Of course,” Angie says, looking hurt. “The fuck you think?”

  Getting out of the car, Cirello knows what happens next—Angie makes a beeline to his bosses to brag he has an NYPD detective on the hook. They’re going to ask him what this detective works and he’s going to tell them narcotics. The bosses file that piece of information away. Because that’s what they do.

  Cops and criminals, information is currency.

  Cirello goes back to his car and sits.

  Because that’s what I do, he thinks. I sit. A lot of cop work is a matter of sitting and waiting for something to happen. Sometimes it does, which is the same as saying that sometimes it doesn’t.

  But he has a hunch about Jacqui.

  She’s going to score and she’s going to score soon.

  Which would ordinarily be no big deal—a few thousand addicts are going to score soon, and it’s really a matter for the uniforms or maybe the plainclothes, if they need some arrests for the quotas that supposedly don’t exist.

  But Cirello needs a Goldilocks bust.

  Not too big, not too small.

  Popping Jacqui’s score is too small, but it might lead him to the midlevel bust he’s looking for.

  So he sits and waits.

  In ambush.

  Like the predator he’s become.

  A cop hunting for a payday.

  Jacqui has texted Travis about fifty-seven times and her manager has started getting raggy about it.

  Where the hell is he?

  Why doesn’t he at least answer? If he hasn’t scored, she thinks, he could at least tell me that so that I can try to reach Marco or someone. She signals the manager that she’s taking a bathroom break and he looks at her like, What, again? She goes into the restroom and is about to call Marco when a text finally comes in from Travis. Pulling in now. Come on out.

  When she comes out, the manager stops her. “Are you sick?”

  “No, why?”

  “You seem sick.”

  “I’m fine,” Jacqui says.

  “No, why don’t you check out,” he says. “It’s slow.”

  “I need the hours.”

  “Go home, Jacqui.”

  She walks out into the parking lot. Travis is waiting in the van, parked along the edge of the lot. She gets into the back and Travis gets out of the driver’s seat and joins her.

  “You score?” Jacqui asks.

  “Yeah.”

  She’s cooking up when there’s a banging at the door.

  “It’s the fucking manager,” Jacqui says. “I’ll deal with him.”

  She slides the door open a crack.

  It’s not the manager. It’s the latte-no-adjectives.

  Holding up a badge.

  “Hello, kids,” he says. “What are we doing in here?”

  Cirello makes his pitch.

  “I arrest you both now,” he says. “It’s simple possession, so you probably get drug court, but you’ll still go to Rikers for a couple of weeks unless you can make bail, which I’m guessing you can’t. Or . . .”

  He pauses for effect.

  Hold out a little hope.

  “You give me your dealer.”

  The guy shakes his head. Cirello had his plates run, so he already knows his name is Travis Meehan, no priors.

  He feels bad for the kid.

  “We can’t do that,” Travis says.

  “That’s too bad,” Cirello says, “because you’re going to get really sick in jail. You love this girl?”

  Travis nods.

  “If you do,” Cirello says, feeling like shit, “you don’t want to see what can happen to her in the bullpen at Rose Singer.”

  “We can’t be rats,” Jacqui says.

  “I hear you,” Cirello says. “I really do. The thing of it is, I don’t even want your dealer, ultimately. I’m betting he’s a friend of yours, a user himself, right? Come on, am I right?”

  He gets grudging nods.

  “I don’t want to hurt your friend,” Cirello says. “I don’t want to hurt you. I’m after people you don’t even know, the people who sold the shit to your friend, and I’ll bet they’re not friends of his.”

  “We have to live here.”

  “If you make it back here,” Cirello says, “from Rikers. You’ve never been in the system, you don’t know. It’s iffy. Could go either way. You get the wrong judge, he’s having a bad day . . . But look, I get your point. We can do this so no one ever knows it was you. But, if you want, I pop you and then I put it out on the street you flipped. Not good.”

  “You’re a prick,” Jacqui says.

  “Yup.”

  She’s jonesing, he sees. They both are.

  And he has the most persuasive tool available to anyone dealing with an addict. “I’m not asking you to set him up. Just give me a name, a description, a car, where he hangs, and I’ll let you fix.”

  Winner, winner.

  Chicken dinner.

  He gets Marco that night.

  Easy pickings, the dumb shit is dealing from the Micky D’s parking lot. (“Would you like fries with that, sir?” “No, thanks, just the smack.”)

  Cirello watches a deal go down from Marco’s Ford Taurus, walks right up and gets into the passenger seat.

  “NYPD, Marco,” Cirello says, showing his badge. “Do not make me pull my weapon, just set your hands on the wheel.”

  Marco tries to tough it out. “Do you have a warrant?”


  “Don’t need one,” Cirello says. “I have probable cause. I just saw you sling a dime bag. I don’t even have to ask you if I can search the car, I can just search the car, but first I’m going to ask you, do you have any weapons on you, especially any firearms?”

  “No.”

  “That’s good, Marco,” Cirello says, “that will save you four years on this beef. Now let’s see what we do have.”

  He opens the console and sees a stack of dime bags.

  “Uh-oh,” Cirello says. “Possession with intent to distribute. Felony weight. Rockefeller law shit. Fifteen to thirty, mandatory.”

  Marco starts to cry. He’s a skinny, scared, pathetic junkie and Cirello feels like a piece of shit.

  “I’d cry, too,” Cirello says. “You have priors, Marco?”

  “One.”

  “For?”

  “Possession,” Marco says.

  “What did you get?”

  “Probation,” Marco says. “Court-ordered counseling, methadone program.”

  “Didn’t take, huh?” Cirello says. “Well, now you’re double fucked, Marco. The judge is going to go flamenco on you. They’re very serious about heroin slingers these days, and you, my dumb young friend, are dealing in a white neighborhood that’s had a lot of overdose deaths. You know how many COs live in Staten Island? They’re going to be waiting for you inside.”

  Cirello’s just making this shit up, but it sounds good. And the guy is terrified, his hands quivering on the wheel.

  “I want my lawyer.”

  “What a lawyer is going to get you is maybe the minimum fifteen,” Cirello says, seeing this slip right out of his hands. “That means you’re, what, forty when you get out? Best-case scenario. Worst-case, sixty? But yeah, let’s call him. Only thing is, once you do, I can’t help you anymore.”

  “What can you do to help me?”

  “That depends on you,” Cirello says.

  “I know what you want.”

  “What do I want, Marco?”

  “You want me to give you the guys who sold this to me,” Marco says.

  “You’re not as stupid as you look,” Cirello says. “That’s good. Now before you say something that proves you are as stupid as you look, let me ask you something: if those guys were in your position, would they do fifteen to thirty upstate to save you? Think before you answer.”