by Don Winslow
The water comes up to his chest and he feels the current pulling at him, trying to claw him downstream.
He pushes hard with his legs but then the water is up to his chin, and then his mouth and then his nose, and he has to walk on his tiptoes to breathe but he knows the deepest part of the river is in the middle and that it will get better.
Then he plunges into a hole.
The water is over his head, the whirling eddy strips the stick from his hand and he starts to lose his feet, they’re slipping out from under him and the water is all around him and he holds his breath because if he gasps for the air that his lungs are screaming for, he’ll swallow water and drown.
Feeling the bottom, he pushes as hard as he can with his toes and he comes up, inhales a breath of air and then falls forward, splashing face-first into the water. He flails his arms as the current carries him downstream, a whirlpool spinning him around and around until he doesn’t know where the shore is; there’s only darkness as the water pulls him along and he sinks again and swallows water and then comes up again coughing and gasping and he’s so tired now his arms won’t even flail and his legs feel like heavy stone and refuse to kick and his body wants to go to sleep in the water that is no longer cold but very warm and then the current carries him to the shore.
A jagged branch snags his T-shirt. Nico reaches out, grabs it, and pulls himself up onto the sand.
He lies there, gasping, coughing, exhausted, and then he feels light on his face.
A flashlight.
Nico hears a voice. “Jesus, it’s a kid.”
Hands grab Nico by the arms and pick him up.
He blinks and sees a badge.
It’s the American migra.
4
This Upside-Down World
If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil
Cirello hates his job.
He’s tired of cuddling up to drug slingers, taking their money, pretending to be as filthy as they are. A half-dozen times now he’s asked Mullen to be reassigned—to freakin’ anything—but the boss has said no.
“We’re just getting somewhere,” Mullen said. “It’s no time to quit now.”
Problem is, Cirello thinks, and “just the facts, ma’am,” I’m too good at what I do.
He’s played Mike Andrea and Johnny “Jay” Cozzo like twin pianos at one of those annoying bars people go to on their birthdays. They thought they were playing him—had him doing favors to square his gambling jones—first it was checking out license plates to see if they belonged to cops, then it was running checks on potential partners to see if they were under scrutiny.
Things really took off when he gave Darius Darnell a clean bill of health.
“Guy did a stint in Victorville,” Cirello told Andrea, “but he was a stand-up convict. NYPD doesn’t have him up.”
“You guarantee that?”
“One hundred per,” Cirello said.
“What about DEA?”
“They don’t care about him,” Cirello said. It had been an easy get—he took Cozzo’s fifty K to “buy” a DEA contact, then went to Mullen, who went to God knows who, who brought back word that if the DEA ever had its eye on Darnell, its eye was now off. “But, seriously, you guys are working with moolies now?”
“We’re woke,” Cozzo said.
“You’re what?”
“Woke,” Cozzo said. “It means we’re postracial.”
“It means we work with moolies,” Andrea said, “if those moolies can get us grade A heroin.”
Which Darius Darnell apparently could, based on the weight that Cozzo and Andrea started to spread around the city.
Cirello knew this personally because he’s graduated to pulling security for the heroin deliveries, making sure that Narcotics Division doesn’t have any of the locations up and that none of the shipments are ripped by local gangs, hijackers, or even cops who are truly dirty.
The work is excruciating, goes against everything Cirello ever believed or did in his past life as a legit drug cop. He helps those assholes move smack, millions of dollars’ worth, any one of which deliveries would have been a major case. They could have had Cozzo and Andrea any time they wanted, but Mullen said no.
“It’s fifteen pounds, boss,” Cirello said. “You know what that will do on the streets?”
“I do know,” Mullen said, “but it’s not what we’re in this for. We’re not in this to win a battle, we’re in it to win a war.”
Then he went off on some World War II analogy about some city that Churchill let the Germans bomb even though he was forewarned they were going to bomb it.
“It would have tipped the Germans that we had their code,” Mullen said, “which might have lost the war. So Churchill had to let thousands of innocent people get killed in order to win the war.”
Cirello doesn’t know about the war, he just knew that addicts all over the East Coast were going to die because he let these shipments go through.
It kills him.
He asked out.
“I’ll do parking violations in Far Rockaway,” he told Mullen.
“Hang in there, Bobby,” Mullen said. “I know what this is costing you, but hang in there. You’re the best. You know how I know that? Because, before you, I was the best.”
Yeah, yeah, Cirello thought, that’s Mullen tugging on my cock.
“I need you to climb the ladder,” Mullen said. “Create a relationship with Darnell.”
“How’m I going to do that?”
White cop, black drug dealer.
Forget about it.
“Be patient,” Mullen said. “Whatever you do, don’t push. Wait until he comes to you.”
Which is never going to happen, Cirello thought.
But two weeks later, just like the boss said, Andrea comes to him and says, “Darnell wants to meet you.”
Pull back, Cirello thinks. Go the other way, don’t look eager. “What for?”
“We have a big piece of business coming in,” Andrea says, “and before it does, Darnell wants to meet you personally. Something about ‘looking you in the eye.’”
“What, he doesn’t trust me?”
“It’s what the man wants.”
“You taking orders from moolies now?” Cirello says. “I don’t want to meet him.”
“The fuck not?”
“Because the more people I’m exposed to,” Cirello says, “the more I’m exposed.”
“He already knows your name.”
“Who gave him that?” Cirello asks.
“I did.”
“Fuck you, Mike.”
“You’re coming to meet him.”
“Says who?”
“Says the Lakers when they don’t make a three-point spread,” Andrea says. “You think I don’t know about that?”
So they go and do a meet-and-greet with Darius Darnell.
Cirello figures he’ll tell Mullen about it after it happens so the boss doesn’t fuck it up by sending in the whole bureau as backup. He just gets in a car with Andrea and they drive out to the Linden Houses in East New York.
“We might be the only white people here,” Cirello says as they get out of the car.
“You white?” Andrea asks. “I’m Italian, you’re Greek. We ain’t white.”
A small delegation of G-Stone Crips is waiting for them at the entrance to the project and walks them into one of the buildings, into the elevator to the top floor, then up some stairs to the roof.
A tall black man stands on the edge, looking out at the city.
“There he is!” Andrea says. “The king surveying his kingdom!”
Just like Andrea, always kissing ass, Cirello thinks.
Darnell turns around.
He’s wearing a Yankees jacket and designer jeans. Not the usual high-top basketball shoes Cirello expects from black drug slingers, but a pair of work boots.
“I spent a
lot of years inside,” Darnell says, “I like to be outside when I can.”
“Beautiful day,” Andrea says.
Darnell ignores this and looks Cirello up and down. “You must be the police these guys keep talking about.”
“Bobby Cirello.”
“I know your name,” Darnell says. “You know what I learned in prison, Bobby Cirello?”
“Probably a lot of things.”
“Probably a lot of things,” Darnell says. He steps up close, just inches from Cirello’s face. “One of them was I learned to know a snitch when I saw one, and you know what, Bobby Cirello, I think you’re a snitch. I think you’re UC, and I think the only question is whether we shoot you or throw you off the roof.”
Cirello is scared shitless.
Should have told Mullen.
Should have got backup.
Too late now.
He goes the other way with it. “Or shoot me and then throw me off the roof. Or, if you really want to get crazy with it, throw me off the roof and then shoot me. So there are options. But here’s the thing, you ain’t going to take any of these options, because no drug-slinging smoke is going to murder a white New York City gold shield, so why don’t we knock off the shit.”
One of those long silences.
Then Darnell says, “If he was wired up, the black-and-whites would already be rolling in to save they boy’s life. He clean.”
“Good,” Cirello says. “Can we go now? I hate fresh air.”
“I got a meeting tonight,” Darnell says. “With a person I don’t trust so much. I want you to come as security.”
“The G Boys here aren’t good enough for you?”
“They good,” Darnell says. “But like you say, ain’t nobody going to mess with a gold shield. Nine o’clock, meet you at Gateway, in front of Red Lobster. Make sure your car clean, you driving.”
“Who are we meeting?”
“You find out.”
Cirello goes and gets his car detailed. At nine o’clock on the dot he pulls up outside Red Lobster.
Darnell is already there and gets in the passenger seat.
“What is it with white boys and Mustangs?” he asks.
“It’s a Steve McQueen thing,” Cirello says. “Bullitt.”
“This ain’t the Bullitt car.”
“No, I couldn’t afford that,” Cirello says. “You gotta tell me where we’re going here because I don’t know.”
He’s impressed that Darnell came alone, no entourage.
Unusual for a slinger.
“Take the Belt south,” Darnell says. “Brighton Beach.”
“You dealing to Russians now?”
“What are you carrying?” Darnell asks.
“My service weapon,” Cirello says. “A Glock nine. You?”
“You know better,” says Darnell. “Ex-con with a piece, we get stopped I go back to V-Ville.”
“We get stopped,” Cirello says, “I show my badge and we go on our merry way.”
“Nice life for white.”
“Ain’t the white, it’s the blue,” Cirello says. “You don’t like white people much, do you?”
“Don’t like white people at all.”
“Good to know where I stand.”
Cirello takes the Belt all the way down to Ocean Parkway.
“This person I’m meeting,” Darnell says, “him and me have boundary issues.”
“He’s got no boundaries?”
“They just not as big as he thinks,” Darnell says. “That’s what we got to work out, who can sell to who down here. I give him his boundaries if he buys from me exclusive.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“I’m introduce you as a NYPD detective,” Darnell says. “I won’t say your name.”
“I gotta show him my shield?”
“No, fuck that. Just look like a cop.”
“I’ll do my best,” Cirello says. “Where do you want me to turn?”
“I’m looking at my phone.”
“Google Maps?”
“That snooty bitch tell you where to turn,” Darnell says. “I shut the sound off.”
“I know, I hate her.”
“Right on Surf Avenue, left on Ruby Jacobs.”
“That’s not Brighton Beach,” Cirello says. “That’s Coney Island. That’s by that roller coaster, the what-do-you-call-it, the Thunderbolt.”
“I don’t ride no roller coaster,” Darnell says. “My life a roller coaster.”
“Okay.”
“There’s a Mexican place end of the street.”
“I don’t know about this,” Cirello says.
“What you don’t know?”
“Like why here?” Cirello asks, looking around. “All this empty space. Parking lot, a construction site . . .”
“You scared, white?”
“I’m not white, I’m Greek,” Cirello says. “You see that movie, 300? Those were Greeks.”
“Didn’t show that at V-Ville. Too gay.”
Cirello pulls into a parking spot in the middle of Ruby Jacobs. It’s the last space available, still a half block from the restaurant, which he doesn’t like at all. You have to walk down something called Polar Bear Club Walk to get there.
“Polar Bear Club?” Darnell asks.
“New Year’s Day,” Cirello says. “Guys jump in the ocean.”
“Black people ain’t so foolish.”
They’re just at the edge of the parking lot when Cirello sees it. Movement from the corner of his left eye.
He tackles Darnell, drives him to the pavement.
The bullets zip over their heads.
Cirello looks up, sees guys running.
In the car, Cirello says, “I told you, I fucking told you it wasn’t good!”
“Should have listened.”
Cirello realizes that he’s racing back up the Belt and he takes his foot off the gas. His head is spinning. I acted like a skel, he thinks, not a cop. I should have acted like the cop I am—stayed on the scene, called it in, waited for the uniforms and then the detectives. Instead of running like the dirtbag I’m pretending to be.
He thinks about turning around and going back, but he doesn’t.
There’d be no way to explain it, no way to explain why he left the scene that wouldn’t destroy his career. And it would shut down the investigation—all that work, all those months of climbing into bed with criminals wasted.
He keeps driving.
Knowing that what he should do is call Mullen. Drop Darnell off and call Mullen. Go sit in his kitchen and tell him everything, let the boss decide what to do.
Cirello drives Darnell back to Red Lobster.
“You saved my life,” Darnell says.
“That was my job,” Cirello says. That’s what I’m supposed to do, that’s what a cop is supposed to do, save people’s lives. Even a piece of shit like you, who sells poison to kids.
“You could have just dove out of the way,” Darnell says. “You didn’t.”
Maybe I should have, Cirello thinks.
“You don’t work for the Italians no more,” Darnell says. “I’m picking up your tab.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I thought I had to, I wouldn’t,” Darnell says.
“They’re not going to be happy.”
“Ain’t up to me to make them happy,” Darnell says. “Up to them to make me happy. I ain’t they nigger, they mine. They don’t like it, I cut them out, find me other niggers. Call me when you feel better, we work it out.”
“What are you going to do about the Russians?” Cirello asks.
“I’ll deal with them.”
Cirello drives home.
Goes into the bathroom and throws up.
When Libby comes home she asks him how his day was and he says it was fine. Later, she reaches out for him to have sex, but he pretends he’s asleep. He isn’t, he barely sleeps all night, and she’s gone to class when he finally gets up.
That’s how Bobby Ci
rello becomes Darius Darnell’s chief driver and bodyguard, pulling security on major deliveries, watching the radar to make sure Darnell’s light isn’t blinking. And the Italians don’t like it, although they don’t say shit about it to Darnell.
Cirello, they say shit to.
“You’ve come up in the world,” Andrea says to Cirello. “Chauffeur to a ditzune? Geez, Bobby, my back hurts a little where you stepped on your way up.”
“I didn’t ask for this.”
“Yeah, but you got it, anyway, huh?”
Mullen is a little more enthusiastic. “How did this come about?”
“I don’t know, you said get close, I got close.”
He comes clean about the rooftop meeting.
“You shouldn’t have gone up there without backup,” Mullen says.
“Probably not,” Cirello admits.
“But now you’re in, Bobby, you’re in,” Mullen says. “The next step is to find out where Darnell is getting his heroin.”
The next step, Cirello thinks. There’s always a next step.
When’s it going to stop?
Crazy thing is, Mike Andrea comes to him a few weeks later and makes the exact same request.
“You like working for Darnell?” he asks.
“It pays.”
“It could pay better,” Andrea says. “Darnell thinks he’s the king of New York, but when you really look at it, all he is, he’s just a middleman. If we could make a direct connection to his supplier, we could buy direct without his markup.”
“Okay.”
“You know who his supplier is?”
“No.”
“But you could find out,” Andrea says. “You make that connection for us, Bobby, there’d be something in it for you. Cut Darnell out, cut you in.”
Cirello has to acknowledge the humor of it, two mob guys and the head of the NYPD’s Narcotics Division wanting him to do the same thing. The fact that this makes sense is just part and parcel of the bizarre life he’s living, which has its own internal logic. In this world, you don’t bust heroin dealers, you assist them; you don’t resist corruption, you embrace it; the worse you are, the better you are.
It’s like one of those old Greek plays where they talked about “cloud-cuckoo land.”
He knows he can’t maintain it forever.
