The Force

by Don Winslow

  “Sure.”

  “No, you don’t,” Malone says. “And you won’t for a while. Then, if you’re as smart as Sykes says, you’ll get it.”

  The question is, whose spy are you? Sykes’s? IAB’s? One of their own people or a “field associate,” a cop they use?

  Are you wearing a wire?

  Is this about Pena?

  “What made you want to transfer to the Task Force?” Malone asks.

  “It’s where the action is,” Levin says.

  “Plenty of action in the Seven-Six.” Busiest precinct in the city. Leading the league in shootings and robberies. And heavy with gangs—the Eight Trey Crips, Folk Nation, the Bully Gang. What more action does the kid want?

  “Well, ‘be careful what you wish for.’ Sometimes boring is good,” Malone says. Then he asks, “Married? Kids?”

  “I have a girlfriend. We’re, you know, exclusive.”

  Yeah, we’ll see how long that lasts, Malone thinks. Da Force ain’t exactly Promise Keepers. “This girl have a name?”

  “Amy.”

  “Nice.”

  Good luck, Amy, Malone thinks.

  Unless Dave here is IAB, then he keeps his dick as clean as his nose. Something to watch for. You can’t trust a guy won’t drink with you, do a little blow or a little weed, won’t get laid on the side. That guy don’t want to have to explain that shit to his bosses.

  “So, Sykes, he’s your hook?” Malone asks.

  “I don’t know if I’d say that.”

  “Well, Manhattan North is a hook house,” Malone says. “The Task Force is a plum assignment. You got what, an uncle at One P?”

  “I think Captain Sykes appreciated my work in the Seven-Six,” Levin says. “But if you’re asking if I’m his boy, I’m not.”

  “Does he know that?”

  Levin bristles a little. The puppy has some teeth, Malone thinks.

  “Yeah, I think he knows that,” Levin says. “Why? Do you and he have some kind of a beef?”

  “Let’s just say we see things different.”

  “He’s by the book,” Levin says.

  “He is that.”

  Levin says. “Look, I know you aren’t thrilled to have a new guy, and I know I can’t replace Billy O’Neill. I just want you to know I appreciate it and I won’t get under your feet.”

  You’re already under my feet, Malone thought. Or up my ass.

  The elevator stinks of urine.

  Levin gags.

  “They use them for toilets,” Malone says.

  “Why don’t they use the toilets?”

  “Most of them are broken,” Malone says. “Plumbing gets ripped out and sold. We’re lucky it’s just piss today.”

  They get out on four and walk into Leonora’s apartment. The Crime Scene guys are in there now, doing their thing, although the case is obvious.

  “This is Dave Levin,” Malone said. “He’s coming on the team.”

  Russo looks at Levin like he’s inspecting produce at the supermarket. “Phil Russo.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  Montague looks up from where he’s straightening his argyle socks. “Bill Montague.”

  “Dave Levin.”

  “He came over from the Seven-Six,” Malone says.

  Now they’re thinking the same thing he is—even if Levin isn’t Sykes’s spy, the last thing they need is a newbie, someone they don’t know they can trust to have their backs.

  “Let’s go work the streets,” Malone says.

  The street is always good.

  It’s where Malone feels at home, in charge, in control of himself and his environment.

  No matter what the problem is, the answer is always in the street.

  Russo turns left off Frederick Douglass onto 129th, through the center of the project, then pulls over by a large three-story building.

  “This is the HCZ,” Malone tells Levin. “The Harlem Children’s Zone, a charter school. There’s not too much slinging around here because the boys don’t want the extra sentencing for trafficking in a school zone.”

  Drug slinging has become largely an indoor trade because it’s safer out of the eyes of the cops and it’s just easier to phone or text your dealer and go to an apartment in one of the buildings or into the stairwells and make the buy. And it’s virtually impossible for the cops to make a raid in the buildings because the slingers post kids as lookouts who warn them and they’ve scattered before you can even get through the door.

  They drive east to the end of the block and Salem Methodist Church, then turn north on Seventh toward the St. Nick’s playground.

  “Two playgrounds in the project,” Malone says, “North and South. This is North. Heavy betting on the b-ball games, the losers have been known to shoot instead of pay. What are you doing?”

  “Taking notes.”

  “This look like college to you?” Malone asks. “You see coeds, Frisbees, man buns? You don’t take notes, you don’t write anything down. Only thing you ever write are your 5s. Notes you take on duty are discoverable. Some defense attorney shithead will deliberately misinterpret them and ram them up your ass on the stand.”

  “I get it.”

  “Keep everything in your head, College,” Russo says.

  A couple of Spades shooting hoops see the car and start to hoot. “Malone! Hey, Malone!”

  Whistles pierce the air as the lookouts warn the slingers. Bangers disappear behind buildings. Malone waves to the kids on the court. “We’ll be back!”

  “When you do, Malone, bring your wife some clean panties! The ones she got on stink!”

  Malone laughs. “Lend her a pair of yours, Andre! Those red silk ones I like!”

  It gets more hoots and hollers.

  “Oh No Henry” is walking along the sidewalk with that guilty but ecstatic “I just scored” look on his face.

  Oh No Henry got his tag the first time they popped him, what, going on three years now. They put him against a wall and asked if he was carrying heroin.

  “Oh, no,” Henry said with shocked innocence.

  “You shoot smack?” Malone asked.

  “Oh, no.”

  Then Monty found the envelope of smack in his pants pocket, with fixings, and Henry just said, “Oh, no.”

  Monty told the story in the locker room that night and the name stuck.

  Now Malone waits until Oh No Henry turns into an alley where he’s going to cook up and lay out. He, Russo and Levin go in behind him, Henry turns and sees them and says, with wonderful predictability, “Oh, no.”

  “Henry, don’t you run on me,” Malone says.

  “Don’t you run, Henry,” says Russo.

  They grab him up and quickly find the smack.

  “Don’t say it, Henry,” Malone says. “I’m begging you, don’t say it.”

  Henry doesn’t know what he means. He’s a skinny white guy in his late twenties but he could easily pass for fifty. He wears a denim jacket that used to be wool-lined, jeans and sneakers, and his hair is long and filthy.

  “Henry, Henry, Henry,” Russo says.

  “That’s not mine.”

  “Well, it’s not mine,” Malone says. “And I don’t think it’s Phil’s. But let me ask him. Phil, is this your heroin?”

  “No, it is not.”

  “No, it is not,” Malone says. “So if it’s not mine and it’s not Phil’s, it must be yours, Henry. Unless you’re calling us liars. You’re not calling us liars, are you?”

  “Give me a break, Malone,” Henry says.

  “You want a break,” Malone says, “give me a break. You hear anything about that shooting in St. Nick’s?”

  “What did you want me to hear?”

  “No, we’re not doing that, Henry,” Malone says. “If you heard something, tell me what you heard.”

  Henry looks around, then he says, “I heard it was Spades.”

  “You’re full of shit,” Malone says. “The Spades are with Carter, too.”

  “You aske
d me what I heard,” Henry says. “That’s what I heard.”

  If it’s true, it’s bad news.

  The Spades and the GMB have had an uneasy but viable truce, enforced by Carter, for a year or so now. If that’s broken, St. Nick’s is going to tear itself apart. A war inside the project, with 129th as no-man’s-land, will be a catastrophe.

  “You hear anything more,” Malone says, “you call me.”

  “Who’s he?” Henry asks, pointing at Levin.

  “He’s with us,” Malone says.

  Henry looks at him funny.

  He don’t trust him either.

  They meet Babyface up in Hamilton Heights behind the Big Brother Barber Shop.

  The undercover sucks on his pacifier as Malone tells him what Henry said about the Spades.

  “It’s not crazy,” Babyface says. “The shooter was definitely a brother.”

  “Not a dark Dominican?” Monty asks.

  “A brother,” Babyface says. “Could have been a Spade. They’re sure as shit gunning up.”

  He looks at Levin.

  “Dave Levin,” Malone says. “He came over from Brooklyn.”

  Babyface nods at him. About as much of a welcome as Levin’s going to get. Babyface says, “Shame about that lady.”

  “What are you hearing about the guns?”

  “Silence,” Babyface says.

  “Anyone talking about a white guy?” Monty asks. “A cracker named Mantell?”

  “Biker?” Babyface asks. “I’ve seen that dude around, but no one’s talking about him. You think we’re looking for an Iron Pipeline gun?”

  “Could be.”

  “I’ll keep an ear.”

  “Be careful, huh?” Malone says.

  “Always.”

  “Anybody hungry?” Russo asks.

  “I could eat,” Monty says. “Manna’s?”

  Russo says, “When in Nairobi . . .” He drives down to 126th and Douglass and parks in front of the Unity Funeral Chapel across the street. A kid who looks about fourteen is standing on the sidewalk.

  “Why aren’t you in school?” Monty asks him.

  “Suspended.”

  “What for?”

  “Fighting.”

  “Dumbass.” Monty slips him a ten. “Look after the car.”

  They go into Manna’s.

  The place is long and narrow—a checkout counter in front by the windows, then double cafeteria racks with trays of food. Malone takes a large Styrofoam container and fills it with jerked chicken, fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, some greens and banana pudding.

  “Take what you want,” he tells Levin. “They charge by the pound.”

  Most of the other customers, all black, either look away or give them hostile, empty looks. Contrary to myth, most cops don’t eat in their own precincts, especially the predominantly black or Hispanic ones, because they’re afraid the staff will spit in their food or do something worse.

  Malone likes Manna’s because the food’s already made and he can control what he eats, and, well, he just likes the food.

  He gets in line.

  The counter guy asks him, “Four of you?”

  Malone takes out two twenties but the guy ignores them. He hands Malone a receipt anyway. Malone walks to a table in the back. The rest of the team get their food and sit down with him.

  Stares follow them all the way to the table.

  It’s gotten worse since the Bennett shooting. It was bad after Garner, but now it’s worse.

  “We don’t pay?” Levin asks.

  “We tip,” Malone says. “And we tip large. These are good people up here, they work hard. And we don’t come more than once a month—you don’t want to beat a guy to death.”

  “What, you don’t like your food?” Russo asks.

  “Are you kidding? It’s dumb good.”

  “Dumb good,” Monty says. “Are you trying to sound hood, Levin?”

  “No, I just—”

  “Eat,” Russo says. “You want a soda or something, you buy it because they have to account for that.”

  They all know it’s a test. If Levin is Sykes’s boy, or an IAB field agent, this will come back on them. But Malone has a receipt ready and can say that Levin is full of shit.

  Unless Levin’s out for bigger game, Malone thinks. He pushes it a little to feel the guy out. “We alternate tours—days, nights, graveyards—but that’s just a technicality. The cases define the hours. We’re flexible, you need lost time, call me, don’t put it through at the house. We make good overtime, some good side jobs, you’re interested. But don’t take any off-duty work you don’t clear through me.”

  “Okay.”

  Malone goes into teaching mode. “Those projects towers, you never go in alone. The roof and the top two floors are combat zones—the gangs always take them over. The stairways are where the bad shit happens—dealing, assaults, rapes.”

  “But we do mostly narcotics, right?” Levin asks.

  “You ain’t ‘we’ yet, College,” Malone says. “Yeah, our main mission is dope and guns, but the Task Force teams do what-the-fuck-ever we want, because it’s all related. Most of the robberies are junkies and crackheads. The rapes and assaults are mostly gangbangers who are also slinging.”

  “We play them back and forth,” Russo says. “A guy you bust on a drug charge might give you a murderer for a lesser charge or a walk. An accessory to a homicide might give you a major dealer if you’ll let him plead down.”

  “Any Task Force team can follow a case anywhere in Manhattan North,” Malone says. “This team mostly works the Upper West Side and West Harlem. Torres and his people work Inwood and the Heights.

  “We work all the streets and the projects—St. Nick’s, Grant and Manhattanville, Wagner. You’ll learn our turf and theirs—OTV, ‘Only the Ville’; Money Avenue crew; Very Crispy Gangsters; Cash Bama Bullies. The big thing we got goin’ on now is the Domos up in the Heights—the Trinitarios—aren’t content with just wholesale anymore. They’re moving in on the black slingers down here.”

  “Vertical integration,” Monty says.

  “So where are you from, Levin?” Russo asks.

  “The Bronx.”

  “The Bronx?” Monty asks.

  “Riverdale,” Levin admits.

  The crew cracks up.

  “Riverdale isn’t the Bronx,” Russo says. “It’s the suburbs. Rich Jews.”

  “Tell me you didn’t go to Horace Mann,” Monty says, naming the expensive private school.

  Levin doesn’t answer.

  “I thought so,” Monty says. “And then where?”

  “NYU. Majored in criminal justice.”

  “You might as well have majored in Bigfoot,” Malone says.

  “Why’s that?” Levin asks.

  “Because it don’t exist, either. Do us all a favor, forget everything they taught you,” Malone says. He gets up. “I gotta make a call.”

  Malone walks outside and gets on the phone. “Did you see him?”

  Larry Henderson, a lieutenant in IAB, sits in a car parked in front of the funeral home. “Levin’s the tall one? Black hair?”

  “Jesus shit, Henderson,” Malone says. “He’s the one who’s not us.”

  “He’s not ours, either.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “I’d pull your coat if I heard anything,” Henderson says. “IAB doesn’t have you up.”

  “You’re sure about that, too.”

  “What do you want from me, Malone?”

  “For a thousand a month?” Malone asks. “Some assurance.”

  “Go in peace,” Henderson says. “You have a force field around you since the Pena bust.”

  “Check this Levin out, though, right?”

  “You got it.”

  Henderson pulls out.

  Malone goes back inside and sits down.

  “Levin here,” Russo says, “doesn’t know about the Easter Bunny.”

  “I know about the Easter Bunny,” Levin says.
“What I mean is I don’t understand the connection between your savior being nailed to a cross and then resurrected, which is a doubtful premise to begin with, and a rabbit coming around and burying candy eggs, especially as a rabbit is a mammal that does live births.”

  “This is what they teach them in college,” Russo says. “What do you want us to bury, candy crosses?”

  “It would make more sense,” Levin says.

  Monty kicks in. “The Easter Bunny comes from a German pagan tradition that the Lutherans adapted as a judge to determine whether children had been good or bad.”

  “Sort of like Santa Claus,” Russo says.

  “Which also doesn’t make any sense,” Levin says.

  “You’re just bitter,” Russo says, “because Jewish kids get fucked over at Christmas.”

  “That’s probably true,” Levin says.

  “An egg,” Monty says, “is a symbol of birth, new life. When you bury and then recover it, it’s a symbol of new life resurrected. But a rabbit can no more lay an egg than a man can come back from the dead. Both require miracles. So the Easter Bunny is a symbol of hope, that miracles—resurrection, a new life, redemption—are possible.”

  “Hey, check it out,” Russo says, pointing to the television bracketed to the wall.

  The mayor is standing out in front of St. Nick’s talking to the press.

  “My administration will not tolerate,” he’s saying, “and this city will not tolerate, violence in our public housing.”

  An old man sitting near the television laughs.

  The mayor says, “I have instructed our police force to spare no effort in finding the guilty party or parties, and I promise you, we will. The people of Harlem, the people of New York City can know, and can trust, that this administration believes that black lives matter.”

  “Bullshit!” the old man yells.

  A couple of customers nod in agreement.

  A few more stare at Malone and the team.

  “You heard the man,” Malone says. “Let’s get to work.”

  Back in the car, Malone sees the Sig Sauer P226 in Levin’s shoulder holster.

  “What else do you carry?” Malone asks.

  “This is it.”

  “It’s a good weapon,” Malone says, “but you’ll need more.”