The Force

by Don Winslow

  “It’s regulation,” Levin says.

  “Tell that to some skel who just took it off you and is about to shoot you with it,” Malone says.

  “You need a backup weapon,” Russo says. “And then something that’s not a gun.”

  “Like what?” Levin asks.

  Russo takes a leather sap out of one pocket and brass knuckles out of another and holds them up. Montague has a sawed-off baseball bat handle with lead poured down the center.

  “Jesus Christ,” Levin says.

  “This is Manhattan North,” Malone says. “The Task Force. We have one job—hold the line. The rest of it’s just details.”

  His phone rings.

  It’s Torres.

  DeVon Carter will sit down with Malone today.

  Chapter 7

  Malone and Torres sit across a table from DeVon Carter above a hardware store on Lenox the dope slinger uses as one of his many offices. He’ll abandon it after this meeting, won’t come back for months, if at all.

  So it tips Malone that Carter has something to gain from the meeting, if he’s willing to burn a location.

  “You wanted to talk,” Carter says. “Talk.”

  “You just took out an innocent old lady,” Malone says. “What’s it going to be the next time? A kid? A pregnant girl? A baby? You strike back for Mookie, sooner or later, that’s what it’s gonna be.”

  “If I don’t answer back for Mookie,” Carter says, “I will lose respect.”

  “I don’t want a war on my turf,” Malone says.

  “Tell that to the Dominicans,” Carter says. “You know who they sent up here? Cat named Carlos Castillo, a certified headhunter.”

  “It wasn’t a Dominican who shot Mookie,” Malone says. “It was a brother, maybe a Spade.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about your Spades flipping on you and going over to the Dominicans,” Malone says. “Maybe they punched their ticket by doing Mookie.”

  Carter is good at holding himself in, but there’s just a momentary look in the eye that tells Malone it’s the truth.

  “What do you want me to do?” Carter asks.

  “Call off the deal with the bikers,” Malone says. “Tell them you won’t be needing any more of their guns.”

  Carter’s voice takes on an edge. “You stay out of that.”

  He looks over at Torres.

  So Torres knows all about the gun deal, Malone thinks. “No, I’m going to be all up in that.”

  “I can’t fight the Domos without weapons,” Carter says. “What do you want me to do, just die?”

  “Let us handle the Domos.”

  “Like you handled Pena?”

  “If that’s what it takes.”

  Carter smiles. “And what do you want for these services? Three thousand a month, five, a flat fee? Or just the ability to rip as much as you can get your hands on?”

  “I want you out of the business,” Malone says. “Go to Maui, the Bahamas, I don’t care, but you retire and no one comes after you.”

  “I just give up my business and sail away.”

  “How much more money do you need to live?” Malone asks. “How many cars can you drive? How many houses can you live in? How many women can you fuck? I’m giving you an out.”

  Carter says, “You know better than that, Malone. You of all people should know that kings don’t retire.”

  “Be the first.”

  “And leave you king?”

  “Diego Pena killed your boy Cleveland and his entire family,” Malone says. “You didn’t do shit about it. That ain’t the DeVon Carter of legend. I think you’re past it already.”

  “You know what I hear?” Carter asks. “I hear you’re dipping your pen in the inkwell. And I hear you ain’t the only white horse she ride, your Miss Claudette.”

  He taps the back of his hand on his forearm.

  Malone says, “You or any of your chimps go near her I’ll kill you.”

  “I’m just saying”—Carter smiles—“if she gets sick, I can get her well.”

  Malone gets up. “My offer stands.”

  Torres follows Malone down the stairs. “What the fuck, Denny?!”

  “Go back to your boss.”

  “You leave the guns alone,” Torres says. “I’m warning you.”

  Malone turns around. “Warning me or threatening me?”

  “I’m telling you,” Torres says. “Leave the fucking guns alone.”

  “What, you got a piece of that deal, too?”

  He knows the bikers—white don’t like to deal with black, but they’ll deal with brown to deal with black.

  Torres says, “For the last time, stay in your lane.”

  Malone turns and goes down the stairs.

  Manhattan North is a zoo.

  You got the usual animals, but you also got a herd of suits up from One P, and a pack of functionaries from the mayor’s office.

  McGivern is there.

  He meets Malone at the door.

  “Denny,” he says, “we have to get this under control.”

  “Working it, Inspector.”

  “Work it harder,” McGivern says. “The Post, the Daily News . . . the ‘community’ is all over us.”

  From two directions, Malone thinks. On the one hand, they want the violence in the projects to stop; on the other, they’re out there protesting against the police sweep of the gangs that’s been going on since the Gillette-Williams murders this morning.

  Well, which do they want, because they can’t have both.

  Malone works his way through the crowd to the briefing room where Sykes leads a meeting of the Task Force.

  “What do we have?” Sykes asks.

  Tenelli says, “The Domos are denying right, left and center they had anything to do with the Gillette shooting.”

  “But they would,” Sykes said. “They didn’t anticipate the Williams killing and the heat from that.”

  “I get it,” Tenelli says, “but this is more than the usual ‘I din’t have nothin’ to do with it.’ They proactively sent people to tell us it wasn’t one of them.”

  “It wasn’t,” Malone says. “They subcontracted it out to the Spades.”

  “Why would the Spades take that job?”

  “Price of admission to join the Dominicans,” Malone says. “They figure that Carter can’t supply them with high-quality product, guns or people. They jump off now or get stuck on the sinking boat.”

  Babyface takes his pacifier from his mouth. “Concur.”

  “The question is why now?” Emma Flynn asks. “The Domos have been quiet since the Pena bust. Why do they want to start a shooting war now?”

  Sykes throws a surveillance photo on the screen.

  “I reached out to Narcotics and DEA,” Sykes says. “Their best information is that this man, Carlos Castillo, has come up from the Dominican to get the organization back in shape. Castillo is a full-blooded narco. He was born in Los Angeles, like a lot of the narcos of his generation, so he has dual Dominican and American citizenship.”

  Malone looks at the grainy image of Castillo, a small, suave man with caramel skin, thick dark hair, a hawk nose and thin lips, clean-shaven.

  Sykes says, “DEA’s had him on the radar for years but has never had enough for an indictment. But it all makes sense—Castillo is here to get the NYC heroin market straightened out. Vertical integration, from the DR to Harlem, from factory to customer. They want it all now. Castillo is here to lead the final charge on Carter.”

  Flynn looks over at Malone. “You really think the Dominicans have coopted the Spades?”

  Malone shrugs. “It’s a workable theory.”

  “Or the truce between the Spades and the GMB simply broke down,” Flynn says.

  “But we’re not hearing that on the street,” Babyface says.

  Sykes asks, “What information do we have linking this shooting to the Spades?”

  A lot.

  The holding cells
in the Three-Two, Three-Four and Four-Three are full of gangbangers—GMB, Trinitarios and Dominicans Don’t Play. They’ve been picked up for everything from littering to outstanding warrants, parole and probation violations, simple possession. Those that are saying anything are telling the same story that Oh No Henry did: the shooter—a few say it was shooters, plural—was—or were—black.

  “I don’t imagine anyone is giving up names,” Sykes says.

  He knows the GMB bangers wouldn’t give up a Spade shooter to the cops because they want to handle it themselves.

  “All right,” Sykes says, “tomorrow we do verticals in the North buildings. Shake out the Spades, start hauling them in, see what falls out of the trees.”

  “Verticals” are random patrols of project stairwells that the uniforms usually reserve for winter nights when they want to get out of the cold.

  Malone can’t blame them—it’s dangerous and you never know when you might get shot or shoot some kid in the dim light, like that poor cop Liang who panicked and killed an unarmed black guy and claimed at his trial that his “gun just went off.”

  The jury didn’t believe him and came back with a manslaughter conviction.

  At least they didn’t send him to jail.

  Yeah, the verticals are treacherous. And now they’re going to roust the Spades.

  One of the mayor’s hacks says, “The community is not going to like that. They’re already up in arms about the last round of arrests.”

  “Who dat?” Russo, eyeballing the guy who just spoke, asks Malone.

  “Yeah, we seen him before,” Malone says, trying to dredge up a name. “Chandler somebody, somebody Chandler.”

  “Some people in the community are not going to like it,” Sykes answers. “Other people in the community are going to pretend not to like it. But most of them want the gangs shut down. They want—and deserve—safety in their own homes. Is the mayor’s office really going to argue against that?”

  Good for you, Malone thinks.

  But the mayor’s office is apparently going to argue against it. Chandler says, “Couldn’t we do something more surgical?”

  “If we had a named suspect, possibly,” Sykes says. “In the absence of that, this is the best option.”

  “But the community is going to perceive arresting a large group of young black men as profiling,” Chandler says.

  Babyface laughs out loud.

  Sykes glares at him and then turns to the mayor’s guy. “You’re the one profiling here.”

  “How so?”

  “By assuming all black people are going to object to this operation,” Sykes says.

  He and everyone else know why the mayor’s office is playing both sides against the middle—minorities are his voter base and he can’t afford to alienate them.

  He’s in a tough spot—on the one hand he has to be seen to be trying to suppress the violence in the community; on the other hand, he can’t be allied with what will be termed heavy-handed police tactics against that same community.

  So he pushes for an arrest while preserving for the record that he argued against the tactics that might best produce that arrest. At the same time, he’ll use the issue to deflect attention from his scandal onto the police department.

  Chandler is saying, “After the Bennett shooting, we can’t afford to further alienate—”

  McGivern, standing in the back of the room, says, “Do we really want to have this discussion in front of the entire Task Force? It’s a command matter, and these officers have work to do.”

  “If you’d prefer,” Chandler says, “we can take this discussion to—”

  “We’re not taking this discussion anywhere,” Sykes says. “We invited you to this briefing as a courtesy and to keep you in the loop, not to participate in decisions that are the department’s to make.”

  “All police decisions are political decisions,” Chandler says.

  He’s done his job.

  If the operation results in an arrest on the Williams murder, the mayor’s office will claim credit. If it doesn’t, the mayor will blame the commissioner, preach against racial profiling and hope the papers cover the Job’s problems instead of his.

  “Get some rest,” Sykes says to his cops. “We’ll go in tomorrow morning.”

  The meeting breaks up.

  The mayor’s rep comes over to Malone and hands him a card. “Detective Malone, Ned Chandler. Special assistant to the mayor.”

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  “Would you have a minute for me?” Chandler asks. “But maybe not here?”

  “What about?” It’s fucking treacherous, being seen with a guy his captain just took on.

  “Inspector McGivern thought you might be the person to talk to.”

  So that’s that. “Yeah, okay. Where?”

  “You know the Hotel NYLO?”

  “Seventy-Seventh and Broadway.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” Chandler says. “Soon as you’re done here?”

  McGivern is standing next to Sykes, waving Malone over.

  Chandler walks away.

  “You just put your neck in the noose,” McGivern tells Sykes. “You think these Gracie Mansion sons of bitches will hesitate to pull the trap?”

  “I’m under no such illusion,” Sykes says.

  He isn’t under any illusion, either, Malone thinks, that if there’s a hanging, McGivern won’t be in the crowd cheering, glad it’s not him. That’s why he had Sykes running the meeting instead of himself. If things go right, McGivern will take the credit for his talented subordinate; if it goes sick and wrong, he’ll be in there whispering, “Well, I tried to tell him . . .”

  Now McGivern says, “Sergeant Malone, we’re counting on you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  McGivern nods and walks out.

  “How’s Levin doing?” Sykes asks.

  “I’ve had him for about seven hours,” Malone says, “but so far, fine.”

  “He’s a good cop. He has a career in front of him.”

  So don’t fuck him up, is what Sykes is saying.

  “What progress have you made on the guns?” Sykes asks.

  Malone fills him in on what he knows about Carter, Mantell and the ECMF deal. No shipment has come up yet, but negotiations are ongoing. Carter is fronting the deal through Teddy from an office over a nail shop on Broadway and 158th. But without a wiretap . . .

  “We don’t have enough for a warrant,” Malone says.

  Sykes looks at him. “Do what you need to do. But remember we’ll need probable cause.”

  “Don’t worry,” Malone says. “If they hang you, I’ll pull on your legs.”

  “I appreciate that, Sergeant.”

  “My pleasure, Captain.”

  The team is waiting for Malone out on the street.

  “Levin,” Malone says. “Why don’t you go home and take a nap. The grown-ups need to talk.”

  “Okay.” He’s a little miffed, but he walks away.

  “What do you think?” Malone asks.

  Russo says, “Seems like a good kid.”

  “Can we trust him?”

  “To do what?” Monty asks. “His job? Probably. Some of the other things? I don’t know.”

  “Speaking of which,” Malone says, “I got the go for a wire on Carter.”

  “Did you get a warrant with that?” Monty asks.

  “Yeah, a nod warrant,” Malone says. “We’ll set it up after tomorrow’s op. I gotta go see this guy from the mayor’s office.”

  “What about?” Russo asks.

  Malone shrugs.

  Malone sits in the bar of a trendy West Side boutique hotel called NYLO and sips a club soda. He’d have a real drink except the guy he’s there to meet is from the mayor’s office and you never know.

  Ned Chandler bustles in a minute later, looks around, spots Malone and sits down at his table. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  “No problem,” Malone says. He’s annoyed. Chandler is the one with
the ask, so he should be there on time if not early, he thinks. You don’t come for a favor and then make the guy you want something from wait for you.

  But Chandler is from the mayor’s office, Malone thinks, so I guess the rules don’t apply to him. The guy tilts his chin at the waitress as if that’s going to get her immediate attention, which in fact it does.

  “What do you have for single malt?” Chandler asks.

  “We have a Laphroaig Quarter Cask.”

  “Too smoky. What else?”

  “A Caol Ila 12,” the waitress says. “Very light. Refreshing.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Malone has known Ned Chandler for maybe forty seconds and already wants to smack the elitist asshole. Guy has to be in his early thirties, wears a checked shirt with a knit tie under a gray cardigan sweater and tan cords.

  Malone hates him just for that.

  “I know your time is precious,” Chandler says, “so I’ll get right at it.”

  Anytime someone tells you that your time is precious, Malone thinks, what they really mean is that their time is precious.

  “Bill McGivern recommended you,” Chandler said. “Of course, I know you by reputation—I’m impressed, by the way—but Bill said you were professional, competent and discreet.”

  “If you’re looking for a spy in Sykes’s command, that’s not me.”

  “I’m not looking for a spy, Detective,” Chandler says. “Do you know Bryce Anderson?”

  No, Malone thinks, I don’t know a billionaire real estate developer on the city’s Development Commission. Fuck yes, I know who he is. He’s planning to inhabit Gracie Mansion once the current resident moves on to the governor’s office.

  “I know the name, I don’t know him personally,” Malone says.

  “Bryce has a problem,” Chandler says, “that requires discretion.”

  He stops talking because the waitress comes over with his light and refreshing single malt.

  “I’m sorry,” Chandler says to Malone. “I should have asked. Do you want—”

  “No, I’m good.”

  “On duty.”

  “There you go.”

  “Bryce has a daughter,” Chandler says. “Lyndsey. Nineteen, smart, beautiful, apple of her father’s eye, all that happy crap. Dropped out of Bennington to build her ‘lifestyle brand’ by being a YouTube celebrity.”