The Force

by Don Winslow

  “What’s her lifestyle brand?”

  “Damned if I know,” Chandler says. “She probably doesn’t, either. Anyway, little Lyndsey has a boyfriend, a real mook. Of course she goes for him to get back at Daddy for giving her everything.”

  Malone hates it when civilians try to talk like cops. “What makes him a mook?”

  “He’s a total loser,” Chandler says.

  “Black?”

  “No, she spared us that cliché, anyway,” Chandler says. “Kyle’s a white bridge-and-tunnel type who thinks he’s the next Scorsese. Except instead of making Mean Streets he has to shoot a sex tape with Bryce Anderson’s daughter.”

  “And now he’s threatening to put it out,” Malone says. “How much does he want?”

  “A hundred K,” Chandler says. “If that tape gets out, it will ruin this kid’s life.”

  Not to mention her daddy’s chance at getting elected, Malone thinks. A law-and-order candidate who wants to come down on street gangs but can’t control his own kid. “This Kyle have a last name?”

  “Havachek.”

  “You have an address?”

  Chandler slides a piece of paper across the table. Havachek lives up in Washington Heights.

  “Is she living with him?” Malone asks.

  “She was,” Chandler says. “Lyndsey moved back in with Mom and Dad and that’s when the blackmail threat came.”

  “He lost his means of support and needs a new one,” Malone says.

  “That’s my interpretation as well.”

  Malone puts the paper in his pocket. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Now Chandler looks nervous, like he wants to say something but doesn’t know how to do it politely. Malone would help him out, but he don’t feel like it. Finally Chandler says, “Bill indicated that you could handle this without . . . getting carried away.”

  Malone wants to make him say it. Like a wiseguy making a similar request. I want the guy whacked. I don’t want him whacked. I want him punished, taught a lesson . . .

  If it took this loser getting murdered to stop that sex tape going out, he thinks, they’d want me to murder him. If not, they don’t want the extra hassle, never mind something on their conscience.

  Fuck, I hate these people. But he takes Chandler off the hook. “I’ll be appropriate.”

  They love that word.

  “So we’re on the same page?” Chandler asks.

  Malone nods.

  “In regard to paying you for your time—”

  Malone waves it off.

  That ain’t how it works.

  Russo picks him up on Seventy-Ninth Street.

  “What did the mayor’s guy want?” Russo asks.

  “A favor,” Malone says. “You got a little time?”

  “For you, sweetheart . . .”

  They drive up to Washington Heights, find the address in a shitty building on 176th between St. Nicholas and Audubon. Russo parks on the street, Malone sees a kid on the corner, walks over and slips him a twenty. “This car—all of it—is here when we get back, yeah?”

  “You cops?”

  “We’re undertakers if this car gets jacked.”

  Havachek lives on the fourth floor.

  “Why is it,” Russo asks as they go up the stairs, “mooks can never live on the first floor? Or in buildings that have elevators? I’m getting too old for this shit. The knees.”

  “The knees go first,” Malone says.

  “Thank Christ, huh?”

  Malone knocks on Havachek’s door and hears, “Who is it?”

  “You want a hundred grand, you don’t want a hundred grand?” Malone asks.

  The door opens a chain’s width. Malone kicks it in the rest of the way.

  Havachek’s tall, skinny, has a man bun and a nasty bruise already forming on his forehead where the door hit him. He’s wearing a dirty jersey sweater and black skinny jeans over a pair of Chelsea boots. He steps back, puts his hand to his forehead to feel for blood.

  “Get undressed,” Malone says.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “I’m the guy who just told you to get undressed,” Malone says. He pulls his gun out. “Don’t make me tell you again, Kyle, because you’re not going to like the alternate request.”

  “You’re a porn star, right?” Russo asks. “So this shouldn’t be a problem for you. Now get your fucking clothes off.”

  Kyle strips down to his shorts.

  “Everything,” Russo says, sliding his belt from its loops.

  “What are you going to do?” Kyle asks. His legs are quivering.

  “You want to be a porn star,” Malone says. “You need to get used to this.”

  “All in a day’s work,” Russo says.

  Kyle steps out of his shorts, covers his genitals.

  “Now is that any way for a porn star to act?” Russo asks. “Come on, stud, show us what you got.”

  He gestures with his gun and Kyle puts his hands up.

  “How does it feel?” Malone asks. “Naked in front of strangers. You think that’s how Lyndsey Anderson might feel? She’s a nice girl, not some ratchet you put in a porn film.”

  “She put me up to it,” Kyle says. “Said it was a way to get money out of her folks.”

  “That’s not going to happen, Kyle,” Malone says. “You upload it yet?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me the truth.”

  “It’s the truth!”

  “That’s good,” Malone says. “That’s a good answer for you.”

  He grabs the laptop, sees they’re above an alley, and opens the window.

  “It cost twelve hundred dollars!” Kyle yells.

  “Something is going out this window,” Malone says. “You or your laptop. Choose.”

  Havachek chooses the laptop. Malone shoves it out the window and watches it shatter on the concrete below. “Lyndsey was in on this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Smack him, tell him ‘bullshit.’”

  Russo swings the belt on the back of Kyle’s thighs. “Bullshit.”

  “No, she was,” Kyle says. “It was her idea.”

  “Smack him again.”

  Russo smacks him.

  “I’m telling the truth!”

  “I believe you,” Malone says. “You just deserve some smacks. You deserve a lot more than that, but I’m going to be appropriate.”

  “He’s very appropriate,” Russo says.

  “But I’ll tell you this, Kyle,” Malone says. “This tape shows up anywhere, or I hear you pull this stunt on or with any other girl, we’re going to come back and you’ll remember these slaps with a sense of nostalgia.”

  “As the good old days,” Russo says.

  “Now, when Lyndsey texts you asking what’s up,” Malone says, “you’re not going to answer. You’re not going to answer her phone calls, her Facebook messages, you’re not going to call her or contact her, you’re just going to disappear. And if you don’t . . .”

  Malone points the gun at his forehead.

  “You’re just going to disappear,” Malone says. “Move back to Jersey, Kyle. You don’t have what it takes to play the game in the city.”

  “Whole different game,” Russo says.

  Malone puts his hands on Kyle’s shoulders. Fatherly, coachlike. “Now I want you to sit here naked for an hour and think about what a sleazy douchebag you really are.” Then he brings his knee up—hard. Kyle goes down into a fetal position, groaning in pain, sucking for air. “We do not treat women that way. Even if they ask us to.”

  As they walk back down the stairs, Malone asks, “Was I inappropriate?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Russo says.

  The car is waiting for them when they get there.

  Intact.

  Malone calls Chandler. “That thing is taken care of.”

  “We owe you,” Chandler says.

  Yeah, you do, Malone thinks.

  Claudette just wants to bust balls tonight and that’s a
ll there is to it.

  And when a woman—black, white, tan, aubergine, whatever, Malone thinks—wants to bust balls, balls are going to get busted.

  Maybe it’s the news on TV—footage of the cops rounding up black kids, the protesters, what-the-fuck-ever. Maybe it’s the fact that the TV stations have cleverly blended the project raids into the Michael Bennett case and Cornelius Hampton is at his accustomed spot in front of the cameras saying, “There is no justice for young African American men. I guarantee you that if Sean Gillette was white, gunned down in broad daylight in the middle of a white neighborhood, the police would have a suspect in custody already. Just as I guarantee that if Michael Bennett was white, the case against his killer would have gone to a grand jury long before this.”

  With exquisite timing, the DA just brought the Bennett case to the grand jury, and now it will take weeks, if not months, to return a decision. Couple that with the killings in the Nickel, the community is seething.

  “Is he right?” Claudette asks.

  They’re sitting in front of the TV, eating some Indian takeout he brought back—chicken tikka for her, lamb korma for him.

  “About what?” Malone asks.

  “Any of it?”

  “You think we’re not working hard to find out who killed those two people today?” Malone asks. “You think we lay back on it because they’re black?”

  “I’m asking.”

  “Yeah, well, fuck you.”

  He’s not in the mood for this bullshit.

  Claudette is, though. “Be honest, you going to tell me that, subconsciously at least, Gillette doesn’t mean a little less to you because he’s just another ‘Jamaal’? That’s what you call them, right? ‘Jamaals’?”

  “Yeah, we call them ‘Jamaals,’” Malone says. “Also ‘idiots,’ ‘mopes,’ ‘skels,’ ‘bangers,’ ‘corner boys’—”

  “‘Niggers’?” Claudette asks. “I’ve heard cops in the E-room, chuckling about banging some nigger ’longside the head. Tuning up some moolie. Do you talk that way, Denny, when I’m not around?”

  “I don’t want to fight,” he says. “It’s been a day.”

  “Poor you.”

  The korma tastes like shit now and he feels the evil coming over him. “The only kid I beat up today was white, it makes you feel better.”

  “Great, you’re an equal opportunity thug.”

  “There were two people killed today,” Malone says, because he can’t seem to stop himself. “That kid and an old lady. And do you know why? ’Cuz a nigguh gots to sling his dope.”

  “Now fuck you.”

  “I’m working my ass off trying to close those cases.”

  “That’s right,” Claudette says. “They’re ‘cases’ to you, not people.”

  “Jesus Christ, Claudette,” he says, “are you trying to tell me that every patient who rolls in on a gurney is a fully realized human being to you and sometimes not just another job? Another piece of meat? That you try to save but at the same time, you don’t hate them just a little bit for bleeding their fucked-up, drunk, stoned, stupid-ass violent shit all over you?”

  “You’re talking about yourself, not me.”

  “Yeah, and it wasn’t all that pain, was it,” Malone says, “all those other people’s pain that made you shoot smack, was it?”

  “Go fuck yourself, Denny.” She gets up. “I have an early shift.”

  “Go to bed.”

  “I think I will.”

  She waits up long enough she thinks he’s asleep when she slips into bed and it almost feels like he’s back on Staten Island.

  Malone has hellish dreams.

  Billy O jerks on the floor like a downed power line.

  Pena’s mouth gapes, his dead eyes stare vacantly and yet with accusation. Snow falls from the ceiling, white bricks spill out of the wall, a dog lunges on its chain, puppies whine in fear.

  Billy sucks for air, a fish flopping on the bottom of the boat.

  Malone weeps and pounds on Billy’s chest. More snow blows out Billy’s mouth onto Malone’s face.

  It freezes on his skin.

  Machine gun rounds explode in his head.

  He opens his eyes.

  Looks out Claudette’s window.

  It’s jackhammers.

  City workers in yellow helmets and orange vests fixing the street. A supervisor sits on a truck gate, smoking a cigarette, reading the Post.

  Fuckin’ New York, Malone thinks.

  Motherfuckin’ New York.

  The sweet, juicy, rotten apple.

  It wasn’t just Billy in the dreams.

  That was just last night.

  Three nights before it was that DOA back when he was in the Tenth. He answered the call and went up to the sixth floor in the Chelsea-Elliott projects. The family was sitting at the table eating supper. When he asked them where the body was, the father jerked his thumb at the bedroom door.

  Malone went in and saw a kid lying on the bed, facedown.

  Seven-year-old boy.

  But Malone didn’t see any wounds, no signs of blunt trauma, nothing. He turned the boy over and saw the needle still sticking out of the kid’s arm.

  Seven years old and he was shooting smack.

  Swallowing his rage, Malone went back and asked the family what the hell had happened.

  The father said the kid “had problems.”

  Then went back to eating.

  So there’s that dream.

  There are others.

  Eighteen years on the Job, you see things you wish you hadn’t. What’s he supposed to do, “share” that with some therapist? With Claudette? Sheila? Even if he did, they couldn’t understand.

  He goes into the bathroom and splashes cold water on his face. When he comes out, Claudette is in the kitchen making coffee. “Bad night?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Of course you are,” she says. “You’re always okay.”

  “That’s right.” Jesus, what’s her fucking problem? He sits down at the table.

  “Maybe you should go talk to someone,” Claudette says.

  “Career suicide,” Malone says. She doesn’t know what happens when a cop voluntarily goes to a shrink. Desk duty—the rest of his career—because no one wants to be on the street with a potential whack job. “Anyway, I don’t see myself going to some shrink whining about I have bad dreams.”

  “Because you’re not weak like other people.”

  “Jesus shit,” Malone says, “if I wanted to hear what an asshole I am, I’d—”

  “Go back to your wife?” she asks. “Why don’t you?”

  “Because I want to be with you.”

  She stands at the counter and puts together the salad she has for lunch, carefully arranging the ingredients in a plastic container. “I get you think that only other cops can understand what you go through. Y’all feel aggrieved because you’re blamed for killing Freddie Gray or Michael Bennett. But you don’t know how it feels to be blamed because you are Freddie Gray or Michael Bennett. You think people hate you because of what you do, but you don’t have to think that people hate you because of what you are. You can take that blue jacket off, I live twenty-four seven in this skin.

  “Here’s what you can’t understand, Denny—what you can’t understand, because you’re a white man, is the sheer . . . weight . . . of being black in this country. The sheer exhausting weight that presses your shoulders down and tires your eyes and makes it hurt just to walk sometimes.”

  She presses the lid on. “And you were right last night—sometimes I do hate my patients and I’m tired, Denny, tired of cleaning up the things they do to each other, we do to each other, and sometimes I hate them because they’re black like me and because it makes me wonder about myself.”

  She puts the container in her bag.

  “So that’s what we go through, baby,” Claudette says. “Every damn day. Don’t forget to lock up.”

  She kisses him on the cheek and goes out.

 
An early spring has come to the city like a gift.

  Snow has turned to slush, water runs in the gutters like little brooks. A trace of sunshine promises warmth.

  New York is coming out of winter. Not that it ever hibernated; the city had just pulled its collar up and put its head down against the winds that whipped through its canyons, freezing faces and numbing lips. New Yorkers push through winter like soldiers through gunfire.

  Now the city uncovers itself.

  And Da Force gets ready to hit the Nickel.

  “Take it easy at first,” Malone tells Levin. “Don’t try to prove yourself. Just lay back, watch, get the hang of things. Don’t worry, we’ll get you on the sheet.”

  Get you an arrest, let you look good on the paperwork.

  They’re going into Building Six in north St. Nick’s to do a vertical.

  The gang already knows the cops are there, and in four other buildings. The ten-year-old wannabes sounded the alarms with shouts and whistles. People flee the lobby like Malone’s crew has anthrax. The couple who stay just give them sullen eye-fucks, and Malone hears one of them mutter, “Michael Bennett.” He ignores it.

  Levin walks toward the stairwell door.

  “Where you going?” Russo asks him.

  “I thought we’re going to check the stairs.”

  “You’re going to walk up the stairs.”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “Fucking moron,” Russo says. “We take the elevator to the roof and then walk down the stairs. Save the legs and then we’re coming in above any problems instead of below them.”

  “Oh.”

  “NYU, huh?”

  An old lady sitting on a metal folding chair just shakes her head at Levin.

  They ride up to the fourteenth floor and get out.

  The walls are graffiti, gang tags.

  The crew walks down to the metal door that leads to the stairs, opens it, and it’s chaos as four Spades scatter like a covey of quail because one of them has a gun. They take off down the stairs.

  More out of instinct than anything, Malone starts to chase them, but then Levin vaults the railing and drops ahead of him.

  “Newbie, hold up!” Malone yells.

  But Levin is gone, pounding down to thirteen, and then Malone hears the shot. Hears it, hell, it echoes through the stairway, bruising his eardrums, rendering him deaf, and as his ears ring he flies down the stairs expecting to see Levin bleeding out, except what he sees is Levin chasing the guy down the stairs, then leaping like a linebacker and tackling the shooter from behind. Slams him onto a landing just as Malone gets there.