The Force

by Don Winslow

  Hizzoner turned his back on them over the Eric Garner thing.

  “Give Pigs Wings,” Malone thinks.

  Kiss my pig ass.

  Anyway, it’s a nice June morning, good day to be outside.

  Malone says, “You sure about this? Your bosses hear you’re dealing, they’ll take you out.”

  Cimino family rule: you deal, you die.

  It’s not because they have moral compunctions, it’s that the heavy sentences induce guys to flip. So if you get busted with dope, you’re too big a risk and you have to go.

  “That’s not for dealing,” Savino says. “That’s for getting caught dealing. As long as the bosses get their beaks wet, they don’t give a shit. And how else am I going to eat, right?”

  Yeah, right, Malone thinks.

  Louie crying poor is pretty funny. Like he needs to sling smack to put a little bread on the table. He just knows there’s a fucking killing to be made here. A fucking windfall, if he can pull it off.

  “You let me worry about me,” Savino is saying. “What do you want for it?”

  “A hundred grand a kilo,” Malone says.

  “What the fuck world you live in?” Savino asks. “I can get smack for sixty-five, seventy.”

  “Not Dark Horse,” Malone says. “Not sixty percent pure. The market price is a hundred.”

  “That’s if you can go straight to the retailer,” Savino says. “Which you can’t. Which is why you called me. I can go seventy-five.”

  “You can go fuck yourself, too.”

  “Think about it,” Savino says. “You can do business with family, white people instead of niggers and spics.”

  “Seventy-five’s not enough,” Malone says.

  “Make a counter.”

  “We got Shark Tank going on here,” Malone says. “Okay, Mister Wonderful, we’ll do ninety a kilo.”

  “You just want me to bend over a headstone here, you can fuck me in the ass?” Savino asks. “Maybe I could go eighty.”

  “Eighty-seven.”

  “The fuck, are we Jews?” Savino says. “Can we do this like gentlemen, say eighty-five? Eighty-five thousand a kilo times fifty. Four million, two hundred fifty thousand dollars. That’s a lot of chocolate-glazed.”

  “Do you have it?”

  “I’ll get it,” Savino says.

  That means he’s going to have to go to other people, Malone thinks. More people means more talk, more risk. But it can’t be helped. “Another thing, you don’t put this out in Manhattan North. Take it upstate, New England, just not here.”

  “You’re a piece of work,” Savino says. “You don’t care there are addicts, just as long as they’re not your addicts.”

  “Yes or no?”

  “Deal,” Savino says. “Only because I don’t feel like standing out in a graveyard any longer. Gives me the creeps.”

  Yeah, Malone thinks. Nothing like a graveyard to bring it home someday you’ll have to pay, answer for what you’ve done.

  Fuckin’ nuns.

  “When do we do this?” Savino asks.

  “I’ll give you a time and a place,” Malone says. “And cash, Lou. Don’t show up with hot jewelry and some paper on a bad loan.”

  “Cops.” Savino smirks. “So suspicious.”

  Before he leaves, Malone goes to pay his respects at Billy’s grave.

  “This is for you, Billy,” Malone says. “It’s for your son.”

  Malone opens the trap under the shower.

  What do the PRs call it? La caja.

  The fifty kilos of horse are each wrapped in blue plastic with stickers indicating that they’re Dark Horse. Malone rips off the stickers and flushes them down the drain. Then he puts the kilos in two North Face duffel bags he bought for the occasion, replaces the trap in the shower, hefts the bags one at a time down the elevator and puts them in the back of his car.

  Normally he’d have Russo or Monty or both with him, but he wants to keep them out of this, just present them with their cut of the cash like it’s Christmas all over again. It’s tricky, though, flying solo with no backup.

  But that’s your world now, he tells himself as he turns north on Broadway and drives uptown. You’re on your own until you can get out from under Paz and the feds, and until that happens you have to protect your guys.

  It would be good to have them along, though, in case Savino tries to rip him. He doubts that will happen, because they have so many ties with the Cimino borgata, but you’re talking a lot of money and a lot of dope here, and you never know what that’s gonna do to a guy.

  Savino might just take the big home-run swing.

  Which he wouldn’t do if Russo or Monty was there.

  But now it’s just me, with a Sig, a Beretta, and a knife. Yeah, okay, and the MP5 in a sling under my jacket. I have a lot of firepower but only one trigger finger, so what I’m mostly counting on here is Savino’s honor.

  Used to be you could count on that with mob guys.

  Used to be a lot of things, though.

  He turns onto the West Side Highway and drives up past the GW Bridge, then into Fort Tryon Park below the Cloisters. One o’clock in the morning, the park is pretty empty, and if someone is there, it isn’t for a good reason. You’re a transient building an illegal fire, or you’ve brought a hooker there, or you’re looking for a blow job—although a lot of that shit stopped since the gays came out of the closets.

  Or you’re looking to make a dope deal.

  Which is what I’m looking to do, Malone thinks, just like any other skel.

  If it wasn’t me, it would just be someone else, Malone thinks, knowing it’s an age-old rationalization even as he thinks it. But it’s age-old because it’s true. Right now in some lab in Mexico they’re cranking out more of this shit, so if it wasn’t these fifty keys, it would be their replacements. And if it wasn’t me, it would be someone else.

  So why should the bad guys make all the money all the time? The guys who torture and kill. Why shouldn’t me and Russo and Monty make a little something, build a future for our families?

  You spend your whole fucking life trying to keep this shit out of people’s arms and no matter how much you seize, how many dealers you bust, it just keeps coming anyway, right up the line from the opium fields, to the labs, to the trailer trucks, to the needles and into the veins.

  One smooth, ever-flowing river.

  No, he gets his own hypocrisy.

  Knows he might as well be shooting this directly into Claudette’s arm.

  But if it ain’t me, it’s just someone else.

  And the irony of it is, I use it to send her to rehab. Send my kids to college. Instead of it goes to some Mexican or Colombian to buy another Ferrari, some more gold chains, a pet tiger, a country estate, a harem.

  Anyway, you tell yourself what you gotta tell yourself to do what you gotta do.

  And sometimes you even fuckin’ believe it.

  He pulls off where Fort Tryon Place meets Corbin Drive. He wants to still be on his Manhattan North turf, something goes wrong here, but he also knows what every skel knows—you want to move around precincts. Start in the Two-Eight, do the deal in the Three-Four, all of it also covered by Manhattan North.

  That way if the shit comes down and you get popped, you got a shot at paperwork getting fucked up between precincts and jurisdictions. Rivalries and jealousies can get in the way and maybe even spring you.

  It’s why, for instance, hookers stroll the streets that border precincts, because no cop wants to make a bust across the line. Too much paperwork. Same with low-level dealers—nickel- and dime-bag guys. They see a cop coming they just cross the street and most of the time the cop won’t follow. If there’s a chase now, Malone will drive down through Manhattan but Savino will cross into the Bronx, get a whole other borough involved.

  The Bronx and Manhattan hate each other.

  Unless the feds get involved, then they hate the feds.

  What the public doesn’t know is just how tribal cops
are. It starts with ethnicity—you got the biggest tribe, the Irish; then you got the Italian Tribe and the Every Other Kind of White Guy Tribe. Then you got the Black Tribe, the Hispanic Tribe.

  They each have their clubs—the Irish have the Emerald Society, the Italians the Columbia Association. The Germans are the Steuben Society, the Polacks the Pulaski Association, the other white guys have a catchall called the St. George’s Society. The blacks are the Guardians, the Puerto Ricans have the Hispanic Society, the twelve Jews got the Shomrim Society.

  Then it gets complicated, because you got the Uniform Tribe, the Plainclothes Tribe and the Detective Tribe that cut across all the ethnic tribes. Most of all you got the Street Cop Tribe versus the Administration Tribe, a subclan of which is the Internal Affairs Tribe.

  Then you got the boroughs, the precincts and the working units.

  So Malone is in the Irish Detective Street Cop Manhattan North Special Task Force Tribe.

  And another tribe, he thinks—the Dirty Cop Tribe.

  Savino is already at the pull-off.

  Blinks the lights of his black Navigator twice. Malone pulls up to the front of the Navigator so it will have to reverse to get out fast. He can’t see into the SUV. Then Savino gets out.

  The capo is wearing, honest to God, a tracksuit, because some of these guys just can’t help themselves. The gun bulge is at his waist by his right hand and he’s got a big shit-eating grin on his face.

  It occurs to Malone that he doesn’t like Savino very much. Especially when the back doors open and three Dominicans get out.

  One of them is Carlos Castillo.

  Clearly the jefe, he’s wearing a black suit, white shirt, no tie, and he looks like money. Black hair slicked back, a thin mustache. The other two are gunmen—black jackets, jeans, freakin’ cowboy boots and AKs.

  Malone takes out the MP5 and holds it at his hip.

  “Easy,” Savino says. “It’s not what it looks like.”

  The fuck it ain’t, Malone thinks. You set me up. All that shuck-and-jive in the cemetery, you don’t have the money. It was a fugazy—a front, a façade to get me whacked.

  Castillo smiles at him. “What, do you think we didn’t know how many kilos were in that room? How much money?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Diego Pena was my cousin.”

  Don’t back down, Malone tells himself. Backing down gets you killed. Looking weak gets you killed. “Murder a New York Police Department detective in New York City? The world will come down on your head.”

  If I don’t blow it off first.

  “We’re the cartel,” Castillo says.

  “No, we’re the cartel,” Malone says. “I got thirty-eight thousand in my gang. How many you got?”

  Castillo takes it in. This is no stupid guy. “It’s unfortunate. So for the time being I’ll have to settle for recovering our property.”

  One of the Malone Rules: Never take a step back.

  “You can buy it,” he says.

  “It’s generous of you,” Castillo says, “offering to sell us back our own product.”

  “You’re getting a deal that this guinea motherfucker cut for you,” Malone says. “Otherwise it would be bust-out retail.”

  “You stole it.”

  “I took it,” Malone says. “There’s a difference.”

  Castillo smiles. “So I could just take it.”

  “Your guys could,” Malone says. “I’ll send you where I sent your cousin.”

  “Diego would never have drawn a gun on you,” Castillo says. “He was too smart. Why fight what you can buy?”

  Malone says, “Diego got what he deserved.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Castillo says calmly. “You didn’t have to kill him. You wanted to.”

  It’s fucking true, Malone thinks. “We going to do this or not?”

  One of the Domos goes back to the car, comes back with two briefcases. He starts to hand them to Castillo, but the man stares at Malone and shakes his head, so his gunman hands them to Savino instead.

  Nice Halliburtons.

  Savino walks up, sets them on the hood of Malone’s car and opens both of them, showing him the stacks of hundreds.

  “It’s all there,” Castillo says. “Four million, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  “You want to count it?” Savino asks.

  “I’m good.” He doesn’t want to be out here any longer than he has to and he doesn’t want to take his eyes off the Domos for the time it would take to count the money. Anyway, if they were going to short him, they might as well just rip him.

  Malone puts the cases on the floor of the car by the front passenger seat, walks around, grabs the duffel bags and sets them on the hood.

  Savino carries the bags over to Castillo, who opens them and looks inside. “The labels are missing.”

  “I took them off,” Malone says.

  “But it’s the Dark Horse.”

  “Yeah,” Malone says. “You want to test it?”

  “I trust you,” Castillo says.

  Malone has his finger on the MP5 trigger. If they’re going to shoot him, this is the moment, when they know they got the heroin and they can still grab their money back. The jefe nods to one of his guys, who grabs the duffel bags and takes them back to Savino’s car.

  Savino smiles. “Always a pleasure doing business with you, Denny.”

  Yeah, Malone thinks, and Castillo here would have killed me if he didn’t want to do business with the Cimino family. And you and me are going to have a serious conversation, Louie.

  Castillo stares at Malone. “You know you’re just on a reprieve.”

  “Aren’t we all?” Malone asks.

  He gets back in his car and pulls out. Four and a quarter mil sits on the car floor next to him. His adrenaline is shrieking as he drives, then the fear and anger hit him like a double shot with a hammer and he starts to shake.

  Sees his hands quiver on the steering wheel and grips it hard to try to stop it. He snorts air through his nose to slow his heartbeat down.

  I thought I was dead, he thinks.

  Thought I was fucking dead.

  I got through that one, he tells himself, but Pena’s cousin isn’t going to let it go. He’s just going to wait for an opening and then he’ll take it. Or maybe contract it out through the Ciminos. Louie will ask me to a sit-down and I’ll never come back. A lot of it is going to be a matter of who’s more valuable to the Ciminos—me or the cartel.

  I’d put my money on the Domos.

  And the other thing.

  The fucking Domos will put this out on the street in Manhattan North, to put DeVon Carter out of business.

  Junkies on my turf will die.

  Something else I get to live with.

  He drives south along the Hudson and the black water shines silver from the lights of the bridge.

  Chapter 22

  Malone puts the cases with the money back in la caja and then goes and pours himself a drink.

  His hands have stopped shaking, at least, and he uses the whiskey to wash down a couple of Dexies. It’s already after 3 A.M. and John has a baseball game at 8:30 he don’t want to miss. He sits and waits for the go-pills to hit and then he leaves the apartment and gets into his car and drives out to Staten Island so he can watch the sun come up over the ocean.

  So there he is, Malone walking alone along the beach with the sun a fiery red and the sea a reflected rose, and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge an amber arc. A flock of gulls at the water’s edge stubbornly hold their position as he walks past them. He’s the interloper here; they’re waiting for the tide to bring in the seaweed and with it their breakfast, but Malone, the speed stops him from being hungry even though he hasn’t eaten since lunch yesterday, and he thinks, Good for you, gulls. Don’t let anyone move you out of your place. You got the numbers.

  Sometimes when he was a kid his dad would take them down to this beach and he loved to chase the gulls. Then if the water was warm enoug
h, his dad would take him in bodysurfing and that was the best thing in the world. He’d like to go in now even though the water is still freezing, but he doesn’t want to get the salt on his skin because there’s no place to shower and anyway he doesn’t have a towel.

  But it would be good to get into the cold water, and then he realizes that he forgot to shower and he hopes he doesn’t stink. Sniffs his armpit and it don’t smell so bad.

  He hasn’t shaved, either, and that might upset John, so when he gets back to the car he takes out the Dopp kit he keeps under the front seat and dry-shaves in the visor mirror. It scrapes and isn’t as smooth as he wants but at least he looks decent.

  Then Malone drives to the baseball park.

  Sheila is already there and John’s team is warming up, the kids looking unhappy early on a Saturday morning that would otherwise be a day to sleep in.

  Malone walks over to her. “Good morning.”

  “Rough night?”

  He ignores the gibe. “Caitlin here?”

  “She stayed over at Jordan’s last night.”

  Malone is disappointed and can’t help but suspect that was part of the plan, him being disappointed. He looks over and waves to John, who gives him a sleepy wave back. But smiles. That’s John, always has a smile.

  “You want to sit together?” Malone asks Sheila.

  “Later, maybe,” she says. “I got the first shift, concession stand duty.”

  “You got any coffee?”

  “Come on, I’ll make some.”

  Malone follows her to the little shack where they do the concessions. Sheila looks good in a green fleece jacket and jeans. She makes the coffee, pours him a cup and he also takes a glazed doughnut because he knows he should eat. He lays down a ten and tells her put the change in the jar.

  “Big spender.”

  He takes an envelope out of his jacket pocket and slips it to her. Sheila takes it and puts it in her bag.

  “Sheel,” Malone says, “anything should happen, you know where to go, right?”

  “Phil.”

  “And if something happened to him?” Those two cops, Ramos and Liu, partners, just sitting in their car and they both got it.