The Force: A Novel

by Don Winslow

  The banger tries to throw the gun down the stairs but Russo has caught up and he grabs it.

  Levin is hyped. “Secure that gun! The asshole shot at me!”

  He’s jacked on fear and adrenaline but wrestles the shooter into cuffs. Monty puts the shooter on the floor and kneels on his neck. Levin sits on the landing with his back up against the wall, breathing hard as the adrenaline drops.

  “You okay?” Malone asks.

  Levin just nods, too freaked out to talk.

  Malone gets it, knows from experience that “I just almost got killed” feeling. “Catch your breath, then you take him to the Three-Two. I want you to get the collar.”

  When Malone gets to the precinct, Levin is waiting for him. “Odelle Jackson. He had a warrant on a ten-to-fifteen crack bust. Why he took a chance winging a shot at a cop.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Squad room.”

  Malone goes up to the detective squad and sees Jackson in the cage.

  Levin is sitting in the locker room.

  “What the fuck, Levin?” Malone asks. “Jackson looks like he just got out of church.”

  “What should he look like?” Levin asks.

  “Like he caught a serious beating.”

  “I don’t do that,” Levin says.

  “He tried to kill you,” Monty says.

  Levin says, “And he’ll go away for it.”

  “Look,” Malone says, “I know you’re concerned with ‘social justice’ and you want ‘the minority community’ to love you, but if Jackson goes to Central Booking looking like he ain’t been tuned up, every mook in New York will think it’s okay to shoot at an NYPD officer.”

  “If you don’t break out the gym set on this individual,” Monty says, “you’ll put us all in danger.”

  Levin looks stricken.

  “We’re not saying stick a plunger up his ass,” Russo says. “But you don’t fuck him up, no one in this house is going to respect you.”

  “Go do the right thing,” Malone says, “or clean out your locker.”

  Twenty minutes later they come downstairs to put Jackson on the bus to Central Booking. His head looks like a pumpkin, his eyes are slits, he’s limping and holding his ribs.

  Levin did a job on him.

  “You fell down the stairs when my guys busted you, right?” Malone asks Jackson. “You need medical attention?”

  “I’m okay.”

  Yeah, you’re okay now, Malone thinks. The jailers in Central Booking don’t like cops, so they’re going to leave you alone. Different story when you get to the joint, where the COs always feel their lives are threatened and take assaults on cops very seriously. You’ll be a hero in the population, but the guards are going to give you a ride down another set of stairs.

  Levin, he looks sick.

  Malone gets it—he felt the same way when an old-timer made him tune up his first perp.

  If memory serves.

  It was a long time ago.

  Monty comes into the room and hands Malone a sheet of paper. “Mr. Jackson here is having a very bad day.”

  Malone looks at the sheet. The bullet Jackson winged at Levin matches the bullet that ended up in Mookie Gillette’s chest.

  Same gun.

  “Hey, Sarge?” Malone says. “Unhook this guy, huh. We’ll be in Interview One. And call Minelli up in Homicide. He’s going to want in on this.”

  Jackson’s hooked to a bolt on the table.

  Malone and Minelli sit across from him.

  Malone says, “You may be having the worst day in the history of days. You shoot at a cop and miss, and now you’re down for a double homicide.”

  “Double? I didn’t shoot Mrs. Williams.”

  “Well now, here’s an interesting theory,” Minelli says. “According to the law, your shooting of Mookie led directly to his shooting of Mrs. Williams. So you’re down for both.”

  “I didn’t shoot Mookie,” Jackson says. “I was there, but I didn’t shoot him. I was just the walkaway.”

  The shooter passes the weapon to a junior member, who walks away.

  “You still have the murder weapon,” Minelli says. “And you used it again.”

  “They gave it to me,” Jackson says, “told me to get rid of it.”

  “And you didn’t,” Malone says. “Dumb shit.”

  “Who gave you the gun?” Minelli asks. “Who was the shooter?”

  Jackson looks down at the table.

  “Look, you know how this works,” Minelli says. “You can go for the murders or someone else can. I don’t give a shit which. It clears my sheet either way.”

  “I get it,” Malone says. “Killing Mookie gives you street cred. But do you really want to go down for Mrs. Williams?”

  “I’m still going for the cop.”

  “New York law,” Malone says. “Forty to life for shooting at a police officer. With two previous convictions, bet on life.”

  “So I’m fucked anyway.”

  “You give us the shooter,” Malone says, “maybe we can help you on the cop shooting. We can’t get you a walk, but we can have the ADA tell the judge you cooperated on a double homicide. Forty, you do fifteen, you still have a life. The other way, you die in there.”

  “I give them up,” Jackson says, “they kill me inside anyway.”

  Malone sees it in his eyes—the kid knows his life is over.

  Once the machine has you, it doesn’t let you go until it’s chewed you up.

  “You have a grandma?” Malone asks.

  “’Course I got a grandma,” Jackson says. It’s at least ten seconds before he says, “Jamichael Leonard.”

  “Where do we find him?” Minelli asks.

  “His cousin’s.” He gives them the address.

  Malone takes him back to get on the bus to Central Booking. “We’ll get in touch with your PD.”

  “Whatever.”

  They put him on the chain and load him on the bus.

  “You want in on this collar?” Minelli asks Malone.

  “No,” he says. “Too much ink makes us targets. Do me a solid, though. Give Levin an assist and bring Sykes in on it before you go pick him up.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  As any good wiseguy knows, you want to eat, you don’t eat alone. You kick up, and there’s all kinds of coin.

  He goes down to the locker room and finds Russo, Montague and Levin.

  “If it makes you feel any better, newbie,” Malone says, “Jackson gave up the Williams shooter. You get an assist.”

  It helps but it doesn’t fix it. He sees it in Levin’s eyes—the first time you give up a little bit of yourself to the street, it hurts. The scar tissue hasn’t formed yet, and you feel it.

  “I think,” Malone says, “we’ve earned a Bowling Night.”

  Chapter 8

  Bowling Night is a Task Force institution.

  A mandatory attendance, no-excuses-accepted night when the men tell their wives and girlfriends that they’re going bowling with the guys.

  It’s the team leader’s privilege—some would call it his duty—to call Bowling Nights as a way of letting off steam, and when a cop gets shot at, that’s a lot of steam.

  A brother cop gets killed, you don’t talk about it; a cop has a near miss, you have to talk about it—get it out, laugh about it, because tomorrow or the next day you’re going to have to go down another stairwell.

  They do 10-13s frequently—the name comes from the radio code for “officer needs assistance”—where they coop up somewhere and party, but Bowling Night is something different: dress sharp, no wives, girlfriends, or even gumars, none of the usual cop bars.

  Bowling Night is strictly first class, all the way.

  Sheila, with the perspicacity of a Staten Island cop wife, once said, “You don’t go bowling. That’s just a cover to pig out, get drunk and fuck cheap whores.”

  That isn’t true, Malone thought as he walked out the door that night.
It’s a cover to dine out, get drunk and fuck expensive whores.

  Levin doesn’t want to come.

  “I’m beat,” he says. “I think I’ll just go home and chill.”

  “This is not an invitation,” Malone says, “it’s a summons.”

  “You’re coming,” Russo says.

  “You’re part of the team,” Monty said, “you make Bowling Night.”

  “What do I tell Amy?”

  “You tell her you’re going out with your crew, don’t wait up,” Malone says. “Now go home, clean up, dress nice. Meet us at Gallaghers at seven.”

  Corner table at Gallaghers on Fifty-Second.

  Russo looks extra sharp tonight—slate-gray suit, custom-tailored white shirt, French cuffs, pearl cuff links.

  “You hear the shot?” Russo asks.

  “Not until later,” Levin says. “That’s the funny thing. I didn’t hear it until later.”

  “Man, you fucking tackled that asshole,” Russo says. “Sign this guy up for the Jets.”

  “The Jets tackle?” Malone asks.

  It goes on like that, making Levin talk, making him take some credit for being brave, for surviving.

  “Thing is,” Malone says, “you’re probably good for life now.”

  “What do you mean?” Levin asks.

  Montague explains, “Most cops don’t get shot at their entire careers. You did, and it missed. Odds are you never take another shot, you walk away unscathed after twenty, pull your pension.”

  Malone fills their glasses. “Here’s to that!”

  Russo asks, “Remember Harry Lemlin?”

  Malone and Monty start to laugh.

  “Who was Harry Lemlin?” Levin asks. He loves these old stories, and he’s not even pissed that they fined him a hundred bucks for wearing a shirt with buttons on the cuffs.

  “French cuffs,” Malone told him. “When the team goes out, we go out in style. We make an impression. French cuffs, cuff links.”

  “I don’t own any cuff links.”

  “Buy some,” Malone says, taking a hundred out of Levin’s wallet.

  Now Levin asks again, “Who was Harry Lemlin? Tell me the story.”

  “Harry Lemlin—”

  “Never Say Die Harry,” Monty says.

  “Never Say Die Harry,” Russo says, “was a comptroller in the mayor’s office in charge of making the budget look somewhat legit. And he was hung. Those stallions they put out to stud? They look at Harry, they hang their heads in shame. Harry’s dick arrived at meetings two minutes before the rest of him did. Okay, so Harry is a regular at Madeleine’s, this is back in the day she does most of her business at the house.”

  Malone smiles. Russo is going into storytelling mode.

  “Anyway, back then it was, what, Sixty-Fourth and Park. So Harry, he starts taking Viagra. Best thing that ever happened according to him. Penicillin, polio vaccine, fuck that—Harry is in love with the blue pill.”

  “How old was he?” Levin asks.

  “You gonna let me tell the story?” Russo asks, “or keep interrupting me? Kids these days.”

  “I blame the parents,” Monty says.

  “That’s another hundred,” Malone says.

  “Harry was sixtysomething, I dunno,” Russo says, “but fucking like he’s nineteen. Two girls at a time, three, he’s a steam engine. Girls are tag-teaming, he’s wearing them out. Madeleine, she doesn’t care, she’s making money, and the girls, they love him, he’s a big tipper.”

  “Tipped by the inch,” Monty says.

  “How come Monty doesn’t get fined?” Levin asks.

  “That’s another hundred.”

  “So this one night,” Russo says, warming up to the story, “the three of us are out doing a stakeout on this coke dealer’s place, and we get a call on Malone’s private phone from Madeleine. All upset, crying, ‘Harry’s dead.’ We go running over there and sure enough, there’s Harry, in the sack, hookers standing around him weeping like he’s Jesus or something, and Madeleine says, ‘You have to get him out of here.’

  “No shit, we think, because this is going to be a major embarrassment, the comptroller found naked at one in the morning in the rack with a brace of call girls. We gotta move the body. First problem is getting Harry dressed, because he had to go two eighty and there is, shall we say, an obstacle in the way.”

  “An obstacle?” Levin asks.

  “Harry’s soldier is still standing at attention,” Russo says, “ready for duty. We’re trying to get his boxers on, never mind his trousers, which are a little tight to begin with, and there’s this flagpole to contend with . . . and it ain’t going down, whether it’s the pill or rigor mortis, we don’t know, but . . .”

  Russo starts laughing.

  Malone and Monty start laughing, too, and Levin, he’s having a great time. “So what did you do?”

  “The fuck could we do?” Russo asks. “We keep wrestling, we get clothes back on him—his pants, his shirt, his jacket and tie, everything, except he has major wood poking out, I swear it’s getting bigger, like his dick is Pinocchio and just told a lie.

  “I go down, twenty the doorman to go for a smoke and I guard the lobby. Monty and Malone heft this guy into the elevator and we drag him out the side door into our car, which is no easy task.

  “So Harry’s propped up in the front seat like he’s drunk or something and we drive all the way downtown to his office. A hundred for the security guard, back in the elevator, we set him down in his chair behind his desk like he’s this dedicated employee burning the midnight oil.”

  Russo takes a sip of his martini, signals for another. “But now what? What we should do is just get the fuck out of there, let them find him in the morning, but we all like Harry. Very fond of the guy, and we don’t have the heart to just let him sit there rotting, so . . .

  “Malone here calls the desk sergeant at the Five. Makes up this bullshit about walking past the building, seeing lights on, thought he’d go up to see his old friend Harry, blah, send a unit.

  “The uniforms come up, then the duty ME. Takes one look at Harry, says, ‘The guy’s heart exploded.’ We nod, like yeah, isn’t it sad, he was overworked, then the ME says, ‘But it didn’t do it here.’ We’re all like, ‘What do you fucking mean?’ and he goes into some long explanation about lividity and morbidity and that he didn’t shit his pants and what’s more, the deceased has a hard-on like a battering ram, and he’s looking at us like ‘what’s going on,’ so we take him aside and tell him.

  “‘Look,’ I say. ‘Harry tapped out in the saddle and we want to spare the widow and the kids the embarrassment. Can you work with us on this?’

  “‘You moved the body,’ he says.

  “We confess.

  “‘That’s a crime,’ he says.

  “We agree. Malone here, he tells the guy we’ll owe him a solid, do the right thing, and the doc he says, ‘Okay.’ Writes it up like Harry died at his desk, a faithful servant of the city.”

  “Which he was,” Monty says.

  “Absolutely,” Russo says. “Except now we have to go to Rosemary, tell her her husband has passed. We drive over to their place on East Forty-First, ring the bell, Rosemary, she’s in a robe and curlers, we tell her. She cries a little, she makes us all some tea, then . . .”

  Russo’s martini arrives.

  “She wants to see him. We tell her why don’t she wait until tomorrow, we made the ID, it’s not necessary, but no. She wants to see her husband.”

  Malone shakes his head.

  “So, okay,” Russo says. “We go to the morgue, show our shields, they slide Harry out of the drawer, and I have to say they did their best. They had him covered with sheets, blankets, but no . . .

  “Tent pole. Like you could hold a revival meeting under there. The circus, I don’t know—elephants, clowns, acrobats, the whole nine yards—and Rosemary, she looks and she says . . .”

  They all start laughing again.

  “Rosemary, she says, ‘L
ook at Little Harry—never say die.’

  “She was proud of it. Proud that he died in the saddle, doing what he loved to do. We’re getting hernias lugging this horny bastard around, and she knew all about it all the time.

  “Calling hours? You know sometimes the wiseguys, they have to have closed caskets? They had to close Harry’s casket from the waist down. Rosemary said send him to heaven ready.”

  Monty lifts a glass. “Here’s to Harry.”

  “Never say die,” Malone says.

  They clink their glasses.

  Then Russo looks over Levin’s shoulder. “Oh, shit.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t turn around,” Russo says. “At the bar. It’s Lou Savino.”

  Malone looks alarmed. “Are you sure?”

  “It’s Savino and three of his crew,” Russo says.

  “Who’s Lou Savino?” Levin asks.

  “‘Who’s Lou Savino?’” Russo says. “Are you kidding me right now? He’s a capo in the Cimino family.”

  “Runs the Pleasant Avenue crew,” Malone says. “He has an open warrant out. We gotta take him.”

  “Here?” Levin asks.

  “What the fuck,” Russo says, “do you think IAB would think, it got word we were in the same place as a mobster with an open warrant and we let him walk away?”

  “Jesus,” Levin says.

  “It has to be you,” Malone says. “He hasn’t made us yet, but if one of us gets up, he’ll bolt like a rabbit.”

  “We’ll back you, kid,” Russo says.

  Monty says, “Be polite.”

  “But firm,” says Russo.

  Levin gets up. He looks nervous as hell, but he walks to the bar where Savino is having drinks with three of his guys and their gumars. If they’re sitting in the main room of any restaurant, they always want to be seen with beautiful women; if it’s just the men, they’d be in a private room.

  Whether or not to have women at dinner on Bowling Night has long been a topic of discussion in Malone’s team. He could argue it either way—on the one hand, it’s always nice to have a lovely woman by your side at dinner. On the other hand, it’s too showy. A group of well-known detectives out to an expensive dinner is borderline as it is; to be more ostentatious with call girls is another thing.