Carter stares at him, then says, “You know the best thing about these riots? They burn down things you wanted taken down anyway—slum buildings, dirty bodegas, shabby bars. Then you buy low, build nice things and sell high. Let me give you some advice, Malone. You take some of your dirty dope money, put it into real estate, you become a pillar of the community.”
“Does that mean we have a deal?”
“We’ve always had a deal.”
“I need to see the clip.”
Carter has a beautiful flat-screen monitor.
He jacks an iPhone in.
The images are painfully clear.
Michael Bennett is a typical street kid in a gray hoodie, baggy jeans and basketball shoes. He stands in the middle of the street arguing with a uniformed officer, Hayes.
Hayes goes to cuff him.
Bennett turns and runs.
He’s fast, like a fourteen-year-old, but he isn’t faster than a bullet.
Hayes pulls his service weapon and empties it.
Bennett’s body spins so the last two shots hit him in the face and the chest, the exact reverse of what the ME said.
Jesus Christ.
It’s just murder.
Black lives matter, Malone thinks.
They just don’t matter as much as white lives.
“You made copies,” Malone says.
“Of course I did,” Carter said. “Mrs. Carter didn’t raise herself any stupid black babies. You tell your bosses that if anything happens to me, this clip will be released on fifty major media outlets and the Internet. Then the whole city will burn. Make the same deal for yourself, I don’t mind. I want you back on the street.”
He hands Malone the phone.
“The riots will die down, they always do,” Carter says. “You and me, we’ll go back to keeping the lid on, because we always do. Make Manhattan North safe for real estate. Now you run and go tell Massuh Anderson as long as I get room to make my play, he doesn’t have to worry about the video.”
Malone puts the phone in his pocket.
“Are we good?” Carter asks.
“Let me ask you something,” Malone says. “Who was Benjamin Coombs?”
Carter looks puzzled. Searches his brain for the name, as if it’s some African American painter he hasn’t heard of. But it doesn’t come to him, and he’s annoyed when he has to ask, “Who?”
Malone pulls his gun.
“Nasty Ass,” he says.
He shoots Carter twice in the chest.
Chapter 37
They’re waiting for him at Anderson’s penthouse.
The gang’s all there.
Like a group portrait an artist has done on consecutive days. Same people, different poses, but all eyes focused on Malone as he walks in.
Chief Neely says, “Pat him down.”
“Why?” Berger asks.
“He’s a rat, isn’t he?” the chief of detectives says as he walks over to Malone and starts to search him. He looks right in Malone’s face as he says, “Once a rat, always a rat. I don’t want to get rid of one recording just to get another even worse.”
“I’m not wearing a wire,” Malone says, raising his arms. “But knock yourself out, sir.”
Neely pats him down, then looks at the rest of them and says, “He’s clean.”
“Did you get the clip?” Paz asks Malone.
“Don’t worry, I got it,” Malone says. “That was our deal, wasn’t it? I get you guys the Bennett tape, you cut me loose?”
Paz nods.
“No,” Malone says, his eyes boring through her. “I want to hear you say it. I want you to make a proffer, full fucking disclosure.”
“That was our deal,” Paz says.
“Yeah, that was our deal,” Malone says. “That was before.”
“Before what?” Anderson asks.
“Before I saw it,” Malone says. “Before I saw our cop kill that kid. Shot him running away. It was pure murder. So now the clip is worth more.”
“What do you want?” Anderson asks.
“I go back on the Job,” Malone says. “I go back to running Manhattan North. That’s my price. Carter’s is a little steeper. He gets a free hand running his dope business. We go after the Dominicans and leave him alone. You’re thinking of sending someone to clip him—or me, for that matter—forget about it.”
“There are copies of the vid clip,” Anderson says.
“Did you think you were playing with children?” Malone asks. “Dumb cops and jungle bunnies? He’s your fucking real estate partner anyway, isn’t he, Mr. Anderson? But don’t worry, you keep your part of the deal, we keep ours.”
The mayor says, “We cannot countenance—”
“Yes, we can,” Anderson says, his eyes not leaving Malone. “We can and will. We don’t have a choice, do we?”
“And everyone is in, right?” Malone says. He scans the room, looking from face to face. Like one of those old John Ford westerns his old man used to like, close-up after close-up of faces showing hope, fear, anger, anxiety, challenge. Except these aren’t cowboy faces, they’re city faces, New York City faces full of wealth, grit, cynicism, greed and energy. “Mr. Mayor, Mr. Commissioner, Chief Neely, Special Agent O’Dell, Ms. Paz, Mr. Anderson. All in, right? Speak now or forever hold—”
“Give us the goddamn clip,” Anderson says.
Malone tosses him the phone. “This is the original. Carter’s dead. The clip is probably already running on CNN, Fox, Channel Eleven, the Net, I don’t know.”
Paz stares at him in disbelief.
“Do you even know what you’ve done?” Anderson asks. “You’ve burned down this city. You’ve set fire to this whole country.”
“I can’t help you now, Denny,” Berger says. “There is nothing I can do to save you.”
“Good,” Malone says. He doesn’t want to be saved. “I loved the Job. I loved it. I loved this fucking city. But it’s wrong now. You fucked it up.
“Fuck you. Individually and collectively fuck you all. Eighteen years I spent on those streets, down those hallways, through those doors, doing what you wanted done. You didn’t want to know how, you just wanted it done. And I did it for you and now I’m done. Now you live with what happens when guys like me aren’t around anymore to keep the animals from busting out of their cages and marching down Broadway to claim what you’ve kept from them for four hundred years.
“You call me a dirty cop. Me and my partners, me and my brothers. You call us corrupt. Well, I call you corrupt. You’re the corruption, you’re the rot in the soul of this city, this country. You take millions in bribes on city construction, but you’re going to set me free to cover that up. Slumlords get passes on buildings with no heat and toilets that don’t work, and you look the other way. Judges buy their benches and sell cases to make it back, but you don’t want to hear about that.”
He looks at the commissioner. “You guys take gifts, trips, free meals, tickets from rich citizens to protect them from tickets, citations, violations . . . get them guns . . . and then you come down on cops for a free cup of coffee, a drink, a fucking sandwich.”
Malone turns to Anderson. “And you, you built this penthouse laundering dope money. This whole fucking thing is built on a pile of white powder and the backs of poor people. I’m ashamed I ever worked for you, helped protect you.
“Yeah, I’m a dirty cop. I’m a wrong guy. I gotta answer to God for what I did. But not to you. Not to any of you. That drug war to you is a way to keep the niggers and the spics in their place, fill the courts and the cells, keep the lawyers and the guards and yes, the police, in full fucking employment, and you play with your numbers to make them what you want them to be so you can get your promotions and your headlines and your political careers.
“But we’re the ones out there. We pick up the bodies, we tell the families, we watch them cry. We go home and cry, we bleed, we die, and you sell us down the river any time it gets tough. But we go out there and, no matter what—no mat
ter what else we’ve done or what you think of us, if we get lost along the way—we go out there and try to protect those good people.
“Dirty cops? They’re my brothers, my sisters. They may be dirty, they may be wrong, but they’re better than you. Any one of them is better than any one of you.”
Malone walks out the door, no one tries to stop him. He walks up Fifth to Central Park South, turns toward Columbus Circle and is halfway there before he looks over his shoulder and sees O’Dell coming behind him, his right hand inside his jacket. The agent is striding, fast, a man on a mission.
This is as good a place as any, Malone thinks.
He turns and waits.
O’Dell walks up to him, a little out of breath.
“Did you get it?” Malone asks him.
O’Dell opens his shirt, shows him the wire. “I’m on the next Acela to DC. They’ll be coming after you, you know.”
“I know. You too.”
“Maybe once people hear what’s on this tape . . .”
“Maybe,” Malone says. “I wouldn’t count on it, though. They got friends in DC, too. So take care of yourself, huh? Keep your head on a swivel.”
People walk past them like water around a rock, stillness an obstacle in this city of motion.
“What are you going to do now?” O’Dell asks.
Malone shrugs.
The only thing I know how to do, he thinks.
Chapter 38
New York, 4 A.M.
The city’s not sleeping, just taking a gasping spell after another night of rioting that broke out with renewed violence when the Bennett video hit the screens.
Rioters came down Broadway from Harlem, smashing windows, looting stores first around Columbia University and Barnard, then down into the Upper West Side, turning over cars, robbing cabs, beating any whites who hadn’t locked themselves in their buildings, setting fires until the National Guard formed a line on Seventy-Ninth and fired first rubber bullets and then live rounds.
Thirteen civilians, all of them black, were shot; two were killed.
And it wasn’t just New York.
Protests turned into riots in Newark, Camden, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, DC. By night—like embers flying in a ferocious wind—riots were touched off in Chicago, East St. Louis, Kansas City, New Orleans, Houston.
Los Angeles went up later.
Watts, South Central, Compton, Inglewood.
National Guard units were called in, federal troops sent to LA, New Orleans and Newark as the Michael Bennett riots turned into the worst since Rodney King, and the long hot summers of the ’60s.
Malone watched it from a barstool at the Dublin House.
Saw the president come on and plead for calm. When the president finished up, Malone went into the men’s room and chased the three Jamesons with four go-pills.
Going to need them.
He knew they’d be looking for him.
Probably already been to his apartment.
He left the bar and got into his car.
His own car, his beloved Camaro he bought when he was first promoted to sergeant.
Got the Bose cranked up now as he follows another car up Broadway.
The drive uptown is a trip through shattered dreams.
Decades of progress burned down in days of rage and nights of torment. Malone’s been cruising these streets for eighteen years, seen them when they were ghetto wasteland, seen them bloom and grow, now sees them going back to boarded windows and charred storefronts.
Inside, people still have the same hopes, the same disappointments, the love, the hate, the shame, but the dreams, the dreams are on hold.
Malone drives past Hamilton Fruits and Vegetables, the Big Brother Barber Shop, the Apollo Pharmacy, Trinity Church Cemetery and the mural of a raven on 155th. Past the Church of the Intercession—but it’s too late for intercession, Malone thinks—past the Wahi Diner and all the small gods of place, the personal shrines, the markers of his life on these streets that he loves like a husband loves a cheating wife, a father loves a wayward son.
He follows the car as it goes up Broadway.
Illmatic pumped up:
I never sleep ’cause sleep is the cousin of death
Beyond the walls of intelligence, life is defined
I think of crime when I’m in a New York state of mind.
Last time you drove uptown this time of the morning, Malone thinks, you were with your brothers, your partners—laughing, busting balls.
That was the night Billy O died.
Now Monty is as good as gone.
Russo, he ain’t your brother anymore.
Levin, the one you were supposed to protect, is dead.
And your family, who you told yourself you did it all for, they’re gone and don’t want to see you.
You got nothin’.
It’s 4 A.M. in New York.
The time for waking dreams.
The time to wake from dreams.
The car he’s following turns left on 177th and drives west past Fort Washington and Pinehurst Avenues until it takes another left onto Haven Avenue, crosses 176th and pulls over on the east side of Haven, just uptown from Wright Park. Malone watches Gallina, Tenelli and Ortiz get out, not even bothering to disguise the assault rifles—M4s and Ruger 14s—as they go into the building.
The Trini lookouts let them in.
Why not? Malone thinks. They’re on the same side now. Tenelli made the move and it was the smart bet.
He sees a black Navigator pull up in front of the building and Carlos Castillo get out of the backseat. Two shooters get out with him and flank him as he goes inside. Malone drives down the street, pulls off on Pinehurst Avenue and parks at the end of the cul-de-sac.
I lay puzzle as I backtrack to earlier times
Nothing’s equivalent to the New York state of mind.
Malone has a Sig Sauer and a Beretta, the knife at his ankle, a flashbang grenade.
But no Billy O, no Russo or Monty, no Levin to take his back.
Climbing into his vest and Velcroing it tight, he wishes he could hear Big Monty bitch about the vest again. Tilt his trilby, roll his cigar.
He flips the lanyard with his shield over his chest. Then he grabs the Rabbit out of the trunk, walks through the park and into an alley beside Castillo’s building.
He climbs the fire escape to the edge of the roof.
The Trini lookout is looking out the other way, toward the street. And he’s not looking that hard—Malone can smell the weed.
Malone moves across the roof.
Wraps his left forearm around the Trini’s throat and pulls him up, close and tight so he doesn’t scream as Malone pumps two rounds from the Sig into his back. The body slumps and Malone lets it down easy.
No one is going to notice the shots—there’s sporadic gunfire all over the city, the sector cars have stopped responding to the 10-10s—and the die-hard Fourth of July partiers are still setting off fireworks.
Malone looks downtown and sees the eerie orange glow of fires burning and thick black smoke rising against the night sky.
Then he goes to the roof door.
It’s locked, so he jams the Rabbit in and squeezes. Wishes again that Monty were here because it’s hard, but he keeps pressing and the lock finally gives it up and the door swings open.
Malone goes down the stairs.
My last vertical, he thinks.
He holds the Sig in front of him.
Another door, but this one’s not locked.
It opens into a hallway.
A dim fluorescent light hanging from a rusty chain casts sick yellow light on the face of the surprised sentry outside the wooden door at the end of the hallway.
His mouth forms a vacant O.
Brain rushing to send a message that never gets to his hand because Malone shoots him twice and he crumples in front of the door like a rolled-up welcome mat.
The last door, Malone thinks.
Flashbacks to Bi
lly O.
And Levin.
So many goddamn doors, so many things on the other side.
Too many dead.
Dead families, dead children.
A dead soul.
Malone presses himself against the wall and edges toward the door. Bullets come out. Heavy, spinning rounds shattering wood.
Malone hollers as if in pain and drops face-first to the floor.
The door opens.
His gun in front of him, Gallina’s eyes are adrenaline wide, his neck swivels as he looks for the threat then sees the dead man at his feet.
Malone fires a burst into and through his chest.
Gallina spins like a top.
A sprinkler spraying blood.
The gun drops from his hand, clatters on the floor.
More bullets come out, splintering the wall above Malone’s head. He rolls across the floor to the other side of the wall as a Trini gun peeks out from the doorway, searching for him.
Malone pulls the safety pin on the flashbang grenade and tosses it in and pushes his eyes into the crook of his elbow.
The noise is horrific, sickening.
The white light washes everything out.
He counts to five, then lunges to his feet and dives for the open door. His balance is fucked from the blast, his legs rock like he’s drunk. A Trini staggers out, screaming, his face burned, the green bandanna around his neck on fire. Grabbing at his throat to rip off the flaming noose, he bounces off Malone, sending him to the floor. The Sig drops from Malone’s hand and he can’t see to find it so he pulls the Beretta from his waistband.
Ortiz looks down at him.
Ortiz raises a Ruger.
Malone shoots as he shuffles on his ass to get his back against a wall. Ortiz groans heavily and falls to his knees, the Ruger still out and pointed. Malone hits him with two more shots.
Ortiz falls on his face.
Blood pools beneath him.
The heroin, fifty kilos of Dark Horse, is stacked neatly on tables.
Castillo sits calmly behind one of them, behind his dope like Midas counting his gold.
Malone gets up, pointing the Beretta at him.