“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 matter 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.