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 Billy 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.
“I thought you’d be Carter,” Castillo says to him.
Malone shakes his head. “You killed one of my brothers. Another one is brain dead.”
“It’s a dangerous game that we play,” Castillo says. “We all know the risks. So what are we going to do here?”
Castillo smiles.
Satan’s smile on meeting Faust.
A quick look tells Malone that the Dark Horse is all there. They were just cutting it to put it out on the streets.
His streets.
Last time he stood in this spot he made the worst mistake of his life. Now he says, “You’re under arrest. You have the right to—”
Malone hears the two pops.
They drive him forward like punches and he falls face-first but rolls before he hits and looks up to see Tenelli.
His finger squeezes the trigger and keeps squeezing.
The four shots hit her low to high, running up from her groin to her stomach, her chest and then her neck.
Her black hair whips her face.
She swats at the wound on her neck like it’s a mosquito.
Then sits down on the floor and looks at Malone with this funny little smile like she’s surprised she’s dying, like she can’t believe she’s stupid enough to let herself get killed.
A croak comes deep from her chest and her eyes pop and she’s gone.
Malone pushes himself up.
The pain is awful.
He hollers and then spews vomit. Hunches over, pukes again and then looks down and sees blood coming out from the exit wound below his vest. He touches the wound and blood seeps through his fingers, making them red, hot and sticky.
Malone aims the gun at Castillo’s head and pulls the trigger.
Hears the metallic click and knows it’s empty.
Castillo laughs. Gets up from his chair and walks over. Puts his hand on Malone’s chest and pushes him down.
It doesn’t take much.
Malone’s on all fours.
Like an animal.
A wounded animal that needs to be put down.
Castillo pulls a pistol from his jacket.
A slick little Taurus PT22.
Small, but it will do.
He puts the barrel against Malone’s head. “Por Diego.”
Malone don’t say nothing. He pulls the SOG knife from his ankle, raises up and stabs behind him.
The pistol goes off with a deafening roar but Malone is still alive in a world of red light and red pain as he gets up, turns, and slashes the knife up through Castillo’s leg, severing the femoral artery.
He looks into Castillo’s face, pulls the knife out and then plunges it into his stomach and rips up.
Castillo’s mouth opens wide.
An inhuman sound comes out.
Malone pulls the knife out and lets Castillo fall.
His blood smears Malone’s chest.
Malone staggers to the table and starts loading the bricks of heroin into duffel bags.
Chapter 39
This one time Malone took the family to the White Mountains in New Hampshire on the kids’ spring break. They rented a little cabin in a canyon by a river and one morning he got up early and ran some water out of the tap so cold it almost hurt to drink, but it tasted so good and so clean he couldn’t stop.
That was a good trip, a good vacation.
Now bachata music comes from a boom box somewhere as Malone comes out of the building onto the street.
Helicopter rotors chop the air.
Malone hurts and he’s thirsty as he hefts the bags, walking—shuffling—west on 176th onto Haven. Blood follows him like a guilty secret as he crosses the street and staggers onto Riverside, then across, then into some trees and trips over a root and falls.
It would be nice to just lie there, just lie there and go to sleep warm and drowsy in the grass, but the pain stabs him anyway and he can’t stay there—he has somewhere to go—so he struggles to his feet and keeps walking.
John, he caught a trout from the river and when Malone put it on a tree stump and started to clean it, John, he started to cry when he saw the guts come out and he cried because he was sorry he killed the fish.
Malone walks onto the Henry Hudson.
A car blasts its horn and swerves around him. A yell comes out the window, “Fucking drunk!”
Malone crosses the northbound lane, then the south and then he’s in trees again and then he comes to some basketball courts, empty now in the early morning and even though he can see the river he leans against a post to rest and steady himself as he bends over and throws up again.
Then he starts again and comes to more trees and uses them to hold himself up until he makes it to some rocks by the edge of the river.
He sits down.
Unzips the duffel bags and starts taking out the bricks of heroin.
Billy O looks up and smiles at him.
“We’re rich.”
Then the dog snaps at the end of its chain.