“Yeah, probably not.” With every cop over the grade of captain elbowing each other aside to kiss the pontiff’s ring or his ass, whichever was presented first.
Malone ain’t crazy about nuns, either.
“What about Mother Teresa?” Sheila asked him, when they were arguing about it. “She fed starving people.”
“If she passed out condoms,” Malone said, “she wouldn’t have had so many starving people to feed.”
Malone even hates The Sound of Music. It was the only movie he ever saw, he rooted for the Nazis.
“How could anyone hate The Sound of Music?” Monty asked him. “It’s nice.”
“What kind of shitty black man are you?” Malone asked him. “Listen to the fucking Sound of Music.”
“That’s right,” Monty said. “You listen to that rap shit.”
“What you got against rap?”
“It’s racist.”
It’s been Malone’s experience that no one hates rap and hip-hop more than black men above the age of forty. They just can’t stand the attitude, the pants hanging off their asses, the backward baseball caps, the jewelry. And most black men of that age aren’t going to let their women be called bitches.
That just ain’t gonna happen.
Malone’s seen it. Once, back before it fell apart, he and Sheila and Monty and Yolanda were on a double date, driving up Broadway on a warm night with the windows open, and this rapper on the corner of Ninety-Eighth saw Yolanda and yelled out, “You got one sweet bitch, brother!” Monty stopped the car in the middle of Broadway, got out, walked over and clocked the kid. Walked back to the car, didn’t say a word.
Nobody did.
Claudette, she doesn’t hate hip-hop, but she listens to mostly jazz and makes him go to the clubs with her when one of the musicians she likes is playing. Malone likes it okay, but what he really likes are the older rap and hip-hop guys—Biggie, Sugarhill Gang, N.W.A. and Tupac. Nelly and Eminem are all right, too; so is Dr. Dre.
Malone stands in his living room and realizes that he’s been spacing out, so the Dexedrine hasn’t kicked in yet.
He locks up and walks to the garage where they park his car.
Malone’s personal vehicle is a beautifully restored 1967 Chevy Camaro SS convertible, black with Z-28 stripes, 427-cubic-inch engine, four-speed manual transmission, tricked out with a new Bose sound system. He never takes it to the precinct, rarely even drives it in Manhattan. It’s his indulgence—he uses it to go to the Island or on joyrides to escape the city.
Now he takes the West Side Highway downtown and then crosses Manhattan near the 9/11 site. It’s been more than fifteen years and he still gets mad when he doesn’t see the Towers. It’s a hole in the skyline, a hole in his heart. Malone, he don’t hate Muslims but he sure as hell hates those jihadist cocksuckers.
Three hundred and forty-three firefighters died that day.
Thirty-seven Port Authority and New Jersey police officers.
Twenty-three cops ran into those buildings and didn’t come out.
Malone will never forget that day and wishes that he could. He was off-duty but responded to the Level-4 mobilization call. Him and Russo and two thousand other cops went, and he saw the second tower fall, not knowing at the moment that his brother was in it.
That endless day of searching and waiting and then the phone call that confirmed what he already knew in his gut—Liam wasn’t coming back. It was Malone had to go tell his mother and he’ll never forget the sound—the shrill scream of grief that came out of her mouth and still echoes in his ears in the gray hours when he can’t sleep.
The other gift that keeps on giving is the smell. Liam once told him that he could never get the smell of burning flesh out of his nose, and Malone never really believed him until 9/11. Then the whole city smelled like death and ash and scorched flesh and rot and rage and sorrow.
And Liam was right—Malone never has gotten the smell out of his nose.
He puts Kendrick Lamar on the sound system and blasts it as he goes through the Battery Tunnel.
The phone rings when he’s on the Verrazano Bridge.
It’s Mark Piccone. “You got a couple of minutes today for me?”
“It’s Christmas.”
“Five minutes,” Piccone says. “My new client wants to get this taken care of.”
“Fat Teddy?” Malone asks. “Shit, his trial won’t come up for months.”
“He’s nervous.”
“I’m headed for the Island,” Malone says.
“I’m already there,” Piccone says. “Big family thing, I thought I’d try to make my escape late afternoon.”
“I’ll call you.”
Malone comes off the bridge near Fort Wadsworth, where the New York marathon starts, gets off on Hylan and drives down through Dongan Hills, past Last Chance Pond, and then takes a left onto Hamden Avenue.
The old neighborhood.
Nothing special about it, just your basic East Shore block of nice single-family homes, mostly Irish or Italian, a lot of cops and firefighters.
A good place to raise kids.
The truth is he just couldn’t stand it anymore.
The incredible freakin’ boredom.
Couldn’t stand coming back from busts, the stakeouts, the roofs, the alleys, the chases to what, Hylan Plaza, Pathmark, Toys “R” Us, GameStop. He’d come home from a tour jacked up from speed, adrenaline, fear, anger, sadness, rage, and then go to someone’s cookie-cutter house to play Mexican Train or Monopoly or nickel poker. And they were nice people and he’d feel guilty sitting there sipping their wine coolers and making small talk when what he really wanted was to be back on the street in hot, smelly, noisy, dangerous, fun, interesting, stimulating, infuriating Harlem with the real people and the families and the hustlers, the slingers, the whores.
The poets, the artists, the dreamers.
He just loved the fuckin’ city, man.
Watching them ball at Rucker, or standing up on the terrace in Riverside Park watching the Cubans play baseball down below. Sometimes he’d go up to the Heights and Inwood to check out the Dominican scene—the domino games on the sidewalks, the reggaetón music blaring out of car stereos, the street merchants hacking coconuts open with machetes. Go into Kenny’s for a café con leche or stop at a street stand for the sweet bean soup.
It’s what he loves about New York—you want it, it’s there.
The sweet, fetid richness of this city. He never really got it until he left his Irish-Italian blue-collar, cop-fireman Staten Island ghetto and moved to the city. You hear five languages walking a single street, smell six cultures, hear seven kinds of music, see a hundred kinds of people, a thousand stories and it’s all New York.
New York’s the world.
Malone’s world, anyway.
He’ll never leave it.