“We’ll see, honey.”
“‘We’ll see’ means no,” Caitlin says, giving her mother a sharp look.
“Don’t you guys have presents for us?” Sheila says.
The excitement deflects them and they hustle to get their gifts from under the tree. John gives Malone a New York Rangers knit cap, Caitlin has a coffee mug she decorated in art class.
“This goes on my desk,” Malone says. “And this goes on my head. I love them, guys, thanks. Oh, and this is for you.”
He hands Sheila a box.
“I didn’t get you anything,” she says.
“Good.”
“Macy’s.” She holds up the scarf for the kids to see. “This is beautiful. And it will keep my neck so warm. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Then it gets awkward. He knows she needs to start the kids getting dressed to go over to her family’s, the kids know it too. But they also know that if they move, he’ll leave and the family will be broken again, so they sit still as statues.
Malone looks at his watch. “Oh, wow. I can’t keep the bad guys waiting.”
“That’s funny, Daddy,” Caitlin says.
Except her eyes are all teary.
Malone gets up. “You guys be good for Mom, okay?”
“We will,” John says, already adopting the role of the man of the family.
Malone pulls both of them to his legs. “I love you.”
“Love you, too.” Sadly. In chorus.
He and Sheila don’t hug because they don’t want to give the kids false hope.
Malone goes out the door thinking that Christmas was invented to torture divorced parents and their children.
Fuck Christmas.
It’s way too early to show up at Russo’s, so Malone drives out to the shore.
He wants to time his arrival for after dinner to avoid the death-by-pasta ordeal that Donna is planning. The idea is to get there just for the cannoli and the pumpkin pie and some laced coffee.
Malone parks in a lot across the road from the beach and sits in the car with the motor running and the heat on. He’s tempted to go for a walk but it’s too cold out.
Taking a pint bottle out of the glove compartment, he sips on it. Malone is a heavy drinker but nowhere near being an alcoholic and normally wouldn’t drink this early except the whiskey warms him up.
Maybe I would be an alkie, Malone thinks, except I have too big an ego to be a stereotype.
The alcoholic divorced Irish cop.
Who was it, yeah, Jerry McNab, drove out here one Christmas afternoon and put the gun under his chin. His off-duty weapon. Alcoholic divorced Irish cop blows his own brains out.
Another stereotype.
The guys from the One-Oh-One made sure it went down he was cleaning his gun so there’d be no problem with the insurance or the pension and the claims guy knew better than to fuck with them so he pretended to believe a guy was cleaning his gun at the beach on Christmas.
Except McNab, he was scared of going to jail, doing time. They had him, too, dead to rights, on video taking money from a crack dealer in Brooklyn. They were going to take his shield, his gun, his pension, put him behind bars, and he couldn’t face it. Couldn’t face the shame his family would go through, his ex-wife and kids seeing him in handcuffs, so he ate the gun.
Russo had a different interpretation. They were discussing it in the car one night, killing time on a surveillance, and Russo said, “You stunatzes got it all wrong. He did it to save his pension, for his family.”
“Didn’t he put anything away?” Malone asked.
“He was in a sector car,” Russo said. “He couldn’t have been making that much, even in the Seven-Five. He dies in an accident, his family keeps the pension and the benefits. McNab did the right thing.”
Except he didn’t save, Malone thinks.
Malone does.
He has cash stowed away, investments, bank accounts where the feds can never lay their paws on it.
And he has another account, over on Pleasant Avenue with the guineas, what’s left of the old Cimino family crew in East Harlem. Those guys are better than banks. They won’t rob you or throw your money away on bad mortgage loans.
I’ll take an honest mobster over those Wall Street cocksuckers any day, Malone thinks. What the general public doesn’t get—they think the Mafia are crooks? The guineas only wish they could steal like the hedge fund guys, the politicians, the judges, the lawyers.
And Congress?
Forget about it.
A cop takes a ham sandwich to look the other way, he loses his job. Congressman Butthole takes a few million from a defense contractor for his vote, he’s a patriot. The next time a politician blows his brains out to save his pension will be the first time.
And I’ll pop a champagne bottle, Malone thinks.
But I ain’t going the way of Jerry McNab.
Malone, he knows he’s not the suicide type.
I’m going to make them shoot me, he thinks, looking out at the dune grass and the weathered hurricane fence. Hurricane Sandy did a number on Staten Island. Malone made sure to be home that night, sat with Sheila and the kids in the basement and played Go Fish. Went out the next day and did what he could to help.
They nail me, I’ll do my time and fuck you and your pension.
I can take care of my family.
Sheila don’t even have to go up to Pleasant Avenue, they’ll come to her. A fat envelope every month.
They will do the right thing.
Because they’re not in Congress.
He gets on the phone and calls Claudette.
“You up?” he asks when she answers.
“Just,” she says. “Thank you for my earrings, baby. They’re beautiful. I have something for you.”
“You gave me my present last night.”
“That was for us,” she says. “I have the four to midnight. You want to come through after?”
“I do. You going to your sister’s today, right?”
“I can’t think of a way out of it,” Claudette says. “It will be nice to see the children, though.”
He’s glad she’s going, he worries about her being alone.
The last time she used, he gave her a choice—you get into a car with me and I take you to rehab or I put you in bracelets and you can detox in Rikers. She was furious at him but got in the car and he drove her up to the Berkshires in Connecticut, this place his West Side doctor found for him.
Sixty grand for the rehab, but it was worth it.
She’s been clean since.
“I’d like to meet your family sometime,” he says now.
She laughs softly. “I’m not sure we’re ready for that, baby.”
Which is code for she’s not ready to bring a white cop home to her family in Harlem. Be about as welcome as a Klan member at a black home in Mississippi.
“Sometime, though,” Malone says.
“We’ll see. I need to hop in the shower.”
“Hop,” he says. “I’ll see you later.”
He pulls the Rangers cap over his head, zips up his jacket and shuts the motor off. The car will stay warm for a few minutes. He sits back and closes his eyes, knows the Dexedrine won’t let him drop off, but his eyes are sore.