“No, you don’t,” Malone says. “And you won’t for a while. Then, if you’re as smart as Sykes says, you’ll get it.”
The question is, whose spy are you? Sykes’s? IAB’s? One of their own people or a “field associate,” a cop they use?
Are you wearing a wire?
Is this about Pena?
“What made you want to transfer to the Task Force?” Malone asks.
“It’s where the action is,” Levin says.
“Plenty of action in the Seven-Six.” Busiest precinct in the city. Leading the league in shootings and robberies. And heavy with gangs—the Eight Trey Crips, Folk Nation, the Bully Gang. What more action does the kid want?
“Well, ‘be careful what you wish for.’ Sometimes boring is good,” Malone says. Then he asks, “Married? Kids?”
“I have a girlfriend. We’re, you know, exclusive.”
Yeah, we’ll see how long that lasts, Malone thinks. Da Force ain’t exactly Promise Keepers. “This girl have a name?”
“Amy.”
“Nice.”
Good luck, Amy, Malone thinks.
Unless Dave here is IAB, then he keeps his dick as clean as his nose. Something to watch for. You can’t trust a guy won’t drink with you, do a little blow or a little weed, won’t get laid on the side. That guy don’t want to have to explain that shit to his bosses.
“So, Sykes, he’s your hook?” Malone asks.
“I don’t know if I’d say that.”
“Well, Manhattan North is a hook house,” Malone says. “The Task Force is a plum assignment. You got what, an uncle at One P?”
“I think Captain Sykes appreciated my work in the Seven-Six,” Levin says. “But if you’re asking if I’m his boy, I’m not.”
“Does he know that?”
Levin bristles a little. The puppy has some teeth, Malone thinks.
“Yeah, I think he knows that,” Levin says. “Why? Do you and he have some kind of a beef?”
“Let’s just say we see things different.”
“He’s by the book,” Levin says.
“He is that.”
Levin says. “Look, I know you aren’t thrilled to have a new guy, and I know I can’t replace Billy O’Neill. I just want you to know I appreciate it and I won’t get under your feet.”
You’re already under my feet, Malone thought. Or up my ass.
The elevator stinks of urine.
Levin gags.
“They use them for toilets,” Malone says.
“Why don’t they use the toilets?”
“Most of them are broken,” Malone says. “Plumbing gets ripped out and sold. We’re lucky it’s just piss today.”
They get out on four and walk into Leonora’s apartment. The Crime Scene guys are in there now, doing their thing, although the case is obvious.
“This is Dave Levin,” Malone said. “He’s coming on the team.”
Russo looks at Levin like he’s inspecting produce at the supermarket. “Phil Russo.”
“Nice to meet you.”
Montague looks up from where he’s straightening his argyle socks. “Bill Montague.”
“Dave Levin.”
“He came over from the Seven-Six,” Malone says.
Now they’re thinking the same thing he is—even if Levin isn’t Sykes’s spy, the last thing they need is a newbie, someone they don’t know they can trust to have their backs.
“Let’s go work the streets,” Malone says.
The street is always good.
It’s where Malone feels at home, in charge, in control of himself and his environment.
No matter what the problem is, the answer is always in the street.
Russo turns left off Frederick Douglass onto 129th, through the center of the project, then pulls over by a large three-story building.
“This is the HCZ,” Malone tells Levin. “The Harlem Children’s Zone, a charter school. There’s not too much slinging around here because the boys don’t want the extra sentencing for trafficking in a school zone.”
Drug slinging has become largely an indoor trade because it’s safer out of the eyes of the cops and it’s just easier to phone or text your dealer and go to an apartment in one of the buildings or into the stairwells and make the buy. And it’s virtually impossible for the cops to make a raid in the buildings because the slingers post kids as lookouts who warn them and they’ve scattered before you can even get through the door.
They drive east to the end of the block and Salem Methodist Church, then turn north on Seventh toward the St. Nick’s playground.
“Two playgrounds in the project,” Malone says, “North and South. This is North. Heavy betting on the b-ball games, the losers have been known to shoot instead of pay. What are you doing?”
“Taking notes.”
“This look like college to you?” Malone asks. “You see coeds, Frisbees, man buns? You don’t take notes, you don’t write anything down. Only thing you ever write are your 5s. Notes you take on duty are discoverable. Some defense attorney shithead will deliberately misinterpret them and ram them up your ass on the stand.”
“I get it.”
“Keep everything in your head, College,” Russo says.
A couple of Spades shooting hoops see the car and start to hoot. “Malone! Hey, Malone!”
Whistles pierce the air as the lookouts warn the slingers. Bangers disappear behind buildings. Malone waves to the kids on the court. “We’ll be back!”
“When you do, Malone, bring your wife some clean panties! The ones she got on stink!”
Malone laughs. “Lend her a pair of yours, Andre! Those red silk ones I like!”
It gets more hoots and hollers.
“Oh No Henry” is walking along the sidewalk with that guilty but ecstatic “I just scored” look on his face.
Oh No Henry got his tag the first time they popped him, what, going on three years now. They put him against a wall and asked if he was carrying heroin.
“Oh, no,” Henry said with shocked innocence.
“You shoot smack?” Malone asked.
“Oh, no.”
Then Monty found the envelope of smack in his pants pocket, with fixings, and Henry just said, “Oh, no.”
Monty told the story in the locker room that night and the name stuck.
Now Malone waits until Oh No Henry turns into an alley where he’s going to cook up and lay out. He, Russo and Levin go in behind him, Henry turns and sees them and says, with wonderful predictability, “Oh, no.”
“Henry, don’t you run on me,” Malone says.
“Don’t you run, Henry,” says Russo.
They grab him up and quickly find the smack.
“Don’t say it, Henry,” Malone says. “I’m begging you, don’t say it.”
Henry doesn’t know what he means. He’s a skinny white guy in his late twenties but he could easily pass for fifty. He wears a denim jacket that used to be wool-lined, jeans and sneakers, and his hair is long and filthy.
“Henry, Henry, Henry,” Russo says.
“That’s not mine.”
“Well, it’s not mine,” Malone says. “And I don’t think it’s Phil’s. But let me ask him. Phil, is this your heroin?”
“No, it is not.”
“No, it is not,” Malone says. “So if it’s not mine and it’s not Phil’s, it must be yours, Henry. Unless you’re calling us liars. You’re not calling us liars, are you?”
“Give me a break, Malone,” Henry says.
“You want a break,” Malone says, “give me a break. You hear anything about that shooting in St. Nick’s?”
“What did you want me to hear?”