Malone puts the paper in his pocket. “I’ll take care of it.”
Now Chandler looks nervous, like he wants to say something but doesn’t know how to do it politely. Malone would help him out, but he don’t feel like it. Finally Chandler says, “Bill indicated that you could handle this without . . . getting carried away.”
Malone wants to make him say it. Like a wiseguy making a similar request. I want the guy whacked. I don’t want him whacked. I want him punished, taught a lesson . . .
If it took this loser getting murdered to stop that sex tape going out, he thinks, they’d want me to murder him. If not, they don’t want the extra hassle, never mind something on their conscience.
Fuck, I hate these people. But he takes Chandler off the hook. “I’ll be appropriate.”
They love that word.
“So we’re on the same page?” Chandler asks.
Malone nods.
“In regard to paying you for your time—”
Malone waves it off.
That ain’t how it works.
Russo picks him up on Seventy-Ninth Street.
“What did the mayor’s guy want?” Russo asks.
“A favor,” Malone says. “You got a little time?”
“For you, sweetheart . . .”
They drive up to Washington Heights, find the address in a shitty building on 176th between St. Nicholas and Audubon. Russo parks on the street, Malone sees a kid on the corner, walks over and slips him a twenty. “This car—all of it—is here when we get back, yeah?”
“You cops?”
“We’re undertakers if this car gets jacked.”
Havachek lives on the fourth floor.
“Why is it,” Russo asks as they go up the stairs, “mooks can never live on the first floor? Or in buildings that have elevators? I’m getting too old for this shit. The knees.”
“The knees go first,” Malone says.
“Thank Christ, huh?”
Malone knocks on Havachek’s door and hears, “Who is it?”
“You want a hundred grand, you don’t want a hundred grand?” Malone asks.
The door opens a chain’s width. Malone kicks it in the rest of the way.
Havachek’s tall, skinny, has a man bun and a nasty bruise already forming on his forehead where the door hit him. He’s wearing a dirty jersey sweater and black skinny jeans over a pair of Chelsea boots. He steps back, puts his hand to his forehead to feel for blood.
“Get undressed,” Malone says.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m the guy who just told you to get undressed,” Malone says. He pulls his gun out. “Don’t make me tell you again, Kyle, because you’re not going to like the alternate request.”
“You’re a porn star, right?” Russo asks. “So this shouldn’t be a problem for you. Now get your fucking clothes off.”
Kyle strips down to his shorts.
“Everything,” Russo says, sliding his belt from its loops.
“What are you going to do?” Kyle asks. His legs are quivering.
“You want to be a porn star,” Malone says. “You need to get used to this.”
“All in a day’s work,” Russo says.
Kyle steps out of his shorts, covers his genitals.
“Now is that any way for a porn star to act?” Russo asks. “Come on, stud, show us what you got.”
He gestures with his gun and Kyle puts his hands up.
“How does it feel?” Malone asks. “Naked in front of strangers. You think that’s how Lyndsey Anderson might feel? She’s a nice girl, not some ratchet you put in a porn film.”
“She put me up to it,” Kyle says. “Said it was a way to get money out of her folks.”
“That’s not going to happen, Kyle,” Malone says. “You upload it yet?”
“No.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“It’s the truth!”
“That’s good,” Malone says. “That’s a good answer for you.”
He grabs the laptop, sees they’re above an alley, and opens the window.
“It cost twelve hundred dollars!” Kyle yells.
“Something is going out this window,” Malone says. “You or your laptop. Choose.”
Havachek chooses the laptop. Malone shoves it out the window and watches it shatter on the concrete below. “Lyndsey was in on this?”
“Yes.”
“Smack him, tell him ‘bullshit.’”
Russo swings the belt on the back of Kyle’s thighs. “Bullshit.”
“No, she was,” Kyle says. “It was her idea.”
“Smack him again.”
Russo smacks him.
“I’m telling the truth!”
“I believe you,” Malone says. “You just deserve some smacks. You deserve a lot more than that, but I’m going to be appropriate.”
“He’s very appropriate,” Russo says.
“But I’ll tell you this, Kyle,” Malone says. “This tape shows up anywhere, or I hear you pull this stunt on or with any other girl, we’re going to come back and you’ll remember these slaps with a sense of nostalgia.”
“As the good old days,” Russo says.
“Now, when Lyndsey texts you asking what’s up,” Malone says, “you’re not going to answer. You’re not going to answer her phone calls, her Facebook messages, you’re not going to call her or contact her, you’re just going to disappear. And if you don’t . . .”
Malone points the gun at his forehead.
“You’re just going to disappear,” Malone says. “Move back to Jersey, Kyle. You don’t have what it takes to play the game in the city.”
“Whole different game,” Russo says.
Malone puts his hands on Kyle’s shoulders. Fatherly, coachlike. “Now I want you to sit here naked for an hour and think about what a sleazy douchebag you really are.” Then he brings his knee up—hard. Kyle goes down into a fetal position, groaning in pain, sucking for air. “We do not treat women that way. Even if they ask us to.”
As they walk back down the stairs, Malone asks, “Was I inappropriate?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Russo says.
The car is waiting for them when they get there.
Intact.
Malone calls Chandler. “That thing is taken care of.”
“We owe you,” Chandler says.
Yeah, you do, Malone thinks.
Claudette just wants to bust balls tonight and that’s all there is to it.
And when a woman—black, white, tan, aubergine, whatever, Malone thinks—wants to bust balls, balls are going to get busted.
Maybe it’s the news on TV—footage of the cops rounding up black kids, the protesters, what-the-fuck-ever. Maybe it’s the fact that the TV stations have cleverly blended the project raids into the Michael Bennett case and Cornelius Hampton is at his accustomed spot in front of the cameras saying, “There is no justice for young African American men. I guarantee you that if Sean Gillette was white, gunned down in broad daylight in the middle of a white neighborhood, the police would have a suspect in custody already. Just as I guarantee that if Michael Bennett was white, the case against his killer would have gone to a grand jury long before this.”
With exquisite timing, the DA just brought the Bennett case to the grand jury, and now it will take weeks, if not months, to return a decision. Couple that with the killings in the Nickel, the community is seething.
“Is he right?” Claudette asks.
They’re sitting in front of the TV, eating some Indian takeout he brought back—chicken tikka for her, lamb korma for him.
“About what?” Malone asks.