“This old gay guy,” Russo says. “Owned the whole brownstone, lived alone, had a heart attack in bed.”
Malone says, “I leave Russo there and go back to sit outside the White Horse. Brady comes out, he’s half in the bag, he tells me drive him over to the DOA’s house. He’s been out of the bar, what, five seconds, and he’s in the car hitting a flute—”
“What’s a flute?” Levin asks.
“A Coke bottle filled with booze,” Monty says.
“We drive by,” Malone says, “Russo’s standing on the stoop, freezing his balls off. Brady goes ape-shit, screaming at Phil, ‘I told you to stay with the body, asshole! You march your ass inside, upstairs and stay there, or I’ll write you up.’ Russo goes back in, we go back to the bar.
“I’m sitting out there, a call comes over the radio, a 10-10, shots fired, and I hear the address. It’s the same address as the DOA residence!”
“What the fuck,” Levin says, delighted.
“What I’m thinking,” Malone says. “I run into the bar, find Brady and say, ‘We got a problem.’ We go racing over there, run up the freakin’ stairs, and there’s Russo, with his gun drawn, the DOA is sitting bolt upright in the bed, and Phil here has put two rounds into his chest.”
Malone’s laughing so hard now he can barely get the words out. “What happened is . . . gas starts moving around inside the body . . . and they do weird things . . . this one sat straight up . . . scared Russo . . . so bad . . . he puts two in the guy’s chest . . .”
“I’m looking at the freaking undead!” Russo says. “The fuck am I supposed to do?!”
“So now we got a real problem,” Malone says, “because if that guy wasn’t dead, Russo has not only discharged his firearm, he’s looking at a homicide charge.”
“I’m scared shitless,” Russo says.
Monty’s shoulders are shaking as he chuckles, tears running down his cheeks.
Malone says, “Brady asks me, ‘You sure this guy was dead?’ ‘Pretty sure,’ I say. He says, ‘Pretty sure? What the fuck is that?!’ I say, ‘I dunno, he had no pulse.’ And he sure as shit didn’t have a pulse after Russo put two in his heart.”
“So what did you do?” Levin asks.
Malone says, “The duty ME is Brennan, the laziest fuck ever to occupy the position. I mean, they gave him the job so he couldn’t work on live people. He comes over, takes in the situation, looks at Russo and says, ‘You shot a dead guy?’
“Phil’s shaking. He says, ‘So the guy was dead?’ ‘You kidding me?’ Brennan says. ‘He croaked three hours before you shot him, but how the fuck am I going to explain two rounds in his chest?’”
Monty dabs at his cheek with his napkin.
“This is where, I have to say, Brady earns his stripes,” Malone says. “He says to Brennan, ‘That’s going to involve a lot of work on your part. Reports, an investigation, you might have to testify . . .’
“Brennan says, ‘How about we just call it even?’ The wagon comes, we bag the guy up, I deem it natural causes, Russo here gets new underwear.”
“Amazing,” Levin says.
Lou Savino and his party get up to leave. Savino nods to Malone, who nods back.
Fuck IAB.
If the mobsters don’t know who we are, don’t show us respect, we’re not doing our jobs.
The bill comes to over five bills, or would if they were charged.
The waitress, she delivers the check, it comes to zero. But she delivers a check in case they’re being watched. Malone lays a credit card down, she takes it back, he pretends to sign it.
They leave two hundred in cash on the table.
You never, ever stiff a server.
For one thing, it’s not right. For the other, once again, the word gets around that you’re cheap. What you want, you walk into a place, a server sees you and says, “Give me that party.”
That way you always get a table.
And if you’re not with your wife, no one is going to notice or remember.
You never stiff a server or take change for a twenty whether you’re at a bar or a bodega.
That’s for grass eaters, not Force detectives.
It’s just the cost of doing business.
You can’t deal with it, go back on patrol.
Malone calls for the car.
Bowling Night they always get a town car and a driver.
Because they know they’re going to get shit-faced and no one wants to blow their gig on a DUI if some rookie patrolman writes it up or calls it in before knowing what’s what.
Half the wiseguys in New York own car services because it’s easy to launder money through them, so they have no problem getting one comped. Of course the driver is going to tell his boss every place they went and what they did, but they don’t care. That’s as far as it’s going to go—no driver is ever going to rat them to IAB or even admit they were in his car. And who gives a shit some mobster knows they get drunk and laid—they know that already.
And the car service knows better than to send them some Russian or Ukrainian or Ethiopian—it’s always a goombah who knows the score, knows to keep his ears open and his mouth shut.
Tonight’s driver is Dominic, a fiftysomething mob “associate” who’s had them before and knows he’s going to get tipped out big, likes having guys in Armani, Boss and Abboud get in and out of his car. Is going to get right next to the curb so his clients’ Guccis, Ferragamos and Maglis don’t get wet. Gentlemen who treat his car with respect, aren’t going to puke in it, eat smelly fast food, fill it with dope smoke, get into fights with their women.
He drives them up to Madeleine’s on Ninety-Eighth and Riverside.
“We’re going to be a couple of hours at least,” Malone tells him, slipping him a fifty, “you want to get dinner.”
“Just call me,” Dominic says.
“What is this place?” Levin asks.
“You heard us talk about Madeleine’s,” Malone says. “This is Madeleine’s.”
“A brothel?”
“You could call it that,” Malone says.
“I don’t know,” Levin says. “Amy and I are, you know, exclusive.”
“You put a ring on her finger?” Russo asks.
“No.”
“So?” Russo says.
“Look, I think I’ll just go home,” Levin says.
“It’s called Bowling Night,” Monty says. “Not Bowling Dinner. You’re coming in.”
“Come upstairs,” Malone says. “And hang out. You don’t want to get laid, okay, you don’t want to get laid. But you’re coming with us.”
Madeleine owns the whole brownstone but is very discreet about what goes on in there so the neighbors don’t get their noses out of joint. Most of her business these days is off-location anyway; the house is just for small parties and special guests. She doesn’t do the old “lineup” anymore; the men preselect online.
She greets Malone personally at the door with a kiss on the cheek.
They came up together; she was still taking dates when he was in uniform. She was walking home through Straus Park one night, some asshole decided to hassle her and this uniformed cop shall we say, “intervened,” brought his nightstick down on the jerk’s head and then gave him a few shots to the kidneys to emphasize his point.
“Do you want to press charges?” Malone asked her.