“We have an understanding,” O’Dell says.
“If I give you one or two others,” Malone says, “I have your sacred word—on the eyes of your children—you don’t hurt my partners.”
“You have my word,” O’Dell says.
How do you cross the line?
Step by step.
Chapter 16
Fat Teddy is on the move.
Fast as Fat Teddy can move, anyway.
From across Broadway, in the liquor delivery truck, Malone watches him come down from the nail shop and hit the street and he’s still on the phone.
“It’s on,” Levin says, looking at his iPad screen.
Teddy has used three phones to call the same Georgia cell phone and now he’s walking downtown on Broadway.
“He just dialed a 212,” Levin says.
“That’s him telling Carter it’s going,” says Monty.
“Where do you want to take him?” Russo asks.
“Wait,” Malone says.
They stay parallel as Teddy crosses 158th. Then he turns right onto 157th and right again up Edward Morgan Place.
“If he’s going into Kennedy’s Chicken,” Monty says, “it’s too much of a stereotype for me.”
They turn behind him.
“Did he make us?” Russo asks.
“No,” Malone says. “Too much on his mind.”
“That’s his car,” Russo says. “Outside the coffee shop.”
“Let’s do it.” He dials Nasty Ass. “Do your thing.”
Nasty hadn’t wanted to be involved in this at all. Flat-ass balked at it. “Man, I could’ve got caught last time. I don’t want to have to go back to Baltimore again.”
“You won’t.”
Nasty tried another. “Ain’t Carter protected by Torres?”
Yeah, that’s the fucking idea, Nasty.
“You run the Task Force now?” Malone asked. “They replaced Sykes with an Ichabod Crane–looking black junkie motherfucker, no one sent me the memo? I’ll decide where I work, asshole.”
“I’m just sayin’ . . .”
“Don’t be sayin’ anything except you gonna do what I ask you to do.”
So now Nasty’s out on the street and he calls 911. “I see a man with a gun.”
Gives the address.
It hits the radio and Russo answers it. “Manhattan North Unit there. We got it.”
They jump out of the truck, walk up behind Teddy and mug him just before he gets to his car.
Teddy ain’t joking around this time, he got no mouth to give.
This is serious business.
Monty puts him against the car.
Levin takes his phone.
Malone says to Teddy, “I swear to God, one fuckin’ word . . .”
They hustle him back into the truck.
“You have some shitkicker friends coming up from the South?” Malone asks him.
Teddy doesn’t say anything.
Monty climbs into the truck with a briefcase. “Look what I found.”
He opens the case. Stacks of hundreds, fifties, twenties. “Save me the trouble, Teddy. How much?”
“Sixty-five,” Teddy says.
Malone laughs. “Did you tell Carter sixty-five? What’s the real number?”
“Fifty, motherfucker.”
Russo takes fifteen out of the case. “It’s a sad, corrupt world.”
“Have you ever met Mantell,” Malone asks, “or just talked to him over the phone?”
“Why you wanna know?”
“Here’s how it’s going to go,” Malone says. He holds up a sheaf of papers, the CI file he placed for Teddy. “Either you become my CI right now, or this paperwork gets leaked to Raf Torres, who sells it to Carter.”
“You’d do that to me, Malone?”
“Oh hell yes,” Malone says. “I’m doing it to you now, dumbfuck. Now what are you gonna do, because I don’t want your cracker friends getting hinky.”
“I ain’t never met Mantell.”
“Sign here, here and here,” Malone says, offering him a pen.
Teddy signs.
“Where were you going to make the exchange?” Malone asks.
“Up by Highbridge Park.”
“The crackers know that?”
“Not yet.”
Teddy’s phone rings.
Levin looks at Malone. “Georgia.”
“You have a shutdown code?” Malone asks.
“No.”
Malone gestures to Levin, who holds the phone up to Teddy.
“Where are you?” Teddy asks.
“Harlem River Drive. Where am I going?”
Teddy looks to Malone, who holds up a pad.
“Dyckman east of Broadway,” Teddy says. “There’s a car service garage on the uptown side. Pull into the alley.”
“You got our money?”
“The fuck you think?” Teddy asks.
Levin clicks off.
“Very good, Teddy,” Malone says. “Now call Carter, tell him everything is copacetic.”
“What?”
“Good,” Monty says.
Teddy dials as Malone holds the CI statement up to remind him of the stakes.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Teddy says into the phone. “S’all good. . . . Twenty minutes, half hour maybe. . . . All right.”
He clicks off.
“An Oscar-winning performance,” says Russo.
“You got boys waiting at Highbridge Park?” Malone asks.
“What you think?”
“So you’re gonna drive your fat ass up there,” Malone says. “You’re gonna wait for these hillbillies, except they’re not going to show up.”
“You don’t need me to make the buy?”
“Nah,” Malone says. “We have our own fat black man. I can hear you thinking, Teddy, so you think about this—if your new white friends don’t show up at Dyckman, I file your paperwork with Carter.”
“What I tell him?”
“Tell him to watch the news,” Malone says. “And then tell him he shouldn’t be doing business on my turf.”
Teddy gets out of the truck.
Russo cuts up Teddy’s $15K, hands Levin his share.
Levin puts his hand up. “You guys do what you want. I didn’t see anything. It’s just . . . I don’t do that.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Russo says. “You’re either in or you’re out.”
“If you don’t take it,” Montague says, “we don’t know that we can trust you to keep your mouth shut.”
“I’m not a rat,” Levin says.
Malone feels a twinge in his gut.
“No one said you were,” Montague says. “It’s just that you got to have skin in the game, you feel me?”
“Take the money,” Russo says.
“Give it to charity if you want,” Montague says. “Drop it in the poor box.”
“Send it to St. Jude’s,” Malone says.
“Is that what you do?” Levin asks.
“Sometimes.”
Levin asks, “What happens if I don’t take the money?”
Russo grabs him by the shirt. “You with IAB, Levin? You a ‘field associate’?”
“Get your hands off me.”
Russo does, but he says, “Take your shirt off.”
“What?”
“Take your shirt off,” Montague says.
Levin looks to Malone.
Malone nods.
“Jesus Christ.” Levin unbuttons his shirt, opens it for them. “Happy now?”
“Maybe it’s under his balls,” Russo says. “Remember Leuci?”
“If you have anything under your balls but your taint,” Montague says, “you’d better tell us now.”
“Peel them,” Malone says.
Levin shakes his head, unbuckles his belt and slides his jeans down to his knees. “Would you like to look up my asshole, too?”
“Would you like us to?” Russo asks.
Levin pulls his jeans back up. “This is demeaning.”
“Nothing personal,” Malone says. “But you don’t take money, we have to wonder what you’re about.”
“I just want to be a cop.”
“Be one, then,” Malone says. “You just fined DeVon Carter three grand.”