He pauses to let that set in and for Russo and Montague to back him up with their eyes. Then he says, “Look, there are going to be citizens on your beats celebrating. Do not respond. They’re going to try to goad you into getting stupid, but do not do it. I don’t want to see any of you get jammed up with a brutality beef. Stay cool, remember faces, and we’ll settle with them later—you have my word on that.
“If IAB questions you, cooperate. Tell them the truth—that you don’t know anything. And that is the truth. Thinking you know something and actually knowing it are two very different things. You give rats any cheese, they just keep coming back. We keep our house clean, they go away. Questions.”
There aren’t any.
“All right,” Malone says. “We’re the freaking N-Y-P-D. Let’s go out and do our jobs.”
It’s the talk the captain should have given but he didn’t. Malone goes back upstairs and sees Gallina, Torres’s partner, standing by his desk.
“Let’s take a walk,” Malone says.
They go out the back to avoid the media.
“What the fuck happened?” Malone asks. If Torres talked to anyone, it was Jorge Gallina. Him and Torres were tight.
“I don’t know,” Gallina says. He’s clearly shaken, afraid. “He was quiet yesterday. Something was wrong.”
“But he didn’t say what?”
“He phoned me from his car,” Gallina says, “and just said he wanted to say good-bye. I asked him, you know, ‘What the fuck, Raf?,’ and he said, ‘Nothing,’ and hung up.”
Guy’s going to end his life, Malone thinks, and he calls his partner, not his wife, to say good-bye.
Cops.
“Did IAB have him up?” Malone asks, feeling like a fucking creep.
“No,” Gallina says. “We’d have known. What are we going to do now, Malone?”
“Shut it down,” Malone says. “I mean not as much as a fixed parking ticket. Stonewall IAB and keep our noses clean. The Rat Squad starts to paint Raf dirty, we’ll get the media all over them.”
“Okay,” Gallina says.
“Where’s Torres’s money?”
“All over the place,” Gallina says. “I have about a hundred in a fund.”
“Gloria know that?” Last thing you want is a widow worrying about money on top of everything else.
“Yeah, but I’ll remind her.”
“How’s she doing?”
“She’s a mess,” Gallina says. “I mean, she was talking divorce, but she still loves him.”
“Get to his gumars,” Malone says. “Lay some cash on them, tell them to shut their mouths. And for Chrissakes make sure they know that coming to the funeral is not a smart idea.”
“Okay. Good.”
“You need to chill out, Jorge,” Malone says. “The rats smell fear like sharks smell blood.”
“I know. What if they want me to take a polygraph?”
“You call your delegate, he tells them to go fuck themselves,” Malone says. “You’re in grief, you’re in shock, you’re in no condition for that.”
But Gallina is scared. “You think IAB was on him, Malone? Jesus, you don’t think Raf was wearing a wire?”
“Torres?” Malone asks. “No fucking way.”
“Then why did he do it?” Gallina asks.
Because I gave him up, Malone thinks. Because I dropped him in the jackpot, put the gun in his hand.
“Who the fuck knows?” Malone says.
He goes back into the house. McGivern is waiting for him.
“This is bad, Denny,” McGivern says.
No shit, this is bad, Malone thinks. Worse maybe than he thought, because Bill McGivern, an NYPD police inspector with more connections than an alderman, looks scared.
Old, all of a sudden.
His pale skin looks like paper, his white hair like the top of an aspirin bottle, the ruddiness of his cheeks now looks like just broken veins.
McGivern says, “If IAB had Torres—”
“They didn’t.”
“But what if they did?” McGivern asks. “What did he tell them? What did he know? Did he know about me?”
“I’m the only one who brought you envelopes,” Malone says. For all Manhattan North.
But shit yes, Torres knew.
Everyone knows how it works.
“Do you think Torres was wearing a wire?” McGivern asks.
“Even if he was, you have nothing to worry about,” Malone says. “You didn’t talk business with him, did you?”
“No, that’s right.”
“Has IAB called you in?” Malone asks.
“They don’t have the nerve,” McGivern says. “But if someone talks . . .”
“They won’t.”
“The Task Force is solid, Denny? Stand-up guys?”
“Totally,” Malone says. At least I fuckin’ hope so.
“I hear rumors,” McGivern says, “that it isn’t IAB, it’s the feds.”
“Which feds?”
“Southern District,” McGivern says. “That Spanish bitch. She has ambitions, Denny.”
McGivern makes it sound dirty. Ambitions, like she has crabs. Like being ambitious makes her a whore.
Malone hates the buchiach, too, but not for that.
“She wants to hurt the Job,” McGivern says. “We can’t let her do that.”
“We don’t even know it’s her,” Malone says.
McGivern ain’t listening. He says, “I’m two years away from pulling the pin. Jeannie and I have a cabin up in Vermont.”
And a condo on Sanibel Island, Malone thinks.
“I want to spend time in that cabin,” McGivern says. “Not behind bars. Jeannie isn’t well, you know.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“She needs me,” McGivern says. “Whatever time we have left . . . I’m counting on you, Denny. I’m counting on you to shut this down. Do what you have to do.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I trust you, Denny,” McGivern says, putting his hand on Malone’s shoulder. “You’re a good man.”
Yeah, Malone thinks, walking away.
I’m a king.
It’s going to be brutal, Malone thinks, to keep this tied down.
For one thing, the street is going to be talking. Every half-ass low-level dope slinger Torres ever ripped or beat on is going to come forward to tell the story now that they don’t have to be afraid of him.
Then the guys he put away are going to start to chirp from their cells. Hey, Torres was a dirty cop. He lied on the stand. I want a retrial, no, I want my conviction tossed out.
It comes out that Torres was dirty, it’s full-employment act for the criminal defense bar. Those assholes will reopen every case Torres ever touched; shit, that the whole Task Force ever touched.
And it could come out. It takes only one guy to break. Gallina’s already shaken. If he goes, he’s not only going to flip on his own team, but on everyone.
The dominos tumble.
We have to shut it down.
Not we, motherfucker. You.
You started the ball rolling.
Malone’s the last on his team to go talk with IAB.
His guys did what they needed to do and Russo told him, “They got nothing. They know shit.”
“Who is it?”
“Buliosi and Henderson.”
Henderson, Malone thinks. We finally catch a break.
He goes into the room.
“Have a seat, Sergeant Malone,” Buliosi says.
Lieutenant Richard Buliosi is a typical IAB prick. Maybe it’s the acne scars that made him a rat, Malone thinks, but the guy definitely has a beef with the world to work out.
Malone sits down.
“What can you tell us,” Buliosi asks, “about the apparent suicide of Sergeant Torres?”
“Not much,” Malone says. “I didn’t know him all that well.”
Buliosi looks at him with a show of incredulity. “You were in the same unit.”
“Torres mostly worked the Heights and Inwood,” Malone says. “My team is mostly in Harlem.”
“Hardly worlds apart.”