“Here’s the funny thing,” Rubenstein says. “People in ‘the community’ were talking to me about Torres, and then they stopped. They don’t return my calls, they walk away from me. It’s almost like someone put some pressure on them.”
“You guys are fuckin’ unbelievable,” Malone says. “I just gave you the real reason Torres took Exit 38, but you want to get on the grassy knoll anyway. I guess it makes a better story, huh?”
“The truth makes the best story, Sergeant.”
“And now you have it.”
“Did your bosses send you?”
“You see me on a bicycle?” Malone says. “I came here on my own to protect a brother officer’s reputation.”
“And the Task Force’s.”
“Yeah, that too.”
“Why’d you come to me?” Rubenstein asks. “The Post will usually whore for the department.”
“I read your heroin articles,” Malone says. “They were good, you got it right. And you’re the fuckin’ Times.”
Rubenstein thinks for a few seconds and then says, “What if I write that a confidential but reliable source revealed that Torres was suffering from a painful and terminal illness.”
“You’d have my gratitude.”
“What does that get me?”
Malone gets up. “I don’t fuck on the first date. Dinner, maybe a movie, we’ll see what happens.”
“You have my number.”
Yeah, I do, Malone thinks, walking out onto the street.
I got your number.
He meets Russo and Monty at the co-op.
Where they usually go to relax, chill out, but nothing’s chill in there now. The air is close and tight, and Russo and Monty, two tough sons of bitches, are rattled. Russo doesn’t have that smile on his face, Monty looks positively grim, the cigar in his mouth cold and out.
And Levin’s not even there.
“Where’s the newbie?” Malone asks.
“He went home,” Russo says.
“He okay?”
“He’s shook, but he’s okay,” Russo says. He gets up from the sofa and paces around the room. Looks out the window and then back to Malone. “Jesus Christ. You think Torres gave us up?”
“If he did, we’d be in cuffs already,” Monty says. “Raf Torres was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a rat.”
It goes into Malone like a blade.
Because Big Monty’s right. Raf Torres was a drug slinger, a whoremonger and a woman beater, Malone thinks, but he wasn’t me. He wasn’t a rat and he didn’t look his partners in the eye and lie to them, like I’m about to do.
“Still, the fucking heat’s coming down,” Russo says.
“It wasn’t IAB,” Malone says, feeling like shit. “At least not as far as Henderson knows. He’s moving to shut them down on it. It’s going to cost us a hundred K from the slush fund.”
“The cost of doing business,” Monty says.
“So it’s who, the feds?” Russo asks.
“We don’t know,” Malone says. “Could be nobody. For all we know, Torres just got tired of being a worthless piece of shit and put an end to it. I put out a cover story he was sick.”
A silence as Monty and Russo look at each other. They’d been talking to each other before he got there, and Malone wants to know what they have on their minds. Fuck, are they wondering about me?
“What?” Malone asks, his fucking heart stopped.
Russo starts, “Denny, we’ve been talking . . .”
“Jesus Christ, just say it,” Malone says. “You got something on your mind, let it come out your fucking mouth.”
Russo says, “We think it’s time to move the Pena smack.”
“Now?” Malone asks. “With all this heat?”
“Because of all this heat,” Russo says. “What if we need to take off, or money for lawyers? If we wait, we might be in a situation we can’t lay it off.”
Malone looks to Monty. “Where are you with this?”
Monty rolls his cigar, carefully lighting it. “I’m just not getting any younger, and Yolanda’s been on me to spend more time with the family.”
“You talking about leaving Da Force?” Malone asks.
“The Job,” Monty says. “I have my twenty coming up in a few months. I’m not so sure I don’t want to finish out at some desk in the outer boroughs, pull the pin, take my pension and move the family to North Carolina.”
“If that’s what you want to do, Monty,” Malone says, “you should do it.”
“North Carolina,” Russo says. “You don’t want to stay in the city?”
“The boys,” Monty says, “especially the two older ones, are getting to that mouthy age. They don’t want to do what they’re told, they want to talk back. The truth of it is, I don’t want them talking smack to the wrong cop and getting shot.”
“The fuck, Monty?” Russo says.
So this is what it’s come to, Malone thinks—a black cop is afraid another cop is going to shoot his kid.
“It’s not something the two of you have to think about,” Monty says. “Your kids are white, but it’s something Yo and I have to think about. Scares her half to death; if it isn’t a cop, it’s some banger.”
“Black kids get shot in the South,” Malone says.
“Not like up here,” Monty says. “Do you think I want to leave? Shit, I don’t even like getting a meal outside of New York. But Yo has family down near Durham, there are good schools, I can get a good position at one of the colleges . . . Look, we’ve had a good run. But everything comes to an end. Maybe this whole Torres thing is trying to tell us to walk away with the house money. So, yes, I think I want to cash out.”
“Yeah, okay,” Malone says. “I’m thinking Savino. He’ll take it up to New England somewhere. Keep it off our turf.”
Russo says, “So we’ll meet with him.”
“Not us,” Malone says. “Me.”
“The fuck?”
So if it comes to it, I can swear into a polygraph you weren’t there, Malone thinks. “The fewer of us the better.”
“He’s right,” Monty says.
“All right, let’s get Raf in the dirt, and then I’ll set it up,” Malone says. “In the meantime, let’s all chill, let this blow over.”
Chapter 20
Detective Sergeant Rafael Torres receives an inspector’s funeral.
The Job’s way of letting the world know it has nothing to hide, Malone thinks, nothing to be ashamed of.
The Times helped.
Rubenstein’s article was “wood”—a top-of-the-fold front-page story with his sole byline under hero cop succumbs.
And artistic, Malone thinks.
“No one really knows why Rafael Torres did what he did. Whether it was accidental or intentional, whether it was the terminal agonizing illness or the decades of waging the interminable war on drugs. All we know is that he pulled the trigger on a life full of pain . . .”
Well, that much is true. Torres did inflict a lot of pain.
His wife, his family, his whores, his gumars, his arrestees, pretty much anyone he ever came into contact with. Yeah, maybe himself, although Malone doubts it. Raf Torres was a sociopath, incapable of feeling anyone else’s pain.
But he did pull the trigger, Malone thinks.
You have to give him credit for that.