The funeral is at Woodlawn Cemetery, in the Bronx. Malone had forgotten Torres was from up here. The place is huge, hundreds of acres, with enormous cedar and pine trees, full of ornate mausoleums. Malone has only been here once before, when Claudette dragged him out to lay flowers on Miles Davis’s grave.
Like all the other cops at the funeral, Malone is in full dress. His blue jacket, white gloves, a black band over his gold shield, his other medals. Malone doesn’t have a lot—he don’t like medals because you have to put yourself up for them, and that strikes him as pussy.
He knows what he’s done.
So does everyone who matters.
The funeral is a painful reminder of Billy’s.
The formation, the bagpipes, the gun salute, the color guard . . .
Except Billy didn’t have kids, and Torres does, two girls and a boy standing bravely beside their mother, and Malone feels an icy stab of guilt—you did this to them, you left them without a father.
The wives are there too, not just from Torres’s team but from the whole force. It’s expected, and they’re lined up in their black funeral dresses that they wear too often. Like crows on a phone line, Malone thinks unkindly, and he knows what they’re feeling, too—sad for Gloria Torres and guilty they’re relieved it’s not them.
Sheila’s lost a few pounds, no question.
She looks good.
Even looks a little tearful, although she despised Torres and hated when they had to socialize with him.
The mayor is saying a few words, but Malone don’t know what they are because he ain’t listening and what the fuck difference does it make? Most of the cops are making at least a subtle show of not paying attention because they hate his guts, think he’s betrayed them every chance he’s had and is going to do it again with the Michael Bennett shooting.
Hizzoner is smart enough to keep it short and turn it over to the commissioner, and Malone figures the only reason they don’t just gut each other right there and save everyone the trouble of coming out for another funeral is that they’re afraid of a standing ovation.
The cops do listen to the commissioner, who, although a total dick, does have their backs on the Bennett shooting and the rest of the brutality shit. Also, they’re afraid not to, because the chief of patrol and chief of D’s are watching and taking names. Mayors and PCs come and go, but those guys stay in their jobs forever.
Next comes the priest, another guy Malone don’t listen to. Hears the fuckin’ parasite say something about Torres being in heaven, which only shows he never knew Torres.
The Job had to jack the Church into doing a full funeral anyway and burying him in consecrated ground, seeing as how Torres was a suicide, which is a mortal sin, and he didn’t get Last Rites.
Fuckin’ clowns.
Do the right thing, see the man off in front of his family and let him go to hell. He was goin’ anyway, if there even is such a place. But the Job is a repeat customer and donates a lot of money, so the Church yielded, and Malone can’t help but observe that the priest is Asian.
The fuck, they couldn’t sober up an Irish priest long enough to do a cop funeral? Or a PR who wasn’t too busy diddling a little boy? They had to get some, what is he, Filipino, or whatever the fuck he is? He’d heard the Church was running out of white priests and now he guesses that’s true. The Flip pygmy finally shuts up, the bagpipes start in, and Malone thinks about Liam.
Him and all those other funerals back then.
Those goddamn bagpipes.
The music stops, the rifles crack, the folded flag is delivered, the formation breaks.
Malone walks over to Sheila. “Hell of a thing, huh?”
“It’s the kids I feel for.”
“They’ll be okay.”
Gloria is a good-looking woman, still young and attractive. Lustrous black hair, good figure, she’ll have no problem replacing Raf, she wants to.
And truth is, Gloria Torres might just have won the fucking lottery. She was about to divorce her husband when he canceled his reservation, and now she gets both his official and unofficial pensions.
Malone made sure Gloria got her fat envelope and that the system’s in place for monthly payments.
Torres will keep earning.
“What about the hookers?” Gallina had asked him.
“You’re out of the whore business.”
“Who the fuck are you to—”
“I’m the guy pulled IAB off your ass,” Malone said. “That’s who the fuck I am. Your team wants to go off the reservation, see what happens.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s reality, Jorge,” Malone said. “The reality is you’re not smart enough to handle your own shit. Those girls are on buses back to where they came from and that’s an end to it.”
Malone walks over to give his respects to Gloria Torres.
Assholes are too dumb to know what I did for them, Malone thinks. I got the feds and IAB locked into mutually assured destruction, I got the whispers about Torres silenced. With any luck, this thing gets buried with him and we all go back to living our lives.
Malone gets into the line to speak with the widow and when he gets up to her, he says, “I’m so sorry, Gloria, for your loss.”
He’s shocked when she whispers, “Get the fuck away from me.”
He just looks at her.
“Cancer, Denny?” she asks. “He had cancer?”
“I was protecting his reputation,” Malone says.
Gloria laughs. “Raf’s reputation?”
“For you, for the kids.”
“Don’t you talk about his kids.”
She stares at him, pure fucking hatred in her eyes.
“What—”
“It was you, you son of a bitch,” Gloria hisses.
Malone feels like he’s been hit in the face. Can’t believe he heard what he’s hearing. He forces himself to look at her.
She says, “Raffy told me.”
It was you.
Russo launches an overhand right at Ortiz and it connects.
Ortiz steps back, holding a hand up to his bloody mouth, but Russo isn’t through, he steps in about to follow with the left, but Malone hauls him off.
“You crazy?” Malone asks. “Here?”
With half the NYPD brass looking on?
“You hear what he said about you?” Russo asks, his face red and twisted in rage. “He called you a fucking rat!”
Russo tries to twist out of Malone’s hold, but now Monty has stepped in too, and walks them backward. Levin moves into the space between them and Gallina’s people. Monty keeps walking Russo back and away from the funeral, where cops are turning and staring.
“He called Malone a rat,” Russo says. “Says Torres told his wife.”
“If he did,” Monty says, “that’s Torres’s last gift of malevolence from the grave. Let the haters hate.”
Russo twists out of Malone’s grasp and holds his hands up. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”
He leans his hand on a headstone and catches his breath.
Levin comes over. “What’s going on?”
Russo shakes his head.
“Torres’s people are claiming that Malone was working with the feds,” Monty says, “and set him up.”
“That’s not true, is it?” Levin asks.
Malone lunges at him. “The fuck—”
Monty gets between them and grabs Malone. “We’re going to fight each other, too?”
“It’s bullshit!” Malone yells, almost believing himself.
“Of course it’s bullshit,” Monty says. “They put it out as a test, see how we’d react.”
“If it’s a test,” Levin says, “why say it was the feds, not IAB?”