Can’t blame them.
Malone watches them walk toward him at the middle of the diamonds. Knows they’ll be heavy, too.
It’s more like some shoot-out in an old western, Malone thinks, than freakin’ barons and kings. The two sides—fuck, we’re sides now—step up to each other.
“I’m patting you down,” Gallina says to Malone.
“Why don’t we all get naked?” Malone asks.
“Because we’re not rats.”
“Neither am I.”
“That’s not what we heard,” says Tenelli.
“The fuck did you hear?” Russo asks.
“Let’s make sure we’re not making a recording first,” Gallina says.
Malone stretches his arms out. It’s humiliating, but he lets Gallina pat him down for a wire.
“Now the rest of your team,” Gallina says.
“Everyone pats each other down,” Malone says. “We don’t know it ain’t one of you.”
It looks ridiculous, cops frisking each other, but they get it done.
“Okay,” Malone says, “can we talk now?”
“Haven’t you talked enough already?” Tenelli asks.
“I don’t know what Gloria told you,” Malone says, “but I didn’t give Torres up.”
“She said the feds played Torres a recording of him and you,” Gallina says. “He wasn’t wired, so it had to be you.”
“Bullshit,” Malone says. “They could have had a listening device from a parked car, or a rooftop, anywhere.”
“Then why haven’t they come for you?” Gallina asks.
“Or have they?” asks Tenelli.
“No.”
“Why is that?” Tenelli asks.
“They will,” Gallina says. “And then what are you going to do?”
“Tell them to go fuck themselves,” Malone says. “They don’t have shit on anyone else here, and they won’t.”
“Unless you give it up,” Gallina says.
“I won’t hurt a brother officer.”
Tenelli asks, “How do we know you haven’t already?”
“I’ve never hit a woman,” Malone says, “but you’re pushing me to it.”
“Come on.”
Gallina stops it again. “What’s that going to prove? If it wasn’t you, Malone, how did the feds get on us in the first place?”
“I don’t know,” Malone says. “You assholes were on Carter’s pad—maybe he flipped. You were running hookers, maybe that brought them on us.”
“What about the newbie, Levin?” Ortiz asks.
“What about him?”
“Maybe he’s the rat,” Ortiz says. “Maybe he’s working with the feds?”
“Get the fuck out of my face.”
“Or what?”
“I’ll get you out of my face.”
Ortiz backs off. “What now?”
“We stay clean,” Malone says.
“What about the Carter pad?”
“I’ll deal with Carter from now on.”
Tenelli says, “First you get Torres killed, then you take food off our tables?”
“Listen to me,” Malone says. “Raf put me in the jackpot, not the other way around, but I will deal with it. If I have to fall on the sword, I will. But we can all walk away with this if we’re smart. We have IAB in our pocket, they can’t hurt us without blowing themselves up. The Job has had too much bad publicity already, they’ll let this lie if nothing else comes up.”
“What about the feds?” Gallina asks.
“The long, hot summer’s just around the corner,” Malone says. “The Bennett report is going to come out, and if it exonerates that stupid shit, this city is going to blow up. The feds know that, they know they’re going to need us to keep this city from burning. Keep your noses clean, do your fucking jobs. I’ll get us through this.”
They don’t look happy, but none of them say anything.
The king is still the king.
Then Monty speaks up. “Police work is a dangerous job. We all know that. But if anything happens to Malone—if he catches a bullet, a concrete block falls on him, he gets hit by lightning, I’m going to come looking for the people on this playground. And I’ll kill you.”
Both sides walk away.
They go back to the co-op.
“Don’t discuss business with anyone outside us,” Malone says. “And don’t talk about anything in the house, in cars, anywhere we’re not one hundred percent certain is secure.”
“The feds have you and Torres on tape?” Monty asks.
“Sounds like it.”
“What have they got?”
“I only had two conversations with Torres that are incriminating,” Malone says. “One on Christmas, he came to see me about Teddy. The other was after the gun bust, he came to me about Carter. I don’t remember exactly what got said, but it isn’t good.”
Russo asks, “What if the feds do come after you?”
“I don’t give them anything,” Malone says.
Monty says, “That means jail.”
“Then it means jail.”
“Jesus, Denny.”
“I’m all right,” Malone says. “You’ll take care of my family.”
“Goes without saying.” This from Russo.
“Let’s hope it don’t come to that,” Malone says. “I ain’t out of the game yet. But if it does . . .”
“We got your back,” Russo says. “What about Levin?”
“Jesus, you too?”
“All this shit happens when he came on the team,” Russo says.
“Post hoc, ergo propter hoc,” Monty says.
“What?”
“‘After this, therefore because of this,’” Monty says. “It’s a fallacy of logic. Just because this shit started after Levin came on doesn’t mean it started because Levin came on.”
“He took his cut of Teddy’s money,” Malone says.
“Yeah, but took it where?” Russo asks. “Maybe it’s vouchered with the feds.”
“Okay,” Malone says, “go to his place two or three in the morning, see if he has the money stashed.”
“If he doesn’t . . .”
“Then we have questions,” Malone says.
Malone goes out and walks to his car.
It’s time to move the smack.
It’s the worst fucking time to do anything risky, but he has to move the Pena smack.
Chapter 21
They meet in St. John Cemetery.
“The fuck we have to come all the way out to Queens for?” Lou Savino asks.
“You want to meet on Pleasant Avenue?” Malone says. “It’s a federal movie set. Here you can always say you were just paying respects to old friends.”
Half the major bosses from the Five Families are buried out here. Luciano himself, Vito Genovese, John Gotti, Carlo Gambino, Joe Colombo, even old Salvatore Maranzano, who started it all.
St. John is sort of the Gangster Hall of Fame.
And then there’s Rafael Ramos.
It doesn’t seem like two years have gone by since he and another cop, Wenjian Liu, were shot as they sat in their radio car in Bed-Stuy. The whack job who did it said it was revenge for Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Said he was putting “Wings on Pigs.” Had the sense to blow his own brains out before the NYPD got to him.
The gun he used came through the Iron Pipeline.
Where were the fucking demonstrations then? Malone wonders. Where were the signs that said “Blue Lives Matter”?
Malone was at Ramos’s funeral here—the largest in police history, over a hundred thousand people. A lot of cops turned their backs on the mayor when he delivered the eulogy.
Hizzoner turned his back on them over the Eric Garner thing.
“Give Pigs Wings,” Malone thinks.
Kiss my pig ass.