That way if the shit comes down and you get popped, you got a shot at paperwork getting fucked up between precincts and jurisdictions. Rivalries and jealousies can get in the way and maybe even spring you.
It’s why, for instance, hookers stroll the streets that border precincts, because no cop wants to make a bust across the line. Too much paperwork. Same with low-level dealers—nickel-and dime-bag guys. They see a cop coming they just cross the street and most of the time the cop won’t follow. If there’s a chase now, Malone will drive down through Manhattan but Savino will cross into the Bronx, get a whole other borough involved.
The Bronx and Manhattan hate each other.
Unless the feds get involved, then they hate the feds.
What the public doesn’t know is just how tribal cops are. It starts with ethnicity—you got the biggest tribe, the Irish; then you got the Italian Tribe and the Every Other Kind of White Guy Tribe. Then you got the Black Tribe, the Hispanic Tribe.
They each have their clubs—the Irish have the Emerald Society, the Italians the Columbia Association. The Germans are the Steuben Society, the Polacks the Pulaski Association, the other white guys have a catchall called the St. George’s Society. The blacks are the Guardians, the Puerto Ricans have the Hispanic Society, the twelve Jews got the Shomrim Society.
Then it gets complicated, because you got the Uniform Tribe, the Plainclothes Tribe and the Detective Tribe that cut across all the ethnic tribes. Most of all you got the Street Cop Tribe versus the Administration Tribe, a subclan of which is the Internal Affairs Tribe.
Then you got the boroughs, the precincts and the working units.
So Malone is in the Irish Detective Street Cop Manhattan North Special Task Force Tribe.
And another tribe, he thinks—the Dirty Cop Tribe.
Savino is already at the pull-off.
Blinks the lights of his black Navigator twice. Malone pulls up to the front of the Navigator so it will have to reverse to get out fast. He can’t see into the SUV. Then Savino gets out.
The capo is wearing, honest to God, a tracksuit, because some of these guys just can’t help themselves. The gun bulge is at his waist by his right hand and he’s got a big shit-eating grin on his face.
It occurs to Malone that he doesn’t like Savino very much. Especially when the back doors open and three Dominicans get out.
One of them is Carlos Castillo.
Clearly the jefe, he’s wearing a black suit, white shirt, no tie, and he looks like money. Black hair slicked back, a thin mustache. The other two are gunmen—black jackets, jeans, freakin’ cowboy boots and AKs.
Malone takes out the MP5 and holds it at his hip.
“Easy,” Savino says. “It’s not what it looks like.”
The fuck it ain’t, Malone thinks. You set me up. All that shuck-and-jive in the cemetery, you don’t have the money. It was a fugazy—a front, a fa?ade to get me whacked.
Castillo smiles at him. “What, do you think we didn’t know how many kilos were in that room? How much money?”
“What do you want?”
“Diego Pena was my cousin.”
Don’t back down, Malone tells himself. Backing down gets you killed. Looking weak gets you killed. “Murder a New York Police Department detective in New York City? The world will come down on your head.”
If I don’t blow it off first.
“We’re the cartel,” Castillo says.
“No, we’re the cartel,” Malone says. “I got thirty-eight thousand in my gang. How many you got?”
Castillo takes it in. This is no stupid guy. “It’s unfortunate. So for the time being I’ll have to settle for recovering our property.”
One of the Malone Rules: Never take a step back.
“You can buy it,” he says.
“It’s generous of you,” Castillo says, “offering to sell us back our own product.”
“You’re getting a deal that this guinea motherfucker cut for you,” Malone says. “Otherwise it would be bust-out retail.”
“You stole it.”
“I took it,” Malone says. “There’s a difference.”
Castillo smiles. “So I could just take it.”
“Your guys could,” Malone says. “I’ll send you where I sent your cousin.”
“Diego would never have drawn a gun on you,” Castillo says. “He was too smart. Why fight what you can buy?”
Malone says, “Diego got what he deserved.”
“No, he didn’t,” Castillo says calmly. “You didn’t have to kill him. You wanted to.”
It’s fucking true, Malone thinks. “We going to do this or not?”
One of the Domos goes back to the car, comes back with two briefcases. He starts to hand them to Castillo, but the man stares at Malone and shakes his head, so his gunman hands them to Savino instead.
Nice Halliburtons.
Savino walks up, sets them on the hood of Malone’s car and opens both of them, showing him the stacks of hundreds.
“It’s all there,” Castillo says. “Four million, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“You want to count it?” Savino asks.
“I’m good.” He doesn’t want to be out here any longer than he has to and he doesn’t want to take his eyes off the Domos for the time it would take to count the money. Anyway, if they were going to short him, they might as well just rip him.
Malone puts the cases on the floor of the car by the front passenger seat, walks around, grabs the duffel bags and sets them on the hood.
Savino carries the bags over to Castillo, who opens them and looks inside. “The labels are missing.”
“I took them off,” Malone says.
“But it’s the Dark Horse.”
“Yeah,” Malone says. “You want to test it?”
“I trust you,” Castillo says.
Malone has his finger on the MP5 trigger. If they’re going to shoot him, this is the moment, when they know they got the heroin and they can still grab their money back. The jefe nods to one of his guys, who grabs the duffel bags and takes them back to Savino’s car.
Savino smiles. “Always a pleasure doing business with you, Denny.”
Yeah, Malone thinks, and Castillo here would have killed me if he didn’t want to do business with the Cimino family. And you and me are going to have a serious conversation, Louie.
Castillo stares at Malone. “You know you’re just on a reprieve.”
“Aren’t we all?” Malone asks.
He gets back in his car and pulls out. Four and a quarter mil sits on the car floor next to him. His adrenaline is shrieking as he drives, then the fear and anger hit him like a double shot with a hammer and he starts to shake.
Sees his hands quiver on the steering wheel and grips it hard to try to stop it. He snorts air through his nose to slow his heartbeat down.
I thought I was dead, he thinks.
Thought I was fucking dead.
I got through that one, he tells himself, but Pena’s cousin isn’t going to let it go. He’s just going to wait for an opening and then he’ll take it. Or maybe contract it out through the Ciminos. Louie will ask me to a sit-down and I’ll never come back. A lot of it is going to be a matter of who’s more valuable to the Ciminos—me or the cartel.
I’d put my money on the Domos.
And the other thing.
The fucking Domos will put this out on the street in Manhattan North, to put DeVon Carter out of business.
Junkies on my turf will die.