“If you want to put it that way,” Chandler says. “Jesus, Malone, can you put the gun down?”
“No, I can’t,” Malone says. “Because people are trying to kill me. One hour after I tell Paz about payoffs to City Hall, someone wraps a wire around my throat. It was one of Castillo’s people, but Castillo is partnered up with the Ciminos and the Ciminos are partnered up with City Hall—”
“I wouldn’t say ‘partnered’—”
“I delivered the fucking envelopes!” Malone says, shoving the barrel harder into Chandler’s temple. “Who leaked my 302?”
“I don’t know.”
“You believe in God, Ned?”
“No. I don’t know . . .”
“You don’t know the answers, right?”
“Right.”
“You want to learn all the answers,” Malone says, “tell me you don’t know again. Who leaked the 302?”
“Paz.”
Malone takes the gun from Chandler’s head. “Talk.”
“We weren’t tracking her investigation,” Chandler says. “If you’d come to us earlier, Malone, we could have shut it down or at least redirected it. When we found out it was you, we knew it was going to be a . . . problem.”
“A problem you thought the Ciminos would take care of for you.”
Chandler doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to.
“And when they missed,” Malone says, “Castillo took a shot.”
Chandler says, “That was on him. You killed someone in his family, right?”
“And you were all there to applaud when I did.” But they don’t know, Malone thinks. They don’t know about the rip. They don’t know their asshole buddies in the Cimino family handed fifty keys of smack to the Dominicans.
There’s still a way out of this.
“You made the payoff allegations in front of the feds,” Chandler says. “Not just Paz, but the FBI, Weintraub. You’ve put certain people in a very difficult position.”
“Not if I’m dead and can’t testify.”
Chandler shrugs. It’s true.
“Which certain people?” Malone asks. “Who’s coming after me?”
“Everyone,” Chandler says.
Right, Malone thinks—Castillo, the Ciminos, Torres’s team, Sykes, IAB, the feds . . . City Hall.
Yeah, that’s about everyone.
“It doesn’t have to go down this way,” Malone says. “I’ll take care of Castillo. I’ll deal with the Ciminos. You get me a sit-down with ‘certain people.’”
“I don’t know if I can do that,” Chandler says. “No offense, Malone, but you’re poison.”
“Oh, I know you can do that,” Malone says. “See, I have nothing to lose, Neddy, and I will put two right through your fucking head.”
Chandler picks up the phone.
They call Fifty-Seventh Street “Billionaires’ Row.”
A doorman takes Malone up the private elevator to the penthouse at One57 and Bryce Anderson opens the door personally.
“Sergeant Malone,” Anderson says, “please come in.”
He ushers Malone into a living room with floor-to-ceiling windows, the view from which justifies the hundred-million-dollar price tag. All of Central Park stretches out beneath them, all of the West Side to the left, the East Side to the right. This is what rich people get to look at, Malone thinks, the city stretched out at their feet.
The entire back wall of the room is a saltwater aquarium with its own coral reef.
“Thanks for meeting me so early,” Malone says.
“I don’t like the sun to find me sleeping,” Anderson says. He looks the part of a real estate mogul—tall, blond hair, hawk nose, piercing eyes. “Chandler indicated this wasn’t exactly a social call. Would you like coffee?”
“No.”
He stands by the window with dawn over New York as a backdrop.
It’s deliberate.
He’s showing Malone his kingdom.
“Should we ‘pat each other down,’ Sergeant,” Anderson asks, “or can we do this like gentlemen?”
“I’m not wired.”
“Neither am I,” Anderson says. “So . . .”
“I delivered a lot of envelopes for the Cimino family,” Malone says, “not a few of which found their way here.”
“Maybe,” Anderson says. “Listen, Detective, if I took envelopes, they were chump change. I took them to get things done, to get things built, and that was the way to do it. Look out there . . . that building . . . that building . . . that one. Do you know how many jobs that meant? How much business? Tourism? You’re not naive, you know what it takes to rebuild a city. Do you want to go back to the bad old days? Unemployment? Crack vials like seashells under your feet?”
“I just want to survive.”
“And what’s that going to take, do you think?” Anderson says. “You still have a problem with at least two crime organizations that want you dead. You seem to make enemies, Malone, like Lay’s makes chips.”
“Comes with the Job,” Malone says. “I can take care of the narcos and the wiseguys. The federal government’s too big for me. So is City Hall. When they’re lined up together . . . You’re going after the commissioner and the Job. I’m just one cop.”
“You’re one cop who got in the way,” Anderson says. “And now you’ve put City Hall and other very powerful people, including me, in the crosshairs.”
“You don’t need to be.”
“How so?”
“Shutting down a federal investigation,” Malone says, “would be a lot easier than killing me.”
“Apparently,” Anderson says. “And if that investigation were to be shut down, would the people who rebuilt this city have a reason to worry about you?”
“You think I give a shit,” Malone says, “who lines their pockets downtown? Who’s going to be mayor, who’s going to be governor? You’re all the same cat to me.”
“All cats are gray in the dark?” Anderson asks. “But why should we trust you, Malone?”
“How’s your daughter?”
“What does that mean?” Anderson asks. But he’s a smart man, and it comes to him quickly. “Of course, that was you. She’s doing well now, thank you. And I mean, literally, thanks to you. She’s back at Bennington. Dean’s list.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“So this is blackmail,” Anderson says. “You have a copy of her sex tape and you’ll release it unless I get the investigation shut down?”
“I’m not you,” Malone says. “I never even looked at the tape, much less kept a copy. Maybe that’s why I don’t have a place like this. Maybe that’s why I’m just a working donkey in the city you rebuilt. There’s no blackmail—you’re smart enough to do the smart thing. But I’m telling you—if anyone comes after me, my family, my partners, I will come back and the next time I will kill you.”
Malone walks over to the window. “It is a beautiful fucking city, isn’t it? I used to love it like my life.”
Isobel Paz takes her early-morning jog in Central Park up by the reservoir.
Malone falls in behind her.
Her hair is tied back in a long ponytail.
“Isobel,” Malone says, “I don’t suppose you’ve ever been shot in the back. Neither have I, but I’ve seen it a few times and it isn’t pretty. Looks like it hurts, too. A lot. So if you turn around, or yell for help, or do anything, I’m going to put one in your kidney. Do you believe me?”
“Yes.”