“I told you last night,” Russo says, “I was going to do what I had to do.”
Malone doesn’t get it.
Russo leans over, speaks right into his face. “You gave me up to save your family. I don’t blame you. I’d have done the same thing. So I just did, Denny.”
Then it hits him—Russo had only one card to play, and he’d laid it down.
“Yeah, Pena,” Russo says. “I told them you murdered him. Shot that spic motherfucker in cold blood. Now I testify, I’m the star fucking witness at your trial, I walk, I go sell aluminum siding in Utah and you get the life without parole.”
A fed comes out of the office, takes Russo by the wrist and starts to lead him away.
“No hard feelings, Denny,” Russo says. “We each did what we had to do.”
O’Dell opens the door and gestures for Malone to come in.
“Our deal is off,” O’Dell says. “Your client will be charged with capital murder. His testimony will no longer be required as we have Phil Russo for everything we need. And Sergeant Malone will have to find new legal representation, as you will no longer be able to function in that role.”
“How’s that?”
“You’ll be conflicted out,” Weintraub says. “We’ll call you as a prosecution witness to testify as to Malone’s considerable personal animus against Diego Pena.”
O’Dell cuffs Malone and takes him to the Metro Correctional Center down on Park Row and puts him in a holding cell.
The door shuts and just like that Malone is on the other side.
“Why did you have to kill him?” O’Dell asks.
Chapter 33
It was Nasty Ass who tipped Malone that something was wrong at 673 West 156th. This was back in the early days of the Task Force, a fetid August night, and the snitch didn’t even want to be paid for it, not in cash or smack, and he looked shaken as he said, “I heard it’s bad, Malone, really bad.”
Malone’s team went to check it out.
You go through a lot of doors on the Job. Most of them are forgettable, indistinguishable.
Malone would never forget this one.
The whole family was dead.
Father, mother, three young kids ranging in age from seven down to three. Two boys and a girl. The kids had been shot in the back of the head; same with the two adults, although they’d been chopped up with machetes first—arterial blood had sprayed all over the walls.
Russo crossed himself.
Montague just stared—the murdered kids were black and Malone knew he was thinking about his own children.
Billy O cried.
Malone called it in—five homicides, all AA—adult male, adult female, three minors. And step the fuck on it. It took maybe five minutes for Minelli from Task Force Homicide to get there—the ME right behind him with the Crime Scene people.
“Jesus Christ,” Minelli said, staring. Then he shook it off and said, “Okay, thanks, we got it from here.”
“We stay with it,” Malone said. “It’s drug related.”
“How do you know?”
“The adult vic is DeMarcus Cleveland,” Malone says. “That’s his wife, Janelle. They were midlevel smack slingers for DeVon Carter. This wasn’t a robbery—the place hasn’t been tossed. They just came in and executed them.”
“For what?”
“Slinging on the wrong corners.”
Minelli wasn’t going to get into a border skirmish on this one, not with three dead kids. Even the Crime Scene people were shook—no one made the usual jokes or looked around for something to put in their pockets.
“You have an idea who did it?” Minelli asked.
“Yeah, I do,” Malone said. “Diego Pena.”
Pena was a midlevel manager in the Dominicans’ NYC operation. His job was to stabilize the otherwise chaotic retail business in the neighborhood, get the low-level blacks under control or move them out. Briefly put, you buy from us or you don’t buy.
Malone’s hunch was that the Clevelands had refused to get in line and pay the franchise fee. He’d heard DeMarcus Cleveland proclaim his resistance on a corner one night: “This is our motherfucking hood, Carter’s motherfucking hood. We black, not Spanish. You see tacos around here? Brothers doing the fuckin’ merengue?”
It got laughs on the corner, but no one was laughing now.
Or talking.
Malone and his team canvassed the building and no one heard anything. And it wasn’t just the usual “fuck the cops, they won’t do anything anyway” or the gangbanger “we take care of our own business” attitude.
It was fear.
Malone understood—you kill a dealer in a turf dispute it’s just another day in the neighborhood. You kill the dealer and his whole family—his kids—you’re sending a message to everybody.
Pónganse a la cola.
Get in line.
Malone wasn’t taking “I don’t know” for an answer.
Three dead children, shot in their beds, he went full Task Force on it. You don’t want to be a witness? Cool, you can be a defendant. He and his team rousted every junkie, dealer and hooker in the hood. They popped guys for just standing there—loitering, littering, looking at them wrong. You didn’t hear nothing, see nothing, you don’t know nothing? That’s okay, don’t worry about it, we’ll give you some time in Rikers to think about it, maybe something will come to mind.
The team filled up booking in the Three-Two, the Three-Four and the Two-Five. Their captain back then was Art Fisher—he had street brains and balls, and didn’t give them any shit about it.
Torres did. He and Malone about got into it in the locker room when Torres asked him, “What are you busting your ass for on this thing? It’s NHI.”
No Humans Involved.
“Three dead kids?”
“If you do the math,” Torres said, “that saves the city, what, about eighteen illegitimate grandkids on welfare?”
“Shut your stupid mouth or you won’t be giving blow jobs for a month,” Malone said.
Monty had to get between them. You don’t go around Big Monty to get into a beef. He said to Malone, “Why do you let him get to you?” Meaning, I don’t, why should you?
Who worked the case hard was Nasty Ass.
When he wasn’t whacked out, the snitch worked the streets like he was cop. (Malone had to warn him more than once that he wasn’t.) He went out of his way, took chances, asked questions of people he shouldn’t have been asking questions. For some reason this got to him, and Malone, who had long since decided that junkies didn’t have souls, had to reconsider his opinion.
But it turned up nothing they could use to get to Pena.
He just kept pushing the heroin—a product labeled Dark Horse—onto the street, and everyone was too afraid of him to get in his way.
“We have to go after him more direct,” Malone said one night as they sat in the Carmansville Playground tossing back a few beers.
“Why don’t we kill him?” Monty asked.
“Worth going to the joint for you?” Malone asked.
“Maybe.”
“You got kids,” Russo said. “A family. We all do.”
“It isn’t murder if he tries to kill us first,” Malone said.