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“You mean property of Russo,” Fat Teddy says. “You ain’t drivin’ my Caddy out the Jersey Shore with that smelly guinea fish in it.”
“I wouldn’t be caught dead in this coonmobile,” Russo says. “It’s going to the pound.”
“It’s Christmas!” Fat Teddy whines.
Malone juts his chin toward the building. “What’s her number?”
Fat Teddy tells him. Malone punches the number and holds his phone up to Fat Teddy’s mouth.
“Baby, get down here,” Fat Teddy says. “Take care my car. And it better be here when I get out. And detailed.”
Russo leaves Fat Teddy’s keys on the hood and they haul him toward their car.
“Who dimed me?” Fat Teddy asks. “It was that grimy little bitch Nasty Ass?”
“You wanna be one of those Christmas Eve suicides?” Malone asks. “Jumps off the GW Bridge? Because we can make that happen for you.”
Fat Teddy starts in on Monty. “Workin’ for the man, brothuh? You they house nigger?”
Monty slaps him across the face. Fat Teddy is big, but his head snaps back like a tetherball. “I’m a black man, you grape-soda-drinking, bitch-beating, smack-slinging projects monkey.”
“Motherfucker, I didn’t have these cuffs on—”
“You want to take it there?” Monty says. He drops his cigar in the street and grinds it with his heel. “Come on, just you and me.”
Fat Teddy don’t say nothin’.
“That’s what I thought,” Monty says.
On the way to the Three-Two they stop at a mailbox and put in the envelopes. Then they take Fat Teddy in and book him on the gun and the heroin. The desk sergeant is less than thrilled. “It’s Christmas Eve. Task Force assholes.”
“May Da Force be with you,” Malone says.
I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,
Just like the ones I used to know …
Russo drives down Broadway toward the Upper West Side.
“Who was Fat Teddy talking about?” Russo asks. “Was he just mouthing, or does Carter have someone on the pad?”
“Has to be Torres.”
Torres is a wrong guy.
Does rips, sells cases, even runs whores, low-end crack addicts, mostly, and runaways. He works them hard. Keeps them in line with a car radio antenna—Malone has seen the welts.
The sergeant’s a real thumper, has a well-earned reputation for brutality, even by Manhattan North standards. Malone does what he can to keep Torres sweet. They’re all Task Force, after all, and have to get along.
But Malone can’t have lowlifes like Fat Teddy Bailey telling him he’s protected, so he’s going to have to work something out with Torres.
If it’s even true.
If it’s even Torres.
Russo pulls off at Eighty-Seventh and finds a parking space across the street from a brownstone at 349.
Malone rents the apartment from a Realtor they protect.
The rent is zero.
It’s a small pied-à-terre, but it suits their purposes. A bedroom to crash in or take a girl, a sitting room and a little kitchen, a place to take a shower.
Or hide dope, because in the shower stall there’s a false platform with a loose tile under which they stored the fifty kilos they ripped from the late, unlamented Diego Pena.
They’re waiting to lay it off. Fifty kilos is enough to make an impact on the street, cause a stir, even lower prices, so they have to let the Pena rip fade before they bring it out. The heroin has a street value of five million dollars, but the cops will have to lay it off at a discount to a trusted fence. Still, it’s a huge score, even split four ways.
Malone has no problem letting it all sit.
The largest score they’ve ever made or are ever likely to make, it’s their security, their 401(k)’s, their futures. It’s their kids’ college tuitions, a wall against catastrophic illness, the difference between retiring in a Tucson trailer park or a West Palm condo. They cut up the three million in cash right away, with Malone’s warning that no one should go out on a spending spree—buy a new car, a lot of jewelry for the wife, a boat, a trip to the Bahamas.
That’s what the Internal Affairs pricks look for—a change in lifestyle, work habits, attitude. Put the money away, Malone told his guys. Stash at least $50K where you can lay your hands on it inside an hour, in case IAB comes and you have to go on the lam. Another fifty for bail money if you didn’t get out in time. Otherwise, spend a little, put the rest away, do your twenty, pull the pin, have a life.
They’ve even talked about retiring right now. Spacing it a few months apart, but quitting while they’re ahead. Maybe we should, Malone thinks now, but coming so close after the Pena rip, it would raise suspicions.
He can see the headline now: HERO COPS QUIT AFTER BIGGEST BUST.
IAB would come for sure.
Malone and Russo go into the sitting room and Malone grabs a bottle of Jameson’s from behind the little bar and pours each of them two fingers into squat whiskey glasses.
Red hair, tall, wiry, Russo looks about as Italian as a ham sandwich with mayonnaise. Malone looks more Italian, and they used to joke when they were kids that maybe they got switched at the hospital.
And the truth is Malone probably knows Russo better than he knows himself, mostly because he keeps everything to himself and Russo don’t. If it’s on Russo’s mind, it’s going to come out his mouth—not to everybody, just to his brother cops.
First time he had sex with Donna, classic prom night shit, Russo didn’t even have to say it the next day, it was written all over his goofy face, just like his heart was on his sleeve.
“I love her, Denny,” he said. “I’m gonna marry her.”
“The fuck are you, Irish?” Denny asked. “You guys don’t have to get married just because you did it.”
“No, I want to,” Russo said.
Russo’s always known who he was. A lot of guys, they wanted to get out of Staten Island, be something else. Not Russo, he knew he was going to marry Donna, have kids, live in the old neighborhood, and he was happy with being an East Shore stereotype—cop in the city, wife, kids, three-bedroom house, one and a half baths, cookouts on the holidays.
They took the exam together, joined the department together, went to the Academy together. Malone, he had to help Russo gain five pounds to make the minimum weight—force-fed him milkshakes, beer and hoagies.
Even still, Russo wouldn’t have gotten through without Malone. Russo could hit anything on the target range but he couldn’t fight for shit. He was always that way, even when they were playing hockey, Russo had soft hands that could tip a puck into the net, and he’d drop the gloves but then it was a catastrophe, even with his long arms, and Malone would have to come in and bail him out. So in the hand-to-hand PT at the Academy, they usually worked it out to get partnered up and Malone would let Russo flip him, get him into wristlocks and choke holds.
The day they graduated—will Malone ever forget the day they graduated?—Russo, he had this shit-eating grin he couldn’t wipe off his face for nothing, and they looked at each other and knew what their lives were going to be.
When Sheila pissed two blue lines, it was Russo that Malone went to first, Russo who told him there were no questions, only one right answer and he wanted to be best man.
“That’s old-school shit,” Malone said. “That was our parents, our grandparents, it don’t necessarily work that way anymore.”
“The fuck it don’t,” Russo said. “We are old school, Denny, we’re East Shore Staten Island. You may think you’re modern and shit, but you ain’t. Neither is Sheila. What, don’t you love her?”
“I dunno.”
“You loved her enough to fuck her,” Russo said. “I know you, Denny, you can’t be one of them jackoff absentee father sperm donors. That’s not you.”
So Russo was his best man.
Malone learned to love Sheila.
It wasn’t so hard—she was pretty, funny, smart in her way, it was good for a long time.
He and Russo were still in bags—uniforms—when the Towers came down. Russo, he ran toward those buildings, not away, because he knew who he was. And that night, when Malone learned Liam was under Tower Two and was never coming back up, it was Russo who sat with him all night.
Just like Malone sat with Russo when Donna miscarried.
Russo cried.
When Russo’s daughter, Sophia, was born premature, two pounds something and the doctors said it was touch-and-go, Malone sat in the hospital with him all night, saying nothing, just sitting, until Sophia was out of the woods.
The night Malone was stupid enough to get himself shot, running too far out in front to tackle a B&E perp, if it wasn’t for Russo that night, the Job would have given Malone an inspector’s funeral and Sheila a folded flag. They’d have played the bagpipes and had a wake and Sheila could have been a widow instead of a divorcée, if Russo hadn’t shot the perp and driven the car to the E-room like he stole it, because Malone was bleeding out internally.
No, Phil put two in the perp’s chest and a third in the head because that’s the code—a cop shooter dies on the scene or in the “bus” on a slow ride to the hospital, with detours if necessary and the most possible potholes.
Doctors take the Hippocratic oath—EMTs don’t. They know that if they take extraordinary measures to save a cop shooter’s life, the next time they call for backup it might be slow getting there.
But Russo hadn’t waited for the EMTs that night. He raced Malone to the hospital and carried him in like a baby.
Saved his life.
But that’s Russo.
Stand-up, old-school guy with a Grill Master apron, an unaccountable taste for Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Nine Inch Nails, smarter than shit, clanging fucking balls, loyal like a dog, be there for you anywhere anytime Phil Russo.
A cop’s cop.
A brother.
“You ever think we should quit?” Malone asks.
“The Job?”
Malone shakes his head. “The other shit. I mean, how much more do we need to earn?”
“I have three kids,” Russo says. “You have two, Monty three. All smart. You know what college costs these days? They’re worse than the Gambinos, they get their hooks in you. I don’t know about you, I need to keep earning.”
So do you, Malone tells himself.
You need the money, the cash flow, but it’s more than that, admit it. You love the game. The thrill, the taking off the bad guys, even the danger, the idea that you might get caught.
You’re a sick bastard.
“Maybe it’s time we moved the Pena smack,” Russo is saying.
“What, you need money?”
“No, I’m good,” Russo says. “It’s just that, you know, things have cooled down, it’s just sitting there not earning. That’s retirement money, Denny. That’s ‘fuck you I’m out of here’ money. Survival money, anything should happen.”
“You expecting something to happen, Phil?” Malone asks. “You know something I don’t?”
“No.”
“It’s a big step,” Malone says. “We took money before, we never dealt.”
“Then why did we take it if we weren’t going to sell it?”
“It makes us dope slingers,” Malone says. “We been fighting these guys our whole careers, now we’ll be just like them.”
“If we’d turned it all in,” Russo says, “someone else would have taken it.”
“I know.”
“Why not us?” Russo asks. “Why does everyone else get rich? The wiseguys, the dope dealers, the politicians? Why not us for a change? When is it our turn?”
“I hear you,” Malone says.
They sit quietly and drink.
“Something else bothering you?” Russo asks him.
“I dunno,” Malone says. “Maybe it’s just Christmas, you know?”
“You going over there?” Russo asks.
“In the morning, open presents.”
“Well, that’ll be good.”
“Yeah, that’ll be good,” Malone says.
“Swing by the house, you get a chance,” Russo says. “Donna’s going full guinea—macaroni with gravy, the baccalata, then the turkey.”
“Thanks, I’ll try.”
