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A wooden door blocks the top of the stairs.
Malone nods at Monty.
The big man steps up, jams the Rabbit between the door and the sill. Sweat pops on his forehead and runs down his dark skin as he presses the handles of the tool together and cracks the door open.
Malone steps through, swings his pistol in an arc, but no one’s in the hallway. Looking to the right, he sees the new steel door at the end of the hall. Machata music plays from a radio inside, voices in Spanish, the whir of coffee grinders, the clack of a money counter.
And a dog barking.
Fuck, Malone thinks, all the narcos got ’em now. Just like every chick on the East Side has a yapping little Yorkie in her handbag these days, the slingers got pit bulls. It’s a good idea—the spooks are scared shitless of dogs and the chicas working in the mills won’t risk getting their faces chewed off for stealing.
Malone worries about Billy O because the kid loves dogs, even pit bulls. Malone learned this back in April when they hit a warehouse over by the river and three pit bulls were trying to jump through the chain-link fence to rip their throats out but Billy O, he just couldn’t bring himself to pop them or let anyone else do it, so they had to go all the way around the back of the building, up the fire escape to the roof and then down the stairs.
It was a pain in the ass.
Anyway, the pit bull has made them but the Domos haven’t. Malone hears one of them yell, “Cállate!” and then a sharp whack and the dog shuts up.
But the Hi-Guard steel security door is a problem.
The Rabbit ain’t gonna crack it.
Malone gets on the radio. “Billy, you in place?”
“Born in place, bro.”
“We’re gonna blow the door,” Malone says. “When it goes, you toss in a flashbang.”
“You got it, D.”
Malone nods to Russo, who aims at the door’s hinges and fires two blasts. The ceramic powder explodes faster than the speed of sound and the door comes down.
Women, naked save for plastic gloves and hairnets, bolt for the window. Others crouch under tables as money-counting machines spit cash onto the floor like slot machines paying off with paper.
Malone yells, “NYPD!”
He sees Billy through the window to his left.
Doing exactly shit, just staring through the window. Jesus Christ, throw the grenade.
But Billy doesn’t.
The fuck’s he waiting for?
Then Malone sees it.
The pit bull’s got puppies, four of them, curled up in a ball behind her as she runs to the end of her metal chain, snapping and growling to protect them.
Billy doesn’t want to hurt the puppies.
Malone yells through the radio. “Goddamn it, do it!”
Billy looks through the window at him, then he kicks in the glass and lobs the grenade in.
But he throws it short, to avoid the goddamn dogs.
The concussion shatters the rest of the glass, spraying shards into Billy’s face and neck.
Bright, blinding white light—screams, yells.
Malone counts to three and goes in.
Chaos.
A Trini staggers, one hand to his blinded eyes, the other shooting a Glock as he moves toward the window and the fire escape. Malone hits him with two rounds in the chest and he topples into the window. A second gunman aims at Malone from beneath a counting table but Monty hits him with a blast from his .38 and then a second one to make sure he’s DOA.
They let the women get out the window.
“Billy, you okay?” Malone asks.
Billy O’s face looks like a Halloween mask.
Gashes on his arms and legs.
“I been cut worse in hockey games,” he says, laughing. “I’ll get stitched up when we’re done here.”
Money’s everywhere, in stacks, in the machines, spilled on the floor. Heroin is still in coffee grinders where it was being cut.
But that’s the small shit.
La caja—the trap—a large hole carved into the wall, is open.
Stacked, floor to ceiling, with bricks of heroin.
Diego Pena sits calmly at a table. If the deaths of two of his guys bother him, it doesn’t show on his face. “Do you have a warrant, Malone?”
“I heard a woman scream for help,” Malone says.
Pena smirks.
Well-dressed motherfucker. Gray Armani suit worth two large, the gold Piguet watch on his wrist five times that.
Pena notices. “It’s yours. I have three more.”
The pit bull barks wildly, straining against her chain.
Malone is looking at the heroin.
Stacks of it, vacuum wrapped in black plastic.
Enough H to keep the city high for weeks.
“I’ll save you the trouble of counting,” Pena says. “One hundred kilos even. Mexican cinnamon heroin—‘Dark Horse’—sixty percent pure. You can sell it for a hundred thousand dollars a kilo. The cash you’re seeing should amount to another five million. You take the drugs and the money. I get on a plane to the Dominican, you never see me again. Think about it—when’s the next time you can make fifteen million dollars for turning your back?”
And we all go home tonight, Malone thinks.
He says, “Take your gun out. Slow.”
Pena slowly reaches into his jacket for his pistol.
Malone shoots him twice in the heart.
Billy O squats and picks up a kilo. Slicing it open with his K-bar, he dips a small vial into the heroin, gets a pinch and dumps it into a plastic pouch he takes from his pocket. He crushes the vial inside the test bag and waits for the color to change.
It turns purple.
Billy grins. “We’re rich!”
Malone says, “Hurry the fuck up.”
There’s the sound of a pop as the pit bull breaks the chain and lunges toward him. Billy falls back, throwing the kilo into the air. It mushroom-clouds and then falls like a snow shower into his open wounds.
Another blast as Monty kills the dog.
But Billy’s flat on the floor. Malone sees him go rigid, then his legs start to spasm, jerking uncontrollably as the heroin speeds through his bloodstream.
His feet pound on the floor.
Malone kneels beside him, holds him in his arms.
“Billy, no,” Malone says. “Hold on.”
Billy looks up at him with empty eyes.
His face is white.
His spine jerks like an uncoiling spring.
Then he’s gone.
Freakin’ Billy, beautiful young Billy O, as old now as he’s ever gonna get.
Malone hears his own heart crack, and then dull explosions and at first he thinks he’s been shot, but he doesn’t see any wounds so then he thinks it’s his head blowing up.
Then he remembers.
It’s the Fourth of July.
PART 1 (#ulink_d4d102f3-fc57-5676-81c1-460ba6ed61d8)
(#ulink_d4d102f3-fc57-5676-81c1-460ba6ed61d8)
Welcome to da jungle, this is my home,
The birth of the blues, the birth of the song.
—CHRIS THOMAS KING, “WELCOME TO DA JUNGLE”
CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_864de6f3-8a27-53f1-96b2-5e497bc5b6bc)
Harlem, New York City
Christmas Eve
Noon.
Denny Malone pops two go-pills and steps into the shower.
He just got up after a midnight-to-eight and needs the uppers to get him going. Tilting his face toward the showerhead, he lets the sharp needles sting his skin until it hurts.
He needs that, too.
Tired skin, tired eyes.
Tired soul.
Malone turns around and indulges in the hot water pounding on the back of his neck and shoulders. Running down the tattooed sleeves of his arms. It feels good, he could stand there all day, but he has things to do.
“Time to move, ace,” he tells himself.
You have responsibilities.
He gets out, dries off, wraps the towel around his waist.
Malone is six two and solid. Thirty-eight now, he knows he has a hard look to him. It’s the tats on the broad forearms, the heavy stubble even when he shaves, the short-cropped black hair, the don’t-fuck-with-me blue eyes.
It’s the broken nose, the small scar over the left side of his lip. What can’t be seen are the bigger scars on his right leg—his Medal of Valor scars for being stupid enough to get himself shot. That’s the NYPD, though, he thinks. They give you a medal for being stupid, take your badge for being smart.
Maybe the badass look helps him stay out of the physical confrontations, which he does try to avoid. For one thing, it’s more professional to talk your way through. For another, any fight is going to get you hurt—even if it’s just your knuckles—and he doesn’t like getting his clothes messed up rolling around in God only knows what nasty shit is down there on the concrete.
He’s not so much on the weights, so he hits the heavy bag and does the running, usually early morning or late afternoon depending on work, through Riverside Park because he likes the open view of the Hudson, Jersey across the river and the George Washington Bridge.
Now Malone goes into the small kitchen. There’s a little coffee left from when Claudette got up, and he pours a cup and puts it into the microwave.
She’s pulling a double at Harlem Hospital, just four blocks away on Lenox and 135th, so another nurse can spend time with family. With any luck, he’ll see her later tonight or early in the morning.
Malone doesn’t care that the coffee is stale and bitter. He’s not after a quality experience, just a caffeine kick to jump-start the Dexedrine. Can’t stand the whole gourmet coffee bullshit anyway, standing in line behind some millennial asshole taking ten minutes to order a perfect latte so he can take a selfie with it. Malone dumps in some cream and sugar, like most cops do. They drink too much of it, so the milk helps soothe their stomachs while the sugar gives them a boost.
An Upper West Side doctor writes Malone scrip for anything he wants—Dex, Vicodin, Xanax, antibiotics, whatever. A couple of years ago, the good doc—and he is a good guy, with a wife and three kids—had a little something on the side who decided to blackmail him when he decided to break it off.
