The Force: A Novel Read online

  It’s his city, his turf, his heart.

  Rolling up Lenox now, past the old Mount Morris Park neighborhood and its graceful brownstones, Malone worships the small gods of place—the twin towers of Ebenezer Gospel Tabernacle, where the hymns float out on Sundays with the voices of angels, then the distinctive spire of Ephesus Seventh-Day Adventist and, farther up the block, Harlem Shake—not the dance but some of the best damn burgers in the city.

  Then there are the dead gods—the old Lenox Lounge, with its iconic neon sign, red front and all that history. Billie Holiday used to sing there, Miles Davis and John Coltrane played their horns, and it was a hang for James Baldwin, Langston Hughes and Malcolm X. It’s closed now—the window covered with brown paper, the sign dark—but there’s talk about opening it again.

  Malone doubts it.

  Dead gods don’t rise again except in fairy tales.

  He crosses 125th, a.k.a. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

  Urban pioneers and the black middle class have gentrified the area, which the Realtors have now christened “SoHa,” a blended acronym always being the death knell of any old neighborhood, Malone thinks. He’s convinced that if real estate developers could buy properties in the bottom levels of Dante’s Inferno they’d rename it “LoHel” and start throwing up boutiques and condos.

  Fifteen years ago, this stretch of Lenox was empty storefronts; now it’s trendy again with new restaurants, bars and sidewalk cafés where the better-off locals come to eat, the white people come to feel hip and some of those condos in the new high-rise buildings go for two and a half mil.

  All you need to know about this part of Harlem now, Malone thinks, is that there’s a Banana Republic next to the Apollo Theater. There are the gods of place and the gods of commerce, and if you have to bet who’s going to win out, put your money on money every time.

  Farther uptown and in the projects it’s still the ghetto.

  Malone crosses 125th and passes the Red Rooster, where Ginny’s Supper Club resides in the basement.

  There are less famous shrines, nonetheless sacred to Malone.

  He’s attended funerals at Bailey’s, bought pint bottles at Lenox Liquors, been stitched up in the E-room at Harlem Hospital, played hoops by the Big L mural in Fred Samuel Playground, ordered food through the bulletproof glass at Kennedy Fried Chicken. Parked along the street and watched the kids dance, smoked weed on a rooftop, watched the sun come up from Fort Tryon Park.

  Now more dead gods, ancient gods—the old Savoy Ballroom, the site of the Cotton Club, both gone long before Malone’s time, ghosts from the last Harlem Renaissance haunting this neighborhood with the image of what it once was and can never be again.

  But Lenox is alive.

  It actually throbs from the IRT subway line that runs directly underneath its entire length. Malone used to ride the #2 train, the one they called “The Beast” back then.

  Now it’s Black Star Music, the Mormon Church, African American Best Food. When they get to the end of Lenox, Malone says, “Go around the block.”

  Phil Russo, behind the wheel, turns left onto 147th and drives around the block, down Seventh Avenue and then another left onto 146th, and cruises past an abandoned tenement the owner gave back to the rats and the roaches, chasing the people out in the hope that some junkie cooking up will burn it down and he can collect the insurance and then sell the lot.

  Win-win.

  Malone scans for sentries or some cops cooping in a radio car, bagging a little sleep on the graveyard shift. A sole lookout stands outside the door. Green bandanna, green Nikes with green shoelaces make him a Trinitario.

  Malone’s crew has been watching the heroin mill on the second floor all summer. The Mexicans truck the smack up and deliver it to Diego Pena, the Dominican in charge of NYC. Pena breaks it down from kilos into dime bags and distributes it to the Domo gangs, the Trinitarios and DDP (Dominicans Don’t Play), and then to the black and PR gangs in the projects.

  The mill is fat tonight.

  Fat with money.

  Fat with dope.

  “Gear up,” Malone says, checking the Sig Sauer P226 in the holster on his hip. A Beretta 8000D Mini-Cougar rests in a second holster in the small of his back just below the new ceramic-plate vest.

  He makes the whole crew wear vests on a job. Big Monty complains his is too tight, but Malone tells him it’s a looser fit than a coffin. Bill Montague, a.k.a. Big Monty, is old school. On his head, even in summer, is his trademark trilby, with its stingy brim and a red feather on the left side. His concession to the heat is an XXXL guayabera shirt over khaki slacks. An unlit Montecristo cigar perches in the corner of his mouth.

  A Mossberg 590 pump-action 12-gauge shotgun with a twenty-inch barrel loaded with powdered ceramic rounds sits at Phil Russo’s feet by his high-polished red leather shoes with the skinny guinea toes. The shoes match his hair—Russo is that rare redheaded Italian and Malone jokes that there must have been a bogtrotter in the woodpile. Russo answers that’s impossible because he isn’t an alcoholic and he don’t need a magnifying glass to find his own dick.

  Billy O’Neill carries an HK MP5 submachine gun, two flashbang grenades and a roll of duct tape. Billy O’s the youngest of the crew, but he has talent, street smarts and moves.

  Guts, too.

  Malone knows Billy ain’t gonna cut and run, ain’t gonna freeze or hesitate to pull the trigger, if he needs to. If anything, it’s the opposite—Billy might be a little too quick to go. Got that Irish temper along with the Kennedy good looks. Got some other Kennedy-esque attributes, too. The kid likes women and women like him back.

  Tonight, the crew is going in heavy.

  And high.

  You go up against narcos who are jacked on coke or speed, it helps to be pharmacologically even with them, so Malone pops two “go-pills”—Dexedrine. Then he slips on a blue windbreaker with NYPD stenciled in white and flips the lanyard with his shield over his chest.

  Russo orbits the block again. Coming back around on 146th, he hits the gas, races up to the mill and slams the brakes. The lookout hears the tires squeal but turns around too late—Malone’s out the door before the car stops. He shoves the lookout face-first into the wall and sticks the barrel of the Sig against his head.

  “Cállate, pendejo,” Malone says. “One sound, I’ll splatter you.”

  He kicks the lookout’s feet out from under him and puts him on the ground. Billy is already there—he duct-tapes the lookout’s hands behind him and then slaps a strip over his mouth.

  Malone’s crew press themselves against the wall of the building. “We all stay sharp,” Malone says, “we all go home tonight.”

  The Dex starts to kick in—Malone feels his heart race and his blood get hot.

  It feels good.

  He sends Billy O up to the roof to come down the fire escape and cover the window. The rest go in and head up the stairs. Malone first, the Sig in front of him, ready. Russo behind him with the shotgun, then Monty.

  Malone don’t worry about his back.

  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

  White Christmas

  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

  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.

  Malone had a talk with the girl and explained things to her. Handed her a sealed envelope with $10K and told her that was it. She should never contact the doc again or Malone would put her in the House of D where she’d be giving up her overvalued cooch for an extra spoonful of peanut butter.

  Now the grateful doctor writes him scrip but half the time just gives him free samples. Every little bit helps, Malone thinks, and anyway, it’s not like he could have speed or pain pills show up on his medical records if he got them through his insurance.

  He doesn’t want to phone Claudette and bother her at work, but texts to let her know that he didn’t sleep through the alarm and to ask how her day is going. She texts back, Xmas crazy but OK.

  Yeah, Christmas Crazy.

  Always crazy in New York, Malone thinks.

  If it ain’t Christmas Crazy, it’s New Year’s Eve Crazy (drunks), or Valentine’s Day Crazy (domestic disputes skyrocket and the gays get into bar fights), St. Paddy’s Crazy (drunk cops), Fourth of July Crazy, Labor Day Crazy. What we need is a holiday from the holidays. Just take a year off from any of them, see how it works out.