The Force

by Don Winslow

Our ends know our beginnings but the reverse isn’t true.

No, he started with his eyes firmly on the guiding star, his feet planted on the path, but that’s the thing about the life you walk—you start out pointed true north, but you vary one degree off, it doesn’t matter for maybe one year, five years, but as the years stack up you’re just walking farther and farther away from where you started out to go, you don’t even know you’re lost until you’re so far from your original destination you can’t even see it anymore. You can’t even get back on the path to start over. Time and gravity won’t allow it.

What the public at large doesn’t understand is that the city’s jails have become its de facto mental hospitals and detox centers.

He clips his off-duty Beretta to the back of his waistband, where it nestles into the small of his back. The SOG knife goes into his right boot. It’s against regs and illegal as shit, but Malone doesn’t care. He could be in a situation some skels take his guns and then what’s he supposed to pull, his dick? He ain’t going down like a bitch, he’s going out slashing and stabbing.

“She’s working,” Malone says, dodging the question like a skel. “So am I.” “You’re always working, Denny.” Ain’t that the large truth, Malone thinks, taking that as a good-bye and clicking off. They’ll put it on my freakin’ headstone: Denny Malone, he was always working. Fuck it—you work, you die, you try to have a life somewhere in there. But mostly you work.

It was just down the street where he got the rep as both a “hero cop” and a “racist cop,” neither of which tag is true, Malone thinks.

The cops feel for the vics and hate the perps, but they can’t feel too much or they can’t do their jobs and they can’t hate too much or they’ll become the perps. So they develop a shell, a “we hate everybody” attitude force field around themselves that everyone can feel from ten feet away.

Manhattan North is the Kingdom of Malone. Like with any king, his subjects love him and fear him, revere him and loathe him, praise him and revile him. He has his loyalists and rivals, his sycophants and critics, his jesters and advisers, but he has no real friends. Except his partners.

You may not like your best player, but you don’t trade him. He puts points on the board.

We’re all corrupt. Just each in our own way.

Best thing a man can do for his kids—handle his motherfucking business.

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.

It’s been Malone’s experience that no one hates rap and hip-hop more than black men above the age of forty. They just can’t stand the attitude, the pants hanging off their asses, the backward baseball caps, the jewelry. And most black men of that age aren’t going to let their women be called bitches. That just ain’t gonna happen.

“The fuck you been?” Phil asks. “You missed dinner.” “Got a late start.” “Bullshit,” Phil says, showing him in. “You been out doing that Irish brooding thing, you dumbass donkey. Come on, Donna will fix you a plate.”

Still, he ain’t going to war with Torres. Life is good right now, and when life is good, you leave it the fuck alone.

Something to watch for. You can’t trust a guy won’t drink with you, do a little blow or a little weed, won’t get laid on the side.

“I know your time is precious,” Chandler says, “so I’ll get right at it.” Anytime someone tells you that your time is precious, Malone thinks, what they really mean is that their time is precious.

“Bad night?” “I’m okay.” “Of course you are,” she says. “You’re always okay.” “That’s right.” Jesus, what’s her fucking problem? He sits down at the table. “Maybe you should go talk to someone,” Claudette says.

“Anyway, I don’t see myself going to some shrink whining about I have bad dreams.” “Because you’re not weak like other people.” “Jesus shit,” Malone says, “if I wanted to hear what an asshole I am, I’d—”

New York is coming out of winter. Not that it ever hibernated; the city had just pulled its collar up and put its head down against the winds that whipped through its canyons, freezing faces and numbing lips. New Yorkers push through winter like soldiers through gunfire.

As any good wiseguy knows, you want to eat, you don’t eat alone. You kick up, and there’s all kinds of coin.

“In the words of Oscar Wilde, ‘I can resist everything but temptation.’”

The first time you do it, Malone thinks, it’s life changing. The second time, it’s just life. The third time, Malone thinks, it’s your life. It’s who you are.

How do you cross the line? Step by step.

“I know this is last minute,” he said, “but I have reservations tonight at Jean-Georges and no one merciful enough to have dinner with an insensitive, neglectful jerk like myself, and while I’m pretty sure a woman such as yourself already has plans, I thought I’d take a chance and ask if there’s any possibility you would have dinner with me.”

Until you’ve faced each dawn with sleepless eyes, You don’t know what love is . . .

And Torres had an answer for them. Brutal, mean, racist, lying, vicious motherfucker Raf Torres had an answer for them. Fuck you. I go out like a man.

“Do you know about Irish Alzheimer’s?” Malone asks. “No.” “You forget everything but the grudges,”

As arranged, he meets the team on the southwest corner of 143rd and Malcolm and they walk into the playground together. Russo’s wearing his leather overcoat and Malone knows he’s carrying the shotgun underneath. Monty has a Harris tweed jacket—the .38 bulge visible at his hip. “It’s Runnymede,” Monty says as they cross 143rd toward the baseball diamonds. “Runny who?” “Runnymede,” Monty says. “The barons are challenging the king.” Malone don’t know what Monty’s talking about—he only knows that Monty knows what he’s talking about, and that’s good enough. Anyway, he gets the gist—knows who the king is and who the barons are.

The king is still the king. Then Monty speaks up. “Police work is a dangerous job. We all know that. But if anything happens to Malone—if he catches a bullet, a concrete block falls on him, he gets hit by lightning, I’m going to come looking for the people on this playground. And I’ll kill you.” Both sides walk away.

“Post hoc, ergo propter hoc,” Monty says. “What?” “‘After this, therefore because of this,’” Monty says. “It’s a fallacy of logic. Just because this shit started after Levin came on doesn’t mean it started because Levin came on.”

there are sins of commission and sins of omission, that it’s not always the things you do, but the things you don’t that cost you your soul. That sometimes it’s not the spoken lie but the unspoken truth that opens the door to betrayal.

Any sign of weakness, he’s dead. So he goes the other way with it. “Never threaten me,” Malone says. “Never threaten my money. Never threaten my wife.”

How did you get here? Like anyplace else. A step at a time.

“Life is trying to kill us,” she says. Life, Malone thinks, is trying to kill everyone. And it always succeeds. Sometimes before you die.

Malone goes into the bathroom, turns on the tap to hide the sound, and cries.

If Pirus and Crips all got along They’d probably gun me down by the end of this song Seem like the whole city go against me . . .

So while you’re in it, try to get as much shit as you can And when your run is over just admit when it’s at its end.

YAWK, YAWK, YAWK, YAWK

They’re two drowning people who grab on to each other, won’t let go, and sink together into the cold darkness of their shared sorrow.

It feels good. Feels good to hurt.

I never sleep ’cause sleep is the cousin of death Beyond the walls of intelligence, life is defined I think of crime when I’m in a New York state of mind.

Satan’s smile on meeting Faust.