score, and fill the house with a bunch of arrests so Central Booking will flow with puke from junkies jonesing, and bog down the court dockets with quivering losers pleading out and then going back to jail to score more smack. Come out still addicted, and start the whole cycle all over again.
But we’ll make par.
The suits at One Police can say as much as they want that there are no quotas, but every guy on the Job knows there are. Back in the “broken windows” days, they were writing summonses for everything—loitering, littering, jumping a subway stile, double-parking. The theory was if you didn’t come down on the small stuff, people would figure it was okay to do the big stuff.
So they were out there writing a lot of bullshit C-summonses, which forced a lot of poor people to take time off work they couldn’t afford to go to court to pay fines they couldn’t pay. Some just skipped their court days and got “no-show” warrants, so their misdemeanors escalated to felonies and they were looking at jail time for tossing a gum wrapper on the sidewalk.
It provoked a lot of anger toward the police.
Then there were the 250s.
The stop and frisks.
Which basically meant that if you saw a young black kid on the street, you stopped him and shook him down. It caused a lot of resentment, too, and got a lot of negative media, so we don’t do that anymore, either.
Except we do.
Now the quota that isn’t is heroin.
“Cooperation,” Sykes is saying, “and coordination are what makes us a task force and not just separate entities officed in the same space. So let’s work together, gentlemen, and get this thing done.”
Rah fuckin’ rah, Malone thinks.
Sykes probably doesn’t realize that he’s just given his people contradictory instructions—work their sources and make heroin arrests—doesn’t even get that you work your sources by popping them with drugs and then not arresting them.
They give you information, you give them a pass.
That’s the way it works.
What’s he think, a dealer is going to talk to you out of the goodness of his heart, which he doesn’t have anyway? To be a good citizen? A dealer talks to you for money or drugs, to skate on a charge or to fuck a rival dealer. Or maybe, maybe, because someone is fucking his bitch.
That’s it.
The guys on Da Force don’t look too much like cops. In fact, Malone thinks as he looks around, they look more like criminals.
The undercovers look like junkies or dope slingers—hoodies, baggy pants or filthy jeans, sneakers. Malone’s personal favorite, a black kid called Babyface, hides under a thick hood and sucks on a big pacifier as he looks up at Sykes, knowing the boss isn’t going to say shit about it because Babyface brings home the bacon.
The plainclothes guys are urban pirates. They still have tin shields—not gold—under their black leather jackets, navy peacoats and down vests. Their jeans are clean but not creased, and they prefer Chelsea boots to tennis shoes.
Except “Cowboy” Bob Bartlett, who wears shitkicker boots with skinny toes, “the better to go up a black ass.” Bartlett’s never been farther west than Jersey City, but he affects a redneck drawl and aggravates the shit out of Malone by playing country-western “music” in the locker room.
The “uniforms” in their bags don’t look like your run-of-the-mill cops either. It ain’t what they wear, it’s in their faces. They’re badasses, with the smirks as pinned on as the badges on their chests. These boys are always ready to go, ready to dance, just for the fuck of it.
Even the women have attitudes. There ain’t many of them on Da Force, but the ones who are take no prisoners. You got Tenelli and then there’s Emma Flynn, a hard-drinking (Irish, go figure) party girl with the sexual voracity of a Roman empress. And they’re all tough, with a healthy hatred in their hearts.
The detectives, though, the gold shields like Malone, Russo, Montague, Torres, Gallina, Ortiz, Tenelli, they’re in a different league altogether, “the best of the best,” decorated veterans with scores of major arrests under their belts.
The Task Force detectives aren’t uniforms or plainclothes or undercovers.
They’re kings.
Their kingdoms aren’t fields and castles but city blocks and project towers. Tony Upper West Side neighborhoods and Harlem projects. They rule Broadway and West End, Amsterdam, Lenox, St. Nicholas and Adam Clayton Powell. Central Park and Riverside where Jamaican nannies push yuppies’ kids in strollers and start-up entrepreneurs jog, and trash-strewn playgrounds where the gangbangers ball and sling dope.
We’d better rule, Malone thinks, with a strong hand, because our subjects are blacks and whites, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Haitians, Jamaicans, Italians, Irish, Jews, Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans, who all hate each other and who, in the absence of kings, would kill each other more than they already do.
We rule over gangs—Crips and Bloods and Trinitarios and Latin Lords. Dominicans Don’t Play, Broad Day Shooters, Gun Clappin’ Goonies, Goons on Deck (seems to be a theme), From Da Zoo, Money Stackin’ High, Mac Baller Brims. Folk Nation, Insane Gangster Crips, Addicted to Cash, Hot Boys, Get Money Boys.
Then there’s the Italians—the Genovese family, the Lucheses, the Gambinos, the Ciminos—all of which would get totally out of control if they didn’t know there were kings out there who would cut off their heads.
We rule Da Force, too. Sykes thinks he does, or at least pretends to think he does, but it’s the detective kings who really call the shots. The undercovers are our spies, the uniforms our foot soldiers, the plainclothes our knights.
And we didn’t become kings because our daddies were—we took our crowns the hard way, like the old warriors who fought their way to the throne with nicked swords and dented armor and wounds and scars. We started on these streets with guns and nightsticks and fists and nerve and guts and brains and balls. We came up through our hard-won street knowledge, our earned respect, our victories and even our defeats. We earned our reps as tough, strong, ruthless and fair rulers, administering rough justice with tempered mercy.
That’s what a king does.
He hands down justice.
Malone knows it’s important they look the part. Subjects expect their kings to look tight, to look sharp, to wear a little money on their backs and their feet, a little style. Take Montague, for instance. Big Monty dresses like an Ivy League professor—tweedy jackets, vests, knit ties—and the trilby with a small red feather in the band. It goes against the stereotype and it’s scary because the skels don’t know what to make of him, and when he gets them in the room, they think they’re being interrogated by a genius.
Which Monty probably is.
Malone has seen him go into Morningside Park where the old black men play chess, contest five boards at a time and win every one of them.
Then give back the money he just took from them.
Which is also genius.
Russo,
