and what you’re doing there. Do we understand each other?”
Perfectly, Malone thinks.
We’re all corrupt.
Just each in our own way.
And it’s a peace offering—if this turns into a big bust, I bring you with me this time. You star in the movie, get your picture in the Post, a boost in your career. And no one gives a fuck about Manhattan North’s numbers until you’re up and out.
“Merry Christmas, Captain,” Malone says.
“Merry Christmas, Malone.”
Malone started the Turkey Run, what, five years ago, when the Task Force came into being and he thought they needed a little positive PR in the neighborhood.
Everyone up here knows the detectives from Da Force anyway, and it doesn’t hurt to spread a little love and goodwill toward men. You never know when some kid who ate turkey instead of going hungry on Christmas is going to decide to cut you a break, give you a tip.
It’s a point of pride with Malone that the turkeys come out of his own pocket. Lou Savino and the wiseguys over on Pleasant Avenue would cheerfully donate turkeys that fell off the backs of trucks, but Malone knows the community would get wind of that right away. So he accepts a discount on the turkeys from a food wholesaler whose double-parked trucks don’t get ticketed, but he pays the rest of the freight himself.
Shit, one decent bust more than makes up for it.
Malone doesn’t kid himself that the same people who take his turkeys won’t be dropping “airmail”—bottles, cans, dirty diapers—on him from the upper floors of the project buildings the day after tomorrow. One time someone dropped an entire air-conditioning unit from the nineteenth floor that missed Malone’s head by about an inch.
Malone knows the Turkey Run is just a truce.
Now he goes down to the locker room where Big Monty is getting into the Santa costume.
Malone laughs. “You look good.”
Well, actually ridiculous. A big black man, normally reserved and dignified, with a red Santa cap and a big beard. “A black Santa?”
“Diversity,” Malone says. “I read it on the Job’s website.”
“Anyway,” Russo says to Montague, “you’re not Santa Claus, you’re Crack Claus. Who would be black up here. And you got the belly.”
Montague says, “Ain’t my fault every time I fuck your wife she makes me a sandwich.”
Russo laughs. “More than she makes me.”
Used to be it was Billy O played Santa, even though he was skinnier than a rail. He freakin’ loved it, shoving a pillow under the suit, joking with the kids, handing out the turkeys. Now it’s fallen on Monty, even though he’s black.
Monty adjusts the beard and looks at Malone. “You know they sell those turkeys. We might as well just cut out the middleman and hand them crack.”
Malone knows every turkey ain’t gonna make it to the table, that a lot of them will go straight to the pipe or into arms or up noses. Those turkeys will go to the dealers, who’ll sell them to the bodegas, who’ll put them on the shelves and make a profit. But most of the turkeys will make it home, and life is a numbers game. Some kids will get Christmas dinner because of his turkeys, others won’t.
Has to be good enough.
DeVon Carter doesn’t think it’s even close to good enough. Carter, he laughed at Malone’s Christmas Turkey Run.
This was a month or so ago.
Malone, Russo and Monty were having lunch at Sylvia’s, each of them digging into some stewed turkey wings, when Monty looked up and said, “Guess who’s here.”
Malone glanced over at the bar and saw DeVon Carter.
Russo said, “You want to get the check and go?”
“No reason to be unfriendly,” Malone said. “I think I’ll slide over and say hello.”
As Malone got up, two of Carter’s guys moved to step in the way, but Carter waved them off. Malone took the stool next to Carter and said, “DeVon Carter, Denny Malone.”
“I know who you are,” Carter said. “Is there a problem?”
“Not unless you have one,” Malone said. “I just thought, hey, we’re in the same place, we might as well meet in person.”
Carter looked good, like he always does. Gray cashmere Brioni turtleneck sweater, charcoal Ralph Lauren slacks, large Gucci eyeglass frames.
It got a little quiet in the place. There was the biggest drug slinger in Harlem and the cop trying to bust him sitting down with each other. Carter said, “As a matter of fact, we were just laughing about you.”
“Yeah? What’s so funny about me?”
“Your ‘Turkey Run,’” Carter said. “You give the people drumsticks. I give them money and dope. Who do you think is going to win that one?”
“The real question,” Malone said, “is who’s going to win between you and the Domos?”
The Pena bust slowed the Dominicans down a little, but it was just a setback. Some of Carter’s gangs were starting to look at the Dominicans as an option. They’re afraid they’re outnumbered and outgunned and are going to lose the marijuana business.
So Carter is a polydrug merchandiser—he has to be. In addition to the smack that mostly leaves the city or at least goes to a mostly white customer base, he markets coke and marijuana as well, because to run his moneymaking heroin business he needs troops. He needs security, mules, communications people—he needs the gangs.
The gangs have to make money, they have to eat.
Carter doesn’t have a choice but to let “his” gangs deal weed—he has to, or the Dominicans will and they’ll take his business. They’ll either buy Carter’s gangs outright or just wipe them off the map, because without the weed money, the gangs couldn’t buy guns and they’d be helpless.
His pyramid would crumble from the bottom.
Malone wouldn’t care that much about the weed slinging except that 70 percent of the murders in Manhattan North are drug related.
So you have Latino gangs fighting each other, you have black gangs fighting each other and, increasingly, you have black gangs fighting Latino gangs as the battle between their big-money heroin bosses escalates.
“You took Pena off the count for me,” Carter said.
“And not as much as a muffin basket.”
“I heard you
