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.
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”
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
