The Force. Don winslow

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      “You have plans for tomorrow?” he asks.

      “It’s a Wonderful Life,” she says. “The Montagues asked me, so did the Russos, but I don’t want to intrude.”

      “They were sincere.”

      “I know.” She puts her feet up on the table. “I miss him, Malone. Is that crazy?”

      “No,” Malone says. “It’s not crazy.”

      I miss him, too.

      I loved him, too.

      The Dublin House, Seventy-Ninth and Broadway.

      You go into an Irish bar on Christmas Eve, Malone thinks, what you’re going to find are Irish drunks and Irish cops or some combination thereof.

      He sees Bill McGivern standing at the crowded bar, knocking one back.

      “Inspector?”

      “Malone,” McGivern says, “I was hoping to see you tonight. What are you drinking?”

      “Same as you.”

      “Another Jameson’s,” McGivern says to the bartender. The inspector’s cheeks are flushed, making his full head of white hair look even whiter. McGivern’s one of those ruddy, full-faced, glad-handing, smiling Irishmen. A big player in the Emerald Society and Catholic Guardians. If he weren’t a cop, he’d have been a ward healer, and a damn good one.

      “You wanna get a booth?” Malone asks when the drink comes. They find one in the back and sit down.

      “Merry Christmas, Malone.”

      “Merry Christmas, Inspector.”

      They touch glasses.

      McGivern is Malone’s “hook”—his mentor, protector, sponsor. Every cop with any kind of career has one—the guy who runs interference, gets you plum assignments, looks out for you.

      And McGivern is a powerful hook. An NYPD inspector is two ranks higher than a captain and just below the chiefs. A well-placed inspector—and McGivern is—can kill a captain’s career, and Sykes knows that.

      Malone’s known McGivern since he was a little boy. The inspector and Malone’s father were in uniform together in the Six back in the day. It was McGivern talked to him a few years after his dad passed, explained a few things to him.

      “John Malone was a great cop,” McGivern said.

      “He drank,” Malone said. Yeah, he was sixteen, knew fucking everything.

      “He did,” McGivern said. “Your father and I, back in the Six, we caught eight murdered kids, all under four years of age, inside two weeks.”

      One of the children had all these little burn marks on his body, and McGivern and his dad couldn’t figure out what they were until they finally realized they matched up exactly with the mouth of a crack pipe.

      The child had been tortured and bitten his tongue off in pain.

      “So, yes,” McGivern said, “your father drank.”

      Now Malone takes an envelope from his jacket and slides it across the table. McGivern hefts the heavy envelope and says, “Merry Christmas, indeed.”

      “I had a good year.”

      McGivern shoves the envelope into his wool coat. “How’s life treating you?”

      Malone takes a sip of his whiskey and says, “Sykes is busting my hump.”

      “I can’t get him transferred,” McGivern says. “He’s the darling of the Puzzle Palace.”

      One Police Plaza.

      NYPD headquarters.

      Which has troubles of its own right now, Malone thinks.

      An FBI investigation of high-ranking officers taking gifts in exchange for favors.

      Stupid shit like trips, Super Bowl tickets, gourmet meals at trendy restaurants in exchange for getting tickets fixed, building citations squashed, even guarding assholes bringing diamonds in from overseas. One of these rich fucks got one of the marine commanders to bring his friends out to Long Island on a police boat, and an air unit guy to fly his guests to a Hamptons party in a police chopper.

      Then there’s the thing with the gun licenses.

      It’s hard to get a gun permit in New York, especially a concealed carry license. It generally requires deep background checks and personal interviews. Unless you’re rich and can lay out twenty grand to a “broker” and the “broker” bribes high-ranking cops to shortcut the process.

      The feds have one of these brokers by the nuts and he’s talking, naming names.

      Indictments pending.

      As it is, five chiefs have been relieved of duty already.

      And one killed himself.

      Drove to a street by a golf course near his house on Long Island and shot himself.

      No note.

      Genuine grief and shock waves have blasted through the upper rank of the NYPD, McGivern included.

      They don’t know who’s next—to be arrested, to swallow the gun.

      The media’s humping it like a blind dog on a sofa leg, mostly because the mayor and the commissioner are at war.

      Yeah, maybe not so much a war, Malone thinks, more like two guys on a sinking ship fighting for the last seat in the lifeboat. They’re each facing down major scandals, and their one play is to throw each other to the media sharks and hope the feeding frenzy lasts long enough to paddle away.

      Not enough bad things can happen to Hizzoner to make Malone happy, and most of his brother and sister cops share this opinion because the motherfucker throws them under the bus every chance he gets. Didn’t back them on Garner, on Gurley, on Bennett. He knows where his votes come from, so he panders to the minority community and he’s done everything but toss Black Lives Matter’s collective salad.

      But now his own ass is in a sling.

      Turns out his administration has done some favors for major political donors. There’s a shocker, Malone thinks. There’s something new in this world, except the allegations claim that the mayor and his people took it a little further—threatening to actively harm potential donors who didn’t contribute, and the New York state investigators pushing the case had an ugly word for it—extortion.

      A lawyer word for “shakedown,” which is an old New York tradition.

      The mob did it for generations—probably still do in the few neighborhoods they still control—forcing shopkeepers and bar owners to make a weekly payment for “protection” against the theft and vandalism that would otherwise come.

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