The Border: The final gripping thriller in the bestselling Cartel trilogy. Don Winslow

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СКАЧАТЬ profile me, Libby.”

      “What about all that wonderful Greek food?”

      “Not so wonderful when you grow up on it,” Cirello says. “Don’t tell my ya-ya, but I’d take Italian every time. Or Indian, or Caribbean, anything, as long as it’s not wrapped in a grape leaf. Let me ask you something else: Indians or Reds?”

      “Reds,” Libby says. “I’m all about the National League.”

      “Should Rose get in the Hall?”

      “Absolutely,” Libby says. “I bet on myself every day. I’ll bet you do, too.”

      “You know, this could work out.”

      “Mets?”

      “Of course.”

      She takes a french fry off his plate and pops it in her mouth. “Bobby, about this cheap whore thing …”

      Cirello spoons coffee into the briki and turns the gas stove to medium. He stirs the coffee until the foam rises, pours it into two cups and walks over to the bed. “Libby? You said wake you at seven.”

      “Oh shit,” she says, “I have to get to class.”

      He hands her the coffee.

      “This is wonderful,” she says. “What is it?”

      “Greek coffee.”

      “I thought you said you hated Greek food.”

      “I’m so full of shit …”

      She walks into the bathroom, apparently unbothered by her nudity. Yeah, I wouldn’t be bothered either, Cirello thinks, a body like that. When she comes out, her red hair is in a ponytail and she has a sweatshirt and leggings on.

      “Time to do the walk of shame,” she says.

      “Let me drive you.”

      “I’ll take the subway.”

      “Is that your way of saying this was a one-night stand?” Cirello asks.

      “Look at you, Mr. Big-Shot Detective, all insecure,” she says. She kisses him on the lips. “It’s my way of saying that the subway is faster.”

      He tosses his coffee down. “Come on, I’ll walk you.”

      “Yeah?”

      “Like I said, I’m a nice Greek boy.”

      At the top of the subway entrance she says, “You’d better call me.”

      “I’ll call you,” Cirello says.

      She kisses him lightly and goes down the stairs.

      Cirello stops at a newsstand, buys the papers, and walks to a diner for breakfast. He sits down at a booth, has a big cheese omelet with rye toast, and looks through the Times. There’s a prominent story about the actor who overdosed.

      And now, Cirello thinks, I have to reach out and sell myself to the people who killed him.

      Easy to say, harder to do.

      These people aren’t billionaires because they’re idiots. They don’t own cops in Mexico just because Mexican cops are easier to buy—they own cops because they have leverage on them. The offer isn’t “take it or leave it,” the offer is “take it or we kill you and your family.” That way they know they can trust the cop they bought—he isn’t going to flip on them.

      Doesn’t work that way up here.

      No wiseguy in his right mind would kill a New York City cop, much less threaten his family, because he knows he’d have thirty-eight thousand angry police up his ass. Even if he survived his arrest—which is unlikely—the Irish and Italian prosecutors and the Jewish judge would see that he did the rest of his life under the worst prison in the state. Worse, it would fuck up business, so the bosses make sure their troops don’t do that shit.

      The black and Latino gangbangers know better than to kill a cop, because it would shut their businesses down.

      Cops get killed, all right, too many, but not by OC.

      The Mexicans are going to be hinky about buying an NYPD cop because they won’t have the insurance policy on him.

      So you have to give them some.

      He goes to the garage, picks up his car, a 2012 Mustang GT, and drives out to Resorts World Casino.

      A week later he’s at a Starbucks in Staten Island listening to the barista sing the theme song from Gilligan’s Island.

      “You’re too young to know that show,” he says.

      “Hulu,” she answers. “What can I get you?”

      He looks at her name tag. “A latte, please, Jacqui.”

      “Just a latte?” she asks. “No annoying adjectives?”

      “Just a latte,” he says, thinking, And maybe some smack. The girl wears long sleeves and her eyes look as if she’s high.

      Staten Island is one of the heroin hot spots. They’re seeing three times the smack they did only two years ago. Used to be the drug was just in the northern, more urban part of the island, where it came on the ferry from Manhattan or over the bridge from Brooklyn, and you found it in the projects.

      Not anymore.

      Now it’s down to the single-family neighborhoods in the central and southern parts of the island, working-class neighborhoods with a lot of cops, firefighters, and city employees.

      And let’s be honest about it, Cirello thinks.

      White neighborhoods.

      Blue-collar neighborhoods.

      Why he’s here now.

      Because he’s white.

      Up in Manhattan and out in Brooklyn, drug trafficking is pretty much a gang thing. The black and Latino gangs dominate the trade in and around the projects and he knows he’s not going to break in with them.

      Not a white cop.

      Not even a dirty white cop.

      But out here the heroin trafficking is different—you have a lot of independent dealers, most of them users themselves, selling dime and even nickel bags they’re buying from wiseguy retailers who buy it from the mills uptown.

      Twenty years ago, maybe even ten, it would be worth your life to deal H to white kids in Staten Island, which is as mobbed up as it is copped up. Shit, Paul Calabrese himself lived out here, and there’s still a mob presence but it’s different. СКАЧАТЬ