The Force. Don Winslow

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      Malone turns around and indulges in the hot water pounding on the back of his neck and shoulders. Running down the tattooed sleeves of his arms. It feels good, he could stand there all day, but he has things to do.

      “Time to move, ace,” he tells himself.

      You have responsibilities.

      He gets out, dries off, wraps the towel around his waist.

      Malone is six two and solid. Thirty-eight now, he knows he has a hard look to him. It’s the tats on the broad forearms, the heavy stubble even when he shaves, the short-cropped black hair, the don’t-fuck-with-me blue eyes.

      It’s the broken nose, the small scar over the left side of his lip. What can’t be seen are the bigger scars on his right leg—his Medal of Valor scars for being stupid enough to get himself shot. That’s the NYPD, though, he thinks. They give you a medal for being stupid, take your badge for being smart.

      Maybe the badass look helps him stay out of the physical confrontations, which he does try to avoid. For one thing, it’s more professional to talk your way through. For another, any fight is going to get you hurt—even if it’s just your knuckles—and he doesn’t like getting his clothes messed up rolling around in God only knows what nasty shit is down there on the concrete.

      He’s not so much on the weights, so he hits the heavy bag and does the running, usually early morning or late afternoon depending on work, through Riverside Park because he likes the open view of the Hudson, Jersey across the river and the George Washington Bridge.

      Now Malone goes into the small kitchen. There’s a little coffee left from when Claudette got up, and he pours a cup and puts it into the microwave.

      She’s pulling a double at Harlem Hospital, just four blocks away on Lenox and 135th, so another nurse can spend time with family. With any luck, he’ll see her later tonight or early in the morning.

      Malone doesn’t care that the coffee is stale and bitter. He’s not after a quality experience, just a caffeine kick to jump-start the Dexedrine. Can’t stand the whole gourmet coffee bullshit anyway, standing in line behind some millennial asshole taking ten minutes to order a perfect latte so he can take a selfie with it. Malone dumps in some cream and sugar, like most cops do. They drink too much of it, so the milk helps soothe their stomachs while the sugar gives them a boost.

      An Upper West Side doctor writes Malone scrip for anything he wants—Dex, Vicodin, Xanax, antibiotics, whatever. A couple of years ago, the good doc—and he is a good guy, with a wife and three kids—had a little something on the side who decided to blackmail him when he decided to break it off.

      Malone had a talk with the girl and explained things to her. Handed her a sealed envelope with $10K and told her that was it. She should never contact the doc again or Malone would put her in the House of D where she’d be giving up her overvalued cooch for an extra spoonful of peanut butter.

      Now the grateful doctor writes him scrip but half the time just gives him free samples. Every little bit helps, Malone thinks, and anyway, it’s not like he could have speed or pain pills show up on his medical records if he got them through his insurance.

      He doesn’t want to phone Claudette and bother her at work, but texts to let her know that he didn’t sleep through the alarm and to ask how her day is going. She texts back, Xmas crazy but OK.

      Yeah, Christmas Crazy.

      Always crazy in New York, Malone thinks.

      If it ain’t Christmas Crazy, it’s New Year’s Eve Crazy (drunks), or Valentine’s Day Crazy (domestic disputes skyrocket and the gays get into bar fights), St. Paddy’s Crazy (drunk cops), Fourth of July Crazy, Labor Day Crazy. What we need is a holiday from the holidays. Just take a year off from any of them, see how it works out.

      It probably wouldn’t, he thinks.

      Because you still got Everyday Crazy—Drunk Crazy, Junkie Crazy, Crack Crazy, Meth Crazy, Love Crazy, Hate Crazy and, Malone’s personal favorite, plain old Crazy Crazy. What the public at large doesn’t understand is that the city’s jails have become its de facto mental hospitals and detox centers. Three-quarters of the prisoners they check in test positive for drugs or are psychotic, or both.

      They belong in hospitals but don’t have the insurance.

      Malone goes into the bedroom to get dressed.

      Black denim shirt, Levi’s jeans, Doc Marten boots with steel-reinforced toes (the better to kick in doors), a black leather jacket. The quasi-official Irish-American New York street uniform, Staten Island division.

      Malone grew up there, his wife and his kids still live there, and if you’re Irish or Italian from Staten Island, your career choices are basically cop, fireman or crook. Malone took door number one, although he has a brother and two cousins who are firefighters.

      Well, his brother, Liam, was a firefighter, until 9/11.

      Now he’s a twice-annual trip to Silver Lake Cemetery to leave flowers, a pint of Jameson’s and a report on how the Rangers are doing.

      Usually shitty.

      They always used to joke that Liam was the black sheep of the family, becoming a “hose-monkey”—a firefighter—instead of a cop. Malone used to measure his brother’s arms to see if they’d gotten any longer lugging all that shit around and Liam would shoot back that the only thing a cop would heft up a flight of stairs was a bag of doughnuts. And then there was the fictional competition between them about who could steal more—a firefighter on a domestic blaze or a cop on a burglary call.

      Malone loved his little brother, looked after him all those nights the old man wasn’t home, and they watched the Rangers together on Channel 11. The night the Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1994 was one of the happiest nights in Malone’s life. Him and Liam in front of the TV set, on their knees the last minute of the game when the Rangers were holding on to a one-goal lead by their fingernails and Craig MacTavish—God bless Craig MacTavish—kept getting the puck down deep in the Canucks’ zone and time finally ran out and the Rangers won the series 4–3 and Denny and Liam hugged each other and jumped up and down.

      And then Liam was gone, just like that, and it was Malone who had to go tell their mother. She was never the same after that and died just a year later. The doctors said it was cancer but Malone knew she was another victim of 9/11.

      Now he clips his holster with the regulation Sig Sauer onto his belt.

      A lot of cops like the shoulder holster but Malone thinks it’s just an extra move to get your hand up there and he prefers his weapon where his hand already is. He clips his off-duty Beretta to the back of his waistband, where it nestles into the small of his back. The SOG knife goes into his right boot. It’s against regs and illegal as shit, but Malone doesn’t care. He could be in a situation some skels take his guns and then what’s he supposed to pull, his dick? He ain’t going down like a bitch, he’s going out slashing and stabbing.

      And anyway, who’s going to bust him?

      A lot of people, you dumb donkey, he tells himself. These days, every cop’s got a bull’s-eye on his back.

      Tough times for the NYPD.

      First, there’s the Michael Bennett shooting.

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