The Force. Don Winslow

The Reverend Cornelius Hampton walks up to the van and the crowd parts for him like the Red Sea he’s always preaching about in his “let my people go” sermons.

      Malone looks at the famous face, the conked silver hair, the placid expression. Hampton is a community activist, a civil rights leader, a frequent guest on television talk shows, CNN and MSNBC.

      Reverend Hampton has never seen a camera he didn’t like, Malone thinks. Hampton gets more airtime than Judge Judy.

      Monty hands him a turkey. “For the church, Reverend.”

      “Not that turkey,” Malone says. “This one.”

      He reaches back and selects a bird, hands it to Hampton. “It’s fatter.”

      Heavier, too, with the stuffing.

      Twenty large in cash stuck up the turkey’s ass, this courtesy of Lou Savino, the Harlem capo for the Cimino family and the boys on Pleasant Avenue.

      “Thank you, Sergeant Malone,” Hampton says. “This will go to feed the poor and the homeless.”

      Yeah, Malone thinks, maybe some of it.

      “Merry Christmas,” Hampton says.

      “Merry Christmas.”

      Malone spots Nasty Ass.

      Junkie-bopping at the edge of the little parade, his long skinny neck tucked into the collar of the North Face down jacket Malone bought him so he don’t freeze to death out in the streets.

      Nasty Ass is one of Malone’s CIs, a “criminal informant,” his special snitch, although Malone’s never filed a folder on him. A junkie and a small-time dealer, his info is usually good. Nasty Ass got his street name because he always smells like he has a round in the chamber. If you can, you want to talk to Nasty Ass in the open air.

      Now he comes up to the back of the van, his thin frame shivering, because he’s either cold or jonesing. Malone hands him a turkey, although where the hell Nasty is going to cook it is a mystery, because the man usually flops out in shooting galleries.

      Nasty Ass says, “218 One-Eight-Four. About eleven.”

      “What’s he doing there?” Malone asks.

      “Gettin’ his dick wet.”

      “You know this for sure.”

      “Dead ass. He told me hisself.”

      “This pans out, it’s a payday for you,” Malone says. “And find a fuckin’ toilet, for Chrissakes, huh?”

      “Merry Christmas,” Nasty Ass says.

      He walks away with the turkey. Maybe he can sell it, Malone thinks, score a fix-up shot.

      A man on the sidewalk yells, “I don’t want no cop turkey! Michael Bennett, he can’t eat no fucking turkey, can he!?”

      Well, that’s true, Malone thinks.

      That’s the cold truth.

      Then he sees Marcus Sayer.

      The boy’s face is swollen and purple, his bottom lip cut open as he asks for a turkey.

      Marcus’s mother, a fat lazy idiot, opens the door a crack and sees the gold shield.

      “Let me in, Lavelle,” Malone says. “I have a turkey for you.”

      He does, he has a turkey under his arm and eight-year-old Marcus by the hand.

      She slides the chain lock off and opens the door. “Is he in trouble? Marcus, what you do?”

      Malone nudges Marcus in front of him and steps inside. He sets the turkey on the kitchen counter, or what he can see of it under the empty bottles, ashtrays and general filth.

      “Where’s Dante?” Malone asks.

      “Sleepin’.”

      Malone pulls up Marcus’s jacket and plaid shirt and shows her the welts on his back. “Dante do this?”

      “What Marcus tell you?”

      “He didn’t tell me nothin’,” Malone says.

      Dante comes out of the bedroom. Lavelle’s newest man is brolic, has to go six seven, all of it muscle and mean. He’s drunk now, his eyes yellow and bloodshot, and he looms over Malone. “What you want?”

      “What did I tell you I was going to do if you beat this boy again?”

      “You was going to break my wrist.”

      Malone has the nightstick out and twirls it like a baton, bringing it down on Dante’s right wrist, snapping it like a Popsicle stick. Dante bellows and swings with his left. Malone ducks, goes low and brings the stick across Dante’s shins. The man goes down like a felled tree.

      “So there you go,” Malone says.

      “This is police brutality.”

      Malone steps on Dante’s neck and uses his other foot to kick him up the ass, hard, three times. “You see Al Sharpton here? Television crews? Lavelle here holding up a cell phone? There ain’t no police brutality if the cameras aren’t running.”

      “The boy disrespected me,” Dante groans. “I disciplined him.”

      Marcus stands there wide-eyed; he’s never seen big Dante get jacked up before and he kind of likes it. Lavelle, she just knows she’s in for another ass-kicking when the cop leaves.

      Malone steps down harder. “I see him with bruises again, I see him with welts, I’m going to discipline you. I’m going to shove this stick up your ass and pull it out your mouth. Then Big Monty and me are going to set your feet in cement and dump you in Jamaica Bay. Now get out. You don’t live here anymore.”

      “You can’t tell me where I can live!”

      “I just did.” Malone lets his foot off Dante’s neck. “Why you still laying there, bitch?”

      Dante gets up, holds his broken wrist and grimaces in pain.

      Malone sees his coat and tosses it to him.

      “What about my shoes?” Dante asks. “They in the bedroom.”

      “You go barefoot,” Malone says. “You walk barefoot in the snow to the E-room and tell them what happens to grown men who beat up little boys.”

      Dante stumbles out the door.

      Malone knows everyone will be talking about it tonight. The word will get passed—maybe you beat little kids in Brooklyn, in Queens, but not in Manhattan North, not in the Kingdom of Malone.

      He turns to Lavelle. “What’s wrong with you?”

      “Don’t I need love, too?”

      “Love your kid,” Malone says. “I see this again, you go to jail, he goes in the system. Is that what you want?”

      “No.”

      “Then straighten up.” He takes a twenty from his pocket. “This ain’t for Little Debbies. There’s still time for you to go shopping, put something under the tree.”

      “Ain’t got a tree.”

      “It’s an expression.”

      Jesus Christ.

      He squats down in front of Marcus. “Anybody hurts you, anybody threatens to hurt you—you come to me, to Monty, Russo, anyone on Da Force. Okay?”

      Marcus nods.

      Yeah, maybe, Malone thinks. Maybe there’s a chance the kid don’t grow up hating every cop.

      Malone’s no fool—he knows he isn’t going to stop every child beating in Manhattan North or even most of them. Or most of any other crime. And it bothers him—it’s his turf, his responsibility.