The Force. Don Winslow

sitting on some weight, looking to lay it off …”

      Malone sets down his glass. “I gotta go.”

      “Places to be, people to see,” Savino says. “Buon Natale, Malone.”

      “Yeah, you too.”

      Malone walks out onto the street. Jesus, what has Savino heard about the Pena bust? Was he just fishing, or did he know something? It’s not good, it’s going to have to be dealt with.

      Anyway, Malone thinks, the wops won’t be beating up any deadbeat ditzunes out on Lenox.

      So that’s something.

      Next.

      Debbie Phillips was three months pregnant when Billy O went down.

      Because they weren’t married (yet—Monty and Russo were all over the kid to do the right thing and he was headed in that direction), the Job wouldn’t do shit for her. Didn’t give her any recognition at Billy’s funeral—the fucking Catholic department wouldn’t give the unwed mother the folded flag, the kind words, sure as shit no survivor’s benefits, no medical. She’d wanted to do a paternity test and then sue the Job, but Malone talked her out of it.

      You don’t turn the Job over to lawyers.

      “That’s not the way we do things,” he told her. “We’ll take care of you, the baby.”

      “How?” Debbie asked.

      “You let me worry about that,” Malone said. “Anything you need, you call me. If it’s a woman thing—Sheila, Donna Russo, Yolanda Montague.”

      Debbie never reached out.

      She was an independent type anyway, not really that attached to Billy, never mind his extended family. It was a one-night stand that went permanent, despite Malone’s constant warnings that Billy should double-wrap the groceries.

      “I pulled out,” Billy told him when Debbie called with the news.

      “What are you, in high school?” Malone asked.

      Monty cuffed him in the head. “Idiot.”

      “You going to marry her?” Russo asked.

      “She don’t want to get married.”

      “It doesn’t matter what you or she wants,” Monty said. “It only matters what that child needs—two parents.”

      But Debbie, she’s one of those modern women doesn’t think she needs a man to raise a baby. Told Billy they should wait and see how their “relationship developed.”

      Then they didn’t get the chance.

      Now, she opens the door for Malone, she’s eight months and looks it. She’s not getting any help from her family out in western Pennsylvania and she don’t have anyone in New York. Yolanda Montague lives the closest so she checks in, brings groceries, goes to the doctor’s appointments when Debbie will let her, but she don’t deal with the money.

      The wives never deal with the money.

      “Merry Christmas, Debbie,” Malone says.

      “Yeah, okay.”

      She lets him in.

      Debbie is pretty and petite, so her stomach looks huge on her. Her blond hair is stringy and dirty, the apartment is a mess. She sits down on the old sofa; the television is on to the evening news.

      It’s hot in the apartment, and stuffy, but it’s always either too hot or too cold in these old apartments—no one can figure out the radiators. One of them hisses now, as if to tell Malone to fuck off if he doesn’t like it.

      He lays an envelope on the coffee table.

      Five grand.

      The decision was a no-brainer—Billy keeps drawing a full share, and when they lay off the Pena smack, he gets his share of that, too. Malone is the executor, he’ll lay it out to Debbie as he sees she needs it and can handle it. The rest will go into a college fund for Billy’s kid.

      His son won’t want for anything.

      His mom can stay at home, take care of him.

      Debbie fought him on this. “You can pay for day care. I need to work.”

      “No, you don’t.”

      “It isn’t just the money,” she said. “I’d go crazy, all day here alone with a kid.”

      “You’ll feel different once he’s born.”

      “That’s what they say.”

      Now she looks at the envelope and then up at him. “White welfare.”

      “It’s not charity,” Malone says. “It’s Billy’s money.”

      “Then give it to me,” she says. “Instead of doling it out like Social Services.”

      “We take care of our own,” Malone says. He looks around the small apartment. “Are you ready for this baby? You got, I dunno, a bassinette, diapers, a changing table?”

      “Listen to you.”

      “Yolanda can take you shopping,” Malone says. “Or if you want, we can just bring the stuff by.”

      “If Yolanda takes me shopping,” Debbie says, “I’ll look like some rich West Side bitch with a nanny. Maybe I can get her to speak in a Jamaican accent, or are they all Haitian now?”

      She’s bitter.

      Malone don’t blame her.

      She has a fling with a cop, gets knocked up, the cop gets killed and there she is—alone with her life totally fucked up. Cops and their wives telling her what to do, giving her an allowance like she’s a kid. But she is a kid, he thinks, and if I gave her Billy’s full share in one whack, she’d blow it and where would Billy’s son be?

      “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,