Started carrying freakin’ artillery.
It could come from any direction, from Pena or even from the Ciminos, although Malone doubted a Mafia family would be reckless enough to kill an NYPD detective.
They took precautions. Malone didn’t go home to Staten Island but cooped up on the West Side. Russo kept his shotgun on the passenger seat. But they still hit the streets, worked Pena’s operation, worked their sources, chipped away.
And Malone took the tape to Mary Hinman.
“Berger will walk through this like shit through a goose,” Hinman said. “You didn’t have a warrant, you didn’t have probable cause—”
“Police officers surveilled a fellow officer on an undercover operation,” Malone said. “In the course of those duties they heard a man confessing to a multiple murder and—”
“You want me to charge Pena with the Cleveland homicides based on that?” Hinman asked. “Career suicide.”
“Just bring him in,” Malone said. “Get him in the room. Let Homicide play him the tape and work on him.”
“You think Berger will let him answer any question other than his name?” Hinman asked.
“Try anyway,” Malone said, so tight, so frustrated, he was about to break out of his skin. “You owe me.”
How many convictions did you get from me testilying?
They brought Pena in.
Malone watched from behind the window as Hinman played the tape. “Cleveland knew the rules. He knew that a man puts not only himself on the line, but his entire family. That’s our way.”
Berger held his hand up to Pena to keep quiet, looked at Hinman and said, “I don’t hear anything even remotely close to a confession to or even guilty knowledge of the Cleveland murders. I heard a man expressing an admittedly repulsive cultural norm that, while reprehensible, is not criminal.”
Hinman turned the tape back on.
“There’s two hundred fifty thousand dollars in there. Take it and eat.”
“What’s this for?”
“You know what it’s for.”
“So now you think you have my client for attempting to bribe a police officer,” Berger said. “Except you don’t have the money. Perhaps the briefcase was empty. Perhaps my client was merely taunting Sergeant Malone in admittedly misguided retribution for his endless puerile harassments. Next?”
“No, you tell me what it’s for, you piece of garbage. You tell me it’s for giving you a pass for murdering that family.”
“Pat him down.”
Hinman played the rest of the tape.
Berger said, “I heard nothing incriminating. I did hear an NYPD detective threaten a subject and say that he was going to ‘ass-fuck’ his wife on his coffin. You must be very proud. In any case, this tape is not only useless, it would be inadmissible should you be so foolish as to bring charges against my client. A grand jury might be impressed; a judge would indignantly toss it in the garbage where it belongs. You have nothing on my client.”
Hinman said, “We have a line on the shooters and they’ll implicate your client. His moment to get on the bus, spare himself the needle, is now.”
It was a total bluff, but Pena flinched.
Berger didn’t. “Do I hear whistling past the graveyard? Or a tacit admission that your ‘case’ presently amounts to nothing? I will tell you this, Counselor, your police are out of control. I will take that up with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, but I would recommend you save your career by taking action and culling the rabid dogs from your pack.”
He stood up and gestured for Pena to do the same. “Good day.”
Berger looked straight into the mirror, took out a handkerchief, smiled at Malone and lifted his shoe. He wiped the sole and tossed the handkerchief into the trash can.
The neighborhood started to turn on Pena.
It was subtle at first, a mere leak. But the leak became a stream that became a flood that cracked open the wall of Pena’s invulnerability. No one came into the house—there wasn’t that kind of trust—but it was a nod, a flick of the head, the slightest gesture to let Malone know, as he cruised the streets, that a conversation was wanted.
Those talks happened on the corner, in alleys, in tenement hallways, in shooting galleries, in bars. Words about who killed them three kids, who Pena hired, who the shooters were.
Some of it was cynical; the informants wanted the flow of heroin to resume, the hassling to stop, Malone to shut down his relentless campaign. But a lot of it was conscience freed from fear as the tide started to turn.
A picture began to emerge that Pena had hired two ambitious up-and-comers who wanted to make their bones with him. And the community was especially angry because they were black.
Tony and Braylon Carmichael were brothers, twenty-nine and twenty-seven, respectively, with sheets that stretched back to the early teens for assault, robbery, dealing and burglary, and now they were looking to move up as wholesalers for Pena.
He had an entry-level job for them first.
Kill the Clevelands.
The whole family.
Malone, Russo and Montague crashed into the apartment on 145th with guns drawn, ready to shoot.
Pena had gotten there first.
Tony Carmichael was slumped in a chair, two entry wounds in his forehead.
Well, Malone thinks, we managed to execute one of the killers, anyway—indirectly, by telling Pena we were on the shooters. They searched the rest of the apartment but didn’t find Braylon, which meant that their case against Pena was still alive.
Malone went to Nasty Ass. “Put it out on the street. He reaches out to me, I promise to bring him in safe. No beating. He makes whatever deal he can make for testifying on Pena.”
Braylon was a dumbass—his late brother was the brains of the operation. But Braylon had to be smart enough to know that Pena was hunting him, Cleveland’s friends were hunting him, and his only chance was Malone.
He reached out that night.
Malone and his team picked him up in St. Nicholas Park, where he’d been hiding in some bushes, and brought him into the station.
“Don’t say a fucking word to me,” Malone said as he cuffed him. “Keep your mouth shut.”
He wanted to do this right. Called in and made sure that Minelli was ready to interview and that Hinman was present. Braylon didn’t want a lawyer. He gave it all up, how Pena had hired him and his brother to kill the Clevelands.
“Is it enough?” Malone asked.
“It’s enough to arrest him.”
She got a warrant on Pena, and Homicide went to pick him up—Hinman strictly forbade Malone to go.
Pena wasn’t there.
They missed him by minutes.
Gerard Berger had surrendered his client to the feds.
Not for murder, for narcotics trafficking.
Malone exploded when Hinman called him with the news. “I don’t want him for trafficking! I want him for the murders!”
“We don’t get everything we want,” Hinman said. “Sometimes we have to settle for what we can get. Come on, Malone, you won. Pena turned himself in to save his life and go to a federal lockup where his own people can’t kill him. He’ll do fifteen to thirty, probably die there. That’s a victory. Take it.”