The Force. Don Winslow
finds Lou Savino at D’Amore over on 116th in what they used to call Spanish Harlem.
Before that it was Italian Harlem.
Now it’s on the way to becoming Asian Harlem.
Malone edges his way back to the bar.
Savino is a capo in the Cimino family with a crew based on the old Pleasant Avenue turf. They’re into construction rackets, unions, shylocking, gambling—the usual mob shit—but Malone knows Lou also slings dope.
But not in Manhattan North.
Malone has assured him that if any of his shit ever shows up in the hood, all bets are off—it will blow back on his other businesses. It’s pretty much always been the police deal with the mob—the wiseguys wanted to run hookers, to run gambling—card games, backroom casinos, the numbers racket before the state took it over, called it the lottery and made it a civic virtue—they gave a monthly envelope to the cops.
It was called the “pad.”
Usually one cop from every precinct was the bagman—he’d collect the payoff and distribute it out to his fellow officers. The patrolmen would kick up to the sergeants, the sergeants to the lieutenants, the lieutenants to the captains, the captains to the inspectors, the inspectors to the chiefs.
Everyone got a taste.
And most everybody considered it “clean money.”
Cops in those days (shit, Malone thinks, cops in these days) made a distinction between “clean money” and “dirty money.” Clean money was mostly from gambling; dirty money was from drugs and violent crimes—the rare occasions when a wiseguy would try to buy off a murder, an armed robbery, a rape or a violent assault. While almost every cop would take clean money, it was the rare one who took money that had drugs or blood on it.
Even the wiseguys knew the difference and accepted the fact that the same cop who’d take gambling money on Tuesday would arrest the same gangster on Thursday for dealing smack or committing a murder.
Everyone knew the rules.
Lou Savino is one of those mob guys who thinks he’s at a wedding and doesn’t realize it’s actually a wake.
He prays at the altar of dead false gods.
Tries to hold up an image of what he thinks used to be but in fact didn’t exist except maybe in the movies. The fuckin’ guy wants so bad to be something that never was, even the ghost image of which is now fading into black.
The guys of Savino’s generation liked what they saw in the movies and wanted to be that. So Lou ain’t trying to be Lefty Ruggiero, he’s trying to be Al Pacino being Lefty Ruggiero. He ain’t trying to be Tommy DeSimone, he’s going for Joe Pesci being Tommy DeSimone, not being Jake Amari but James Gandolfini.
Those were good shows, Malone thinks, but Jesus, Lou, they were shows. But people point to the spot a couple of blocks away from here where Sonny Corleone beat up Carlo Rizzi with a trash can lid like it really happened, not to the spot where Francis Ford Coppola filmed James Caan pretending to beat up Gianni Russo.
Yeah well, Malone thinks, every institution survives on its own mythology, the NYPD included.
Savino wears a black silk shirt under a pearl-gray Armani jacket and sits sipping a Seven and Seven. Why the hell anyone would dump soda into good whiskey is a mystery to Malone, but to each his own.
“Hey, it’s the cop di tutti cops!” Savino gets up and hugs him. The envelope slides effortlessly from Savino’s jacket into Malone’s. “Merry Christmas, Denny.”
Christmas is an important time in the wiseguy community—it’s when everyone gets their yearly bonuses, often in the tens of thousands of dollars. And the weight of the envelope is a barometer as to your standing in the crew—the heavier the envelope, the higher your status.
Malone’s envelope has nothing to do with that.
It’s for his services as a bagman.
Easy money—just meet a person here and there—a bar, a diner, the playground in Riverside Park—slip them an envelope. They already know what it’s for, it’s all been worked out; Malone is just the delivery guy because these good citizens don’t want to take a chance they’re seen with a known wiseguy.
They’re city officials—the kind who award contract bids.
That’s where the Cimino profit center is.
The Cimino borgata gets a piece of everything—a kickback from the contractor for getting him the bid, then the concrete, the rebar, the electrical, the plumbing. Otherwise, these unions find a problem and shut the project down.
Everyone thought the mob was done after RICO, Giuliani, the Commission case, the Windows case.
And they were.
Then the Towers came down.
Overnight, the feds shifted three-quarters of their personnel into antiterrorism and the mob made a comeback. Shit, they even made a fortune overcharging for debris removal from Ground Zero. Louie used to brag they took in sixty-three million.
Nine/eleven saved the Mafia.
It’s not clear now who’s in charge of the Cimino family, but the smart money is on Stevie Bruno. Did ten years on a RICO case, been out three now and is moving up fast. Very insulated, lives out in Jersey, rarely comes into the city, even for a meal.
So they’re back, although they’ll never be what they were.
Savino signals the bartender to get Malone a drink. The bartender already knows it’s a Jameson’s straight up.
They sit back down and go through the ritual dance—how’s the family, fine, how’s yours, all good, how’s business, you know another day another dollar behind, the usual bullshit.
“You touch the good reverend?” Savino asks.
“He got his turkey,” Malone says. “A couple of your people tuned up a bar owner on Lenox the other night, guy named Osborne.”
“What, you got a monopoly on beating up moolies?”
“Yeah, I do,” Malone says.
“He came up light on his vig,” Savino says. “Two weeks in a row.”
“Don’t show me up and do it on the street, where everyone sees,” Malone says. “Things are tense enough in the ‘community.’”
“Hey, just because one of your guys capped a kid means I gotta issue some kind of hall pass?” Savino asks. “This dumb shit bets on the Knicks. The Knicks, Denny. Then he don’t pay me my money. What am I supposed to do?”
“Just don’t do it on my beat.”
“Jesus fuck, Merry Christmas, I’m glad you came in tonight,” Savino says. “Anything else squeezing your shoes?”
“No, that’s it.”
“Thank you, St. Anthony.”
“You get a good envelope?”
Savino shrugs. “You want to know something … you and me? The bosses these days, they’re cheap cocksuckers. This guy, he has a house in Jersey overlooks the river, a tennis court … He barely comes into the city anymore. He did ten inside, okay, I get it … but he thinks that means he gets to eat with both hands, no one minds. You know something? I mind.”
“Lou, shit, there are ears in here.”
“Fuck them,” Savino says. He orders another drink. “Here’s something might interest you, you know what I heard? I heard that maybe all the smack from that Pena bust made you a rock star didn’t make it to the evidence locker.”
Jesus Christ, is everyone talking about this? “Bullshit.”
“Yeah,