are bugging out, so a couple days later Commissioner Kelly gives every undercover in the department—Firearms, Narcotics, whatever—he gives every uncle an opportunity to flip over to investigator, no questions asked. Now, I don’t think the Big Bosses really thought that one through. Because what happens is pretty much every uncle abandons ship. Almost all these guys, they hadbecome undercovers in the first place so they could get to investigator one day. And even if you wanted to stick around, your wife was going to make you switch, or, like me, you got divorced. So now the department’s all out of uncles, and the only people buying drugs are the drug addicts. Unacceptable, right?
“So the department reaches out to you guys. The replacements—and I don’t mean that in a bad way. You’re just the next wave is all. And now here we are, déjà vu all over again. Five years pass and none of you have
heard
these stories, so the Big Bosses figure, ‘Hey, let’s get some buy boards back on the walls, what’s the worst that can happen?’
“I’m just telling you, God forbid, if I get killed from all this crazy numbers-chasing? The one-upmanship? Not a single Big Boss is allowed to come to my funeral. No one above sergeant. Not Prondzinski, not Nielsen, not Captain Morse,
none
of them. I’m serious. If any of those snakes gets within three hundred feet of my casket, I will hold each of you responsible and haunt you all for the rest of your lives. Remember that. It’s gonna be some idiot drug dealer that pulls the trigger, but it’s the department pushing us in front of the gun. Just saying. God forbid.”
CHAPTER THREE
Unable to see clearly, unable to breathe deeply, Janice woke up on a white leather couch. Her nose was congested, her eyes inflamed and leaking water. A rancid fuzz coated her tongue. Mister Maplewood—an obese orange tabby cat—sat atop her chest, crushing her, pawing at her blouse as if kneading dough. The good news: he belonged to Fiorella, which meant Janice hadn’t accidentally fucked a stranger last night, and, even more important, her gun would be locked up inside the apartment’s safe. The bad: she was allergic to cats. She sat up on the couch, to try to get some air into her lungs, but the inertia-prone Mister Maplewood clung to her by his claws, disengaging himself only when she let loose a fantastic, head-clearing sneeze.
“God bless you,” said a tiny voice.
With her vision still bleary, she rubbed at her eyes—the very worst thing she could’ve done—until she could see the outline of Fiorella’s nine-year-old son, Hector the Magnificent, magician/superhero. He stood in the living room’s entryway wearing his beloved Superman costume, the cape more orange than red, hand-sewn by Vita as a replacement for the original, which he’d lost on what Fiorella called a disastrous horse-drawn-carriage ride through Central Park. His head turned to watch the cat gallop past him toward the back of the apartment.
“What are you doing up so early?” Janice asked him.
“Couldn’t sleep.” Like so many children of police officers, he had the haywire hair and shiny eye baggage of the apprentice insomniac. “Bad dreams.”
“I get those, too,” she said.
“I tried to tell Mama, but she wouldn’t wake up.”
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” she said. She swung her sweaty legs off the sticky couch. Normally someone who slept in the nude with an eye mask and earplugs, she had—thank God—kept her shirt on, matted now with dander, and her underwear, but her wool-felted pencil skirt lay crumpled on the carpet. Her purse strap curled out from under the coffee table. She pulled it toward her to check the time, but apparently her phone battery had gone dead. Of course it had. She squeezed her saddlebags, hating herself. She hated everything, everywhere, except for these eye-rubs, which felt amazingly good and for which she’d suffer all day. “Mama and Aunt Janice had a rough night
“So the department reaches out to you guys. The replacements—and I don’t mean that in a bad way. You’re just the next wave is all. And now here we are, déjà vu all over again. Five years pass and none of you have
heard
these stories, so the Big Bosses figure, ‘Hey, let’s get some buy boards back on the walls, what’s the worst that can happen?’
“I’m just telling you, God forbid, if I get killed from all this crazy numbers-chasing? The one-upmanship? Not a single Big Boss is allowed to come to my funeral. No one above sergeant. Not Prondzinski, not Nielsen, not Captain Morse,
none
of them. I’m serious. If any of those snakes gets within three hundred feet of my casket, I will hold each of you responsible and haunt you all for the rest of your lives. Remember that. It’s gonna be some idiot drug dealer that pulls the trigger, but it’s the department pushing us in front of the gun. Just saying. God forbid.”
CHAPTER THREE
Unable to see clearly, unable to breathe deeply, Janice woke up on a white leather couch. Her nose was congested, her eyes inflamed and leaking water. A rancid fuzz coated her tongue. Mister Maplewood—an obese orange tabby cat—sat atop her chest, crushing her, pawing at her blouse as if kneading dough. The good news: he belonged to Fiorella, which meant Janice hadn’t accidentally fucked a stranger last night, and, even more important, her gun would be locked up inside the apartment’s safe. The bad: she was allergic to cats. She sat up on the couch, to try to get some air into her lungs, but the inertia-prone Mister Maplewood clung to her by his claws, disengaging himself only when she let loose a fantastic, head-clearing sneeze.
“God bless you,” said a tiny voice.
With her vision still bleary, she rubbed at her eyes—the very worst thing she could’ve done—until she could see the outline of Fiorella’s nine-year-old son, Hector the Magnificent, magician/superhero. He stood in the living room’s entryway wearing his beloved Superman costume, the cape more orange than red, hand-sewn by Vita as a replacement for the original, which he’d lost on what Fiorella called a disastrous horse-drawn-carriage ride through Central Park. His head turned to watch the cat gallop past him toward the back of the apartment.
“What are you doing up so early?” Janice asked him.
“Couldn’t sleep.” Like so many children of police officers, he had the haywire hair and shiny eye baggage of the apprentice insomniac. “Bad dreams.”
“I get those, too,” she said.
“I tried to tell Mama, but she wouldn’t wake up.”
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” she said. She swung her sweaty legs off the sticky couch. Normally someone who slept in the nude with an eye mask and earplugs, she had—thank God—kept her shirt on, matted now with dander, and her underwear, but her wool-felted pencil skirt lay crumpled on the carpet. Her purse strap curled out from under the coffee table. She pulled it toward her to check the time, but apparently her phone battery had gone dead. Of course it had. She squeezed her saddlebags, hating herself. She hated everything, everywhere, except for these eye-rubs, which felt amazingly good and for which she’d suffer all day. “Mama and Aunt Janice had a rough night
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