Don winslow Don winslow - The Border

Now you’re the commanding general in this war, Keller thinks, and you have no idea how to win it. You have thousands of brave, dedicated troops and all they can do is hold the line. You only know how to do the same old thing you’ve been doing, which isn’t working, but what’s the alternative?

Just give up?

Surrender?

You can’t do that, because people are dying.

But you have to try something different.

The train goes into a tunnel on its way to Manhattan.

By design, no one is there to meet them. No one from DEA or the AG’s office. They go out of Penn Station by the Eighth Avenue exit and hail a cab. Hugo tells the driver, “Ninety-Nine West Tenth.”

“We’re not going there,” Keller says, and before Hidalgo can ask why not, adds, “Because if I take a piss in the New York DEA office, Denton Howard knows how much and what color before I finish washing my hands.”

Leaks are going out from DEA, Keller knows—to the conservative media and also to the Republican politicians now vying for the presidential nomination, Ben O’Brien among them.

One of the potential candidates is right here in New York, although Keller has a hard time believing he’s for real.

Real estate tycoon and reality TV star John Dennison is making noise about running, and a lot of the noises he’s making have to do with Mexico and the border. All Keller needs is Howard feeding Dennison half-truths and insider information, including that Keller is meeting privately with the chief of the New York City Police Department’s Division of Narcotics.

“Where are we going?” Hidalgo asks.

Keller tells the driver, “Two-Eighty Richmond Terrace. Staten Island.”

“What’s there?” Hidalgo asks.

“You ask a lot of questions.”

Brian Mullen is waiting for them on the sidewalk outside an old house.

Keller gets out of the cab, walks up to him and says, “Thanks for meeting me.”

“If my chief finds out I’m doing this on the down low,” Mullen says, “he’ll hand me my ass.”

Mullen came up the hard way, as an undercover, working Brooklyn during the bad old crack days and coming out of a dirty precinct squeaky clean. Now he’s breaking every protocol by agreeing to meet with Keller without informing his superiors.

The visit of the head of DEA would be an occasion, replete with media and photos taken with a gang of brass in dress uniform at One Police Plaza. There’d be assistants and cupbearers and PR flaks and a lot of talk and nothing would get done.

Mullen is wearing a Yankees jacket over jeans.

“Does it bring back your UC days?” Keller asks.

“Sort of.”

“What is this place?” Keller asks.

“Amethyst House,” Mullen says. “A halfway house for female addicts. If I get spotted by some cop from the One Twenty, I can say I was meeting with a source.”

“This is Hugo Hidalgo,” Keller says. He can see Mullen isn’t thrilled to see someone else there. “His father and I worked together back in the day. Ernie Hidalgo.”

Mullen shakes Hugo’s hand. “Welcome. Come on, I have a car. There’s a deli at the corner, you need coffee or something.”

“We’re good.”

They follow Mullen to an unmarked black Navigator parked on the street. The guy behind the wheel doesn’t look at them as they get into the back. Young guy, black hair slicked back, wearing a black leather jacket.

“Meet Bobby Cirello,” Mullen says. “He works for me. Don’t worry. Detective Cirello is professionally deaf and dumb. Just take us for a drive, Bobby, okay?”

Cirello pulls out onto the street.

“This is the St. George neighborhood,” Mullen says. “Used to be the epicenter of the heroin epidemic in New York, because it’s closest to the city, except now heroin is everywhere on the island—Brighton, Fox Hills, Tottenville—hence the name ‘Heroin Island.’”

St. George looks like junkie turf, Keller thinks, if there is such a thing, and he sees what look like addicts from the car, hanging out on the corner, in parking lots and vacant lots.

But then they drive into what could be any suburb in any town in the United States. Residential areas of single-family homes, tree-lined streets, well-kept yards, swing sets and driveway basketball hoops.

“Smack is killing kids here now,” Mullen says. “Which is why we have an ‘epidemic.’ When it was blacks and Puerto Ricans, it wasn’t an illness, it was a crime, right?”

“It’s still a crime, Brian.”

“You know what I mean,” Mullen says. “It’s this new ‘cinnamon.’ Thirty percent stronger than the black tar the Mexicans used to sell, that the addicts were used to. That’s why they’re overdosing—they’re shooting the same amount they used to and it’s taking them out. Or they were used to taking pills, but the heroin is cheaper, and they shoot too much.”

As the drive moves south into even more suburban areas, Mullen points out houses— a son from this house, a daughter from this one, these people lucked out, their kid ODed but survived, is in rehab now, who knows, we’ll see, I guess.

“We’re talking triage here,” Mullen says. “The first step is to treat the wounded, right? See if we can save them on the battlefield. New York State just gave us a grant to equip twenty thousand officers with naloxone.”

Keller knows the drug, commercially known as Narcan. It’s like an EpiPen—if an overdosing addict is treated in time, you can practically bring them back from the dead. A Narcan kit costs all of sixty bucks.

“But DEA has expressed ‘reservations,’ right?” Mullen says. “You’re concerned it will just encourage addicts to shoot up, or kids will start using it to get high. You’re worried about ‘Narcan parties.’”

That’s Denton Howard shooting his mouth off to the media, Keller thinks, but he doesn’t say it. He’s not about to lay it off with a “that ain’t me” excuse.

“I’d put Narcan kits out on the street like fire extinguishers,” Mullen says. “Maybe the addicts could save their friends, because by the time my cops or first responders get there, it’s often too late.”

It makes sense, Keller thinks. It’s also political suicide—if he came out for open Narcan distribution, Fox and Friends would chop him to pieces. “Okay, triage—keep going.”

“Cutting down on overdose deaths is the first step,” Mullen says, “but when the addict comes to, he’s still an addict, right? You’re just saving him so you can save him again, until one day you can’t. What you have to do is get him into rehab.”

“So rehab’s the answer?”

“I know jail isn’t the answer, prison isn’t the answer,” Mullen says. “They’re getting high in there, only it costs more. Drug courts, maybe—bust them, have a judge force them into rehab? I don’t know that there’s an answer. But we have to do something different. We have to change the way we think.”

“Is this you?” Keller asks. “I mean, are you expressing a shift in the department’s thinking or are you an outlier?”

“A little bit of both,” Mullen says. “Look, you go to the chief, some of the older guys with this stuff, they look at you like you’re some bleeding-heart mugger hugger, but even some of the guys at One Police are starting to look for different answers, they see what’s going on now. Hell, we had a detective overdose two years ago, did you know that? Guy got hurt on the job, started taking pain pills. Then smack. Then he ODed. An NYPD gold shield, for Chrissakes. It makes people think. Look for new solutions. You heard of SIFs?”

Supervised injection facilities, Keller thinks. Places addicts can go and shoot up. Medical personnel supervise the content and the dose. “De facto legalization of heroin?”