THE LAST GUY

      The last guy on earth anyone ever expected to end up in the Metropolitan Correctional Center on Park Row was Denny Malone.

      You said the mayor, the president of the United States, the pope—people in New York would have laid odds they’d see them behind bars before they saw Detective First Grade Dennis John Malone.

      A hero cop.

      The son of a hero cop.

      A veteran sergeant in the NYPD’s most elite unit.

      The Manhattan North Special Task Force.

      And, most of all, a guy who knows where all the skeletons are hidden, because he put half of them there himself.

      Malone and Russo and Billy O and Big Monty and the rest made these streets their own, and they ruled them like kings. They made them safe and kept them safe for the decent people trying to make lives there, and that was their job and their passion and their love, and if that meant they worked the corners of the plate and put a little something extra on the ball now and then, that’s what they did.

      The people, they don’t know what it takes sometimes to keep them safe and it’s better that they don’t.

      They may think they want to know, they may say they want to know, but they don’t.

      Malone and the Task Force, they weren’t just any cops on the Job. You got thirty-eight thousand wearing blue, Denny Malone and his guys were the 1 percent