Devils in Exile

by Chuck Hogan

  They went down the twenty-ninth floor hallway, met halfway by the black guy, holding another man doubled over in front of him. His face was bloody and he wheezed into his gag—probably a lookout posted at the elevator.

  The blond took the lookout, and the black guy lined up on the hinge side of door 2919. The Latino pushed the Venezuelan’s face into the peephole. Royce crouched beside him, his gun pointed at the Venezuelan. He pulled down the man’s gag and knocked on the door.

  A voice on the other side said, “Yep,” and the door started to open, and the Latino drove the Venezuelan forward. The black guy went in solo behind him, long gun out. Then the blond with the bloodied man, then Maven.

  Maven’s guy tried to kick him and pull free, so Maven shoved him down, hard, the man crashing into a table and falling onto his side. Maven had his gun free and was in a good two-handed crouch—but it was already over.

  Nobody moved. Not the goon who had answered the door and was thrown back against the wall. Not the goon by the window, his hand frozen halfway to his holster. Not the fat Maracone brothers, seated at the far table like diners awaiting their meal.

  It was the letters FBI. Not one shot was fired.

  The Maracones looked at the bound and gagged Venezuelan with disgust. They kept their fat hands visible and their mouths shut. The black guy went over and shouldered each one to the floor, twin silver .25 handguns falling from beneath their fleshy thighs.

  Everybody was then cuffed, hands and ankles. Furniture was cleared away so that they could be laid out on the floor, heads in, like a six-petal flower. The Venezuelan’s muscle, the heaviest of them all, was left where he had fallen, lying on his side by the wall.

  Then a thorough frisking, the Latino throwing mobile phones, wallets, car keys, pistols, and pistol magazines onto the bed.

  “I want my lawyer!” barked one Maracone brother, lying red-faced on his big belly. “And a motherfucking receipt!”

  “Who here blabbed?” said the other Maracone. “Who was it?”

  The Venezuelan was trying to protest through his gag.

  The rrriiippp they heard was the blond tearing off lengths of duct tape.

  “What the fu—?” was all the Maracone brother could get out, as the tape wrapped around his mouth to the back of his head. Another strip covered his eyes to his ears. Leaving only his nose.

  The same was done to all of them.

  A couple thrashed afterward, making a racket on the floor, until the black guy went around kicking each one in the ribs until they stopped.

  The blond took the clock radio from the nightstand and placed it on the floor in the center of the ring of taped heads. He found a hip-hop station and turned up the volume.

  Maven, fascinated by all the activity, heard a thumping and turned just in time to see the muscle stagger to his feet against the wall. He came at Maven head-down, bull-style. Maven side stepped him and dropped the heel of his hand down onto the back of his head, flattening the guy, dropping him hard.

  The black guy tossed over a roll of silver duct tape with an approving look.

  The blond unfolded a medium-size white paper bag and picked up each confiscated weapon from the bed, releasing ammo clips and clearing the firing chambers. He deposited all ammunition in the bag, dropping the empty guns back onto the bed. He then removed each mobile phone battery and dumped both pieces separately into the bag. Then both room phones, including the bathroom extension.

  Royce gave a low whistle, summoning Maven to the bathroom. It was spacious, with a separate interior door to the toilet, and one of those bidet things. Royce shoved the complimentary toiletries aside, making counter room for the Venezuelan’s suitcase. He ran the zipper along the sides, opening the cover to reveal a layer of plush white towels.

  Beneath the towels lay tightly packed parcels wrapped in green-tinted plastic, bound with tape. Royce removed one with his gloved hand, the parcel roughly the size of a hardcover book. With a small folding knife, he opened up a three-inch gash lengthwise in the plastic wrap.

  The dope inside was caked and chunky, dull white with a yellowish tinge.

  “Cocaine hydrochloride,” said Royce, picking at the drug with the tip of the blade. “One metric kilogram. About thirty grand worth, wholesale. Or a ten-to-life stretch, depending on which way you look at it. Five or more kilos means possession with intent to distribute, jumping it up to forty to life. If real cops busted in here right now, our next lunch in the outside world would be in about 2050. A science-fiction stretch. Just to put this into perspective.”

  He handed over the parcel, slit side up, and Maven was holding a kilo of uncut cocaine. It was lighter than he had imagined, like a flat loaf of unleavened bread.

  Royce grabbed a second kilo and slit its green plastic, this time bisecting the sealing tape. He carried it to the open toilet, dumping the coke into the bowl, kneading the clumps until the package was empty.

  He pushed the handle, the mixture swirling until it was swallowed down the drain, the bowl refilling with clear water.

  Royce said, “The sewer rats dance tonight.”

  He had Maven dispose of the one in his hand, and they switched off flushing away the rest. The cocaine didn’t dissolve well, sinking slowly into the water like cake mix. Maven lost count, but there were fewer than twenty flushes.

  When they were done, Royce mashed up the wrappers and brought them out to the white paper bag on the bed. He dumped them in, then his white-dusted gloves.

  Maven followed suit. Then they returned to the bathroom and removed their jackets and holsters, patching up their FBI signs and unstrapping the armor vests, stripping off their masks and piling everything into the suitcase, which they then brought back out to the main room. The dealers remained on the floor, music pounding in their ears. The others were all unmasked now too, packing up. Maven was handed the white paper bag full of pistol magazines, coke wrappers, and unpowered mobile phones. Royce grabbed a suitcase roughly the same size as the Venezuelan’s, but softer.

  BACK INTO THE STAIRWELL, DOWN TWO FLIGHTS TO TWENTY-SEVEN, then along the L-shaped hallway to the elevators and down. They exited at the second floor, the mall level, Royce wheeling his travel bag behind him past the kiosks and upscale stores.

  At the edge of the food court, Royce nodded toward a trash container, and Maven dumped the white bag with evident relief.

  Past Legal Sea Foods, they rode the long escalator down to revolving doors, exiting onto Boylston Street, where a cold, canyonlike wind cuffed them, street grit spraying their skin as they crossed three lanes of traffic to the shelter of a side street.

  “And that,” said Royce, “is that.”

  “Christ,” said Maven, running off a string of expletives, the by-product of adrenaline-induced elation.

  “Take it easy,” said Royce, keeping an even pace.

  Maven reined in his manic exhilaration, moving past a mother walking a blanketed newborn. What he was feeling could almost have been a contact high from flushing all that coke. “Now what?”

  “Now we walk.”

  They were already walking. Maven wanted to sprint. “What about them back there?”

  Royce crossed Newbury Street, not waiting, traffic stopping for him. “They’ll get themselves free eventually. By now they know they got ripped off. I want them to think we took the product too. Double the pain, double the blame.”

  As they approached Commonwealth Avenue, Maven shoved his hands into his pockets to keep them from flying away. “FBI? Fucking hell.”

  Royce nodded. “We’re breaking all kinds of laws here. Point is to settle them down immediately. Especially in a public place like that, a hotel. Get them under control fast. Thinking it’s an orderly raid, something their lawyers can beat. Getting arrested to them is like a dentist appointment. Getting ripped off—that’s another thing entirely.”

  Maven eyed the suitcase, rolling at Royce’s heels like a puppy. “How much is in there?”

  Royce shrugged, though Maven c
ould tell he knew already. “Dealers can’t exactly run to the cops to make up their loss. That’s why getting out clean is imperative. No gunplay, no going off and capping anybody if we can help it. Because gunshots bring heat, and dragging the law into this thing defeats our advantage.”

  Royce slowed to a stop, turning to Maven on the sidewalk in the median pedestrian mall of Commonwealth Avenue.

  “I want you to never, ever forget how stupendously fucking dangerous this is, what we just did. Taking big money away from well-funded sadists. We made it look easy back there only because we’ve been working this thing for weeks, planning it out, training to get it right. One little mistake, one slipup—and we’re smoked. Done for. Not that it would end fast. These fuckers would want to get their pound of flesh, you can believe it. Getting jacked makes them punk. Street cred is everything out here. Why retaliation is a motherfucking guarantee—if we screw up. Which we will not.”

  Royce’s stare was intense, but nothing at that point, not even the fear of death, could have doused Maven’s flame. He nodded, hands squirming in his pockets, anxious to get wherever they were going.

  GRIDLEY

  THEY TURNED ONTO MARLBOROUGH STREET, NARROWER THAN THE other avenues in the Back Bay, quieter, lined with trees and gas lamps. The formerly Brahmin, currently swanky side of town.

  The clicking of the suitcase wheels over the brick sidewalk stopped at a low, black, wrought-iron gate outside a street-level real estate office, listing sheets taped to the window underneath a sign reading ROOF DECK PROPERTIES AND MANAGEMENT.

  Royce pushed through the ornamental gate toward the stone steps. Maven looked up at the curved-front Victorian brownstone, then followed.

  Inside the unlocked first door, Royce waved to the side office entrance, where a frazzled-looking receptionist on the phone waved back and reached beneath her desk to buzz them inside. The second door in front of them buzzed and Royce pulled it open, revealing a chandelier of violet-tinted glass hanging in a richly paneled lobby. A thin Oriental runner led to the foot of a broad, curving staircase.

  “Eleven real estate agents working their asses off,” said Royce on the way up the stairs, “hustling student apartments, business sublets, artist lofts. Knocking each other over to land exclusive listings. The business is actually profitable, not that I give a damn. It’s a laundry machine to me. A front. Cash goes in dirty and comes out clean. But the workers, they have no idea. So they keep busting their asses for their commissions, trying to keep the office afloat. Poor fucks.”

  He stopped at the only door on the first-floor landing. His key turned in the lock, and Maven followed him inside to a splendid, modern kitchen with beet red walls, glass-front cabinets, stainless-steel fixtures. A floor-through apartment, running left through an archway to a larger room in the rear, and right down a short hallway to the street-facing front.

  Maven closed the door, and the entire city vanished. Royce set the suitcase gently down atop the silver-speckled countertop. He opened a panel on the island unit and a gasp of freezer steam escaped, and he withdrew two chilled pint glasses. He opened the door to a giant silver refrigerator, a bank vault of food, and pulled out two bright red, bottle-shaped aluminum cans of Budweiser. “They only drink American. I’m betting you won’t mind.”

  “Who’s they?” said Maven, still back on his heels. “You don’t live here?”

  “Me? I live upstairs,” said Royce, pointing. He opened the bottle and poured for Maven, the golden yellow beer sliding down the frosted side of the glass, then poured his own. He handed Maven his glass and clinked it.

  “To gay sex,” Royce said, watching Maven almost choke. “I got you.”

  Maven grinned, then drank down about half, as much as he could handle until the coldness started to close his throat. The suitcase was just sitting there on the counter. He forced himself to look away. Through the short hallway to the front, he saw a large pool table. “Damn,” he sighed, moving to it.

  The table had tassels on the sides and soft, ropy purses for pock ets. Massive mahogany legs. A real Victorian-type piece set out on a plush Oriental rug, the entire room given over to it.

  Maven ran his fingers over its crimson cloth playing surface. A cue-stick rack hung on the wall between two enormous World War II–era propaganda posters. AVENGE DECEMBER 7 rallied the first, an angry man raising his massive fist into the air. BOOKS ARE WEAPONS IN THE WAR OF IDEAS proclaimed the second, a giant book burning in vivid color. The opposite wall was dominated by a stone-manteled fireplace.

  “They had to bring this thing up from the outside, like a piano,” said Royce, coming along behind him.

  Maven went to the far, curved wall, the centered window offering a view across Marlborough Street, and, over them, the top of the Prudential building beyond.

  Cars lined both sides of the street below, the wind spiriting the last of the fallen tree leaves. From the east, two men came along the brick sidewalk, each carrying a duffel bag. Maven made the Latino and the blond, approaching the front door below.

  He stepped back from the window. He felt anxious suddenly, out of place. He needed a moment to get his shit together, and emptied his beer glass. “There a bathroom?”

  IT SMELLED CLEAN, SPICED WITH COLOGNE. The shower curtain was brass-colored and drapes-thick, the walls and floor made of marble tile.

  He ran cold water, splashing some on his face, then looked at himself in the mirror over the sink. He wondered again, How did I get here, exactly?

  The ceiling creaked. Light footsteps along the third floor overhead. Somebody upstairs. Faint music too.

  Then voices down the hall. Maven hated being the new guy. The first day of school all over again. He sucked it up and opened the door into the hallway.

  The Latino and the blond all-American had dumped their duffels in the kitchen, turning to Maven as he entered.

  “We’re good?” said the Latino, referring to Maven.

  Royce said, “What do you think?”

  The Latino then came forward, offered his hand. Maven shook, a good Marine grip. “Name’s Suarez. Carlito Suarez.”

  “Neal Maven.”

  “Carlito, just like Al Pacino in that movie.” Suarez grinned. “Only more badass.”

  The blond came forward with a similar grip. “Jimmy Glade. How’s it goin’? Where’d Royce find you?”

  “Pulled him off the scrap heap,” said Royce, coming out with more beers, passing them around, no glasses this time. “Same as you.”

  Glade said to Maven, “You snore, man?”

  Carlito said of his big blond friend, “Milkshake here likes his beauty sleep.”

  Maven shook his head in confusion.

  Royce said, “Jimmy’s going to be your roommate.”

  Maven stopped with his bottle at his lips. “My roommate?”

  “You’re moving in. This is your new place.”

  Maven stared at him. “I’m doing what?”

  Royce stepped over to the suitcase. “Sticking close is how we do. This is your barracks now. Eat together, sleep together.”

  “Not together together,” stressed Glade.

  “And, rent-free,” said Royce, drawing the zipper along the edges of the suitcase. “Except on paper.”

  “More flow for the tax man,” said Carlito.

  “You’re learning,” said Royce, lifting the top of the suitcase as if he were opening the white box cover on a cake.

  The cash was laid out in overlapping stacks of elasticized bundles. All Jacksons and Franklins, staring faceup.

  A moment of reverence as they all took in the beautiful sight.

  Carlito said, “Fuckin’ Fourth of July.”

  He gave Glade some skin. Glade said, “’Lito, you get any chub out there today? What about you, Maven? Get any chub on that lick? A combat rodney?”

  Maven said, “Not like I’m getting right now.”

  Glade nodded in agreement. “Chub factor of three. Just north of flaccid.” He finished his beer. “Savin
g it for tonight, is all.”

  A key scratched in the lock. Royce dropped the cover on the money bag, but it was purely precautionary and nobody was really concerned.

  In walked the black guy, the fifth member of the crew. Royce said, “What took so long?”

  “Settling up at the front desk,” he said, laying down a tan garment bag. “Who the fuck cleared out the wet bar?”

  Glade smiled, pulling a handful of vodka nips from his pockets.

  “That fucking nine-dollar Snickers, that’s coming out of your kick too.” The black guy sized up Maven, standing on the side of the island, and still didn’t smile. “So what’s the verdict on the FNG?” FNG: fucking new guy. “We going to deep-six this motherfucker, or what?”

  When the others laughed, Maven smiled. The black guy kept his snarl, but some play came into his yellowed eyes.

  “Just shittin’,” he said, offering Maven his hand.

  Royce did the introduction: “Neal Maven, meet Lewis Termino.”

  They shook, Maven hearing something in the name.

  Termino said, “You look like you heard of me before. You grow up in Brockton?”

  “Near there.”

  “Lewis ‘the Dynamo’ Termino.” He dropped his chin and assumed a loose-fisted fighter’s stance. “Rocky Marciano, he was the pride of Brockton. But Dynamo was its soooul.”

  “I do remember,” said Maven.

  “He had all the tools,” said Royce. “Fast hands, granite jaw. All class. Only problem? Feet of fucking clay.”

  “I’d rather stay and take a beating than retreat. Turns out that ain’t good for judges’ cards, or a long-term career.”

  Glade uncapped all four nips, sliding them around the island. Royce watched everyone drink together. “Now we’ve got trust. We’ve got a foundation. We sealed the deal with a crime. Better than a contract inked in blood. Maven—you’re one of us now.”

  Glade said, “Soldiers of fortune.”

  “You got something on us,” said Carlito, swallowing, “and we got something on you.”