Devils in Exile

by Chuck Hogan

  “Heavy?”

  Tricky nodded big, up and down. When he stopped, a little sulfur-yellow butterfly landed on his back. “This dude in the drink. You knew him?”

  “Knew of him,” said Lash. “You?”

  Tricky shrugged.

  “A Venezuelan named Vasco.”

  Tricky shook his head. The butterfly stayed put. “He don’t shop my side of the street.”

  “Chopped off his hands and his tongue.”

  “Dude’s tongue?” Tricky clucked his own. “His dick?”

  “You know, I didn’t think to check.”

  “Everything I hear says these guys are pros. That shit there sounds collateral. The people he got ripped off with, needing to vent some, save face. You got a line on them?”

  “I have a few ideas.”

  “Then, shizz, you don’t even need me.”

  Lash smiled. Tricky had grown up in Mattapan, the wild, fully Americanized son of Cape Verdean immigrants, street-running at twelve, enforcing at fifteen, doing drive-bys at seventeen. Lash had never even laid eyes on him before the night he saved his life. Lash was speaking at a “Mattapan Strong!” community meeting, competing with sirens out in the street, when he heard the distinctive crack-crack of a gun outside. Everybody in the audience hit the floor as Lash ran out, following the police lights to a lanky kid in long Girbaud shorts lying half off a curb, blood gurgling out of his neck like water out of a playground bubbler. One uniformed and two plainclothes cops stood around the kid dumbfounded, so Lash badged them and moved in, gripping the kid’s neck tight, closing the circuit, feeling the pumping action against his fingers like someone knocking to get out. Tricky made it through that night, and the next. Lash dropped in on him at the hospital, later showed up at his arraignment, and went on to visit him inside Cedar Junction. Something formed between them as naturally as the scooped pink scar on the side of Tricky’s neck. At one point, Lash even thought he had him hooked, he believed he could pop him free of the street life after his release. But the battle mark on his neck and his time served inside only raised his status, and soon Tricky fell back in with Broadhouse and his crew.

  Still, Lash managed to exert some influence over him, prevailing upon Tricky to keep dealers away from schools, away from methadone clinics. Most of all, Lash kept him talking.

  Lash folded out a guide he had picked up at the door, about the life of a butterfly. “Nice if people had stages, huh?”

  “What now?”

  “Four stages, like a butterfly. Says here. Egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, adult. If we grew in these stages—if there was some door you walked through, saying NOW ENTERING MANHOOD. If we were caterpillars before we were butterflies. Learn a little humility. A little self-respect.”

  “I know you talking to me.”

  “Look at you up in here. Your soul wants this. It wants peace. You could make it work, fool.”

  “Always preaching.”

  “Pull your shit together. Get some love in your life, boy.”

  Tricky turned his head a fraction. “And if I told you, ‘Yo, Lash. Listen up, fool. Get out of the DEA, get into, I don’t know—selling cars. Something regular. Make a change,’ you’d be like, ‘Sho ’nuff. Easy. Here I go.’”

  “I hear you, but—”

  “Solutions always look good on paper. I got to make paper. To survive.”

  “You can cut the movie talk. I saved your black ass once. I can save it again.”

  Tricky scowled at the floor as if Lash were a fool. Somehow sensing the butterfly on his back, Tricky shook it away, agitated. “Here’s the thing. They don’t take no powder.”

  “You lost me.”

  “Cash only, these bandits. No weight.” Tricky was talking out of the side of his mouth. “All’s they take is the green.”

  “Hold up, hold up.” Lash watched Tricky’s profile, not getting this. “They’re leaving half the score on the table?”

  “Naw. Worse. They flushing it, yo. Spoiling it. Queering it up with bleach.”

  “What are you saying? Like vigilantes?”

  “Like vigilantes getting paid,” said Tricky, mashing one hand into the other. “Robin Hoods, robbin’ hoods.”

  “Flushing away half their score? You sure about that?”

  “This is what I’m saying. This is a different breed of cat. Not needy or greedy. Maybe it’s simple smarts—’cause that shit can be traced. You put somebody else’s product on the street, you be found, and quick. All I know’s, they taking game off the street. Got me thinking maybe it was you.”

  The only downside to running a program like Windfall was sheer temptation. Millions of dollars of untraceable cash. The majority of organized sugar bandits out there were dirty cops. This was why Lash cycled manpower in and out of the task force every nine to twelve months. Still, people talked. The enticement was strong. And Lash was ultimately responsible.

  Lash said, “I can take care of my own guys.”

  “So can I. To a point.”

  Lash already knew he wouldn’t go to anyone else in Windfall about this. He’d have to be his own internal affairs—just in case.

  “Where’s Broadhouse on this whole thing?” asked Lash.

  “Pissed, man. What you think?”

  “Gonna be a summit?”

  “I don’t have much ear right now, the shit that’s been going down. Too much fucking distrust going around. To the point where, I fucking don’t want to know shit, because everybody’s all looking for leaks. Jumpy. Everybody sniffing out everybody else.”

  Three Pins, or drug kingpins, currently stood atop the ever-fluid Greater Boston drug game. Other little players operated at their own discretion and danger, but generally for the past year or two, most of the flow in and around town had to go through three top guys. Broadhouse, based out of Mattapan, Dorchester, and the projects on Mission Hill. Lockerty, out of East Boston and points north. And Crassion, everywhere in between.

  “I just want this cleared up,” said Tricky. “These bandits, they got to be got.”

  Lash squinted. “You trying to get me to do Broadhouse’s work for him now? Are you my inside man, or am I yours?”

  Tricky leaned close. “I’m saying this shit’s going to explode. Escalating like the fucking stairs at Macy’s. These mo-mos, you don’t need to make ’em any more paranoid.”

  Lash nodded. “On that, we agree.”

  Tricky looked him over. “But you say it ain’t you.”

  Lash sat on that, surprised. “You really thought so?”

  Tricky pulled back, shrugged. “It would be a good play, that’s all. Couldn’t put it past you.” He palmed his knees. “We good here?”

  Lash nodded. “We’re good.”

  Tricky stood, hiking up his baggy carps. “Stay black, M.L.”

  “You stay breathing, Tricky-Trey.”

  LASH SHRUGGED OFF HIS OVERCOAT AS HE ENTERED THE VISITING room at MCI Concord, laying it and his scarf across the back of the cleanest-looking chair before sitting down to wait. Monday was the only day they didn’t offer visiting hours, but he had arranged this exception.

  Peter Maracone was brought to him from the Special Housing Unit. He wore an extra-large, orange T-shirt over prison jeans, looking like a double orange Popsicle on two blue sticks. He studied Lash as he sat across the table from him, keeping his eyes beady and putting up a tough front. His hair was stiff and pushed all around as if he were afraid to take a shower.

  “Who’re you?”

  “Me?” Lash said. “I am the Ghost of Drug Deals Past.”

  The guy frown-smiled. “Thought ghosts were white.”

  “The good ghosts are. I’m a bad spirit.”

  “Why ain’t I scared?”

  “Maybe you got an alibi for last November?”

  “Last November? Let me check. The whole month?” Maracone thought about what that question might mean to him. “I suppose I could get one.”

  “How much you get taken for?”

  Maracone di
d the exaggerated head tilt, suddenly hard of hearing. “What’s that?”

  “A lot, huh? Too bad. They tie you up? You must have pissed yourself.”

  Maracone’s eyes stayed narrow but receded farther into his skull. “Was it you, you piece of shit?”

  “Me? Huh.” That got Lash thinking. “Were all of them black, or just some?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Okay. Not all then. More than one?”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Just one. Got it.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m in here for a domestic dispute.”

  “Whipping your girlfriend with an extension cord. You’re all class, Petey.”

  Maracone folded his pudgy fingers on the scratched-up table, going quiet, tired of getting outtalked.

  Lash said, “You used a table saw on his hands, huh?”

  Maracone smiled. Just a little one, his clownish fat face. “I’ll let you know when what you’re saying starts making sense to me.”

  That smile was exactly what Lash had come for. Confirmation. Assholes can never help but congratulate themselves.

  Lash said, “Your brother, where’s he at?”

  “Sport fishing in F-L-A.”

  “Hiding out, in other words. I guess he’s the smart one.” Lash sat back. “You’re obviously very busy here, Petey, trying not to get raped, so I’ll just ask you one more question, straight up. You and your brother were looking to become players, buying in big, and fell flat on your face. So you took out the Venezuelan in anger—fine. But you two don’t have the juice to jump into the game so big like that. Somebody was fronting you. Who?”

  Maracone kept his hands folded, deciding to say nothing.

  “Lockerty,” said Lash. “Yep. That’s what I’ll tell people you told me.”

  “Fuck you. I didn’t tell you shit.”

  “Lockerty. That’s what you said.”

  Maracone almost levitated out of his chair. “You fucking trying to get me killed? What is this?”

  Lash smiled. “Petey, reading you is like reading the front page of USA Today. Too fucking easy.”

  “I didn’t say nothing.”

  “Sure you did.” Lash stood, grabbed his coat.

  “What the fuck was this? Who the fuck are you, anyway?”

  Lash smiled, laying his scarf down soft against the late-day roughness of his neck. “That should have been your first question.”

  “It fucking was!”

  Lash walked back outside to his car, needing to find a place to eat with a nice bathroom where he could wash the prison off his hands.

  PRECIPICE

  TWO DOZEN KILOS OF SCAG AND A FEW POUNDS OF WEED ARRIVED on Cape Cod on a trawler from Florida. It was off-loaded early in the day along with a legit bluefin haul, but the dock wasn’t the transaction point. The deal had to be physically consummated. Credit deals were rare, as any misunderstandings or miscommunications quickly led to bloodshed. Banks were almost never involved because the law loved paper trails and electronic records. The hand-to-hand exchange was the point of highest risk for both dealer and buyer.

  In this brief moment of vulnerability, this synapse of paper and powder, lived the sugar bandits.

  Osterville Grand Island is a circular land mass located just off the triceps of Cape Cod. A private, gated community of 150 homes and an exclusive golf course, accessible only by a two-lane drawbridge, past a guard who takes names.

  The wayward fortyish son of an oil-corporation executive owed the wrong people a lot of money. Playing host to a secure-site trans action would not forgive his staggering debt, but would extend the grace period for its repayment. He had e-mailed the gate guard the names of a plumber and of a tile company who he said were coming that night to repair a bathroom-pipe rupture.

  Traffickers making adjustments out of fear was the clearest evidence yet of the bandits’ influence on the drug trade.

  Termino was the point man in Royce’s absence. He, Maven, Glade, and Suarez ditched their kayaks on a sandy barrier beach of low dunes named Dead Neck, entering the frigid water in insulated neoprene and dive boots, swimming out into Cotuit Bay under cover of night. A breakwater calmed the surf as they snorkeled around the west end of the island, one hundred meters off the densely wooded shore, each man tugging a watertight bag strung from a gas-filled bob.

  They cut in toward the fifth dock from the turn, floating easily and watching the house lights through the oaks, monitoring the shore for any activity. Satisfied with the stillness, they walked out of the water onto beach grass and opened their wet bags, exchanging snorkels and dive masks for light vests, balaclavas, and weapons. Maven made sure his 9 mm MP5 submachine gun was moisture-free, then extended the butt stock of the hybrid handgun-rifle. The others pulled on their masks and started up the dune on either side of the wooden stairway, looking every bit like amphibious commandos.

  This drill they had repeated each of the previous four nights. They knew the layout of the property, they knew everything.

  The others took entry. Maven went alone through pines to the front of the estate, spotting the lookout halfway down the curling drive of crushed white seashells. He stood on the near side, allowing Maven to come up on him silently over grass, catching the goon on the side of the head just as he started to turn around. Maven relieved him of a handgun and a Nextel mobile, then bound him in ZipCuffs and a gag and loaded him into the back of the tile truck parked before the three-car garage.

  A glance through the windows revealed that the dealmakers had been subdued. His all clear was three taps on the glass, masked Termino responding with a nod. Maven then did a full perimeter walk before entering, making double sure there was only one lookout.

  Four men lay prone on the floor. The one guy freaking out wore navy blue corduroys, a collared shirt, and a kelly green whale belt: the homeowner’s son. Guns and mobiles were set out on a wide coffee table with ammo mags and phone batteries removed. The bags of heroin were piled on the granite counter in the center island of the kitchen, smelling like the seafood section of Stop & Shop. Glade transferred cash into two large backpacks.

  Suarez ran the kitchen sink, washing down the scag and chasing it with Drano. The bags of pot they left on the floor. The homeowner’s son—receding hairline, the stink of failure all over him like the dead-fish smell—continued to whine under his gag, wanting to register a sternly worded complaint.

  Maven made a circuit of the ground floor. Paneled walls, museum-quality lighting, inch-thick rugs. He looked at a large, carefully drafted map of the island, hand-lettered and handsomely mounted, an antique from its legitimate oystering days. The owner’s son was a broker who had been “borrowing” from the family money entrusted to his care to fund his own vices and crude interests—money he planned to earn back twofold through risky investments, none of which had yet panned out. The family was down in Hialeah; they didn’t know this yet.

  Maven was in the front of the house, looking at the old seaman’s map that now hung on the wall—one man’s tool another man’s trophy—when he heard a sound out of place. A creak. A step.

  He started toward the intersecting hallways, keeping his dive boots silent on the thick rugs. As he turned the corner toward the shore side of the house, he saw a crouched form emerging from an old servants’ set of stairs. He saw a handgun silhouetted against the kitchen light as the body sprang forward.

  The gunman got off a single round before Maven plowed him over with a forearm to the back of his head. The man hit the floor with such force that the gun in his hand cracked in two at the wooden grip.

  Maven dropped a knee into the man’s back, turning to see where the shot had gone.

  Suarez was on one knee before the sink, neck arched in pain, one hand gripping his back.

  His vest had absorbed the round. Suarez’s face went dark when he realized what had happened, and he straightened in pain, pulling his MAC-10 machine pistol off the kitchen counter in a blind rage. He tu
rned to execute the shooter—but Maven collapsed on the unconscious man, shielding him with his own vested back until Glade and Termino intervened.

  Maven ZipCuffed the shooter and they finished fast, taking the money, phones, and weapons and leaving the way they had come, down the grassy elevation to the sand at the empty dock. Masks and guns went into wet bags with the cash, snorkel gear coming back out.

  Suarez was grunting in pain, still muttering under his breath. The gun report had put a pealing into Maven’s ears like a distant alarm. He was knee-deep in the frigid water, towing out the bad guys’ guns and phones, when Suarez hooked his arm, hard.

  Maven turned fast, responding to the grip. But instead of anger, he saw gratitude.

  “Thanks, man,” said Suarez.

  For knocking out the shooter, and for stopping Suarez from killing him. Maven clapped him on the chest and they pushed out into the water.

  Halfway to Dead Neck, Maven sank the bag of guns and phones to the bottom of the bay.

  MAVEN CAME UP FROM THE SINK WITH HIS FACE DRIPPING, STARING at himself in the restroom mirror. The water dribbling off his chin, the tightness of his sore muscles, brought him back to that night before, the job on the Cape. Despite two hot showers, he could still smell salt water on his hands. The sick feeling he had got when he saw the shooter emerge from the shadows was still with him.

  It could happen that quickly, that easily. One slipup. Game over.

  He dried his face, taking a squirt of cologne from the complimentary dispenser on the counter, patting his neck and jaw. Salt water is good for the complexion, it turned out. His neck was smooth and clean, no razor burn, nothing. He looked strong and ridiculously healthy. That was what money did for you.

  He accepted a linen towelette from the black-jacketed attendant. “Thanks, brother,” said Maven, depositing a finsky into the glass tip bowl.

  “Thank you, sir,” said the attendant, opening the restroom door.

  Maven stepped into the swirl of light and sound that was Precipice. Royce said that the best nightclubs maintain just the right mixture of sexy and sinister. Precipice had that: walking through it was like patrolling a dark cloud during a lightning storm. The pulsating lights, the music thumping from the walls, that pheromonal musk of sweat and perfume and alcohol that was pure sexual incense: every club had these things, but here the mix achieved a sort of exotic frenzy.