Devils in Exile

by Chuck Hogan

  The other doors opened and more men emerged, and Maven’s heart dropped through a gallows trapdoor. He was grabbed and pushed inside the flower exchange. He tried to fight, but he was dizzy and weak and didn’t have much more in him.

  He was pulled past empty stalls and shuttered kiosks offering ribbons, silks, and baskets. They stopped at an open spot formed by the intersection of two aisles and kicked Maven to his knees. He slumped there, head down and throbbing, the building spinning around him.

  A voice said, “Straighten him up. I want a good look.”

  Maven’s head was pulled back to raise his face. A blurry figure appeared from behind the gunmen arranged in a half-circle. Termino.

  “I thought the bitch was delusional. Truly, I did. Coke bugs or some such. But damn.” He stopped right in front of Maven. “Back from the grave.”

  Maven stared, Termino swimming in his vision. “She called you?”

  Termino grinned, working down the webs of his black leather gloves. “To get back in the boss’s good graces? Junkie hookers’ll do anything for the pure.”

  Maven’s chest was empty. No air for speech.

  “Forgot,” said Termino. “You were sweet on her, weren’t you?”

  Maven stared, waiting for Termino to break character. “It was all bullshit?”

  Termino shrugged. “Just the stuff that mattered.”

  “You ran on us. At the bog.”

  “I never even showed.” Big smile as Termino walked a full circle around Maven. “It was over already. You’d served your purpose. You wanted out—so we arranged to take you out.”

  Maven looked at the others around him. He was looking for Royce. “He couldn’t come himself.”

  “Oh, he’s here.” One of the goons passed Termino a notebook computer, and he opened it, speaking directly to the screen. “You ready for this?”

  A familiar voice said, “Let me see.”

  Termino turned the laptop around so that the screen faced Maven. The video-over-Internet connection showed Royce seated behind a desk, before a window. Black collar, clean haircut.

  “I always said it,” said Royce. “Always, I said—this one, he’s different.”

  “Told you he was trouble,” said Termino. “I want to know where the fuck he’s been all this time.”

  Royce said, “His eye. The Jamaican. Lockerty’s still out there. And evidently still pissed.”

  Maven burned, staring at Royce on the computer.

  Royce said, “See, Maven, if you were dead now, as you’re supposed to be … well, then, there’d be no hard feelings.”

  Maven said, “Suarez. Glade.”

  “You were done with those guys, especially Glade. Look, if I could have kept anybody on, it would have been you. But you wouldn’t go for it. You told me as much.”

  Maven said, “Samara.”

  “The girlfriend. Maybe you talk in your sleep, how do I know? She’d been up to the pad. She could make Termino and myself. She knew things, Maven. I’m not a guy who leaves things to chance.”

  “You didn’t have to do it.”

  “And you didn’t have to bring her around.”

  Somebody grabbed Maven’s arms behind him.

  Royce said, “So I am going to watch this now and make sure it’s done right this time, and when it’s over, one of us is gonna be dead, and the other one’s gonna feel a lot better.”

  Maven struggled against the goon holding his arms, but he lacked both strength and leverage. A strip of duct tape was ripped off a fat roll, binding Maven’s wrists behind him.

  A goon brought over a wooden stool, and Termino set the com puter on top of it so that Royce could watch. Another handed Termino a clear plastic bag.

  Termino shook it open. He said, “Less mess this way.”

  He thrust the bag over Maven’s head. Another screech of tape, and Termino sealed the bag around Maven’s neck.

  Maven shook his head as though he could throw off the bag. He tried holding his breath, but quickly realized that was a losing strategy.

  Maven opened his mouth and inhaled deeply, sucking some of the bag into his lips. He caught the plastic with his tongue and began chewing it.

  Termino smiled. Maven heard him say, his voice muffled through the sealed bag, “This guy won’t ever just lie down.”

  Gunfire ripped the air then. Maven thought he was being executed and fell forward, twisting and landing on his side. The goons around him scattered, the bald one firing his MAC-10 full auto, the suppressor making a sound like chattering teeth.

  Someone else was here. Rounds zipped overhead, and Maven’s head screamed panic and pain, his lungs bursting as he chewed on the bag in his mouth.

  He tasted a thin sip of cool air. His tongue found the hole and worked to make it bigger, Maven rolling onto his back and sliding across the glazed floor to the nearest counter. Through the clear plastic, he saw low shelves cluttered with supplies. He kicked at them with his boots, spilling the contents to the floor. Elastic bands and packets of flower food and blank note cards—and scissors.

  TERMINO WAS AT THE EXIT WHEN HE SAW HIS GUY KELVIN COMING UP behind him.

  “What happened?” said Kelvin, an Irishman with a tribal tattoo up the side of his neck to the back of his shaved head.

  Termino pushed him back toward the shooting. “Find Maven. Shoot him in the fucking head. Make sure.”

  Kelvin nodded and started back as Termino went out the exit.

  MAVEN SLICED THE TAPE OFF HIS WRISTS. BEFORE HE COULD RIP OFF his plastic hood, he saw a shadow on the floor.

  He stood and vaulted off the counter, the tattoo making for a nice target as he buried one blade of the scissors in the base of the goon’s bald skull. He locked up the guy’s gun arm, the shooter squeezing off chattering MAC-10 rounds until Maven wrested it from his grip.

  The goon fell, and Maven took cover behind a cluster of potted trees. He was ripping the plastic off his face when he saw the notebook computer on the floor, knocked onto its side.

  “Maven,” Royce said, staring out of the screen in utter disbelief.

  Maven opened up the MAC on Royce’s image, blasting the computer across the floor.

  MAVEN STUMBLED OUTSIDE, HOPING TO FIND THE HIGHLANDER, BUT the vehicle was gone.

  Sporadic gunfire continued inside as Maven hurried away, turning toward a weeded lot, dumping the gun once he was safely underneath the expressway.

  THE PAPA GINO’S MEN’S ROOM WAS A SINGLE BATHROOM WITH A DOOR that locked. Maven first washed the bald goon’s blood off his hands, then stared at his bandaged face in the mirror. His own image drifted in the vision of his one good eye.

  He started with his clothes, removing his shirt and pants, checking socks and underwear, running every inch of fabric between his fingers. Someone knocked, and Maven froze as though he had been followed. But when he said, “Go away!”—they did.

  He viewed his surgical scars in the mirror, tracing the stitch marks over his side and arm, the hem of his flesh raised and rugged. Butcher work. Had they sewn something in there, under his skin?

  He resumed checking his clothes, then his boots. He noticed a fine slice along the rubber side of his heel and went after it, banging the tread on the edge of the sink until the heel piece dislodged and a battery-size gizmo fell out.

  A tracking device.

  That was why Lockerty had let him go. So that Maven could lead him to Royce. Only—Lockerty’s hired hands had jumped too soon.

  He dropped the device into the toilet and hit the handle, watching it circle the drain before being sucked away.

  Maven returned to the mirror: naked, dope sick, half-blind—but truly free. He felt the tape along the edges of the dirtied bandage, then slowly, and with great pain, began peeling it back from his face.

  GOING BACK

  HE WAS OUTSIDE THE BANK OF AMERICA AT BOYLSTON AND EXETER when it opened Monday morning. He had no key or identification and so asked for the manager who had assisted him on his previous visits.
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  “Oh,” said the woman, stout with a pincushion face, lowering her voice. “Are you a friend of his?”

  Maven caught the word no before it left his lips. “I am.”

  “He … he won’t be coming back. For health reasons.”

  She widened her eyes to stress the word health, and Maven knew she meant drugs. He answered questions based on his original safe-deposit-box application—the one Royce had taken him to—and passed a handwriting comparison. He was then led to the vault and his box door was unlocked and brought to the examining table. They left him alone and he opened the long lid, and it was exactly as he had feared.

  Wiped out. As empty as his eye socket. He sat holding his throbbing head in his hands.

  * * *

  THE MARLBOROUGH STREET BUILDING WAS LOCKED UP, ROOF DECK Properties and Management abandoned. Even the carriage-house garage was padlocked.

  Maven was hungry and cold. He tried the Veterans Administration building on Causeway Street, but could not get past the front desk—again, lacking any form of identification. An administrator took pity on him however, offering him a flannel jacket with a ripped quilted lining out of the donation bin. She gave him a clinic pass, and the doctor cleaned out his orbit, redressed the wound, and gave him something for the pain.

  Outside the clinic, Maven was throwing the sample pills in the trash when he saw a vet working cars at a traffic light. The guy’s cardboard sign said that he was disabled and hungry. Maven reacted more to the patrol cap on his head.

  Maven started walking. He did 8.2 miles on his broken bootheel—the same route he used to run after his parking-lot shift—arriving in Quincy just before dark.

  The pea green Parisienne left little space for the other tenants’ beaters in the cracked driveway. Maven climbed the rear steps to the top-floor entrance of the triple-decker. He thumped on the curtain-covered glass with a cold hand and waited while a light came on inside.

  The door pulled open. “Hey, you’re early—”

  The words died in Ricky’s open mouth as he recognized Maven.

  “Neal?” he said, unable to hide his shock at Maven’s appearance.

  Inside the kitchen, boxes of sugary cereal stood in the center of a Formica table. The house apartment hadn’t been updated since the late 1970s. Evidently the utilities were included in the rent because it was like a sauna inside and the radiator kept hissing.

  Ricky looked drawn, purple under the eyes. A shaving cut under his chin had scabbed. He wore baggy, pajama-type shorts and a V-necked T-shirt with yellow underarm stains.

  “You okay?” said Ricky. “You want something?”

  Maven pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and sat, his feet burning.

  Ricky seemed agitated, not knowing how to act or even how to stand still. “What happened to your … your face?”

  “I fell down a flight of stairs.”

  “Must have been one hell of a flight of stairs.” Ricky moved to the counter, opening cabinets fast. “Something to eat, maybe?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “Uh … how about Campbell’s Chunky soup? Date’s okay.”

  Maven rested an arm on the table. “Anything.”

  Ricky plugged in an electric can opener, which made a whirring sound Maven hadn’t heard since he was a boy. Then a grinding noise, the can jumping off the blade halfway around. Ricky swore and fumbled for something in a drawer. He jimmied the can top with a long screwdriver in his good hand. “So. What brings you by?”

  “I’ve got nowhere else to go. No money. No home. No clothes. Literally nothing.”

  Ricky glanced back, still struggling with the can. “How can that be? What about your buddies?”

  “They’re dead.”

  Ricky’s screwdriver jimmying stopped. Then someone rapped at the door.

  “Shit. Hey, that’s just a friend of mine … hang on, I’ll have him come back.” Ricky wiped his hands on his shorts and went out, closing the first door behind him before opening the second.

  Maven got to his feet. He stood by the wall, listening, unable to make out anything. Hearing voices but not words.

  Something came over him, and he rushed through the doors to the exterior landing.

  The guy Ricky stood close to wore a parka and a knit cap. “Oh, hi,” said the guy, before Maven grabbed him by the front of his coat, spinning and throwing him inside through the two open doors, propelling him backward through the kitchen and into a living-room easy chair.

  Ricky came rushing in behind them. “Neal—what in the hell?”

  Maven held the guy by his collar, his other fist cocked. “Who are you! Who sent you!”

  The guy in the chair couldn’t get out any words.

  Ricky said, “Neal, that’s Greg, my buddy Greg …”

  Greg looked freaked-out as Maven patted him down, going through his coat pockets, searching him hard. “Who sent you here?”

  Ricky put a hand on Neal’s arm. “Neal, hey, come on—”

  Maven shoved Ricky backward, and Ricky hit the TV table, knocking over one of his cheap speakers.

  Maven found a couple of bucks in the guy’s jeans pocket and threw it into his lap. Then he found a medical vial inside the phone pocket of his coat. Maven yelled, “What the fuck is this?” Greg said nothing, looking to Ricky for help, not receiving any. Maven tossed the vial onto the sofa. “Who’s your supplier? Talk!”

  Greg realized he was about to get hit. “I … a guy I work with.”

  “Who?”

  “Just a guy. I work at a managed-care facility.” Greg was teary. “A goddamn nursing home. He gives it to me, I bring it to Ricky. Ricky’s my friend. He’s sick.”

  Maven caught his breath. He straightened, releasing Greg.

  Greg was hyperventilating. “What are you? Some kind of cop?”

  Maven reached down for him again, and Greg flinched as if he were going to get beat up, but Maven only pulled him to his feet. Maven fixed his coat somewhat, then stepped back. “Get out of here. Don’t ever come back.”

  Greg looked at Ricky a moment, waiting for a contradictory word. Then he stuffed his money back inside his coat pockets and walked out the doors.

  Maven stared at the floor, knowing he had lost it, knowing he wasn’t fully in control of himself yet.

  When he looked up, the vial was gone from the sofa. Ricky stood with his head down.

  Maven walked to the kitchen. He bent back the cover of the hacked-open can and gobbled down the cold soup. Lumpy, gelatinous paste, but he barely tasted it, the food landing in his stomach like a fist.

  He slid the long-shaft screwdriver into his belt. He found Ricky’s car keys hanging on a peg near the door, next to Ricky’s patrol cap. Maven took both.

  Maven said, “I need to borrow your car.”

  DARK ENERGY

  HE DROVE THE PARISIENNE BACK INTO BOSTON, CRUISING A GAS station sharing a parking lot with a McDonald’s just two blocks from a Topeka Street methadone clinic. He parked and walked over to the gated trash pen beside the gas station, away from the brightest lights. He waited with his hands in his pockets, Ricky’s cap brim low over his eye bandage, until a guy in a black-and-gold Bruins hoodie sauntered past.

  “Don’t be so fucking obvious, man.”

  Maven let the guy cross the parking lot before following him. A row of trash-strewn evergreens lined a fence.

  The runner doubled back, hands in his front pouch pockets. “Well?”

  “I want it,” said Maven.

  The runner looked him over, sniffling. “You don’t look cop.”

  “You neither.”

  He decided. “Front me ten, see what I can do.”

  “I’m trusting you?”

  “That’s how it works. Where the fuck you been?”

  Maven said, “Iraq.”

  “Huh.” The runner hunched his shoulders against the cold. “That’s fucked-up.” He snuffled deep, swallowing snot. “So, welcome back. Now pay to play.”

  Mave
n made as if he were going to do so, then grabbed the runner by his neck, spinning him around and putting the screwdriver to his throat, the point poised at his carotid artery.

  He reached inside the runner’s pouch and took from him a flip knife and a phone. “Where’s the holder?”

  “The who?”

  Maven pressed the point harder against the runner’s throat, enough to feel the artery pulsing through the handle.

  “You crazy?”

  “Wanna find out?” said Maven.

  AROUND THE CORNER ON ATKINSON, A WIRE-TOPPED CHAIN-LINK fence ran to a shorter wooden fence abutting a stone wall. The holder emerged from his nook, seeing the figure jogging toward him under the weak, yellow streetlights in a Bruins sweatshirt, hood up.

  Maven shocked him, grabbing him by the throat. The holder bore a little chin growth trimmed into a diamond, and Maven stuck the point of the runner’s flip knife blade just below it.

  He frisked the holder, coming away with another phone and knife, pocketing them, then bracing the holder’s throat with his forearm. He used the knife blade to slice through the fabric beneath the guy’s bulging cargo pants pocket and removed a folded wad of cash.

  The holder couldn’t talk because of the Baggies of crack cocaine tucked under his tongue. Maven chopped him below his diamond-bearded chin, covering his mouth until the guy had no choice but to choke them down.

  Maven said, “Whose corner is this?”

  “My fucking corner.”

  “Who you front for?”

  The holder said, “You crazy.”

  Maven took out the holder’s phone and opened it, snapping a photograph of the guy. “Everyone in your contact list gets this, with a message saying you’re five-oh and you flipped—”

  “Okay!” said the guy with the knife at his throat.

  MAVEN ENTERED THE SHADOW OF THE TREES FRONTING THE SMALL house on a quiet Forest Hills side street. He waited out a bout of dizziness, then looked inside the window, seeing the back of a sofa in a darkened room.