Devils in Exile (30 page)

“I
WAS AMUSING MYSELF WITH THESE THOUGHTS TODAY, THESE
scenarios.” Lockerty stood by the window now, leaning against the frame. “I was thinking how funny it would be, how fitting, if I did turn you loose after all. Sent you off on your merry errand.”

Maven’s eyes betrayed nothing, no hope or desire. His future did not hinge on Lockerty’s charity because Maven could no longer be deceived into believing that such a thing existed. No one could ever break his heart again because he no longer had a heart to break.

“His own soldier going after him. Good sport, right? Good opera. In theory.”

Maven said, “You don’t want to do that.”

Lockerty knit his brow, flicking at his ear to show that he didn’t think he had heard Maven right. “Not let you go?” He was more intrigued than before. “Why is that?”

“Because after I get through with Royce, I’m coming back for you.”

Lockerty’s hard stare eventually dawned into a smile.

M
AVEN WOKE UP TO FIND SOMEONE SITTING AT THE EDGE OF HIS BED
. Not a man but a kid, a teenager, his back to Maven, doing something with his hands. Making a repetitive
flip-flip-flip
noise that Maven recognized, but not right away. Not until the kid turned and Maven saw his face.

It was Maven himself. The adolescent time bomb, obsessively practicing the flicked-wrist opening of a butterfly knife.

M
AVEN STARTLED AWAKE
. P
AIN IN HIS ARM AS HE THRASHED ABOUT
.

The white Jamaican was pulling away from him—an empty syringe in his hand.

Maven tried to get up, forgetting the straps. “What did you do to me?”

“It’s time, soldier,” said Lockerty. “You know nothing, you are nothing. Even as an object of my wrath, you failed. That’s epic emptiness, pal.”

Maven’s arm throbbed. Something working its way through his veins into his heart, then his entire body beyond.

“Time to cut my losses and move on. But first—Mr. Leroy here needs to get something from you.”

The Jamaican came at him, smiling, with something in his hand. A knife with a small, curved blade—and he set upon Maven, carving into his face.

T
WO BLACK KIDS, NINE-YEAR-OLDS, CROSSED THE FROZEN GROUND
behind the park, turning right by the wall of cracked white cement between the two boulevards.

The box stopped them. This was the way they always went and it had never been there before. A refrigerator carton of sagging cardboard, lying on its side, the top flaps folded shut.

One of them kicked it lightly. The other kid pulled the flaps.

They heard something stir inside. They backed off, looking at each other. One silently dared the other to complete the task. The folds bent apart easily.

They saw a pair of legs inside. Worn blue work pants and work boots. The smell out of the box put them off. The guy had pissed himself and maybe puked sometime in the past few hours.

One kid grabbed a stick off the ground, the longest he could find. He poked the guy’s shin. He got no response and poked it again, harder.

The guy groaned and shifted. He sat up. He shielded his face
from the harsh winter sun. His eye, and almost half of his face, were thickly bandaged. He fell back, dizzy.

He wasn’t wrinkled like the old-time junkies, but the kids knew high when they saw it.

“Hey.” Maven reached out from the box, dazed and trying to see. “Hey, fellas …”

He received a smack on the top of his wrist and pulled back. He looked again, each of the boys wielding a fallen branch.

Maven said, “Hey, I—”

A whack across his chest. Another against his shoulder. A crack against the crown of his head, and he rolled into a defensive ball.

The blows rained down, barely felt on the surface, only their reverberation throughout his muscles and his bones.

M
AVEN CAME TO FIGHTING OFF THE STICK KIDS, BUT NOW IT WAS TWO
blue-gloved EMTs, working by the light of a cop’s flashlight in the park.

“What did you take, sir?”

Maven tried to sit up. They pushed him back down.

“How long have you been out on the streets?”

They put a penlight in his one eye, flicking it back and forth.

“Nothing,” the EMT muttered to himself. “Sir? Hello? What happened to your eye?”

Maven tried to respond, but could not put any words together.

Next thing he knew, he was wide-awake in a sickening surge of full consciousness. It looked like an emergency room, but the walls were rocking, streetlights and upper-story apartment windows rushed past the windows. He was inside an ambulance, strapped to a stretcher.

The EMT had boosted him with Narcan, the opiate antidote. All of Maven’s claustrophobia from being confined at Lockerty’s came roaring back, and he thrashed and tore at the single strap across his waist, loosening it enough to slide out onto the floor.
The EMT first banged on the partition for help, then held his arms out toward Maven as though he were trapped with a bear.

Maven stood inside the rocking vehicle. He was still alive. He was free somehow. He was back in Boston.

The driver slid open her window and Maven reached through and grabbed her throat. She cut the wheel, supplies spilling from the side of the ambulance. The impact with the telephone pole sent the stretcher into the partition, then back against the doors, popping them open. Maven stumbled out and fell to the curb, hurrying away, half-blind, from the gathering people and the lights.

M
AVEN ENTERED THE
V
ERIZON STORE, THE FIRST CUSTOMER OF THE
day. The red-shirted greeter welcomed him, Maven pushing past her to the demo phones, all working models.

He squinted at the phone, his vision blurred, his head splitting. He dialed information, asking for Gridley, Massachusetts, a listing for Vetti. The automated system gave him a number and connected him.

While the phone rang, Maven was aware of the salesmen talking about him, trying to figure out what to do about this bandaged bum using the free service in their store.

Danielle’s mother picked up. Maven told her that he was a friend of her daughter’s, trying to track her down.

“I don’t give out that information,” said Mrs. Vetti.

“A phone number, an address. Anything. It’s critical.”

“I just don’t give out that kind of information.”

“Do you … can you tell me, is she all right? Is Danielle okay?”

A long pause made him fear the worst. “Who is this?”

“A friend. I was at your house for your other daughter’s birthday.”

Another pause. Her hand over the receiver. “She needs a name.”

“She—?” Maven straightened. “Is she there? It’s Neal Maven.”

Mrs. Vetti repeated the name. After some muffled back and forth, the phone was handed to a different person.

“Who is this?” Danielle’s voice.

“Danny?”

A breathless pause. “Neal?”

“You’re all right,” he said, suddenly near tears. “You’re okay.”

“Neal Maven … you’re alive? He said … he said you were …”

“I’m at a phone store, downtown. What are you … what are you doing at your parents’?”

“Brad … he dumped me. Dumped me flat. Threw me out, left me with nothing.”

“You’re lucky he didn’t … he had Glade and Suarez rubbed out. Did you know that?”

“I knew they were … gone.”

“I need you. To see you. I need your help.”

M
AVEN LURKED AROUND THE
B
OSTON
F
LOWER
E
XCHANGE ON
A
LBANY
Street, a long, low, fully enclosed, warehouse-style wholesale flower market. Trucks off-loaded flowers from the port and backed them into the exchange, where they were sold to New England retailers. The sign said it was closed on Sundays, and while a few cars dotted the parking lot, the area itself was quiet.

He leaned against the outside wall, hacking into his hand, still sick from whatever shit they’d put in him. It was wearing off now, the pain in the back of his eye as intense as it was unreachable. He was jittery when he should have been hungry. The constant drip of anesthetics and painkillers had turned him halfway into a junkie.

A black Highlander pulled into the lot. Maven remained in the doorway, hidden yet hopeful, having forgotten to ask Danielle what kind of car she would be driving. The SUV pulled near, coming in at an angle, and he stepped out into view.

The tinted windows made Maven stop, but too late. The pas
senger’s door opened, and a bald guy with a tribal tattoo on the side of his neck stood out, brandishing a MAC-10 with a muzzle suppressor.

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.

T
ERMINO WAS AT THE EXIT WHEN HE SAW HIS GUY
K
ELVIN 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.

M
AVEN SLICED THE TAPE OFF HIS WRISTS
. B
EFORE HE COULD RIP OFF
his plastic hood, he saw a shadow on the floor.