Devils in Exile (33 page)

The shock of seeing Maven had worn off, Royce getting some of his bravado back.

“You think this is it for me? Kingpin of this shitty town—you think this is the top? This is just the beginning, Maven. I have ambition like you can’t even fathom. Kings in exile—remember? You’ll always be a peasant. A dangerous peasant, but a peasant nonetheless.”

Royce’s voice fell away as Maven picked up the knife at his table setting. Maven turned it point-down against the table, the end of the handle against his open palm, slowly rotating his flat hand, cutting a tiny hole in the table linen.

Maven said, “I figured I’d end up getting screwed by the army. The government—I expected that. But never by a fellow vet.”

Royce glanced again at the front window. “You try anything here, you’ll be dead before you reach the door.

“Not as dead as you’ll be.”

As Maven pressed down harder on the knife handle, linen threads snapped, widening the cut. It was going to happen—right here, right now. Nothing could stop it. Maven realized, for the first time, that nothing existed beyond this moment. His life had no meaning beyond this final act of vengeance. He was looking at a big door marked
EXIT
with nothing—nothing—beyond.

A woman appeared at the table near Royce. Maven thought it was the server and did not look up at first, his eyes staying hard on Royce. When nothing was said, and no food was set down on the table, Maven glanced up at the interloper.

Danielle stood there in a loose top and jeans, carrying a clutch, back from a long trip to the bathroom. Maven did not need to look into her eyes to know that she was high—but look into her eyes he did.

Danielle appeared run-down, shrunken. The spark had gone out of her attractiveness. She could have been anyone now.

Her stare back at him was one of horror.

“This must come as a surprise to you,” said Royce. He stood, aping gentlemanly manners, pulling Danielle down into her chair. “When she called me to dime you out, I guess I realized how much I missed her. How valuable she is to me.”

Seated, she continued to stare at Maven, his eye patch, his one good eye.

Maven thought he had died all of his deaths already. He was wrong.

Royce continued, “This is a reunion I never thought I’d see. Anyone feel like champagne?”

The oysters arrived on a platter with an artful assortment of condiments. The knife was still under Maven’s hand, and he gripped the handle, slipping the blade point inside the oyster shell, twisting until he heard the pop. He slid the oyster into his mouth and swallowed, tasting nothing.

In this way he was no different from Danielle. All the flavor had gone out of their lives. They were both dead inside.

Royce said, “And here I thought you two would have more to say to each other.”

Maven said to her, “Why?”

Her gaze fell to the table.

“You knew what he would do.”

She could not look at him.

“Between you and me, Maven”—Royce sipped his Pellegrino—“I think she’s smoking it now.”

Danielle’s eyes flashed up at Maven. Trying to tell him something. Admitting she was in the grip of a thing she hated. Drugs, or Royce. Both.

“The weak exist to be exploited, Maven.” Royce sat back, one arm firmly on Danielle’s leg. “And what with you running all around town, opening fire hydrants, acting recklessly—I figure she’s safest with me for now. I know you wouldn’t want anything to happen to her. Not like that other girl …”

A killer calm spread through Maven. Royce had pushed him to the edge. To a place beyond insult. Where the only recourse was direct action.

For the first time since leaving the military, Maven saw that his mission was evident and clear. He was a soldier again.

At the front windows, the cops appeared satisfied with Termino and the other gunman, their licenses and permits. Maven wished he hadn’t dumped his Beretta.

He swiped his lips with his napkin, dropping it onto his plate. Royce kept Danielle close as Maven got to his feet, standing over the table. Pain seared in his missing eye, but the rest of him was at peace. Maven took one last look at both of them—Danielle looking away, unable to meet his one good eye—then turned and started out of the restaurant.

“Now don’t go away angry,” said Royce to his back.

Maven reached the sidewalk as the cops were starting away. He made certain Termino saw him, the direction in which he was headed, then he walked the short distance to the Parisienne.

M
AVEN DROVE STRAIGHT BACK TO
Q
UINCY
. H
IS HEAD START
wouldn’t last long. He left the Parisienne in the driveway and moved quickly up the back steps. Inside, he jammed a chair underneath the second doorknob, then used his key in the lock he had installed on the spare bedroom. He unzipped one of the two duffel bags there and pulled a Glock 19 from the bag of weapons. He double-checked the load on his way out across the apartment to the street-facing windows.

He saw no one below. Not yet.

He lowered the torn shades and kept a vigil through one of the open flaps.

Twenty minutes later, a dark blue minivan turned the corner, signaling a turn in the middle of the street. A sedan pulled out from the curb, opening up a space that the minivan then took.

Ricky emerged from his bedroom. He saw Maven at the window with the Glock in his hand, and then the chair propped up against the back door. Through the open door to the always locked
spare room, Ricky saw the oversize duffel bag full of stolen guns and rifles, and the regular-size duffel bag zipped shut next to it.

Ricky said nothing. He returned to his bedroom and shut the door.

Maven sat down in the easy chair facing the back entrance and waited.

M
INUTES BECAME HOURS, AND
M
AVEN’S ANXIETY TURNED INTO
annoyance. His head still throbbed, all that adrenaline gone to waste. He checked the street again, and another car looked suspicious, but it was parked on his side of the street and he did not have the angle to see anyone sitting inside.

When night fell, he turned out all the lights, giving his sore eye a break as he sat in darkness.

Ricky emerged one hour before midnight. The light from his room was the only glow inside the apartment. “Um … I’m heading out.”

Maven, seated in the easy chair with the Glock on the table next to him, shook his head.

“Can I turn on a light in here?”

“No.”

Ricky swiped his nose on the sleeve of his T-shirt. “What’s up, what’s going on?”

“Outside. Some guys waiting for me to leave.”

Ricky saw duct tape patching holes in the drawn shades. “Okay.” He went into the bathroom to take a leak. When he came back out, he said, “So why can’t I go then?”

“They might think you are me.”

“And?”

“And shoot you dead.”

Ricky stood there a moment, formulating a comeback. He then returned to his room and closed the door.

Less than an hour later, they heard harsh thumping and muffled
yells from the floor below. Ricky came out into the living room where Maven was standing in the dark, gun in hand.

“What the hell?” hissed Ricky.

Maven held out his hand to silence Ricky. “They just moved in on your neighbors downstairs.”

W
HAT MAVEN THOUGHT WOULD END QUICKLY AND VIOLENTLY
turned into a slow-boiling standoff. He checked the street occasionally, watching cars pull up and switch off. Royce had his men working six-hour shifts.

Ricky came out of his room midmorning, dressed to leave. “Okay. I’m going now.”

Maven opened the refrigerator freezer. “I wouldn’t.”

“It’s daylight. They’ll see I’m not you.”

“They won’t care.”

“I’ll go with my hands up.”

“Where is it you need to go so badly?”

Ricky looked at the tipped-back chair beneath the doorknob. “You don’t understand … I need my medicine. I got a lot of pain.”

Maven closed the freezer with a frozen pizza in his hand. Ricky eventually retreated to his room again.

He reemerged twenty minutes later, this time with a coat on. “Look, this is bullshit.” He launched into a prepared speech. “I can’t take being locked in here, I just can’t. This is my place, and I need to go, so I’m going. You hear me? I’m going to go.”

He walked to the door, expecting Maven to stop him. Maven just kept chewing his pizza, his gun on the table next to a napkin.

Ricky stood before the front legs of the tipped-back chair, not getting the reaction he wanted. “If you knew they were following you, why’d you lead them back here? To my home?”

“I needed a gun.”

“So now you’re trapped here. Me too. Brilliant. That’s fucking great.”

Maven said nothing.

Ricky said, “Okay, if they want you so bad, why aren’t they coming in?”

“Because no one wants to be first.”

Ricky gripped the legs and removed the chair from beneath the knob. He opened it to the outside door.

“They will take you, Ricky. They will use you to try to get to me. But I will not bargain, and I will not bend.”

Ricky stood before the second door, his chest rising and falling with anxiety.

M
AVEN TOOK CATNAPS IN THE EASY CHAIR, RESTING HIS EYE AND TAK
ing the edge off his exhaustion. He kept waking from a dream of them coming up the back steps and rushing inside.

Ricky lay on the living room sofa halfheartedly playing
Grand Theft Auto
to pass the time. He was shot in an attempted carjacking, then threw aside his controller, speckled with beads of sweat. He jumped to his feet and walked twice around the room, disappearing into the bathroom, starting up the shower yet again.

Maven checked the Weather Channel forecast every few hours. He went to the window to check the street.

At the corner bus stop, three men waited inside the transparent plastic kiosk. The bus came and went, and only two of them had boarded.

The heat had been turned off a few hours ago. Ricky hadn’t yet noticed. He kept taking showers because he was sweating through his clothes. Maven was disgusted by how short fentanyl’s leash was on Ricky. When he emerged from the bathroom, Ricky wandered the rooms patting at the skin on his face, smoothing down his wet hair.

* * *

O
VERNIGHT,
R
ICKY WAS WATCHING
The Tyra Banks Show
with his arms crossed when the power went out.

Maven reached for his Glock and stepped silently into the kitchen. He watched the door and waited, listening.

He heard footsteps on the roof. He positioned himself in the shadows beneath the ceiling’s only skylight as a shadow appeared on the slanting rectangle of moonlight on the floor. Ricky had fallen back into a fitful sleep on the sofa, where the man on the roof could not see him.

Maven readied the Glock. He watched the man cup his eyes to the glass and peer inside. Seeing nothing, he straightened and went away.

The apartment was quiet for the rest of the night.

R
ICKY KNELT AT THE TOILET BOWL, HIS DRY HEAVES BRINGING UP
nothing. The water had been turned off, the interior of the bowl disgusting. Ricky muttering into it, “I gotta get outta here, I gotta get outta here.”

He stumbled into the living room wrapped in a blanket as the lights flickered on again. The wall phone rang almost immediately.

Maven stood but did not approach the phone. The machine answered.

Royce said, “Not man enough to come out? You disappoint me, Maven. But don’t worry. It won’t be long now. Some guys, when they’re cornered like this, they decide to tap out rather than face the end. I know you won’t deprive me like that.”

Royce hung up, and Maven stood still a moment longer before returning to his project, laid out on the floor: a yellow rain slicker covered with duct tape.

“What is that?” said Ricky.

Maven said, “It’s going to rain.”

Ricky turned the TV on, but a few moments later the power went out again.

M
AVEN SHOOK
R
ICKY AWAKE AFTER SUNDOWN
. R
ICKY STARTLED AT
the sight, Maven bulked up in vest armor beneath the tape-dulled slicker. A roar of falling water disoriented Ricky, who looked over and saw that it was pouring rain in his living room.

The easy chair had been set beneath the removed skylight, absorbing the water and most of the sound. The two duffel bags were zipped shut and waiting near the chair, as was a heavy coat for Ricky.

“Pass me up the bags,” said Maven, who sprang from the easy-chair armrest to the lip of the skylight, hauling himself up.

The gun bag was heavy. Ricky pushed it up to Maven’s hand with great effort. Then the money, which was lighter. Then Maven reached down his empty hand.

Ricky shrugged on the coat and let Maven pull him up over the edge, dragging him onto the roof.

The fresh, wet air was a shock. Maven laid the skylight back over the opening, then carried both bags to the edge. He tossed them onto the roof of the neighboring house, a few yards across a three-story drop. Then he went back for Ricky, sitting on the roof near the skylight.

“No way. Not jumping.”

Maven pulled on him. “Get up.”

“No.” Ricky shook him off with more vehemence than Maven thought possible, whacking his arm away. “Leave me here.”

“Come on.”

He reached for Ricky again, and Ricky went at him with his fists. “Leave me!” he yelled. “Just leave me, like you did before. You don’t care. Just go.” Ricky sat in the rain as if he were never going to move again. “You were my only friend.”

Maven stared at him a moment, feeling Ricky’s words, weigh
ing his options—then he knelt and took Ricky’s wrist, getting him up and pulling him across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Ricky did not fight him. Maven hauled him in that way to the edge of the roof, then paced back from it to measure out a running start.

The leap was ugly, but they made it, falling hard onto the lower roof.

Maven carried the bags, and Ricky followed, down the rear stairs past interior lights coming on. They reached the ground and went around the far side of the next house, up to the corner nearest the street.