Devils in Exile (7 page)

She came out to applause, turning on her big Tyra smile, playing surprise at the warmth of the reception, putting a flat hand to her breathless, voluptuous chest, then pursing her lips in a kiss.

“There. The air kiss. That’s our little signal.”

Maven looked at skinny Ricky hunched over before the small screen. “Your signal?”

“This cruel world keeps us apart. Experts say there are three events that could trigger a worldwide cataclysm. One—the sun burns out. Two—an asteroid impact destroys the atmosphere. Three—Tyra Banks marries a white man.”

Maven thought about it, and agreed. “I think three would cause the most typhoons.”

Ricky watched his goddess on a flickering four-inch screen. “She should wear stretchier tops.”

A pickup stopped outside, the driver bald, leather-jacketed, with the extremity of a tattoo—something dull, blue, penal—visible at the sides of his neck. He left the pickup running with a pit bull sitting in the front seat, came in, paid cash for a box of Phillies Blunts and some beef jerky, then drove off feeding the jerky to the dog.

The prison tat jumped out at Maven, got him feeling that nervous energy again. Beyond all his qualms, beyond all the questions he still had, beyond the voice in his head telling him,
Don’t,
he was undeniably excited. He couldn’t wait for his shift to be over. For the new day to begin.

He had gone into this thing wanting to know more about Danielle Vetti, and instead found himself beguiled by Brad Royce.

Ricky said, his mouth full of Sour Patch Kids, “You’re not eating tonight?”

Maven shook his head.
Tomorrow Man.
“I’m thinking about trying to get back into shape.”

That straightened Ricky. “You’re going to reenlist,” he said, as though it were something he had been dreading all along.

Maven smiled and shook his head, looking out the window again, searching the sky for signs of dawn.

T
HE SIGHT OF HANDGUNS ON THE HOTEL ROOM BED JOLTED
M
AVEN
. He hadn’t seen a plain-view hot weapon since returning to the States. In Eden, they were standard-issue, like bottles of water. Here in a Back Bay hotel room, a pistol loaded with live rounds looked like a bomb waiting to go off.

He geared up with the others. Royce provided him with soft tactical body armor that fit all right, except for riding up into his throat when he wanted to sit down. The vest had full-wrap protection, critical for close-quarter engagements, when an arms-out gun stance left the sides of the torso vulnerable. Because soft body armor did a decent job of fragmenting pistol bullets but repelled rifle fire about as effectively as a wool sweater, Maven was used to wearing ceramic plates in the front and back pockets. So the vest felt light and almost silly, like wearing a life preserver indoors.

A patch was Velcro’ed onto the vest front, wide and rectangular. Maven started to pull on it when Royce’s hand touched his arm. “Later,” he said, handing Maven shooting gloves made of neoprene
and synthetic leather, and a police-blue windbreaker long enough to hide his belt holster.

Maven stepped to the corner and drew his sidearm, a Sig Sauer 225. He was familiar with the weapon, knowing, for example, that the 225 was manufactured without a safety. He pressed the side button and caught the magazine as it ejected from the grip. He racked the slide and found the firing chamber empty, then racked it a few more times, trusting that it wouldn’t stick if he needed it. He then thumbed the rounds out of the magazine, counting eight, a full load for the 225. He fed them back inside the magazine, one by one against the spring, and slid the magazine home into the Sig’s grip. The weapon felt comfortable in his hand, but without his having fired it, nothing really mattered. Borrowing a handgun is like borrowing a parachute. And the first rule of jump school is, always pack your own kit.

Royce said there shouldn’t be any shooting. “Not if we do this thing right. You think you can do this thing right?”

Maven racked one round into the firing chamber, then decocked, releasing the magazine again, now one short of a full load, and thumbed an extra round from one of the two backup mags in the nylon pouch on his belt, then inserted it into the current mag and thrust it back inside the grip. Now he had nine, a full wad. He holstered the weapon and zipped up his blue jacket to cover it.

The Latino’s left cheek egged out from a fat dip of chewing tobacco, another thing Maven hadn’t seen much of since Eden, where everyone dipped. Royce and the others looped ZipCuffs onto their chest straps, but Maven wasn’t issued any restraints. They pulled black balaclavas down over their faces, fixing the stitched holes so they sat over their eyes, then rolled the masks up to sit on the tops of their heads like knit caps. Maven did the same.

He appreciated the seriousness in the room. These were men dressing for work.

Royce’s phone buzzed. The blond guy had left the room a while ago. Maven realized that he had gone down to the lobby, to eyeball the Venezuelan as he entered the hotel.

Royce listened and reported, “He’s in. With muscle. One man, rolling an oversized suitcase. Tan jacket, bulge underneath. Waved off a bellboy at the door.”

Maven yawned deep. From tiredness, from nerves, from the hormones released by his battle-alert brain, already relaxing his bronchial tubes for deeper breathing. His chest, tight inside the shell of the protective vest, felt like a jar of fireflies. He tore open a foil packet of Nescafé instant coffee crystals—nicked from City Oasis—as he hadn’t got any sleep that morning, emptying it into his mouth and dry-crunching it like candy, ramping up on undiluted caffeine.

“Second elevator,” reported Royce, hanging up. “Remember the security camera in the elevator panel. First man in body-blocks it.”

“That’ll be me,” said the green-jacketed Latino, spitting his plug and a string of brown drool into the plastic-lined trash can.

The black guy passed Maven on his way to the door, smelling of hotel soap and pistol cleaner, his yellow eyes looking like stones in need of polishing. “Don’t don’t fuck it up, newbie,” he said with a smile.

The Latino followed him into the hallway, quietly singing, “We’re gonna have a party …,” until the door closed and they were gone.

Then it was just Maven and Royce, alone in the narrow entryway. Royce checked him face-to-face like a man examining a thermostat before leaving the house for the day, making sure it was right. He looked satisfied.

He pointed to the door, and Maven went out first.

T
HE L-SHAPED HALLWAY ON THE TWENTY-SEVENTH FLOOR WAS EMPTY
. At three in the afternoon, all the
USA Today
s had been claimed, the maid service had come and gone. A couple of room-service trays, set out after lunch, lay next to doors.

The Latino and the black guy waited at the near elevator. The
UP
button had been pressed, a glowing white eye. The Latino’s voice came back faintly—“gonna have a party”—all nervous energy and nicotine.

Maven swished around the last of his soldier’s Starbucks. He looked down at a silver-handled room-service tray containing two small jars of marmalade and honey, the congealed remains of an egg-and-pepper omelet and a bowl of hash, a linen napkin, and a side plate of wheat toast. As Royce peered around the corner again, Maven bent down and stuffed a slice of cold, buttered bread into his mouth.

Royce leaned back, checking behind them. “These guys,” he said, tugging up his jacket to expose his Beretta, “are fucking scum. You remember that.”

Maven nodded, swallowing the toast. The elevator dinged and a red arrow appeared on the overhead panel. Maven followed Royce down the hall, everyone pulling down his balaclava mask and converging on the doors.

They opened, and the first two were inside immediately. Royce advanced with his Beretta out of his holster, aimed low at the floor, ready. Muffled yells and wall-thumps, but no gunshots. Maven couldn’t see inside, remaining a few yards back, uncertain whether he should draw. The door tried to close twice, each time Royce stopping it with his foot.

The scuffle ended, and the Latino exited the elevator car with the Venezuelan in front of him, the man’s wrists cuffed behind his back. A nylon mouth gag accentuated the wild and stunned look on the Venezuelan’s face. The black guy came out second with a bigger guy, identically bound and gagged, but more bent over, perhaps more hurt. He wrenched the man’s arms higher and handed him to Maven, who gripped the guy by his elbow.

Royce retrieved the wheeled suitcase, then the black guy stepped back inside the elevator, Maven seeing, reflected in the wall mirror before the door closed, him screwing a tube-shaped suppressor onto his pistol muzzle.

Then they were running, feet thudding heavily on the carpet as
they pushed their captives around the corner, rushing to the stairwell. Maven followed the Latino’s lead, strong-arming the muscle up the steps, bumping him around a little when he resisted. He saw someone moving floors below them, but it was just the blond coming up the stairs.

At the top floor, Royce squeezed past them to the front, knocking the Venezuelan’s head against the wall to get his attention. Royce unzipped his own jacket and pulled down the flap on the front of his vest. White block letters read
FBI.

The Venezuelan’s gagged grunting echoed inside the deep stairwell.

Royce bounced him off the wall once more for emphasis, and the Venezuelan sagged but the Latino held him up. Royce reached for Maven’s jacket and unzipped it, tearing down his
FBI
patch too. Maven didn’t feel good about this.

Royce said to the Venezuelan, “Play along and your lawyer will have you out by midnight. But fuck with us, and you die resisting arrest.
Comprende? Entiende?
”

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.”