Chuck Hogan - Devils in Exile

Inside the door, a perfect monarch settled on Lash’s shoulder, fluttering its stained-glass wings. Butterflies were everywhere, drinking nectar out of feeders, courting among the exotic foliage, basking in the early-spring sun.

There was a bench for sitting, and on it, hunched forward from the back slats, hands folded over his splayed knees, was a black man in his late twenties. Oversize Phat Farm T, wide-legged, many-pocketed carps, thick chains visible around the back of his neck. He was pondering a tiny, purple-winged butterfly perched on the base knuckle of the top thumb of his folded hands.

Lash settled next to him and the butterfly lifted away.

The man gave Lash some skin, rough-palmed and hard-nailed, and said, “M.L.”

“Tricky-Trey,” said Lash. The man’s name was Patrique Molondre, but on the street he went by Tricky. “I’m digging the spot.”

“Bro of mine from the inside hipped me to it. I need more of this peace in my life.”

Some dudes get their minds shaped more by prison than by the chaos of their childhood. The Zen of the pen. The Tao of the dungeon. Time in isolation opens some up to concepts of harmony within a culture of violence. The hidden garden deep within the fortress under siege.

Lash picked at his collar, billowing out his sweatshirt. “Hothouse.”

“Yeah,” said Tricky. “They should be growing weed up in this mo-mo.”

Lash smiled, Tricky having him on. Nice and loose.

They watched two elderly women shuffle past, each with a death grip on her purse. A sign at the exit reminded visitors to check themselves for butterflies in the mirrors before leaving, and when the door opened, a blower came on, keeping the residents inside.

“Minimum security,” said Tricky. “Nobody trying to bust out of this paradise.” He reached over, plucking a reddish orange number off Lash’s shoulder. Held it pinched by its wings. “Brother here got six to ten for unlawful pollination.”

“Butterflies are the white-collar criminals of nature.”

“This boy, he goes out, drinks himself some nectar, has himself a time, right? People say, ‘Oh, well. He don’t know no better, he’s a butterfly.’ But when some fucking big-ass bumblebee buzzes over, sticks his stinger in — look out. Larceny. Shut that mo-mo up in the bee house, give him twenty years, throw away the key. Cage his black-and-yellow ass.”

Lash nodded. “Ain’t no justice for a bumblebee.”

Tricky watched the critter try to fly, then opened his fingers and let him go. “I guess you hearing me now?”

“I heard you before, Trick.” Lash sat back. “I just didn’t know. Wasn’t seeing it.”

“Won’t never see nothing till it bleeds out onto the street.” Tricky stayed forward, talking over his hands like a man in church. “They been hitting it hard. I don’t mean ambushing street-corner buys. These ain’t stickups. I mean high-line, pro licks. Takedowns. Inside baseball.”

Tricky let that last part hang out there with the sound of the trickling water.

Lash said, “I’m listening.”

“Nobody knows who, or what. No one I hear from anyway. I sure don’t. But they’re tight. Laying dudes out, rodeo-wrappin’ them, pulling phones and straps.”

“Who they hitting?”

“It’s all vague. Nobody wants to bark about getting punked. What I do know is, peeps are gearing up. Strapping it on. All that peacetime, turf-respecting shit — that shit is done .”

Lash had no real problem with upper-echelon dealers being taken down, per se, but instability concerned him. Innocents and the day players might suddenly find themselves in the cross fire.

“These guys,” said Lash, “these sugar bandits. Are we talking shooters?”

“Naw. Pros. Heavy-hitting pros.”

“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 sur vive .”

“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?”