Chuck Hogan - Devils in Exile

“Naw. Worse. They flushing it, yo. Spoiling it. Queering it up with bleach.”

“What are you saying? Like vigilantes?”

“Like vigilantes getting paid, ” said Tricky, mashing one hand into the other. “Robin Hoods, robbin’ hoods .”

“Flushing away half their score? You sure about that?”

“This is what I’m saying. This is a different breed of cat. Not needy or greedy. Maybe it’s simple smarts—’cause that shit can be traced. You put somebody else’s product on the street, you be found, and quick. All I know’s, they taking game off the street. Got me thinking maybe it was you.”

The only downside to running a program like Windfall was sheer temptation. Millions of dollars of untraceable cash. The majority of organized sugar bandits out there were dirty cops. This was why Lash cycled manpower in and out of the task force every nine to twelve months. Still, people talked. The enticement was strong. And Lash was ultimately responsible.

Lash said, “I can take care of my own guys.”

“So can I. To a point.”

Lash already knew he wouldn’t go to anyone else in Windfall about this. He’d have to be his own internal affairs — just in case.

“Where’s Broadhouse on this whole thing?” asked Lash.

“Pissed, man. What you think?”

“Gonna be a summit?”

“I don’t have much ear right now, the shit that’s been going down. Too much fucking distrust going around. To the point where, I fucking don’t want to know shit, because everybody’s all looking for leaks. Jumpy. Everybody sniffing out everybody else.”

Three Pins, or drug kingpins, currently stood atop the ever-fluid Greater Boston drug game. Other little players operated at their own discretion and danger, but generally for the past year or two, most of the flow in and around town had to go through three top guys. Broadhouse, based out of Mattapan, Dorchester, and the projects on Mission Hill. Lockerty, out of East Boston and points north. And Crassion, everywhere in between.

“I just want this cleared up,” said Tricky. “These bandits, they got to be got .”

Lash squinted. “You trying to get me to do Broadhouse’s work for him now? Are you my inside man, or am I yours?”

Tricky leaned close. “I’m saying this shit’s going to explode. Escalating like the fucking stairs at Macy’s. These mo-mos, you don’t need to make ’em any more paranoid.”

Lash nodded. “On that, we agree.”

Tricky looked him over. “But you say it ain’t you.”

Lash sat on that, surprised. “You really thought so?”

Tricky pulled back, shrugged. “It would be a good play, that’s all. Couldn’t put it past you.” He palmed his knees. “We good here?”

Lash nodded. “We’re good.”

Tricky stood, hiking up his baggy carps. “Stay black, M.L.”

“You stay breathing, Tricky-Trey.”

Lash shrugged off his overcoat as he entered the visiting room at MCI Concord, laying it and his scarf across the back of the cleanest-looking chair before sitting down to wait. Monday was the only day they didn’t offer visiting hours, but he had arranged this exception.

Peter Maracone was brought to him from the Special Housing Unit. He wore an extra-large, orange T-shirt over prison jeans, looking like a double orange Popsicle on two blue sticks. He studied Lash as he sat across the table from him, keeping his eyes beady and putting up a tough front. His hair was stiff and pushed all around as if he were afraid to take a shower.

“Who’re you?”

“Me?” Lash said. “I am the Ghost of Drug Deals Past.”

The guy frown-smiled. “Thought ghosts were white.”

“The good ghosts are. I’m a bad spirit.”

“Why ain’t I scared?”

“Maybe you got an alibi for last November?”

“Last November? Let me check. The whole month?” Maracone thought about what that question might mean to him. “I suppose I could get one.”

“How much you get taken for?”

Maracone did the exaggerated head tilt, suddenly hard of hearing. “What’s that?”

“A lot, huh? Too bad. They tie you up? You must have pissed yourself.”

Maracone’s eyes stayed narrow but receded farther into his skull. “Was it you, you piece of shit?”

“Me? Huh.” That got Lash thinking. “Were all of them black, or just some?”

“Fuck you.”

“Okay. Not all then. More than one?”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Just one. Got it.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m in here for a domestic dispute.”

“Whipping your girlfriend with an extension cord. You’re all class, Petey.”

Maracone folded his pudgy fingers on the scratched-up table, going quiet, tired of getting outtalked.

Lash said, “You used a table saw on his hands, huh?”

Maracone smiled. Just a little one, his clownish fat face. “I’ll let you know when what you’re saying starts making sense to me.”

That smile was exactly what Lash had come for. Confirmation. Assholes can never help but congratulate themselves.

Lash said, “Your brother, where’s he at?”

“Sport fishing in F-L-A.”

“Hiding out, in other words. I guess he’s the smart one.” Lash sat back. “You’re obviously very busy here, Petey, trying not to get raped, so I’ll just ask you one more question, straight up. You and your brother were looking to become players, buying in big, and fell flat on your face. So you took out the Venezuelan in anger — fine. But you two don’t have the juice to jump into the game so big like that. Somebody was fronting you. Who?”

Maracone kept his hands folded, deciding to say nothing.

“Lockerty,” said Lash. “Yep. That’s what I’ll tell people you told me.”

“Fuck you. I didn’t tell you shit.”

“Lockerty. That’s what you said.”

Maracone almost levitated out of his chair. “You fucking trying to get me killed? What is this?”

Lash smiled. “Petey, reading you is like reading the front page of USA Today . Too fucking easy.”

“I didn’t say nothing.”

“Sure you did.” Lash stood, grabbed his coat.

“What the fuck was this? Who the fuck are you, anyway?”

Lash smiled, laying his scarf down soft against the late-day roughness of his neck. “That should have been your first question.”

“It fucking was!”

Lash walked back outside to his car, needing to find a place to eat with a nice bathroom where he could wash the prison off his hands.

Two dozen kilos of scag and a few pounds of weed arrived on Cape Cod on a trawler from Florida. It was off-loaded early in the day along with a legit bluefin haul, but the dock wasn’t the transaction point. The deal had to be physically consummated. Credit deals were rare, as any misunderstandings or miscommunications quickly led to bloodshed. Banks were almost never involved because the law loved paper trails and electronic records. The hand-to-hand exchange was the point of highest risk for both dealer and buyer.

In this brief moment of vulnerability, this synapse of paper and powder, lived the sugar bandits.

Osterville Grand Island is a circular land mass located just off the triceps of Cape Cod. A private, gated community of 150 homes and an exclusive golf course, accessible only by a two-lane drawbridge, past a guard who takes names.

The wayward fortyish son of an oil-corporation executive owed the wrong people a lot of money. Playing host to a secure-site trans action would not forgive his staggering debt, but would extend the grace period for its repayment. He had e-mailed the gate guard the names of a plumber and of a tile company who he said were coming that night to repair a bathroom-pipe rupture.