Chuck Hogan - Devils in Exile

“Good gig last night.”

“Yeah,” said Maven. “You should have been there.”

In recent weeks, Royce had pulled back from the actual takedowns. He was busier than ever locating targets and initiating surveillance, doing all the advance work, the covert stuff he never let anyone else touch or even ask about. He presented them with a dossier — usually addresses and license plates and some photos — and took them out in a rented van to cruise the players, the locations, the vehicles, then let them take it from there. They were always busy, doing two jobs a month. “That was a good save, you kept your head.”

“We fucked up.”

Royce shrugged. “Keeps you on your toes. It’s a dangerous game, and it’s only going to get more difficult. They’re aware of us now.”

“We’ve lost the element of surprise.”

“But gained the element of intimidation. You’re building up quite a nice little treasure chest now. Moved up to a bigger safe-deposit box yet?”

“Soon,” Maven said.

“Now I really gotta stay on top of you dicks. Keep you motivated. Money makes you lazy. Makes you conservative, makes you scared. What is the one thing worse than having nothing?”

Maven nodded. “Losing something.”

Royce shot him with a finger gun. “Why we have to keep pushing ahead. Keep up our energy here. Give no quarter.”

“You know what’s good about this?” said Maven, getting comfortable in the booth. “What’s best about it — besides the money? It’s that we’re like cops and thieves at the same time. Doing good by doing bad. Taking down dealers and fragging the product... it feels like a big ‘Fuck you’ to someone, I don’t even know who.”

“To these jackasses,” said Royce, dismissing the room. “To everyone in this club, in this city. Anybody you pass in the street who stayed here and played Xbox while you were over there baking in the Arabian sun. Now you’re back and you’re beating the system — and it’s fucking perfect.”

“It is.”

Royce popped an oyster and chased it with sushi. “Let’s just make sure no one else ever finds out how fucking smart we are, huh?”

Maven grinned wide as a six-year-old on his birthday.

“My point, though,” continued Royce, “is that this game is all in. You push all your earnings forward every time you head out there — don’t ever forget that.”

As Royce said this, the crowd before them parted in such a way as to reveal Danielle, dancing alone out on the floor, a high, swirling spotlight writing over her body as though fashioning a female form out of music and darkness. She wore a salsa dress in black and sheer, the asymmetrical hem giving it a shipwrecked flair. She was lost in herself, in the moment, the music and the light.

Maven remembered the vial then, dousing his good mood. The music changed, one beat overlapping into another, and the dance floor closed up again and she was gone.

Maven threw back most of the rest of his drink.

Royce said, “Where’s Suarez, you seen him?”

Maven shrugged. “Wherever the Asian ladies are at.”

“He does love that wasabi. Know why?”

“Why he only digs Asians?”

“He says that being with a Latina, or even a white girl, would be like being with his own sister.”

Maven nearly choked on that, coughing into his fist. “Nice.”

“I didn’t ask him any more goddamn questions after that.”

“I’m not gonna follow it up either,” said Maven, shaking off that one. “Termino’s doing all right.”

They couldn’t see the bar from here. “He usually does. What about you? Your action seems to have tailed off a bit.”

“Only a bit.”

“What’s that mean? You were a kid in a candy store for a while there. Too much, too fast?”

Maven grinned. “It’s a headache, no big deal.”

“Or are you looking for something more regular?”

“I’m just looking, period.”

“Tomorrow Man, right?” said Royce. “It’s not about who you take to bed, but who you wake up with.”

“Exactly.”

“Go ahead, Maven — smile a little. Don’t forget about that punk back in Iraq, trying to jerk off in the shitter in the middle of a fifty-mile-an-hour shamal. You owe that kid too.”

“That’s kid’s been paid . In full.”

“Good to hear it.” Royce raised his soda water. “Here’s to him.”

“To him.”

“The stupid fuck.”

Maven laughed hard and killed his drink.

Maven kept an eye out for Danielle as he navigated the dance floor, heading out through the parted curtain. If nothing else, it gave his wandering around the club a purpose.

He cleared the top-floor rooms without coming across her, then made his way downstairs, patting the VIP bouncer on the back as he passed, emerging onto the main floor. He moved to the main bar and ordered a Budweiser, and while he waited, felt a brushing sensation against his shoulder, a cascade of brunette ringlets.

“Is this all there is?” said a young voice, the owner of the springy hair, jammed up against the bar with her back to him.

“What do you mean?” yelled her friend over the music. She was trying to get served, but the raised finger wasn’t drawing any attention. “We made it! We’re in!”

“I guess I was expecting gift bags. Or live unicorns or something.”

Maven smiled. He saw ankle boots and plenty of leg.

The bartender came back with Maven’s beer in an aluminum can, and Maven directed the barman’s attention to the women next to him.

The friend shouted their order, then leaned onto the bar to see Maven and thank him. Her look when she saw Maven — a recognition of something special — got the attention of the woman next to him, who turned. She had a darkly featured face, clever eyes, plum-painted lips, and a beaded choker that crossed her throat like a second smile.

“This is all there is,” Maven told her, fighting his eyes’ inclination downward. “No unicorns.”

“No?” she said with a lingering smile. “Too bad...”

Her friend shouted, “What’s upstairs?”

“More of the same,” said Maven, his eyes going back to the girl with the ringlets. “Only darker and less crowded.”

She was smiling at him and he was smiling at her. They were having a moment until two more friends came rushing up, pulling at her arm to go dancing. “Samara, come on!”

She saw the change in his expression, the clouding of his face. Her name was the same as that of the city in northern Iraq — but she had no way of knowing what that meant to him, or why the surprise of hearing it here made him freeze. He watched her — in a denim bustier with a lace-up back and a short, black suede skirt over ankle boots — get absorbed into the undulating mass out on the dance floor.

“Hey. Gridley. Wake up.”

It was Danielle, suddenly, next to him.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said.

“What?” said Maven.

She already had her sunglasses on, her silver clutch under her arm. “I am so done, and not up for driving. He said you had a headache, you could take me.”

Maven checked one more time for the girl named Samara, but she was gone.

Danielle looked at him. “Are you drunk, Gridley?”

She still referred to him by the name of their hometown.

“Well, I am,” she said, squeezing a numbered plastic tag into his hand. “Now be a fucking gentleman and go fetch my coat.”

She waited at the door, and he followed her outside with her coat on his arm — long and black, a light crepe fabric — moving past the queue of hopefuls waiting to get inside. She passed female stares and male sighs and even outright wolf whistles, immune, her arms crossed against the cool night air, or maybe folded in anger against an evening and a city she felt was beneath her.