Chuck Hogan - Devils in Exile

Maven turned his head for a different angle of understanding, but it didn’t work. He looked down at the new timepiece on his wrist instead, the second-hand needle doing a slow lap around the face. “I don’t really want to think about what comes next.”

“You’re crazy not to. Why?”

Maven shook his head.

Royce made a face. “Tell.”

“You’ll think I’m a jinx.”

“If I ever believed in that sort of thing, I wouldn’t be here now.”

“I’m just waiting for the worm to turn.”

“Go on.”

“Look, I’m not being ungrateful. I’m extremely grateful. For the opportunity, for this beer — for fucking everything. But the thing is — trouble has a way of finding me.”

Royce sat back, not perplexed, not amused. “That so.”

“Historically, yeah.”

“You’re saying you got the mark on you. So how do you explain all this good fortune in your life now?”

“Exactly. It’s all tits and butter. That’s what’s got me worried.”

“That you never had it this good?”

“Never in my life.”

Royce finished his beer. He looked disappointed — or maybe that was just Maven’s impression, as he felt he was always giving Royce wrong answers. “Who knows, Maven?” said Royce, standing up with his empty bottle. “Maybe your luck has changed.”

Lash recognized the familiar musk of stupidity upon entering the Barnstable County lockup and decided he had been spending entirely too much time in jails. He feared becoming like a career garbageman whose nose can no longer discriminate between sweet and sour.

This, he thought, as he looked at the faces of the men doubled up in the cells, is the side of the Cape that few people see. Turns out it’s not all sand dunes and ice cream shops. He was buzzed through another door and found the Harleton cat’s cell wide-open. Overweight, white, the executive type, dumping toiletries off the wall shelf into a plastic bag.

Lash said, “Hi, there.”

The guy turned, startled, seeing Lash filling the open door. A man walking freely inside the lockup. Harleton looked behind Lash, expecting others. “Who are you?”

“I’m Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell, how you doing?”

The guy shrank back, a dry toothbrush in his hand. He was on the verge of walking out of this place, and now here was a black man in his cell messing with him. “They said my lawyer is coming.”

Lash looked around. “Not here yet.”

Harleton appeared pained, waiting to be let in on the joke. “I don’t know who you are.”

“Let’s just say that I’m an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration. And let’s just say that you were found three days ago all trussed up in your family’s home on some island-sized golf course, along with three known heroin dealers and eleven pounds of weed.”

Harleton’s mouth flinched, his eyes cheating around the room in anticipation of a beating. “My lawyer is on his way.”

“You said that. I guess your family popped for bail. Very considerate, in light of the circumstances. Very forgiving. I gotta tell you, my son played host to a drug deal in my house while I was away in Florida? He’d be coming up with his own damn bail money.”

“I’m sure you don’t know anything about my family—”

“But I know about you, Mr. Harleton. You’re the fuckup son, a grown man still taking help from parents he doesn’t respect. But I’m not here to scold you. I wouldn’t waste my motherfucking breath.” Lash cursed because Harleton expected it from him. Lash had no problem being his scary stereotype. “I don’t even care about your case. Someone else will handle it, and they will be left holding the bag when you screw. Now, don’t give me that shocked look — you think I don’t know you’re going to run?”

Harleton was over his initial fear, his mind-set back to A man like me doesn’t belong in a place like this. Lawyers had been consulted, bail had been posted. The world he knew was righting itself like a good ship in a storm. “Run where?”

“Like I said, somebody else’s problem. Two days is a good long time to be tied up, isn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

“Your parents know you better than you think. Two days without hearing from you, and they call the police, ask that their house be checked. Osterville cops find you bound up with a bunch of felons and weed. One of the felons was beat-up. They recovered a casing and a round on the floor — and yet no firearms anywhere in the house. The round was scored and mashed, meaning it had been fired and impacted with something — and no bullet holes in the house. They found heroin movers and heroin buyers — and yet no money and no heroin. See a pattern here?”

Harleton kept mum.

“I’m not here about you. I’m here about the guys who ripped you off.”

Harleton’s eyes, accustomed to a lifetime of blinking and prevarication, held firm.

“These other shits you were with, they’ll deny anything occurred. Especially after going to such lengths not to get taken. The island. This gated little golf sanctuary. Only to be made fools of. Which is where you come in. One bridge connects to the mainland, and the guy at the gate, he checks names. So your guests, they had reason to feel pretty secure. But they didn’t pay enough attention to the beach, huh?”

Lash started to pace inside the small cell. He wasn’t even looking at Harleton now, Lash putting all this together in front of him. Harleton’s role in Lash’s ratiocination was that of the finger around which a knot was being tied.

“Coming in by water. That shows skills. Were there four or five of them?”

Lash didn’t need straight-out answers. Just being near the guy allowed him to see. In the way a psychic worries a possession of the recently disappeared, or a bloodhound pokes his nose in a shirt. This was why Lash had come all the way out to Cape Cod.

“I’m betting the shot came from your side. Because the round was blunted, like it hit Kevlar and bounced away. That explains the guy getting smacked around. He got a shot off... and yet he wasn’t killed in retaliation. That’s enormous restraint, isn’t it? Heat of the moment? These guys are disciplined, they’re patient, they’re prepared. And plenty well equipped. A lot of which says cops. But the amphibious stuff — no. Maybe federal...?” Lash played this out in his mind. “Maybe some rogue tactical team, freelancing. Or ex -agents. But how do they know ? Field intel. That’s the fucking weak link here, that’s the key. If I can find any agency, local or federal, that was onto you” — Lash pointed to Harleton, still standing with his back against the far wall — “or those others... a snitch somewhere... somebody undercover...”

Harleton relaxed a little more. Now he’d had some time to think. “Cops?”

Lash looked up at him. “That surprises you. They didn’t seem like cops? Do cop shit?”

Harleton clamped up again.

Lash returned to his pacing. “That’s the one part that doesn’t play, isn’t it? Cops who turn like this, they hide behind the badge. Who wouldn’t? You’re gonna go dirty, why play fair? You’re gonna use the golden key that opens every door in town. And there’s a big difference between taking a shot at some guy trying to rip you off, versus capping a fed. About a life’s sentence difference.”

Lash looked back at Harleton, the man wearing a funny, distant-looking smile on his face.

Lash said, “You’re wondering about cops. Thinking this could help you, help your case. Only thing is — I’m not even going to bother talking to your known associates. So if you go blabbing any of this to your lawyer, they’ll know you were the source, and they’ll think you were talking to us feds.” Lash made a snick noise with his cheek. “I don’t know. Maybe they’ll kill you anyway. For knowing they got taken — for seeing it. They don’t like that. Maybe you lost money too, maybe you financed some of this hijacked cake. Though I doubt it. These aren’t your people. This is more like you owe them something. Like you’ve been living out on the wild side. That it, tubby?”