Chuck Hogan - Devils in Exile

He walked away from the river, toward Commonwealth Avenue, needing to move, working off the alcohol and the discontent. City Convenience at the corner of Massachusetts and Commonwealth avenues was a bright storefront in an otherwise darkened city. He went inside.

Similar to his convenience store in Quincy, only with prices higher by 30 percent. The guy working a laptop behind the counter gave Maven an unsmiling nod, checking him over for stickup potential, and Maven thought of Ricky and felt even worse.

He walked down the hospital-bright aisles, not wanting anything. So he was still smitten with Danielle — fine. He could live with that. In fact, it wasn’t so bad. Having his ultimate girl right there, yet out of reach — up on that balcony — freed him to be a little more reckless with other girls.

This was how he was feeling when a group of young women walked in, weaving and husky-voiced from talking over loud music all night. They wanted bottled water, Maven standing near the drink cooler. He glanced over without too much optimism — then took a second look at the one in front.

Brunette ringlets. A beaded choker around her neck.

She drifted near, choosing between flavored waters, her friends still farther back. Aware of him, yet sober enough to avoid eye contact.

“Unicorns and gift bags,” he said.

She shot him a so-not-interested squint — followed by a glimmer of recognition.

“That club,” she said. “Precipice. That awful place.”

“It is, isn’t it?” he said, smiling. “But this guy I work with, these people I know, it’s like their spot, so...”

She nodded. “You didn’t look like everyone else there. So thrilled with themselves.”

“It’s Samara, right?”

Her friends appeared, protectively backing her up. “How did you remember my name?”

“Well, it’s unusual.”

“So I’m told.”

“It’s also the name of this city in Iraq.”

She nodded. “I’ve heard it mentioned on NPR once or twice.”

“Once or twice,” he said, smiling to himself.

“So, were you... um...?”

“I was.”

“Ah.” She smiled uncomfortably. “Wow. What was that like?”

“Less awful than Precipice.”

She smiled again, aware that she had asked a dumb question. Her friends looked him over, not making this easy. Samara was Indian by heritage, and American by voice, but something about her — her name, and maybe her exoticism, but also something more — put him in the mind of that rarely glimpsed, peaceful side of Eden, during the war.

She was still smiling at him and not looking away.

Maven said, “I believe it was Nietzsche who once said that the most difficult thing a man can do in this life is to ask a girl out in front of her friends.”

Two of the girls laughed, while the other one, whom Maven recognized from Precipice, gave him a corny scowl.

“Okay,” said Samara.

They got out their phones, exchanging numbers side by side.

“One r, ” Samara corrected him.

“One r. ” He thumbed OK to save her contact info. “Okay. So I’ll call you.”

“Okay,” she said, closing her phone.

Outside, turning the corner back onto Comm. Ave.,the walk back to Marlborough Street made him remember the balcony.

He found her number in his phone and pressed SEND.

She answered, “Hi?”

“Hey. I tried waiting that two-day thing before calling you, but it just wasn’t working out...”

Maven lay on his back in full camo on a bed of dirt in a wetlands field, holding a cold carbine flat against his chest, his finger along the magazine feed outside the pistol grip. A warm, still Sunday morning, clouds drifting across the sky. Kids used to find shapes in them, but he never could. Every cloud he saw looked just like a cloud.

He checked his timepiece, then glanced over at the building through the waving weeds. A warehouse at the swampy end of a Raynham industrial park, a granite and marble wholesaler with a storefront named TAKE FOR GRANITE. One of the Crossbone Champs did some part-time stonecutting for the guy who owned the business.

Eighteen thousand ecstasy pellets at $11.40 per. The price had risen sharply, due to recent scarcity. More demand than supply, thanks in large part to the sugar bandits.

That was $205,200. Plus another $40 K or so in uncut cocaine. A quarter mil on the table.

Maven eyed the advance men waiting near a Chevy, their inked arms crossed. One wore a wild gray beard, the other a brown, braided pony, both in jeans and boots and leather vests. But no club markings: the Crossbone Champs were not flying their colors this morning.

The rest of them showed up in a convoy of three cars — cages, as they called them — looking like the road crew for.38 Special. The buyers arrived less than a minute later, an enterprising concern of younger men led by the nephew of a former capo of the Providence, Rhode Island, Mafia, looking to reestablish the family’s influence in that region.

Both factions went inside. Maven touched the talk button on his Bluetooth. “Go time.”

“Let’s bring it,” answered Termino, little more than a hiss in Maven’s ear. Termino and Glade and Suarez were already in position inside the warehouse.

The advance bikers and two mafiosi lingered outside, the bikers sneering over at the buyers, everything a macho trip with these guys. One biker chuckled and said something to the other, then the one with the ponytail tossed away the cigarette he’d been smoking and walked in Maven’s direction. He stopped just off the blacktop, unzipping his fly and taking a long leak into the weeds.

His stream stopped as he saw Maven sit up just a few yards away. He saw the camo and the carbine pointed at him, and the crow’s-feet at his narrowing eyes tightened.

Maven said, “Don’t zip up. Don’t do anything.”

The biker’s urine stream resumed.

Shrubs and thorny overgrowth provided Maven with good cover from the others. In his ear, he heard Termino shouting commands inside, taking control of the room.

Maven saw the other biker look over at his not-moving buddy. The mafiosi stood near their cars, not paying much attention.

Then things started to go bad in his ear.

Glade’s voice now. “Hey — you stay down — stay down! — don’t—”

The yelling was cut short by a brraapp of gunfire so loud, Maven flung the device from his ear.

The other biker drew a pistol from the back of his jeans and started for the door.

Maven’s biker tried to zip up before drawing his piece. Big mistake. Maven was up too fast, throating the biker with the butt of his carbine, the big man dropping hard.

More gunfire from inside as Maven ran across the blacktop.

The other biker fired at the stunned mafiosi, who took cover behind the cars, now firing back. The biker was hit in the gut but kept going.

Maven reached the rear corner, taking cover there. A bay door near him started to rise, opening a few feet, and Maven took a knee, carbine aimed.

It was Glade. He scrambled out fast, Suarez spilling out after him, but heavily, dropping to the blacktop. Maven saw blood on Suarez’s leg.

Termino followed, sliding out and turning, firing behind him. Maven stepped up, in a good crouch, sighting inside the warehouse over the top handle of the carbine. He saw rows of granite slabs stood up on long edges. A spit of flame lashed out from the left, and he answered, the carbine rattling, kicking back hard at his shoulder. Glade hauled out two cases of Olde English 800, glass bottles clanking inside, as Maven held them off. Glade dragged out a vinyl Puma duffel bag, a few shots rapping off the inside of the half-raised bay door.