Chuck Hogan - Devils in Exile

He looked up at the undercarriage of the truck and remembered the exploding SUV, and that made him slide partly out, enough to see the shirtless shooter in the window firing down into the street.

Lash’s first round cracked the rifle’s stock. The second burst red over the shooter’s neck. Shots three, four, and five struck the chest of the howling shooter, who was too dumb to fall.

Lash scrambled out from beneath the truck. Sirens in the distance, all the sounds combining in his head to form a machinelike roar.

The raid was a disaster. The bad guys had been waiting for them inside. Lash wondered if, in hoping to draw out the Sugar Bandits, maybe he had waited too long.

He remembered the gunfire behind him and looked across the street. He saw a body behind a car. Maybe the shooting from that side of the street was friendly fire, saving him from the assassin above.

Lash raced back there, one round chipping the tar at his feet. He dove over the trunk of the Honda, falling to the sidewalk near the man’s boots.

The man lay on his side. No armor, nothing identifying him as law. Lash crawled up on him, seeing broken glass from the car windows on his sweatshirt, blood soaking the neck of his hoodie.

Lash rolled him faceup. It was Tricky. His head was ringed as usual in a drawstring hood, and Lash reached inside, putting his bare hand over the neck wound, just as he had all those years before.

This gash was worse, obliterating his former scar.

“The fuck are you doing here, man?” said Lash.

Tricky tried to swallow, couldn’t. His hand gripped Lash’s wrist, holding him tight. “Protecting my investment,” he coughed out, gritting his teeth.

“What are you talking about, Trick?”

“You. Something happened to you, I’m fucked.”

“You goddamn fool,” said Lash, which was not what he meant to say. Lash looked around for the gun. “Where’s the piece?”

“Gotta save me again, man.”

Lash looked up the road for ambulances, a cruiser, anything. “Shit, Tricky, hold on. Hold the fuck on.”

Tricky stared, but no longer at Lash’s face. His grip slackened, and the pressure of the blood pushing through Lash’s fingers ebbed.

“Hold on!” said Lash.

They were waiting for us,” Suarez said. “that whole thing. a trap. what else could it have been?”

Their placement around the pool table told the story: Glade and Suarez together on one long side, facing Royce; Termino on one short side, Maven across from him.

Glade said, “They were waiting to drop the hammer on us. We’d gone in there? Wipeout. Fucking massacre. Game over.”

“The DEA,” said Suarez. “Right there with us — Jesus.”

Royce waited like a man paid to listen to complaints, letting them air their frustrations. “Point taken.”

Glade said, “We’re on borrowed time now. This thing has been beautiful, man. It’s been beautiful.”

Royce said, “Calm down.”

“I will,” said Glade. “In about a year. When I’m far away from here.”

Royce was looked at Maven. This mutiny was his fault.

“Look,” said Suarez. “Nobody wants to do this. At least this way, we end it on our own terms.”

Royce’s smile was tight like a seam about to burst. “Don’t fucking let me down gently like I’m your girlfriend. Surveillance would have shown that this last one was a bad bet, and we would have pulled back, we would have walked away. Okay? It’s our usual caution that kept us out of trouble. This isn’t so fucking dire that we can’t pull our pants back up and walk on.”

The other two wouldn’t look at him. Glade finally said, “If it’s a vote, then it’s three to—”

“It’s not a vote.” Royce pressed his knuckle into the cloth covering the rail. “It’s not a vote. It’s a decision we all make.”

He walked to the table against the wall and brought over a thick mailing envelope. A new job.

“This one’s back to basics.” He tore it open and dumped the contents onto the table. Oversize index cards containing the marks’ vitals, clipped to photographs. Prelabeled mobile phones, for work and snooping. “A civilian, a dermatologist piped in to pharmaceutical supplies. Opioids.”

Termino said, “What the hell’s that? Geometry?”

“OxyContin, morphine, fentanyl, methadone. Also some steroids and human growth hormones.”

Termino studied a photograph. “Dude could use a cycle or two himself. He doesn’t look like much.”

Maven saw through Termino’s role as Royce’s straight man. It was about as subtle as the propaganda posters on the walls. He checked the other two, Glade and Suarez, who were listening.

Royce said, “Typical too-smart-for-himself frat boy with a taste for the dirty.”

Termino passed the photograph and the index card to Suarez, who shared it with Glade.

Royce said, “I’m asking for one more. You owe me at least that. Let’s not leave this job on the table.”

Glade passed the photograph on to Maven. The standard sur veillance shot was snapped from the same Bushnell binoculars they used, with a built-in camera. Maven glanced at the man in the picture — then stared at it. A long moment passed when everything else in the room disappeared.

It was Dr. Who. The guy with the long scarf, whom Danielle had met on the Green Line train.

Maven was bewildered a moment. Only a moment.

In a sickening moment of lucidity, everything became clear.

How Royce got so close to the marks.

How he got mobile phone access and personal information, setting the table for the bandits’ takedown.

Danielle.

She was the advance team. Fucking their marks.

He stared at the picture, wondering how he could have been so stupid for so long.

Then he looked at Royce. Pimping his girlfriend? Was she really his girlfriend? Or was she another bandit, just like Maven?

His stomach went sour. He looked onto the table at the ripped envelope. It was as though Royce had torn Danielle open in front of him.

“Oh, Christ.”

The words escaped him like a belch or a sob, something he couldn’t hold back.

Royce looked at him. “Fuck is wrong now?”

Maven let the photograph fall onto the table. “Not feeling well,” he said, the truth, the words tasting like throw-up.

Royce rolled his eyes, everything going to hell. “One more,” he said to them. “All I’m asking. If this is truly over, you’ll know it. You’ll have your answer. Who knows? Maybe you’ll regain your appetites.”

Maven went to a chair and sat down. He heard footsteps and looked to the ceiling. Danielle. Overhead, right now.

“You take a vow of silence all of a sudden?” said Royce.

Suarez and Glade were leaning toward yes. Maven realized Royce was looking at him.

“Fine,” said Maven. He felt like a boxer on the canvas being asked to count the referee’s fingers. “One more.”

The others left to scout the addresses of the new job, per the usual routine. Maven begged off, sick and not having to fake it. He lay down on his bed until they left, then dragged himself back up, pacing the condo in a lover’s blind fury. A childlike feeling of betrayal, both by Danielle and by Royce.

He listened again for her footsteps. Maybe he had imagined them. Maybe she was out fucking their next prospective victim.

Maven pulled open the French doors and stepped out onto the balcony, looking up. He couldn’t reach the bottom of the third- floor balcony until he stood on top of the black iron railing surrounding his.

He tried it, gripping the base of the upper balcony. For a moment his feet kicked free, Maven dangling high over Marlborough Street.

He swung himself up and got a foothold, and then in a burst of arm strength he climbed up over the top of the railing.