Chuck Hogan - Devils in Exile

He stood on the soft rubber surface of the small balcony. Two wire chairs and a dirty, rain-wet ashtray. He looked across the street to the facing picture window, seeing the second-floor reflection and remembering the night he had seen Danielle standing where he stood now.

The twin doors were identical to the ones downstairs. The handles turned and the doors opened, unlocked.

Curtains swirled as he entered the room above the pool table. A king-size bed, built-in bureaus, a flat-screen TV over the fireplace. A small bar was wedged into the near corner, stocked with a few bottles and glasses. An air purifier whirred near the door.

He went out through the door into a short, angled hallway. A bathroom stood across from a spare bedroom. The spare bed was not a spare, however: it was unmade, slept-in. Maven slid open the mirrored closet doors to reveal women’s clothing.

Danielle’s clothing. Her dresses and a multitude of shoes.

Was this her bedroom? Separate from his? Or just a dressing room?

The only personal item he found was a small, framed photograph of Danielle’s sister, Doreen — the sight of which stopped Maven, kicking him a little. But he could not be sympathetic. He had to know what he was to her.

He heard movement in the kitchen. Footsteps coming toward him. He went out, Danielle startled by the sight of him there.

The sight of her in the flesh took the stinger out just a bit. She looked like nothing special, wearing lounging shorts and a T-shirt, barefoot, her hair up in a twist.

“What the...?” she said, looking behind her. “You shouldn’t be...” She didn’t understand. “Is Brad here?”

Maven shook his head. He couldn’t find words yet.

“Are you crazy?” she said, smiling, misreading him. “Did you come up the balcony, like Romeo? I like the gesture, but we can’t — not here.”

“Bellson. Curt Bellson.”

She answered with true bewilderment. “What?”

“I saw you with him. The guy in the scarf. We just got handed his folder downstairs, he’s next on the list.”

She closed her mouth, searching him, her eyes never leaving his face.

Maven said, “Don’t pretend anymore that you don’t know what we do.”

She swallowed hard. “This is dangerous. This is crazy.”

“What is? The truth?”

“We can’t have this conversation.” He saw it setting in now, the realization that Maven knew she’d been consorting with them.

He said, “Do you fuck anybody, or just the ones Royce tells you to?”

She didn’t speak. She couldn’t speak, she just looked at him, breathing through her mouth.

“Answer me.”

Her voice came as thin as breath. “What were you doing fucking following me?”

“How do you do it? Copy down what they say in their sleep? Are you a pickpocket, what?”

“I get their phones. I give them to him. He does whatever he does, gives them back to me. I replace.”

“Ghost phones. He builds in snoops. Or do you even know that? Maybe you’re just a pretty pair of hands.”

She said quietly, “You’re as big a fraud as I am.”

“Am I? Am I fucking around on somebody else’s say-so?” He stared at her. He didn’t want to see her shame, he wanted to feel it. “Where does he get his information? Before you come in, I mean. How does he know to point you to these guys?”

“I don’t know.”

“You just follow orders. You do as you’re told. With anybody.”

Now she started to push back. “I. Don’t. Know. Or care.”

“You should. Could be our necks, the way things are going.”

“What does that mean?”

He couldn’t tell her about the DEA. He couldn’t trust her with anything now.

Maven said, “Is he having you do this with me... to keep me here?”

“Don’t flatter yourself. He doesn’t know jack shit about us.”

“Why, then? Why us?”

“Why do you think?”

The pain on her face was real. Whatever they had — she needed something in him. That made this even harder for him.

“How much money do you have put aside?”

“Money?” she said, surprised. “None.”

“He gives me everything I need. I don’t do it for money, Neal.”

The use of his given name stung him. “Then what do you do it for?”

“Why the fuck do you do it? Do you do it for the money?”

“No.”

“But you get money. I don’t. But you’re not a whore, right? You’re doing a good thing — right, Robin Hood? Mr. Innocent.”

“I’m not saying I’m innocent.”

“You’re saying you’re more innocent than me. The guy who’s fucking his boss’s girlfriend.”

Maven was speechless.

“Do you really think you want to know where he gets his information? Really? Even if you find out it’s something you don’t like?”

“Tell me what you know.”

“What do you care? And why now, all of a sudden? You’re out past your curfew on this one. It’s too late.”

“You’re wrong there. It’s over. We’re ending it. One last gig, then — out.”

She said, “Bullshit.”

“Look at me. I mean it. Everybody. Splitsville.”

“He said that?”

“He doesn’t have final say anymore.”

“Who does? You?”

Maven didn’t answer, leaving the question open.

“I don’t like this,” she said. “I don’t like change.”

“So here it is. If there’s anything left between you and him—”

“Oh, Jesus, don’t do this—”

“I’m doing it. I can’t be taking you from him. That’s not me. Even if it is me... I’m not going out on him like that. I’m not. It has to be your decision. I can get you out of this. But you need to make the move.”

She looked away, closed her eyes. He had dropped too much on her.

“I don’t want an answer now,” he told her. “I want you to be sure.”

A car horn in the street got their attention, opened her eyes.

“You need to get out of here,” she said. “Before he comes back.”

The stairs were too risky. Danielle opened a door off the kitchen that led up six steps to the roof. Maven went out into the sunlight, shoes crunching stones. Instead of moving straight to the fire escape, he stood and took in the city from above.

He wasn’t sorry to leave it. He had no choice now. Instead of feeling depressed — at the ruination of his relationship with Royce, and the truth about Danielle — he felt strangely, cautiously elated. All the strings were cut. The lack of a choice made his path clear.

The movers were gone. Maven reassembled Samara’s bed and hooked up her wireless router and screwed in her curtain rods. At her insistence he checked the bathroom for landlord cameras and helped her test the intercom. While she unloaded her kitchen glassware, he walked to Chef Chang’s for takeout, rehearsing what he was going to say when he got back. He returned and, over orange-flavored chicken eaten off paper plates on a cardboard box, he broke up with her.

He said all the things you say, about how great she was and how sorry he felt, and he meant every word.

She sat there stunned, staring at the open boxes and empty walls. “This isn’t happening. How can I live here now? This place you got me. Everywhere I look... every time I walk in that door...” She looked at him as though he had morphed into someone else. “There’s something wrong. I’ve felt it.”

“No. Well — one thing. This client. Long story, but... see, I’m being sued. It’s a bullshit case, but they’re trying to serve me, you know, and they don’t have my address, so...”

“They don’t have the address of your office?”

“No, they have that. They don’t know that I live upstairs from there. So — remember my motorcycle registration? I’m just saying, if a guy comes around, a tall guy, black, older, pretty smooth — he might even try to show you a badge or claim he’s law enforcement or something — just know that you don’t have to tell him anything, okay? You don’t know me. I don’t want to see you dragged into this.”