Chuck Hogan - Devils in Exile

He was on a drip inside someone’s house.

He tried to sit up again and kept trying until the room swirled and he fell into darkness.

Hey. Hey.

A voice, only.

You are mine now. Understand? Mine.

The anesthesiologist wet his lips as he picked through vials inside the messenger bag, looking for a twenty-milliliter ampoule of propofol. He shook it, warming the sedative in his hand. He noted that they had replaced the hydromorphone and Demerol, exactly as he had requested. He was alone in the bedroom but for the man in the bed, who was deeply unconscious.

He checked the IV lines in the manner of the doctor he had once been. He had learned to work with the shakes. He checked the closed door behind him, always afraid of being watched, then pocketed a syringe of midazolam for later.

He picked out a vial of vecuronium, an intravenous muscle relaxant more accurately defined as a paralyzing agent. Too high a dose would shut down the body’s respiratory system in minutes, leading to sudden death. The last time he had held a vial of vecuronium in his hand was inside the surgery bathroom of Mt. Auburn Hospital. When the police finally broke through the door, they found him dressed in blue surgery scrubs, sitting on the floor with a handful of stolen syringes in his lap, injecting propofol into the femoral artery of his left leg. He was an authority on the chemistry, pharmacology, and therapeutic considerations of the most potent and addictive medications available to humankind. And his one need in life now was to have access to these powerful narcotics. He had a significant court date coming up that would prohibit his access indefinitely, an eventuality that demanded its own solution, to be acted upon at the appropriate time. In his mind, he was drawing up an anesthesiologist’s dream last meal, a feast of opioids and sedatives for his central nervous system.

He administered the vecuronium in advance of the patient’s surgery, pocketing the rest. He watched the man in the bed, recognizing subtle changes in expression as the medicines took effect. The anesthesiologist would have traded places with him in a second, regardless of the man’s bullet wounds. He envied his patient — lying there, submerged within himself — and wished he could somehow split himself in two, administering to himself as patient while simultaneously riding out his own ministrations in blissfully schizophrenic codependence.

A seagull cried.

Maven opened his eyes. He watched the amber clouds until they were still.

The bed. The bedroom. A new bag hanging on the wall.

A man in a chair.

“You don’t know me?”

The man was older.

“You don’t recognize the face of the man you stole from?”

The face was that of a man you might sit next to in a coffee shop, flipping through a newspaper, never looking up.

Maven looked at the window. A seagull bobbed on a tree branch.

“I don’t know your name. I don’t know where you’re from. But I know you stole from me. And that is all I need to know.”

Another man stood behind the man in the chair. Maven could not see him.

“Why we waitin’? Dis bumbaklaat fool. He got my blood smoked. Be my personal pleasure reeducatin’ him.”

“This wounded animal? Too damn easy.” The older man stood over him now. “We’re gonna fix you up. Give you time to heal. Get you strong again. So we can break you. ”

The surgeon examined his work and was frank about its shortcomings. He had many excuses available: the lack of assisting nurses; the unprofessional bedroom setting in this seaside house; the inferior surgical equipment. But he saw no sign of infection, which was itself a small miracle.

Obviously the patient was some sort of criminal, like the rest of these gangsters. Although they did not appear to regard the man as a comrade. In fact, quite the opposite.

Just fix him up.

Whenever the doctor edged toward asking why he was being paid to heal this man they appeared to detest—

Just fix him up.

The doctor warned them about the gas man, saying he had the patient under too deep.

Justfixhimup.

So, fine. He did. And if some carelessness crept into the surgeon’s work as a result of his treatment by these thugs, well then, too bad. Because you do not talk to people that way. Not if you want their best.

He had a weird, swimmy memory of something — a tube — being pulled out of his throat, like a stubborn carrot from the earth.

He was too stiff to stir. His brain was packed in cotton wadding.

An old man wearing shabby clothes and latex gloves leaned over Maven to check the IV bag. He lifted back the sheet with trembling hands, and Maven felt a vague sense of blunted pain, as an apple might feel a bruise.

The man, a doctor, was checking Maven’s wounds.

“I did my best,” he said, to no one in particular.

Maven tried to speak but his tongue would not work. He focused on the drip-drip of the IV feed, his eyelids drooping in sync.

“Your boss. Royce.”

Maven floated like a bubble suspended in molasses. Someone overturned the jar and he slowly rose to the top.

“That name sure opens your eyes.”

Maven had to check himself. Had he given up Royce’s name?

He tried to fix on the voice of his interrogator, but felt his eyes lolling in their sockets.

“I’m figuring things out about you. Things just coming to me through the air. You can speak, can’t you?”

The other man, the one with the accent, was over Maven now, pressing down on his wounded thigh. Maven’s vision went blazing red. He grunted.

“Good. Gotta make sure I’m not fucking throwing darts at a board that doesn’t have a bull’s-eye.”

The seagull sat on the back of the chair. Looking at Maven for a long time.

He tried to talk to it. The bird opened its wings and alighted on his thigh.

It stared awhile, then began picking at his surgical wound.

It flew away with stitching trailing from its beak.

“I’m starting to wonder if you even know.”

Maven knew that his only power here was his silence.

“Remember the cranberry bog? What do you think happened there? You got ambushed, didn’t you? Somebody got tipped off. They were waiting for you.”

The cranberries. Maven felt like one of them now, floating on the surface of consciousness, waiting to be picked and crushed for his juice.

“Who do you think did that? It wasn’t me. My guys came in at the end, on a late tip from one of the buyers, who used to deal with us. Losing business to you punks was bad enough, I couldn’t have this fuck freelancing all around. Honestly I didn’t expect much. Mr. Leroy insisted on going. You see, his partner was killed at that Black Falcon clusterfuck. And he’s none too happy about it.”

Maven’s head was pulled up by his hair, and he was looking into the other man’s eyes.

“You remembering any better now?”

He tried. When he was alone. He tried to remember.

He ran his hands over his body, searching out his wounds. His lower back, his shoulder, his thigh. Tracing the surgical scars was like piecing together the sequence of the farmhouse shooting.

Glade and Suarez inside. They never had a chance.

And Termino?

“Hotshots, right? Thought you had it all. You were smarter than everyone else.”

Maven’s arms were tied to the bed now. Strapped down at his sides.

“This silence of yours, what is it? Loyalty? It’s your dumb loyalty, isn’t it. That’s the key. See — I’m learning to listen. Here I thought I was going to be the one ripping info out of you. But it’s me sitting here with the hammer of knowledge. Waiting to beat the truth into you.”

He was near the ocean. He could smell it sometimes. He could hear the surf roaring. Like a beast calling for him.