Chuck Hogan - Devils in Exile

Maven sliced the tape off his wrists. Before he could rip off his plastic hood, he saw a shadow on the floor.

He stood and vaulted off the counter, the tattoo making for a nice target as he buried one blade of the scissors in the base of the goon’s bald skull. He locked up the guy’s gun arm, the shooter squeezing off chattering MAC-10 rounds until Maven wrested it from his grip.

The goon fell, and Maven took cover behind a cluster of potted trees. He was ripping the plastic off his face when he saw the notebook computer on the floor, knocked onto its side.

“Maven,” Royce said, staring out of the screen in utter disbelief.

Maven opened up the MAC on Royce’s image, blasting the computer across the floor.

Maven stumbled outside, hoping to find the Highlander, but the vehicle was gone.

Sporadic gunfire continued inside as Maven hurried away, turning toward a weeded lot, dumping the gun once he was safely underneath the expressway.

The Papa Gino’s men’s room was a single bathroom with a door that locked. Maven first washed the bald goon’s blood off his hands, then stared at his bandaged face in the mirror. His own image drifted in the vision of his one good eye.

He started with his clothes, removing his shirt and pants, checking socks and underwear, running every inch of fabric between his fingers. Someone knocked, and Maven froze as though he had been followed. But when he said, “Go away!” — they did.

He viewed his surgical scars in the mirror, tracing the stitch marks over his side and arm, the hem of his flesh raised and rugged. Butcher work. Had they sewn something in there, under his skin?

He resumed checking his clothes, then his boots. He noticed a fine slice along the rubber side of his heel and went after it, banging the tread on the edge of the sink until the heel piece dislodged and a battery-size gizmo fell out.

A tracking device.

That was why Lockerty had let him go. So that Maven could lead him to Royce. Only — Lockerty’s hired hands had jumped too soon.

He dropped the device into the toilet and hit the handle, watching it circle the drain before being sucked away.

Maven returned to the mirror: naked, dope sick, half-blind — but truly free. He felt the tape along the edges of the dirtied bandage, then slowly, and with great pain, began peeling it back from his face.

He was outside the Bank of America at Boylston and Exeter when it opened Monday morning. He had no key or identification and so asked for the manager who had assisted him on his previous visits.

“Oh,” said the woman, stout with a pincushion face, lowering her voice. “Are you a friend of his?”

Maven caught the word no before it left his lips. “I am.”

“He... he won’t be coming back. For health reasons.”

She widened her eyes to stress the word health, and Maven knew she meant drugs. He answered questions based on his original safe-deposit-box application — the one Royce had taken him to — and passed a handwriting comparison. He was then led to the vault and his box door was unlocked and brought to the examining table. They left him alone and he opened the long lid, and it was exactly as he had feared.

Wiped out. As empty as his eye socket. He sat holding his throbbing head in his hands.

The Marlborough Street building was locked up, Roof Deck Properties and Management abandoned. Even the carriage-house garage was padlocked.

Maven was hungry and cold. He tried the Veterans Administration building on Causeway Street, but could not get past the front desk — again, lacking any form of identification. An administrator took pity on him however, offering him a flannel jacket with a ripped quilted lining out of the donation bin. She gave him a clinic pass, and the doctor cleaned out his orbit, redressed the wound, and gave him something for the pain.

Outside the clinic, Maven was throwing the sample pills in the trash when he saw a vet working cars at a traffic light. The guy’s cardboard sign said that he was disabled and hungry. Maven reacted more to the patrol cap on his head.

Maven started walking. He did 8.2 miles on his broken bootheel — the same route he used to run after his parking-lot shift — arriving in Quincy just before dark.

The pea green Parisienne left little space for the other tenants’ beaters in the cracked driveway. Maven climbed the rear steps to the top-floor entrance of the triple-decker. He thumped on the curtain-covered glass with a cold hand and waited while a light came on inside.

The door pulled open. “Hey, you’re early—”

The words died in Ricky’s open mouth as he recognized Maven.

“Neal?” he said, unable to hide his shock at Maven’s appearance.

Inside the kitchen, boxes of sugary cereal stood in the center of a Formica table. The house apartment hadn’t been updated since the late 1970s. Evidently the utilities were included in the rent because it was like a sauna inside and the radiator kept hissing.

Ricky looked drawn, purple under the eyes. A shaving cut under his chin had scabbed. He wore baggy, pajama-type shorts and a V-necked T-shirt with yellow underarm stains.

“You okay?” said Ricky. “You want something?”

Maven pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and sat, his feet burning.

Ricky seemed agitated, not knowing how to act or even how to stand still. “What happened to your... your face?”

“I fell down a flight of stairs.”

“Must have been one hell of a flight of stairs.” Ricky moved to the counter, opening cabinets fast. “Something to eat, maybe?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Uh... how about Campbell’s Chunky soup? Date’s okay.”

Maven rested an arm on the table. “Anything.”

Ricky plugged in an electric can opener, which made a whirring sound Maven hadn’t heard since he was a boy. Then a grinding noise, the can jumping off the blade halfway around. Ricky swore and fumbled for something in a drawer. He jimmied the can top with a long screwdriver in his good hand. “So. What brings you by?”

“I’ve got nowhere else to go. No money. No home. No clothes. Literally nothing.”

Ricky glanced back, still struggling with the can. “How can that be? What about your buddies?”

“They’re dead.”

Ricky’s screwdriver jimmying stopped. Then someone rapped at the door.

“Shit. Hey, that’s just a friend of mine... hang on, I’ll have him come back.” Ricky wiped his hands on his shorts and went out, closing the first door behind him before opening the second.

Maven got to his feet. He stood by the wall, listening, unable to make out anything. Hearing voices but not words.

Something came over him, and he rushed through the doors to the exterior landing.

The guy Ricky stood close to wore a parka and a knit cap. “Oh, hi,” said the guy, before Maven grabbed him by the front of his coat, spinning and throwing him inside through the two open doors, propelling him backward through the kitchen and into a living-room easy chair.

Ricky came rushing in behind them. “Neal — what in the hell?”

Maven held the guy by his collar, his other fist cocked. “Who are you! Who sent you!”

The guy in the chair couldn’t get out any words.

Ricky said, “Neal, that’s Greg, my buddy Greg...”

Greg looked freaked-out as Maven patted him down, going through his coat pockets, searching him hard. “Who sent you here?”

Ricky put a hand on Neal’s arm. “Neal, hey, come on—”

Maven shoved Ricky backward, and Ricky hit the TV table, knocking over one of his cheap speakers.

Maven found a couple of bucks in the guy’s jeans pocket and threw it into his lap. Then he found a medical vial inside the phone pocket of his coat. Maven yelled, “What the fuck is this?” Greg said nothing, looking to Ricky for help, not receiving any. Maven tossed the vial onto the sofa. “Who’s your supplier? Talk! ”