Chuck Hogan - Devils in Exile

“The weak exist to be exploited, Maven.” Royce sat back, one arm firmly on Danielle’s leg. “And what with you running all around town, opening fire hydrants, acting recklessly — I figure she’s safest with me for now. I know you wouldn’t want anything to happen to her. Not like that other girl...”

A killer calm spread through Maven. Royce had pushed him to the edge. To a place beyond insult. Where the only recourse was direct action.

For the first time since leaving the military, Maven saw that his mission was evident and clear. He was a soldier again.

At the front windows, the cops appeared satisfied with Termino and the other gunman, their licenses and permits. Maven wished he hadn’t dumped his Beretta.

He swiped his lips with his napkin, dropping it onto his plate. Royce kept Danielle close as Maven got to his feet, standing over the table. Pain seared in his missing eye, but the rest of him was at peace. Maven took one last look at both of them — Danielle looking away, unable to meet his one good eye — then turned and started out of the restaurant.

“Now don’t go away angry,” said Royce to his back.

Maven reached the sidewalk as the cops were starting away. He made certain Termino saw him, the direction in which he was headed, then he walked the short distance to the Parisienne.

Maven drove straight back to Quincy. His head start wouldn’t last long. He left the Parisienne in the driveway and moved quickly up the back steps. Inside, he jammed a chair underneath the second doorknob, then used his key in the lock he had installed on the spare bedroom. He unzipped one of the two duffel bags there and pulled a Glock 19 from the bag of weapons. He double-checked the load on his way out across the apartment to the street-facing windows.

He saw no one below. Not yet.

He lowered the torn shades and kept a vigil through one of the open flaps.

Twenty minutes later, a dark blue minivan turned the corner, signaling a turn in the middle of the street. A sedan pulled out from the curb, opening up a space that the minivan then took.

Ricky emerged from his bedroom. He saw Maven at the window with the Glock in his hand, and then the chair propped up against the back door. Through the open door to the always locked spare room, Ricky saw the oversize duffel bag full of stolen guns and rifles, and the regular-size duffel bag zipped shut next to it.

Ricky said nothing. He returned to his bedroom and shut the door.

Maven sat down in the easy chair facing the back entrance and waited.

Minutes became hours, and Maven’s anxiety turned into annoyance. His head still throbbed, all that adrenaline gone to waste. He checked the street again, and another car looked suspicious, but it was parked on his side of the street and he did not have the angle to see anyone sitting inside.

When night fell, he turned out all the lights, giving his sore eye a break as he sat in darkness.

Ricky emerged one hour before midnight. The light from his room was the only glow inside the apartment. “Um... I’m heading out.”

Maven, seated in the easy chair with the Glock on the table next to him, shook his head.

“Can I turn on a light in here?”

“No.”

Ricky swiped his nose on the sleeve of his T-shirt. “What’s up, what’s going on?”

“Outside. Some guys waiting for me to leave.”

Ricky saw duct tape patching holes in the drawn shades. “Okay.” He went into the bathroom to take a leak. When he came back out, he said, “So why can’t I go then?”

“They might think you are me.”

“And?”

“And shoot you dead.”

Ricky stood there a moment, formulating a comeback. He then returned to his room and closed the door.

Less than an hour later, they heard harsh thumping and muffled yells from the floor below. Ricky came out into the living room where Maven was standing in the dark, gun in hand.

“What the hell?” hissed Ricky.

Maven held out his hand to silence Ricky. “They just moved in on your neighbors downstairs.”

What Maven thought would end quickly and violently turned into a slow-boiling standoff. He checked the street occasionally, watching cars pull up and switch off. Royce had his men working six-hour shifts.

Ricky came out of his room midmorning, dressed to leave. “Okay. I’m going now.”

Maven opened the refrigerator freezer. “I wouldn’t.”

“It’s daylight. They’ll see I’m not you.”

“They won’t care.”

“I’ll go with my hands up.”

“Where is it you need to go so badly?”

Ricky looked at the tipped-back chair beneath the doorknob. “You don’t understand... I need my medicine. I got a lot of pain.”

Maven closed the freezer with a frozen pizza in his hand. Ricky eventually retreated to his room again.

He reemerged twenty minutes later, this time with a coat on. “Look, this is bullshit.” He launched into a prepared speech. “I can’t take being locked in here, I just can’t. This is my place, and I need to go, so I’m going. You hear me? I’m going to go.”

He walked to the door, expecting Maven to stop him. Maven just kept chewing his pizza, his gun on the table next to a napkin.

Ricky stood before the front legs of the tipped-back chair, not getting the reaction he wanted. “If you knew they were following you, why’d you lead them back here? To my home?”

“I needed a gun.”

“So now you’re trapped here. Me too. Brilliant. That’s fucking great.”

Maven said nothing.

Ricky said, “Okay, if they want you so bad, why aren’t they coming in?”

“Because no one wants to be first.”

Ricky gripped the legs and removed the chair from beneath the knob. He opened it to the outside door.

“They will take you, Ricky. They will use you to try to get to me. But I will not bargain, and I will not bend.”

Ricky stood before the second door, his chest rising and falling with anxiety.

Maven took catnaps in the easy chair, resting his eye and taking the edge off his exhaustion. He kept waking from a dream of them coming up the back steps and rushing inside.

Ricky lay on the living room sofa halfheartedly playing Grand Theft Auto to pass the time. He was shot in an attempted carjacking, then threw aside his controller, speckled with beads of sweat. He jumped to his feet and walked twice around the room, disappearing into the bathroom, starting up the shower yet again.

Maven checked the Weather Channel forecast every few hours. He went to the window to check the street.

At the corner bus stop, three men waited inside the transparent plastic kiosk. The bus came and went, and only two of them had boarded.

The heat had been turned off a few hours ago. Ricky hadn’t yet noticed. He kept taking showers because he was sweating through his clothes. Maven was disgusted by how short fentanyl’s leash was on Ricky. When he emerged from the bathroom, Ricky wandered the rooms patting at the skin on his face, smoothing down his wet hair.

Overnight, Ricky was watching The Tyra Banks Show with his arms crossed when the power went out.

Maven reached for his Glock and stepped silently into the kitchen. He watched the door and waited, listening.

He heard footsteps on the roof. He positioned himself in the shadows beneath the ceiling’s only skylight as a shadow appeared on the slanting rectangle of moonlight on the floor. Ricky had fallen back into a fitful sleep on the sofa, where the man on the roof could not see him.

Maven readied the Glock. He watched the man cup his eyes to the glass and peer inside. Seeing nothing, he straightened and went away.

The apartment was quiet for the rest of the night.