Chuck Hogan - Devils in Exile

Ricky knelt at the toilet bowl, his dry heaves bringing up nothing. The water had been turned off, the interior of the bowl disgusting. Ricky muttering into it, “I gotta get outta here, I gotta get outta here.”

He stumbled into the living room wrapped in a blanket as the lights flickered on again. The wall phone rang almost immediately.

Maven stood but did not approach the phone. The machine answered.

Royce said, “Not man enough to come out? You disappoint me, Maven. But don’t worry. It won’t be long now. Some guys, when they’re cornered like this, they decide to tap out rather than face the end. I know you won’t deprive me like that.”

Royce hung up, and Maven stood still a moment longer before returning to his project, laid out on the floor: a yellow rain slicker covered with duct tape.

“What is that?” said Ricky.

Maven said, “It’s going to rain.”

Ricky turned the TV on, but a few moments later the power went out again.

Maven shook Ricky awake after sundown. Ricky startled at the sight, Maven bulked up in vest armor beneath the tape-dulled slicker. A roar of falling water disoriented Ricky, who looked over and saw that it was pouring rain in his living room.

The easy chair had been set beneath the removed skylight, absorbing the water and most of the sound. The two duffel bags were zipped shut and waiting near the chair, as was a heavy coat for Ricky.

“Pass me up the bags,” said Maven, who sprang from the easy-chair armrest to the lip of the skylight, hauling himself up.

The gun bag was heavy. Ricky pushed it up to Maven’s hand with great effort. Then the money, which was lighter. Then Maven reached down his empty hand.

Ricky shrugged on the coat and let Maven pull him up over the edge, dragging him onto the roof.

The fresh, wet air was a shock. Maven laid the skylight back over the opening, then carried both bags to the edge. He tossed them onto the roof of the neighboring house, a few yards across a three-story drop. Then he went back for Ricky, sitting on the roof near the skylight.

“No way. Not jumping.”

Maven pulled on him. “Get up.”

“No.” Ricky shook him off with more vehemence than Maven thought possible, whacking his arm away. “Leave me here.”

“Come on.”

He reached for Ricky again, and Ricky went at him with his fists. “Leave me!” he yelled. “Just leave me, like you did before. You don’t care. Just go.” Ricky sat in the rain as if he were never going to move again. “You were my only friend.”

Maven stared at him a moment, feeling Ricky’s words, weigh ing his options — then he knelt and took Ricky’s wrist, getting him up and pulling him across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Ricky did not fight him. Maven hauled him in that way to the edge of the roof, then paced back from it to measure out a running start.

The leap was ugly, but they made it, falling hard onto the lower roof.

Maven carried the bags, and Ricky followed, down the rear stairs past interior lights coming on. They reached the ground and went around the far side of the next house, up to the corner nearest the street.

A bus came along, moving right to left. Maven slung the money bag over his shoulder, grasping Ricky’s coat with his free hand, and as the bus passed, he ran them across the street behind it, obscured by its bulk and bright headlights.

Maven ducked and went from parked car to parked car along the sidewalk until he was two away from the only idling vehicle. The driver’s head was tipped back.

The dealer known as Hex jerked awake at the knock on the window, opening the door in an obedient daze. Maven went in hard, releasing the seat back and dragging Hex into the rear seat. Ricky dropped into the driver’s seat, and Maven, beating on Hex, told Ricky to drive to the beach.

The tide was in, the water moving with the slow lubricity of freezer-chilled vodka. Maven dragged Hex onto the sand. He held Hex’s phone and pistol.

“Where is Royce?” said Maven.

Hex wiped his bloody nose. One eye was swollen shut and he was missing a shoe. “Go to hell you mother—”

Maven shot him in the leg.

Hex howled and rolled in the sand.

Maven said, “Let’s try that again.”

Maven cruised past the granite marker embedded in the stone wall next to an electronic gate. The driveway curled into the trees, the house a mystery from the road. Royce renting an unsold mansion in the down real estate market.

Maven pulled over some fifty yards past the gate. Adrenaline was sending weird panic impulses to his head, his deep oxygenating breathing fogging the windshield.

Ricky lay against the passenger door, his head against the cool window. The rain was fading, and the faint shadow of it sliding down the glass made Ricky appear to be melting. Maven’s aunt had once taken him to a wax museum when he was a kid, and Ricky resembled those figures now — neither truly alive, nor quite dead either.

Maven went over the thin stone wall with the gun bag, ducking through wet hemlock trees to the edge of the lawn. He was wide left of the driveway, the big house shining brightly before him, every window lit as though for a party. The rain was turning to light snow, lit brilliantly by prowler lights glaring down from the high corners and up onto the house from the ground. Even the drive was ringed by low accent lights.

The man standing outside the front steps was a clear silhouette, hands in his pockets, smoking a cigar. Maven slid the rifle out of the gun bag. No wind, but the falling snow played with his one-eyed perception, giving him a sensation of rising.

No sound cover either. Maven relaxed his shoulders and sighted the target. He did not want to fire twice. He squeezed the trigger and the rifle cracked and the silhouette went down. Cigar smoke hung in the air a moment before dissipating.

Maven exchanged the rifle for a Colt and started out from the tree cover at a jog. He was twenty yards from the corner of the house when a figure appeared in a second-floor window. Danielle, dressed plainly in sweatpants and a T-shirt, looked down at him without any shock or scream.

Maven slowed but did not stop, continuing along the side of the house, down wet stone steps. He came out in back to a courtyard centered on a pedestal birdbath, bordered by low shrubs, angled off a protruding addition. No other gunmen lurked on the grounds that night: they were back in Quincy, in the apartment below Ricky’s.

Through tall French doors, he saw a library. A college football game played on a wall screen; a gunman wearing a shoulder holster was eating a sandwich.

Maven unzipped his slicker and tucked the Colt inside the front of his waistband. From the gun bag, he lifted the Benelli 12-gauge, a beauty he had taken off a Vietnamese guy outside Codman Square. Maven pumped and fired, pumped and fired — blowing out both door hinges with slug loads, kicking his way inside.

The gunman knocked over his sandwich trying to clear his holster, Maven drawing his Colt and shooting first, neck and shoulder.

Royce was in the first-floor study changing his internet radio-station preferences when he heard the shotgun blasts. He stood, knocking his chair over. He looked around for his Beretta, and, realizing he had left it upstairs, grabbed his cell phone and went to the door.

Termino opened it, looking for him. Termino had a wire in his ear. “Your little possum slipped his trap.”

Royce swallowed. Quincy was a good twenty minutes away. “Stupid fucks.”

“Good help is hard to find,” said Termino, pulling his pistol out of his belt, doing a brass check. “He’s all mine now.”

Maven heard gunmen coming and grabbed the gun bag and ran to the kitchen, stopping at the door to the hall. One gunman had gone to the library, another remained at the stairs. Trying to hold him down here, maybe drive him back outside.