Chuck Hogan - Devils in Exile

Maven waited. He waited for Royce to look at him.

Royce never did. His eyes stayed on the ceiling, amazed by the tumbling black flakes. He died watching them.

Maven stood after a while. Danielle came up behind him.

“He was going to kill you,” she said.

The emptiness Maven felt was acute, like the hole in his head where his left eye used to be. He said, “We were going to kill each other.”

Danielle reached out to him one-handedly, like a child uncertain whether the thing she wanted to touch was hot or cold. “I did it for you.”

Maven took the murder weapon from her other hand and dropped it onto Royce’s chest. Then he turned and started back through the broken door. He was walking away.

“Neal?” she said, a note of panic in her voice.

Maven kept walking.

Maven drove the Parisienne north into the Vermont mountains, Ricky sleeping fitfully next to him. No radio, no conversation, no stops. The stillness of the frozen terrain suited his mind-set.

The sign read MOUNTAINSCAPE RETREAT. The main building looked like a small ski lodge. The branches of the surrounding trees were coated with sun-reflecting ice, like trees made of glass.

The inside was alpine, peaceful. The admitting director’s lips appeared very pink within his salt-and-pepper beard. “The VA has its own residential detox and recovery,” he said.

Maven said, “They’re not top five in the country. I looked you up.”

“There is currently a three-month waiting list for a bed, and even then, his insurance would cover very little of it.”

Maven lifted the duffel bag onto the counter. He ran the zippers down each end.

The admitting director looked at the cash inside.

“Enough for a full six-month program,” said Maven. “He’s a disabled army veteran. You can move him to the front of the line.”

Outside, Maven helped load Ricky out of the car and into A wheelchair. Ricky looked over at the admitting director, watching them from the building.

“You can do this,” said Maven, kneeling in front of Ricky. “You have to.”

Ricky winced, the thought of a six-month stay worsening his headache. “You’ll take care of my car?”

“I will.”

“You gonna visit?”

“Yeah. I’m gonna visit.”

Ricky looked down into his lap.

Maven said, “Ricky. I know I fucked up a hundred different ways. I’ll carry that with me forever.”

Ricky looked at him — really looked at him — and said, “What about you? What do you do now?”

Maven straightened. “One more thing I gotta do. One last guy I gotta see.”

Lockerty was in his underwear eating pasta at the kitchen table. He was a messy eater and didn’t like to feel self-conscious, so he always ate alone. And if the meal involved a red sauce, he ate without too many stainable clothes on.

The television was on next to the refrigerator, but he had the Boston Phoenix personals open in front of him, and he was more interested in scanning for some action. By chance, he looked up as the photograph of a young, black boxer was shown on the screen. The words below read, “Brockton Fight Legend in Grisly Discovery.”

The Dynamo. Lewis Termino. Royce’s pit bull.

A grisly discovery?

Lockerty said to the TV, “Are you shitting me?”

The story ended fast. He had come to it too late.

“Mr. Leroy!” he called.

He tried changing stations, but he kept pressing the wrong buttons. He couldn’t find out anything more.

“Mr. Leroy!”

The house was awfully quiet. Nothing more than the sound of water running through the pipes. Lockerty stood, leaving his napkin on the table, downplaying his concern. He moved to the window and looked outside, where dusk was turning to night.

He arrived just in time to see the end of a long shadow running across the yard below.

“Mr. Leroy!”

He took a knife off the table and went to the back stairs, calling for him. The upstairs bathroom door was shut. Lockerty rushed inside with the knife, just as Mr. Leroy was stepping out of the shower.

Mr. Leroy looked at the knife, looked at Lockerty.

Lockerty said, “I think he’s here.”

Mr. Leroy squeezed his blond dreadlocks with a towel, then reached for his pants. “Bringin’ me his other eye.”

Maven waited beneath the front porch as Lockerty’s watchman came to the head of the stairs, looking toward the cars, investigating the noise. When he turned to go back to his padded chair, Maven grasped his ankle from the side, upending him hard. Maven jumped onto the porch in a flash, but the fall had done the job, the watchman out cold.

Inside, Carlo heard Lockerty calling him from upstairs. “A minute!” he yelled back, moving out the front door onto the porch, checking on the bang he had heard and felt. He saw a man lying half on his side at the top of the steps. “Jimmy!” he said, rushing to him.

But it was not Jimmy. It was Maven, and he lifted his hand and shot Carlo twice in the chest.

Mr. Leroy arrived thirty seconds later. He stopped at the threshold of the wide-open front door, seeing Carlo dead on the porch.

Mr. Leroy smiled and started back inside, going to the stairs, gun first.

Maven found the bedroom at the end of the upstairs hallway. The bed he had been strapped to was still there, the lumpy mattress stained and bare. He looked to the window, saw the same leafless tree branches he used to stare at. He went to the window and for the first time saw the ocean beyond, the shore lapping at a narrow beach underneath the low, swelling moon.

He pulled out a knife and slashed open the top of the mattress, exposing springs and old filler. He pulled out a squeeze bottle of lighter fluid and doused the mattress, flipping a lit match at it.

The white Jamaican entered the room barefoot and bare-chested. The flaming mattress compelled his attention, leaving Maven just the extra moment he needed to come at him hard from the side.

He drove Mr. Leroy against the wall, rattling the old window. Mr. Leroy’s gun discharged, the round firing into the floor, the shock of it causing him to take his finger off the trigger. Maven slammed his arm against the wall and the gun popped free. Maven reached for it and quickly tossed it onto the flaming bed.

Mr. Leroy pulled a knife from his pocket, flipped it open, and — before Maven turned back — buried it in Maven’s thigh. His leg screamed, and Mr. Leroy went after Maven’s gun arm and neck, locking up his elbow, forcing Maven toward the flames. Maven pushed back, the knife in his leg weakening and yet hardening him at the same time. The Jamaican had a hand around Maven’s throat, and Maven saw a timepiece around the man’s wrist, and something about it commanded his attention.

An Oris timepiece. Maven’s watch. Seeing it changed everything. Maven pivoted on the painful leg, shifting his weight with a wrathful yell, spinning Mr. Leroy around. He backed the Jamaican toward the flames — near enough that the Jamaican’s dreads began to smolder.

Mr. Leroy let up on Maven’s throat, and Maven shoved away from him, the Jamaican just avoiding the flames. Maven looked down at the knife handle jutting from his thigh and yanked it out in one swift motion. It hurt more coming out than going in. The blade was slick with his blood, and in a moment of madness, staring at Mr. Leroy, Maven licked the silver clean.

Mr. Leroy’s fire-brightened eyes went wide, seeing this. His hair was smoking. Maven advanced, backing him up to the window, not with his gun but with the knife.

Mr. Leroy’s howling chased Lockerty from his hiding place inside the house. He rushed out the still-open front door, past Carlo’s dead eyes and down the stairs, past Jimmy lying on the grass, rounding the corner toward the cars with keys in hand.