Devils in Exile

Precipice

Two dozen kilos of scag and a few pounds of weed arrived on Cape Cod on a trawler from Florida. It was off-loaded early in the day along with a legit bluefin haul, but the dock wasn’t the transaction point. The deal had to be physically consummated. Credit deals were rare, as any misunderstandings or miscommunications quickly led to bloodshed. Banks were almost never involved because the law loved paper trails and electronic records. The hand-to-hand exchange was the point of highest risk for both dealer and buyer.

In this brief moment of vulnerability, this synapse of paper and powder, lived the sugar bandits.

Osterville Grand Island is a circular land mass located just off the triceps of Cape Cod. A private, gated community of 150 homes and an exclusive golf course, accessible only by a two-lane drawbridge, past a guard who takes names.

The wayward fortyish son of an oil-corporation executive owed the wrong people a lot of money. Playing host to a secure-site trans action would not forgive his staggering debt, but would extend the grace period for its repayment. He had e-mailed the gate guard the names of a plumber and of a tile company who he said were coming that night to repair a bathroom-pipe rupture.

Traffickers making adjustments out of fear was the clearest evidence yet of the bandits’ influence on the drug trade.

Termino was the point man in Royce’s absence. He, Maven, Glade, and Suarez ditched their kayaks on a sandy barrier beach of low dunes named Dead Neck, entering the frigid water in insulated neoprene and dive boots, swimming out into Cotuit Bay under cover of night. A breakwater calmed the surf as they snorkeled around the west end of the island, one hundred meters off the densely wooded shore, each man tugging a watertight bag strung from a gas-filled bob.

They cut in toward the fifth dock from the turn, floating easily and watching the house lights through the oaks, monitoring the shore for any activity. Satisfied with the stillness, they walked out of the water onto beach grass and opened their wet bags, exchanging snorkels and dive masks for light vests, balaclavas, and weapons. Maven made sure his 9 mm MP5 submachine gun was moisture-free, then extended the butt stock of the hybrid handgun-rifle. The others pulled on their masks and started up the dune on either side of the wooden stairway, looking every bit like amphibious commandos.

This drill they had repeated each of the previous four nights. They knew the layout of the property, they knew everything.

The others took entry. Maven went alone through pines to the front of the estate, spotting the lookout halfway down the curling drive of crushed white seashells. He stood on the near side, allowing Maven to come up on him silently over grass, catching the goon on the side of the head just as he started to turn around. Maven relieved him of a handgun and a Nextel mobile, then bound him in ZipCuffs and a gag and loaded him into the back of the tile truck parked before the three-car garage.

A glance through the windows revealed that the dealmakers had been subdued. His all clear was three taps on the glass, masked Termino responding with a nod. Maven then did a full perimeter walk before entering, making double sure there was only one lookout.

Four men lay prone on the floor. The one guy freaking out wore navy blue corduroys, a collared shirt, and a kelly green whale belt: the homeowner’s son. Guns and mobiles were set out on a wide coffee table with ammo mags and phone batteries removed. The bags of heroin were piled on the granite counter in the center island of the kitchen, smelling like the seafood section of Stop & Shop. Glade transferred cash into two large backpacks.

Suarez ran the kitchen sink, washing down the scag and chasing it with Drano. The bags of pot they left on the floor. The homeowner’s son — receding hairline, the stink of failure all over him like the dead-fish smell — continued to whine under his gag, wanting to register a sternly worded complaint.

Maven made a circuit of the ground floor. Paneled walls, museum-quality lighting, inch-thick rugs. He looked at a large, carefully drafted map of the island, hand-lettered and handsomely mounted, an antique from its legitimate oystering days. The owner’s son was a broker who had been “borrowing” from the family money entrusted to his care to fund his own vices and crude interests — money he planned to earn back twofold through risky investments, none of which had yet panned out. The family was down in Hialeah; they didn’t know this yet.

Maven was in the front of the house, looking at the old seaman’s map that now hung on the wall — one man’s tool another man’s trophy — when he heard a sound out of place. A creak. A step.

He started toward the intersecting hallways, keeping his dive boots silent on the thick rugs. As he turned the corner toward the shore side of the house, he saw a crouched form emerging from an old servants’ set of stairs. He saw a handgun silhouetted against the kitchen light as the body sprang forward.

The gunman got off a single round before Maven plowed him over with a forearm to the back of his head. The man hit the floor with such force that the gun in his hand cracked in two at the wooden grip.

Maven dropped a knee into the man’s back, turning to see where the shot had gone.

Suarez was on one knee before the sink, neck arched in pain, one hand gripping his back.

His vest had absorbed the round. Suarez’s face went dark when he realized what had happened, and he straightened in pain, pulling his MAC-10 machine pistol off the kitchen counter in a blind rage. He turned to execute the shooter — but Maven collapsed on the unconscious man, shielding him with his own vested back until Glade and Termino intervened.

Maven ZipCuffed the shooter and they finished fast, taking the money, phones, and weapons and leaving the way they had come, down the grassy elevation to the sand at the empty dock. Masks and guns went into wet bags with the cash, snorkel gear coming back out.

Suarez was grunting in pain, still muttering under his breath. The gun report had put a pealing into Maven’s ears like a distant alarm. He was knee-deep in the frigid water, towing out the bad guys’ guns and phones, when Suarez hooked his arm, hard.

Maven turned fast, responding to the grip. But instead of anger, he saw gratitude.

“Thanks, man,” said Suarez.

For knocking out the shooter, and for stopping Suarez from killing him. Maven clapped him on the chest and they pushed out into the water.

Halfway to Dead Neck, Maven sank the bag of guns and phones to the bottom of the bay.

Maven came up from the sink with his face dripping, staring at himself in the restroom mirror. The water dribbling off his chin, the tightness of his sore muscles, brought him back to that night before, the job on the Cape. Despite two hot showers, he could still smell salt water on his hands. The sick feeling he had got when he saw the shooter emerge from the shadows was still with him.

It could happen that quickly, that easily. One slipup. Game over.

He dried his face, taking a squirt of cologne from the complimentary dispenser on the counter, patting his neck and jaw. Salt water is good for the complexion, it turned out. His neck was smooth and clean, no razor burn, nothing. He looked strong and ridiculously healthy. That was what money did for you.

He accepted a linen towelette from the black-jacketed attendant. “Thanks, brother,” said Maven, depositing a finsky into the glass tip bowl.

“Thank you, sir,” said the attendant, opening the restroom door.

Maven stepped into the swirl of light and sound that was Precipice. Royce said that the best nightclubs maintain just the right mixture of sexy and sinister. Precipice had that: walking through it was like patrolling a dark cloud during a lightning storm. The pulsating lights, the music thumping from the walls, that pheromonal musk of sweat and perfume and alcohol that was pure sexual incense: every club had these things, but here the mix achieved a sort of exotic frenzy.

The VIP room included a catwalk overlooking the downstairs dance floor. Red velvet curtains draped doorways leading to interconnected rooms, some so dark you couldn’t guess their dimensions upon entering. As many times as he’d been here, Maven still, at least once each night, lost his way.

The club was located on the edge of the Theater District, before it gave over into Chinatown. The outrageous $60 cover charge weeded out students and barhoppers, who could find what they were looking for on Lansdowne or Boylston Street at one-sixth the price and one-tenth the hassle. Unaccompanied women were admitted free if they looked the part, and judging by the traffic-stopping scrum outside, looking the part was apparently the goal of half the twenty-one-year-olds in town.

Maven circumvented the balcony and ducked off into one of the velvet curtains, searching for a smaller bar. Indigo neon light signaled it, and he made his way to the corner rail, yelling out an order for a Seven and Seven and laying a fifty on the bar.

The music was less pounding in here. To his immediate left stood a Middle Eastern guy in his early twenties. Charcoal suit jacket, red silk shirt. Army age, for sure. Possibly Iranian or even Iraqi, impossible to tell in the cool blue light. Precipice hosted its share of layabout Euro trash and Middle Eastern money. Maven eyed him via the mirror backing the bar. Fate put a cocktail in one man’s hands and a rifle in another’s. In another room halfway across the world, Maven and this guy might have been enemy combatants. Here they were just two more guys on the make.

Their drinks arrived together, and Maven paid for both. He pulled out his lime wedge and stirrer and left them on the bar napkin, toasting the guy with a quick nod before pushing off from the bar and heading away.

“Mave!”

Just past the curtain at the next doorway, Jimmy Glade stood bookended by two ladies in thigh-length dresses, all bare shoulders and full legs, each with a bit of glitter mixed with the color on their cheeks. One blonde standout and her more eager brunette friend.

Milkshake shouted introductions, Maven shaking each woman’s warm little hand.

Realtors, were they, Maven and Glade. Housemates in a condo on Marlborough Street. Glade had already hit all the selling points. “Their first time here!” shouted Glade, showing Maven his Jackpot! face.

Milkshake should have been a military recruiter. There wasn’t much to Jimmy Glade — he was big and square-headed and more goofy than funny — but he had confidence, and he had a strategy. A few months back, Glade had generously offered to take Maven under his wing. Maven’s experience chatting up hot girls in clubs was zilch. For a time he picked up Glade’s routine, his patter. Most guys were hesitant to approach girls in pairs, in threes, but that was Glade’s comfort zone, that was where he worked best, playing girlfriends off each other. Flattering questions (“What would you say is her most attractive feature?”). Soliciting opinions (“Which do you prefer, somebody who plays the game, or a guy who calls you right away?”). Sparking competition (“So which one of you is the smartest?”). Everything he did worked. That was the insane thing. Granted, sharp clothes and flash money helped too. As did copious amounts of alcohol. Bizarrely, so did borderline insults (“Your hair is getting a little crazy there.”) and heavy-handed divisive ploys (“I’m trying to figure out which one of you has the prettier smile.”). If you establish a competitive situation, women will compete. That was his secret. Glade was never the object of their desire, merely the facilitator. By challenging them, by provoking jealousies and conflicts — exposing the rivalry inherent in most female friendships — he established a contest wherein he was both referee and grand prize.

Genius. To a point.

Because Glade’s play went way beyond game. His thing was steering two or more buzzed girlfriends back to the Marlborough Street pad and, in the wee small hours of the morning, Howard Sterning them into consummating their hot-girl friendship. He was into “making” lesbians. But that wasn’t the weird part. In fact, for a while, that was the best-roommate-in-the-history-of-the-world part. No, the skeevy thing was that Glade never slept with them himself. He was totally content to play mind games and memorialize the seduction on his handheld Sony, screening his masterwork the next day on the flat screen in the living room for all to enjoy. No saint was Maven — he had spent those heady first few months in a pleasant and near constant state of debauchery — but Glade’s Machiavellian zeal, and that he got off on the manipulative aspect of it rather than the girls themselves, cast a shadow of sadism over the entire affair that had ruined it for Maven. Glade’s creepy coaching and coercion, and the girls’ sloppy tongue kisses, all viewed through the unblinking eye of his camera, got repetitive for everyone but him.

Glade, arms around both young ladies, said to the brunette about the blonde, “Wow, her waist is small.”

The blonde leaned winningly into Maven, speaking into his lowered ear, something he couldn’t quite catch, Maven getting every third word of it. Something about loving dancing ever since doing gymnastics when she was a kid. She squeezed his forearm as she spoke, sending all the signals, but foreseeing her future manipulation at Milkshake’s hands killed it for Maven. He made nice and hung around only as long as he needed to, not to step on Glade’s game, then excused himself.

“You heading back to the pad?” said Glade.

“Yeah, in a while.”

He rubbed both girls’ backs. “Maybe we’ll see you there.”

The blonde reached for Maven, but he pretended not to see it and left her to the night.

He spotted Termino leaning against a bar in one of the back rooms. Termino was probably the least dressed-up guy in the place, wearing a long suede jacket over a white shirt, black pants, black shit-kickers. He usually had something good going, but kept his playmaking skills to himself.

Maven caught his eye, asking, with a shrug, Where is he?

Termino gave a little head dip toward the back booths. As he did so, a lady standing next to him turned to see who had claimed his attention, and a hot sigh emptied Maven’s lungs. She was a Pam Grier — in-her-prime type with a neckline that plunged like the hopes and dreams of every guy in that room whose name wasn’t Lew Termino. Maven saluted her, as the military had trained him to do to any person who clearly outranked him — and that salute was his first indication that maybe the drinks were starting to hit home.

Royce was seated alone at an oval table in back, before a half dozen picked-over platters of food, his face lit by his BlackBerry. Laser lights scribed geometric patterns on every table except Royce’s, who’d nixed it as he always did with a quiet word to the floor manager. As Maven slid in over the plush red banquette toward him, Royce clicked his PDA dark. “What say you, Mercutio?”

Maven sat back and stretched out his neck. “Headache.”

Royce nodded to Maven’s cocktail. “That’s not going to help you any. Get some distilled water in you, try some caffeine.”

Maven, angling his head around to crack his neck, saw a small silver clutch on the other side of Royce. “Think Danny has anything for it?”

Royce passed him the clutch, going back to his PDA. “All kinds of shit, good luck.”

Maven unsnapped the clasp and picked through the contents. A folding brush, mini-hairspray, some hair wax. Lip and eye stuff. Altoids. Her little red phone, an open pack of Camels. A dozen or more twenties and fifties crumpled like tissues. A flat, ornamental pillbox. A small amber vial.

Maven almost pulled out the vial, so struck was he by its appearance. A tiny brown test tube with a silver screw top. He tried to get a better look, but given the darkness of the table, it was impossible. He turned it over and felt some substance shifting inside — then became self-conscious next to Royce and shoved the little vial back down underneath the bills and snap-closed the purse.

“No?” said Royce, clicking off again.

Maven shook his head and slid the bag back to him. Royce plucked a shrimp from one of the platters and swiped it through some sauce on its way to his mouth. “Try this. From Changsho. Salt and Pepper Crispy Shrimp.”

Maven passed. Whenever they went to Precipice, which was two or three times each week, Royce ordered several dishes from his favorite high-end eateries, cabbing them in from all across Boston and Cambridge. Maven recognized yellowtail sushi from Oishii, raw Kumamoto oysters from B&G, a hanger steak from Craigie Street Bistrot. He liked the Texas beef ribs with hot sauce from Redbones, and the buffalo wings from Green Street, but didn’t see either of those here. Despite all the other traits Maven had cribbed from Royce, the fine-food obsession had yet to take hold.

“Good gig last night.”

“Yeah,” said Maven. “You should have been there.”

In recent weeks, Royce had pulled back from the actual takedowns. He was busier than ever locating targets and initiating surveillance, doing all the advance work, the covert stuff he never let anyone else touch or even ask about. He presented them with a dossier — usually addresses and license plates and some photos — and took them out in a rented van to cruise the players, the locations, the vehicles, then let them take it from there. They were always busy, doing two jobs a month. “That was a good save, you kept your head.”

“We fucked up.”

Royce shrugged. “Keeps you on your toes. It’s a dangerous game, and it’s only going to get more difficult. They’re aware of us now.”

“We’ve lost the element of surprise.”

“But gained the element of intimidation. You’re building up quite a nice little treasure chest now. Moved up to a bigger safe-deposit box yet?”

“Soon,” Maven said.

“Now I really gotta stay on top of you dicks. Keep you motivated. Money makes you lazy. Makes you conservative, makes you scared. What is the one thing worse than having nothing?”

Maven nodded. “Losing something.”

Royce shot him with a finger gun. “Why we have to keep pushing ahead. Keep up our energy here. Give no quarter.”

“You know what’s good about this?” said Maven, getting comfortable in the booth. “What’s best about it — besides the money? It’s that we’re like cops and thieves at the same time. Doing good by doing bad. Taking down dealers and fragging the product... it feels like a big ‘Fuck you’ to someone, I don’t even know who.”

“To these jackasses,” said Royce, dismissing the room. “To everyone in this club, in this city. Anybody you pass in the street who stayed here and played Xbox while you were over there baking in the Arabian sun. Now you’re back and you’re beating the system — and it’s fucking perfect.”

“It is.”

Royce popped an oyster and chased it with sushi. “Let’s just make sure no one else ever finds out how fucking smart we are, huh?”

Maven grinned wide as a six-year-old on his birthday.

“My point, though,” continued Royce, “is that this game is all in. You push all your earnings forward every time you head out there — don’t ever forget that.”

As Royce said this, the crowd before them parted in such a way as to reveal Danielle, dancing alone out on the floor, a high, swirling spotlight writing over her body as though fashioning a female form out of music and darkness. She wore a salsa dress in black and sheer, the asymmetrical hem giving it a shipwrecked flair. She was lost in herself, in the moment, the music and the light.

Maven remembered the vial then, dousing his good mood. The music changed, one beat overlapping into another, and the dance floor closed up again and she was gone.

Maven threw back most of the rest of his drink.

Royce said, “Where’s Suarez, you seen him?”

Maven shrugged. “Wherever the Asian ladies are at.”

“He does love that wasabi. Know why?”

“Why he only digs Asians?”

“He says that being with a Latina, or even a white girl, would be like being with his own sister.”

Maven nearly choked on that, coughing into his fist. “Nice.”

“I didn’t ask him any more goddamn questions after that.”

“I’m not gonna follow it up either,” said Maven, shaking off that one. “Termino’s doing all right.”

They couldn’t see the bar from here. “He usually does. What about you? Your action seems to have tailed off a bit.”

“Only a bit.”

“What’s that mean? You were a kid in a candy store for a while there. Too much, too fast?”

Maven grinned. “It’s a headache, no big deal.”

“Or are you looking for something more regular?”

“I’m just looking, period.”

“Tomorrow Man, right?” said Royce. “It’s not about who you take to bed, but who you wake up with.”

“Exactly.”

“Go ahead, Maven — smile a little. Don’t forget about that punk back in Iraq, trying to jerk off in the shitter in the middle of a fifty-mile-an-hour shamal. You owe that kid too.”

“That’s kid’s been paid. In full.”

“Good to hear it.” Royce raised his soda water. “Here’s to him.”

“To him.”

“The stupid fuck.”

Maven laughed hard and killed his drink.