Devils in Exile

Anesthetic

Maven lay on his back in full camo on a bed of dirt in a wetlands field, holding a cold carbine flat against his chest, his finger along the magazine feed outside the pistol grip. A warm, still Sunday morning, clouds drifting across the sky. Kids used to find shapes in them, but he never could. Every cloud he saw looked just like a cloud.

He checked his timepiece, then glanced over at the building through the waving weeds. A warehouse at the swampy end of a Raynham industrial park, a granite and marble wholesaler with a storefront named TAKE FOR GRANITE. One of the Crossbone Champs did some part-time stonecutting for the guy who owned the business.

Eighteen thousand ecstasy pellets at $11.40 per. The price had risen sharply, due to recent scarcity. More demand than supply, thanks in large part to the sugar bandits.

That was $205,200. Plus another $40 K or so in uncut cocaine. A quarter mil on the table.

Maven eyed the advance men waiting near a Chevy, their inked arms crossed. One wore a wild gray beard, the other a brown, braided pony, both in jeans and boots and leather vests. But no club markings: the Crossbone Champs were not flying their colors this morning.

The rest of them showed up in a convoy of three cars — cages, as they called them — looking like the road crew for.38 Special. The buyers arrived less than a minute later, an enterprising concern of younger men led by the nephew of a former capo of the Providence, Rhode Island, Mafia, looking to reestablish the family’s influence in that region.

Both factions went inside. Maven touched the talk button on his Bluetooth. “Go time.”

“Let’s bring it,” answered Termino, little more than a hiss in Maven’s ear. Termino and Glade and Suarez were already in position inside the warehouse.

The advance bikers and two mafiosi lingered outside, the bikers sneering over at the buyers, everything a macho trip with these guys. One biker chuckled and said something to the other, then the one with the ponytail tossed away the cigarette he’d been smoking and walked in Maven’s direction. He stopped just off the blacktop, unzipping his fly and taking a long leak into the weeds.

His stream stopped as he saw Maven sit up just a few yards away. He saw the camo and the carbine pointed at him, and the crow’s-feet at his narrowing eyes tightened.

Maven said, “Don’t zip up. Don’t do anything.”

The biker’s urine stream resumed.

Shrubs and thorny overgrowth provided Maven with good cover from the others. In his ear, he heard Termino shouting commands inside, taking control of the room.

Maven saw the other biker look over at his not-moving buddy. The mafiosi stood near their cars, not paying much attention.

Then things started to go bad in his ear.

Glade’s voice now. “Hey — you stay down — stay down! — don’t—”

The yelling was cut short by a brraapp of gunfire so loud, Maven flung the device from his ear.

The other biker drew a pistol from the back of his jeans and started for the door.

Maven’s biker tried to zip up before drawing his piece. Big mistake. Maven was up too fast, throating the biker with the butt of his carbine, the big man dropping hard.

More gunfire from inside as Maven ran across the blacktop.

The other biker fired at the stunned mafiosi, who took cover behind the cars, now firing back. The biker was hit in the gut but kept going.

Maven reached the rear corner, taking cover there. A bay door near him started to rise, opening a few feet, and Maven took a knee, carbine aimed.

It was Glade. He scrambled out fast, Suarez spilling out after him, but heavily, dropping to the blacktop. Maven saw blood on Suarez’s leg.

Termino followed, sliding out and turning, firing behind him. Maven stepped up, in a good crouch, sighting inside the warehouse over the top handle of the carbine. He saw rows of granite slabs stood up on long edges. A spit of flame lashed out from the left, and he answered, the carbine rattling, kicking back hard at his shoulder. Glade hauled out two cases of Olde English 800, glass bottles clanking inside, as Maven held them off. Glade dragged out a vinyl Puma duffel bag, a few shots rapping off the inside of the half-raised bay door.

Maven saw the strap hanging off the bottom of the bay-door handle and took a chance. He launched himself up off one of the rubber truck bumpers built into the exterior of the bay, grasping the strap and firing into the warehouse as his weight rode the door down and closed.

More rounds rapped the inside of the door. Maven spun to the corner, leaning around it. No gunfire there. He sighted on the vehicles, squeezing the trigger, tires bursting air and moisture, the bodies of the cars sinking.

He spun back to the others, grabbing the Olde English case Glade couldn’t handle, and following them into the wetlands, jogging backward, his muzzle on the rear bay door.

They got deep into the weed growth, putting some trees between them and the warehouse. Suarez was biting down on the neck of his armored vest, screaming into it as Termino carried him on his shoulder.

“What the fuck?” said Maven.

“Fucking bikers,” said Glade, breathing hard on the run. “Fucking rather be shot than ripped off.”

One of Suarez’s screams escaped his vest.

“Pass out already,” grumbled Termino.

“How bad?” said Maven.

“Thigh,” said Glade.

Outer thigh, okay, just muscle damage. Inner thigh could mean the femoral artery, bleeding out, death within two minutes. Termino would be drenched in Suarez’s blood if it were the artery.

They hustled through a swampy field of dead, denuded trees, a clearing that had seen a fire. Termino stopped near a drainpipe, close to the cars, parked in the parking lot of an out-of-business windshield-replacement shop. He dumped Suarez onto a bed of grass, and Maven saw the leg wound, blood pulsing down his pants. Termino fished a telephone out from his vest and tossed it to Maven before ripping open Suarez’s jeans around the wound.

Maven opened up the phone; only one number was listed. He pressed SEND and waited, watching Glade open up a case of Olde English. The forty-ounce bottles were filled with tan pills stamped with the image of a smoking eyeball. Glade dumped the ecstasy pills into water streaming out of the basin.

Royce answered, “What is it?”

“Suarez is hit,” said Maven, adrenaline surging with those words.

“How bad?”

“How bad?” Maven asked Termino.

“A round ricocheted off stone,” said Termino, over Suarez’s groaning. “Sliced him deep, but through-and-through.”

“You hear that?” said Maven.

Royce said, “I heard. You get the product?”

Maven looked at Glade starting in on case number two. “We’re dumping it now. He’s hurting bad.”

“Stop. Get the powder.”

Glade had the bag of white in his hand. Maven told him to stop.

Royce said, “Sprinkle some over the wound.”

Maven looked at the cocaine. “You said what?”

“Cocaine started out as a topical anesthetic. Sprinkle it over the wound. And don’t make me fucking repeat myself again.”

Maven seized the bag from Glade and put down the phone. He went to Suarez, whose eyes were closed. Maven dusted Suarez’s bloody leg wound with cocaine the way good restaurants sprinkle sugar over dessert. The white mixed with the blood and adhered to the edges of the gash.

The other two looked at Maven as though he were insane.

Maven picked up the phone again. “Done.”

“Dump the rest, ditch the armor and weapons as planned, and get him back here pronto.”

Maven hung up. “We move,” he said, stripping off his armor.

By the time they got to Suarez, his tension had broken, and they were able to remove his gear. Suarez sat up, examining his wound, touching it gently around the edges.

“Did you coke up my leg?” he said.

They wrapped his leg in a chamois towel from the boot of the switch car and carried him in the rear-alley basement entrance of the Marlborough Street building. Royce was waiting inside their pad with an olive green medical kit full of field surgical tools, syringes, and vials of anesthetic. He had towels laid out and a pitcher of water. He washed the wound and the coke residue, then pumped Suarez’s thigh full of lidocaine before breaking out a suture kit and going to work.

“Who fucked up?” Royce said.

Glade said, “They started shooting—”

“Who fucked up!”

All three of them kneeling around Royce and Suarez, no one said anything. Maven still didn’t know what had happened, he wasn’t there. But even he felt the tension in the room turning toward Glade. And nobody rising to his defense.

Glade said, “Fuck you, guys. I’m going to let them draw on me?”

Royce said, “You haven’t learned anything this whole time?” The gash was so deep, Royce had to sew the inside of the leg first. “They’re bikers, professional psychos. You gave them what they want. You had control of the situation, and you fucked it up. And left some of your buddy’s DNA at the scene of the crime.” Royce tied off the inside and irrigated the wound again. “From now on, Maven, you’re inside with Termino. You handle the approach.”

Glade soured as if he’d been punched. He stood and walked away, and Royce kept working over Suarez as though he didn’t notice.

“How’s the pain now, ’Lito?”

Suarez said, “My leg wants to go to a disco.”

Maven felt cold. Part of it was the fading adrenaline, but mostly it was the realization that the untouchables had finally got touched. Their winning streak hadn’t ended, but it could have. The dynamics within the crew were changing.

Royce prepared another needle for sewing. “Always fucking fun until somebody gets hurt.”

Maven turned to stand, and then saw Danielle behind them, at the open door, looking down at Royce sewing up Suarez’s leg.

No disgust. No surprise. No expression at all.

She said nothing and backed out into the hallway, gone before anyone else saw her.