Devils in Exile

Gyroscope

Maven heard the blow-dryer turn off. he rolled over, sunlight slanting across the rumpled white comforter. The bathroom door opened and Samara came out dressed in a tan and brown suit.

Maven pushed up a bit, his bare shoulders and his head visible. “Another interview?”

“For a job I don’t even really want. With a company that probably won’t hire me. My career counselor suggested a few test interviews to warm up.” She found her wristwatch on the nightstand, next to his. “Wish I had your life.”

“No.” Maven picked up the toy gyroscope next to the alarm clock. A physics course requirement her sophomore year. “Just my hours.”

He wound the string through the eyehole and got it spinning on the pad of his finger, the rotor tumbling inside the whirring gimbals while the exterior remained fixed.

She put in earrings. “Trouble at home?”

“Huh?” he said, unable to look up from the inner workings of the device.

“I like you spending time here, don’t get me wrong. I just can’t tell if it’s me or that you need a place to chill.”

He transferred the gyroscope to the middle finger of his opposite hand so that he could reach for her leg where her skirt stopped below her knee. “Why don’t you stay awhile if the interview is a nothing?”

She batted away his hand. “You’re a bad influence.” She walked away into the kitchen. “Now — out of my bed.”

She was gone by the time he emerged from the shower. He tossed his things into his backpack, finding his MP3 player on her laptop — Samara was a Freestyle music freak, late-1980s and early-1990s dance tunes, which she loaded onto his player while he slept — and headed out the door with his pack slung over one shoulder, munching toast.

As he turned off the stoop toward Cambridge Street, a body exited a parked car across the street. Maven did not turn to look. He kept on walking toward the busy intersection, listening to the shoes scuffing the sidewalk behind him. If it was a gunman, this was going to be bad. He made ready to throw off his backpack, stopping and turning fast.

“Easy there, tiger.” It was the DEA agent, Lash, wearing a long, asphalt-colored raincoat, a pen and a small notebook in his hand like a reporter.

Maven looked around for more agents. Lash was alone.

“You should really go down to the registry, update your license. Seems you no longer live in Quincy. In fact, it seems you have no known address. Got your motorcycle regged here, yet you’re not on the lease and the landlord doesn’t know you.”

Maven nodded, but inside he was cursing himself. Still — better to do this here than outside Marlborough Street.

“I got some bill collectors on me, I’m saving up to pay them off.”

“Must be some heavy bills. You’re living here now?”

“Kind of bouncing around with friends. Getting back on my feet.”

Lash smiled. “You look pretty solid on your feet, you ask me.” Lash put away the pen and notebook. “I wonder what it is you’re up to.”

Maven gave him his best shrug. “Just trying to live my life, man.”

“I was going to ask your girlfriend when she came out, but I thought I’d give you a shot at explaining yourself first.”

Maven bristled at the thought of Samara being buttonholed by a federal agent.

“Now, I did you a solid there,” said Lash. “Least you can do is answer a couple of questions.”

Maven turned his hands up in a gesture of Go ahead.

“Had any more time to think about that girl you were fighting over?”

Danielle again. “When do I get to know what the hell this is about? You said you were from the Drug Enforcement Agency?”

“Administration.”

“What?”

“It’s the Drug Enforcement Administration. Common mistake.”

“Okay. What does anything have to do with me?”

“That’s what I’m here about.”

“Nothing, is what this has to do with me. I stay far away from that shit. Would a piss test get you off my back?”

“Probably not.”

“Okay...”

“I don’t waste my time with end users. That’s like picking crumbs out of the carpet. They got vacuum cleaners for that shit. I’m about where these crumbs break off from. The big cookie, shall we say.”

Maven shook his head. “No idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

Lash smiled, having trouble reading Maven. “See, there’s this gang of thieves going around, ripping off players. High-level players. Six-figure deals, not street-corner shakedown. They hit the transaction itself, knocking out both sides, buyers and sellers, pocketing the cash but trashing the stash.”

Maven put forward a shrug. “Sounds good to me. I don’t see the problem.”

“Problem is, that’s my job they’re doing. And not doing it well. Busting up sales without jailing any dealers just ramps things up out on the street. Makes bad people paranoid, and paranoid people crazy.”

Maven said nothing, waiting.

“This spring, I had this importer, name of Gilberto Vasco, a Venezuelan, highly placed, thaw out dead in the Charles, his hands and tongue cut off. Seems he’d been taken off by these guys a few months before. Now you say, ‘What’s one less drug dealer?’ And you’re right. No argument from me. But dig this. These bandits who maybe think they’re on their way to becoming folk heroes — this murder could just as easily get pinned on them. So there’s that.”

Lash was looking for a reaction. Maven tried hard not to give him one.

“Here’s another funny thing I figured out. All the drugs being junked and the money being stolen — as much as I can guesstimate, anyway — source from two of the three kingpins in the Greater Boston area. Three pipelines of product, two of which keep getting blown up, while the third — it just keeps flowing. Untouched.”

Maven didn’t know how much of this was true. Maybe Lash was trying to trick him. “Again, I don’t know what—”

“Somebody’s taking drug profits off the table. Upsetting the balance of things. Now this shit is starting to boil over, it’s coming to a head. I’m telling you this vet to vet. Something’s gotta give. The bottom line, if you need one, is that all this bullshit makes my job harder. And I don’t need the competition, or the aggravation. I’m gonna put a stop to it, one way or another.”

Lash fished around inside his pocket for something, a business card. He scribbled his mobile number on the back, then tucked the card into Maven’s jacket pocket with a generous smile.

“See you around.”