Devils in Exile

One More

They were waiting for us,” Suarez said. “that whole thing. a trap. what else could it have been?”

Their placement around the pool table told the story: Glade and Suarez together on one long side, facing Royce; Termino on one short side, Maven across from him.

Glade said, “They were waiting to drop the hammer on us. We’d gone in there? Wipeout. Fucking massacre. Game over.”

“The DEA,” said Suarez. “Right there with us — Jesus.”

Royce waited like a man paid to listen to complaints, letting them air their frustrations. “Point taken.”

Glade said, “We’re on borrowed time now. This thing has been beautiful, man. It’s been beautiful.”

Royce said, “Calm down.”

“I will,” said Glade. “In about a year. When I’m far away from here.”

Royce was looked at Maven. This mutiny was his fault.

“Look,” said Suarez. “Nobody wants to do this. At least this way, we end it on our own terms.”

Royce’s smile was tight like a seam about to burst. “Don’t fucking let me down gently like I’m your girlfriend. Surveillance would have shown that this last one was a bad bet, and we would have pulled back, we would have walked away. Okay? It’s our usual caution that kept us out of trouble. This isn’t so fucking dire that we can’t pull our pants back up and walk on.”

The other two wouldn’t look at him. Glade finally said, “If it’s a vote, then it’s three to—”

“It’s not a vote.” Royce pressed his knuckle into the cloth covering the rail. “It’s not a vote. It’s a decision we all make.”

He walked to the table against the wall and brought over a thick mailing envelope. A new job.

“This one’s back to basics.” He tore it open and dumped the contents onto the table. Oversize index cards containing the marks’ vitals, clipped to photographs. Prelabeled mobile phones, for work and snooping. “A civilian, a dermatologist piped in to pharmaceutical supplies. Opioids.”

Termino said, “What the hell’s that? Geometry?”

“OxyContin, morphine, fentanyl, methadone. Also some steroids and human growth hormones.”

Termino studied a photograph. “Dude could use a cycle or two himself. He doesn’t look like much.”

Maven saw through Termino’s role as Royce’s straight man. It was about as subtle as the propaganda posters on the walls. He checked the other two, Glade and Suarez, who were listening.

Royce said, “Typical too-smart-for-himself frat boy with a taste for the dirty.”

Termino passed the photograph and the index card to Suarez, who shared it with Glade.

Royce said, “I’m asking for one more. You owe me at least that. Let’s not leave this job on the table.”

Glade passed the photograph on to Maven. The standard sur veillance shot was snapped from the same Bushnell binoculars they used, with a built-in camera. Maven glanced at the man in the picture — then stared at it. A long moment passed when everything else in the room disappeared.

It was Dr. Who. The guy with the long scarf, whom Danielle had met on the Green Line train.

Maven was bewildered a moment. Only a moment.

In a sickening moment of lucidity, everything became clear.

How Royce got so close to the marks.

How he got mobile phone access and personal information, setting the table for the bandits’ takedown.

Danielle.

She was the advance team. Fucking their marks.

He stared at the picture, wondering how he could have been so stupid for so long.

Then he looked at Royce. Pimping his girlfriend? Was she really his girlfriend? Or was she another bandit, just like Maven?

His stomach went sour. He looked onto the table at the ripped envelope. It was as though Royce had torn Danielle open in front of him.

“Oh, Christ.”

The words escaped him like a belch or a sob, something he couldn’t hold back.

Royce looked at him. “Fuck is wrong now?”

Maven let the photograph fall onto the table. “Not feeling well,” he said, the truth, the words tasting like throw-up.

Royce rolled his eyes, everything going to hell. “One more,” he said to them. “All I’m asking. If this is truly over, you’ll know it. You’ll have your answer. Who knows? Maybe you’ll regain your appetites.”

Maven went to a chair and sat down. He heard footsteps and looked to the ceiling. Danielle. Overhead, right now.

“You take a vow of silence all of a sudden?” said Royce.

Suarez and Glade were leaning toward yes. Maven realized Royce was looking at him.

“Fine,” said Maven. He felt like a boxer on the canvas being asked to count the referee’s fingers. “One more.”

The others left to scout the addresses of the new job, per the usual routine. Maven begged off, sick and not having to fake it. He lay down on his bed until they left, then dragged himself back up, pacing the condo in a lover’s blind fury. A childlike feeling of betrayal, both by Danielle and by Royce.

He listened again for her footsteps. Maybe he had imagined them. Maybe she was out fucking their next prospective victim.

Maven pulled open the French doors and stepped out onto the balcony, looking up. He couldn’t reach the bottom of the third- floor balcony until he stood on top of the black iron railing surrounding his.

He tried it, gripping the base of the upper balcony. For a moment his feet kicked free, Maven dangling high over Marlborough Street.

He swung himself up and got a foothold, and then in a burst of arm strength he climbed up over the top of the railing.

He stood on the soft rubber surface of the small balcony. Two wire chairs and a dirty, rain-wet ashtray. He looked across the street to the facing picture window, seeing the second-floor reflection and remembering the night he had seen Danielle standing where he stood now.

The twin doors were identical to the ones downstairs. The handles turned and the doors opened, unlocked.

Curtains swirled as he entered the room above the pool table. A king-size bed, built-in bureaus, a flat-screen TV over the fireplace. A small bar was wedged into the near corner, stocked with a few bottles and glasses. An air purifier whirred near the door.

He went out through the door into a short, angled hallway. A bathroom stood across from a spare bedroom. The spare bed was not a spare, however: it was unmade, slept-in. Maven slid open the mirrored closet doors to reveal women’s clothing.

Danielle’s clothing. Her dresses and a multitude of shoes.

Was this her bedroom? Separate from his? Or just a dressing room?

The only personal item he found was a small, framed photograph of Danielle’s sister, Doreen — the sight of which stopped Maven, kicking him a little. But he could not be sympathetic. He had to know what he was to her.

He heard movement in the kitchen. Footsteps coming toward him. He went out, Danielle startled by the sight of him there.

The sight of her in the flesh took the stinger out just a bit. She looked like nothing special, wearing lounging shorts and a T-shirt, barefoot, her hair up in a twist.

“What the...?” she said, looking behind her. “You shouldn’t be...” She didn’t understand. “Is Brad here?”

Maven shook his head. He couldn’t find words yet.

“Are you crazy?” she said, smiling, misreading him. “Did you come up the balcony, like Romeo? I like the gesture, but we can’t — not here.”

“Bellson. Curt Bellson.”

She answered with true bewilderment. “What?”

“I saw you with him. The guy in the scarf. We just got handed his folder downstairs, he’s next on the list.”

She closed her mouth, searching him, her eyes never leaving his face.

Maven said, “Don’t pretend anymore that you don’t know what we do.”

She swallowed hard. “This is dangerous. This is crazy.”

“What is? The truth?”

“We can’t have this conversation.” He saw it setting in now, the realization that Maven knew she’d been consorting with them.

He said, “Do you fuck anybody, or just the ones Royce tells you to?”

She didn’t speak. She couldn’t speak, she just looked at him, breathing through her mouth.

“Answer me.”

Her voice came as thin as breath. “What were you doing fucking following me?”

“How do you do it? Copy down what they say in their sleep? Are you a pickpocket, what?”

“I get their phones. I give them to him. He does whatever he does, gives them back to me. I replace.”

“Ghost phones. He builds in snoops. Or do you even know that? Maybe you’re just a pretty pair of hands.”

She said quietly, “You’re as big a fraud as I am.”

“Am I? Am I fucking around on somebody else’s say-so?” He stared at her. He didn’t want to see her shame, he wanted to feel it. “Where does he get his information? Before you come in, I mean. How does he know to point you to these guys?”

“I don’t know.”

“You just follow orders. You do as you’re told. With anybody.”

Now she started to push back. “I. Don’t. Know. Or care.”

“You should. Could be our necks, the way things are going.”

“What does that mean?”

He couldn’t tell her about the DEA. He couldn’t trust her with anything now.

Maven said, “Is he having you do this with me... to keep me here?”

“Don’t flatter yourself. He doesn’t know jack shit about us.”

“Why, then? Why us?”

“Why do you think?”

The pain on her face was real. Whatever they had — she needed something in him. That made this even harder for him.

“How much money do you have put aside?”

“Money?” she said, surprised. “None.”

“He gives me everything I need. I don’t do it for money, Neal.”

The use of his given name stung him. “Then what do you do it for?”

“Why the fuck do you do it? Do you do it for the money?”

“No.”

“But you get money. I don’t. But you’re not a whore, right? You’re doing a good thing — right, Robin Hood? Mr. Innocent.”

“I’m not saying I’m innocent.”

“You’re saying you’re more innocent than me. The guy who’s fucking his boss’s girlfriend.”

Maven was speechless.

“Do you really think you want to know where he gets his information? Really? Even if you find out it’s something you don’t like?”

“Tell me what you know.”

“What do you care? And why now, all of a sudden? You’re out past your curfew on this one. It’s too late.”

“You’re wrong there. It’s over. We’re ending it. One last gig, then — out.”

She said, “Bullshit.”

“Look at me. I mean it. Everybody. Splitsville.”

“He said that?”

“He doesn’t have final say anymore.”

“Who does? You?”

Maven didn’t answer, leaving the question open.

“I don’t like this,” she said. “I don’t like change.”

“So here it is. If there’s anything left between you and him—”

“Oh, Jesus, don’t do this—”

“I’m doing it. I can’t be taking you from him. That’s not me. Even if it is me... I’m not going out on him like that. I’m not. It has to be your decision. I can get you out of this. But you need to make the move.”

She looked away, closed her eyes. He had dropped too much on her.

“I don’t want an answer now,” he told her. “I want you to be sure.”

A car horn in the street got their attention, opened her eyes.

“You need to get out of here,” she said. “Before he comes back.”

The stairs were too risky. Danielle opened a door off the kitchen that led up six steps to the roof. Maven went out into the sunlight, shoes crunching stones. Instead of moving straight to the fire escape, he stood and took in the city from above.

He wasn’t sorry to leave it. He had no choice now. Instead of feeling depressed — at the ruination of his relationship with Royce, and the truth about Danielle — he felt strangely, cautiously elated. All the strings were cut. The lack of a choice made his path clear.