Devils in Exile

The Shore

Maven struggled to consciousness.

Amber clouds floating above him came into focus as water stains on an old plaster ceiling.

He was in a bed. Mattress springs creaked as he turned his head. He made out a chair. He made out a window.

He tried to sit up but could not lift his head.

He looked to the other side and saw a bag suspended from an inverted coat hanger nailed to the wall. An IV bag.

He was on a drip inside someone’s house.

He tried to sit up again and kept trying until the room swirled and he fell into darkness.

Hey. Hey.

A voice, only.

You are mine now. Understand? Mine.

The anesthesiologist wet his lips as he picked through vials inside the messenger bag, looking for a twenty-milliliter ampoule of propofol. He shook it, warming the sedative in his hand. He noted that they had replaced the hydromorphone and Demerol, exactly as he had requested. He was alone in the bedroom but for the man in the bed, who was deeply unconscious.

He checked the IV lines in the manner of the doctor he had once been. He had learned to work with the shakes. He checked the closed door behind him, always afraid of being watched, then pocketed a syringe of midazolam for later.

He picked out a vial of vecuronium, an intravenous muscle relaxant more accurately defined as a paralyzing agent. Too high a dose would shut down the body’s respiratory system in minutes, leading to sudden death. The last time he had held a vial of vecuronium in his hand was inside the surgery bathroom of Mt. Auburn Hospital. When the police finally broke through the door, they found him dressed in blue surgery scrubs, sitting on the floor with a handful of stolen syringes in his lap, injecting propofol into the femoral artery of his left leg. He was an authority on the chemistry, pharmacology, and therapeutic considerations of the most potent and addictive medications available to humankind. And his one need in life now was to have access to these powerful narcotics. He had a significant court date coming up that would prohibit his access indefinitely, an eventuality that demanded its own solution, to be acted upon at the appropriate time. In his mind, he was drawing up an anesthesiologist’s dream last meal, a feast of opioids and sedatives for his central nervous system.

He administered the vecuronium in advance of the patient’s surgery, pocketing the rest. He watched the man in the bed, recognizing subtle changes in expression as the medicines took effect. The anesthesiologist would have traded places with him in a second, regardless of the man’s bullet wounds. He envied his patient — lying there, submerged within himself — and wished he could somehow split himself in two, administering to himself as patient while simultaneously riding out his own ministrations in blissfully schizophrenic codependence.

A seagull cried.

Maven opened his eyes. He watched the amber clouds until they were still.

The bed. The bedroom. A new bag hanging on the wall.

A man in a chair.

“You don’t know me?”

The man was older.

“You don’t recognize the face of the man you stole from?”

The face was that of a man you might sit next to in a coffee shop, flipping through a newspaper, never looking up.

Maven looked at the window. A seagull bobbed on a tree branch.

“I don’t know your name. I don’t know where you’re from. But I know you stole from me. And that is all I need to know.”

Another man stood behind the man in the chair. Maven could not see him.

“Why we waitin’? Dis bumbaklaat fool. He got my blood smoked. Be my personal pleasure reeducatin’ him.”

“This wounded animal? Too damn easy.” The older man stood over him now. “We’re gonna fix you up. Give you time to heal. Get you strong again. So we can break you.”

The surgeon examined his work and was frank about its shortcomings. He had many excuses available: the lack of assisting nurses; the unprofessional bedroom setting in this seaside house; the inferior surgical equipment. But he saw no sign of infection, which was itself a small miracle.

Obviously the patient was some sort of criminal, like the rest of these gangsters. Although they did not appear to regard the man as a comrade. In fact, quite the opposite.

Just fix him up.

Whenever the doctor edged toward asking why he was being paid to heal this man they appeared to detest—

Just fix him up.

The doctor warned them about the gas man, saying he had the patient under too deep.

Justfixhimup.

So, fine. He did. And if some carelessness crept into the surgeon’s work as a result of his treatment by these thugs, well then, too bad. Because you do not talk to people that way. Not if you want their best.

He had a weird, swimmy memory of something — a tube — being pulled out of his throat, like a stubborn carrot from the earth.

He was too stiff to stir. His brain was packed in cotton wadding.

An old man wearing shabby clothes and latex gloves leaned over Maven to check the IV bag. He lifted back the sheet with trembling hands, and Maven felt a vague sense of blunted pain, as an apple might feel a bruise.

The man, a doctor, was checking Maven’s wounds.

“I did my best,” he said, to no one in particular.

Maven tried to speak but his tongue would not work. He focused on the drip-drip of the IV feed, his eyelids drooping in sync.

“Your boss. Royce.”

Maven floated like a bubble suspended in molasses. Someone overturned the jar and he slowly rose to the top.

“That name sure opens your eyes.”

Maven had to check himself. Had he given up Royce’s name?

He tried to fix on the voice of his interrogator, but felt his eyes lolling in their sockets.

“I’m figuring things out about you. Things just coming to me through the air. You can speak, can’t you?”

The other man, the one with the accent, was over Maven now, pressing down on his wounded thigh. Maven’s vision went blazing red. He grunted.

“Good. Gotta make sure I’m not fucking throwing darts at a board that doesn’t have a bull’s-eye.”

The seagull sat on the back of the chair. Looking at Maven for a long time.

He tried to talk to it. The bird opened its wings and alighted on his thigh.

It stared awhile, then began picking at his surgical wound.

It flew away with stitching trailing from its beak.

“I’m starting to wonder if you even know.”

Maven knew that his only power here was his silence.

“Remember the cranberry bog? What do you think happened there? You got ambushed, didn’t you? Somebody got tipped off. They were waiting for you.”

The cranberries. Maven felt like one of them now, floating on the surface of consciousness, waiting to be picked and crushed for his juice.

“Who do you think did that? It wasn’t me. My guys came in at the end, on a late tip from one of the buyers, who used to deal with us. Losing business to you punks was bad enough, I couldn’t have this fuck freelancing all around. Honestly I didn’t expect much. Mr. Leroy insisted on going. You see, his partner was killed at that Black Falcon clusterfuck. And he’s none too happy about it.”

Maven’s head was pulled up by his hair, and he was looking into the other man’s eyes.

“You remembering any better now?”

He tried. When he was alone. He tried to remember.

He ran his hands over his body, searching out his wounds. His lower back, his shoulder, his thigh. Tracing the surgical scars was like piecing together the sequence of the farmhouse shooting.

Glade and Suarez inside. They never had a chance.

And Termino?

“Hotshots, right? Thought you had it all. You were smarter than everyone else.”

Maven’s arms were tied to the bed now. Strapped down at his sides.

“This silence of yours, what is it? Loyalty? It’s your dumb loyalty, isn’t it. That’s the key. See — I’m learning to listen. Here I thought I was going to be the one ripping info out of you. But it’s me sitting here with the hammer of knowledge. Waiting to beat the truth into you.”

He was near the ocean. He could smell it sometimes. He could hear the surf roaring. Like a beast calling for him.

The seagull was back in the tree. He wanted to come back in. He wanted Maven’s eyes.

Maven awoke propped up on a few pillows. A notebook computer was set on his chest.

“Because I know you wouldn’t take my word for it.”

The man was in his chair, legs crossed. The other man, the white Jamaican, was behind him.

Maven’s right arm was unstrapped. He looked at the computer screen. This was some kind of trick.

“Go ahead. I put up some recent articles from the paper. You don’t have all day.”

On the screen were half a dozen windows open one on top of another. He had trouble reading the type and had to keep blinking and looking away, regaining his focus. So he could not read sequentially and instead had to absorb the writing in static chunks.

Massacre in Easton.

Cranberry Farmers Arrive Home to Bloodbath.

Nephew among dead in reputed drug deal gone bad.

Recent spate of Hub-area drug violence.

Maven scanned the print for names.

Curt Bellson.

James Glade.

Carlito Suarez.

The article noted the number of dead Iraq War veterans on the list. Three besides Glade and Suarez.

Sidebar: Veterans and Crime.

Another window, another article.

Gangland Slaying in Fort Hill.

Broadhouse, one of the kingpins, had been murdered in his home along with three associates.

Another window.

Milton Mansion Sees Night of Deadly Violence.

Crassion, another kingpin, dead. A so-called mob hit.

Sidebar: Recession brings consolidation, contraction in urban drug trade.

Another window.

Chelsea Piano Factory Shootout Claims Four.

Local Drug Baron Disappears.

A surveillance photograph showed a tough guy walking into a bar, a younger version of the man sitting in the chair. The caption gave his name as Lockerty.

The third kingpin.

“He hit us all. Bing, bang, boom. Only missed me because — guess what? — I was out here at the shore. With you.”

Maven let his head fall back. He was dizzy from reading and from the information gleaned.

“You still don’t get it, do you? It’s like I kidnapped a retarded kid nobody wants back.”

Maven lifted his head again to look at Lockerty.

“It’s Royce, you fuck. You did his bidding for months, knocking over the competition, cutting deep into mine and Broadhouse’s distribution. Yeah — Royce was Crassion’s boy. Until he turned on him a few weeks ago. I figured all this out. Crassion’s plan was to use his secret soldier Royce to jack his competition and, in doing so, squeeze street supply down to a dribble, raising prices all over town. You were Royce’s hit squad. I guess he needed you out of the way, cleaning his own house before he went scorched-earth. Set you up at that berry farm to end the bandit phase of the plan. A citywide coup. Crassion got what was coming to him, that fucking phony — and now Royce is king. Running everything single-handedly. An empire you helped him build.”

Maven looked again at the laptop on his chest. Was it real?

“You dumb fucking slug. See for yourself. Not like we’re setting you up a home office here. One more minute. Clock’s ticking.”

Maven didn’t know what to do. He looked at the keyboard, wondering how to prove Lockerty wrong. He tried opening up a search engine, but had difficulty getting his stiff hand to work. So he reread the articles he had.

In the “Related Articles” sidebar, he read:

Drug War Link to B.U. Grad’s Murder?

Maven stopped breathing. He moved his finger over the trackpad, trying to get the tiny arrow cursor on the highlighted article.

He finally clicked it and waited for the page to load.

He didn’t read any of it. He just stared at the photograph of Samara Bahaar, dressed in her cap and gown.