Devils in Exile

The Cycle

The morning sun rose cold over the neighborhood, light coming in at a hard slant. Maven waited after ringing the bell, and the door was pulled open by a young, brown-skinned man wearing a Tufts crewneck over a collared shirt.

Maven said, “Looking for Agent Lash.”

Rosey Lash sized up the caller, cautious. “Hold on.”

Inside, Rosey stepped back into the kitchen where Lash was clearing their breakfast dishes. “Some guy here for you, Dad. Looks pretty out of it.”

Lash went to his jacket hanging over a chair and slid his sidearm out from the holster beneath it. He tucked it into the back of his pants and went to the door.

It was Maven, though it took Lash many moments to be certain. The eye patch was legit, he could see the edge of a scar showing off one corner. Maven’s face looked as if someone had got at it with a potter’s tool. He wore a loose-fitting army jacket, a large duffel bag at his feet.

“Well.” Lash backed away from the door, inviting Maven inside.

Maven carried the heavy bag with a painful limp. He set it down next to the kitchen table with a clunk and lowered himself into one of the chairs, one leg outstretched.

Lash stood for another moment, then sat down across from him, such that Maven could not see the gun tucked into the small of his back.

“Rosey, why don’t you hit your room for a bit, all right?”

Rosey looked at his father. “You sure?”

Lash said to Maven, “We’re fine here, right?”

Maven nodded.

Rosey didn’t leave yet. “You sure you’re okay?”

Lash wanted to pull his bighearted boy into a hug. He did care about the old man after all.

“We’ll be fine,” Lash said, and Rosey backed off, retreating down the hall.

Lash relaxed a bit, now that they were alone. “What’d you do — follow me here some day?”

Maven nodded.

Lash pointed to the floor with his chin. “What’s in the bag?”

“Guns.”

Maven’s hand trembled on the table. Not nerves, more like muscle fatigue. The wristwatch was the only part of him that clicked with the put-together guy Lash first met. But there was blood on the strap, a smudge of dried red on the side of Maven’s palm and on his shirt cuff visible below the coat sleeve.

Lash made as if he were adjusting his shirt for comfort, sliding the gun from the back of his pants to the underside of his thigh. “So.”

Maven took in the open boxes on the counter and the two sealed cartons near the door. He was acutely aware of the blind spot behind him.

“I gave you up for dead,” said Lash. “Bottom of a lake somewhere. Or parceled out into Dumpsters around the city. But then I started hearing things. People saying the bandits were back — only, one guy this time. Wearing an eye patch. And a patrol cap.”

Maven reached up, feeling his unwashed hair. “Lost the cap somewhere along the way.”

“And the eye?”

“Same thing.”

Maven’s intonation was flat, as though he had suffered a concussion or some other trauma. Lash noticed more blood now, flecks on the side of his neck, a spot on his earlobe.

“So you brought guns. What about the money?”

“Gone,” said Maven. “All gone.”

Lash thought he was telling the truth. “So what brings you to my crib this chilly winter morning?”

“I thought it was obvious. I’m turning myself in.”

Lash’s mobile rang in his belt clip. His eyes stayed on Maven, but he had to let go of his sidearm under his leg to free his phone. He pressed SEND. “Lash.”

He listened, watching Maven staring at the table, the guy gingerly touching the bone around his eye patch, his mind somewhere else.

“Let me hit you back in a bit,” he said, hanging up, placing the phone on the table in front of him. Lash was excited and trying not to show it. “Cops are at a house in Swampscott right now. They found Ernesto Lockerty down by the water, shot dead, his house half-burned down.”

Maven nodded, looking up.

Lash said, “A similar thing happened to this new cat, an upstart, kind of a mystery man. Name of Brad Royce.”

Maven’s eye glanced away, came back.

Lash let all this settle over him gently, like a fresh sheet upon an old mattress. “Let me see if I got this straight. You just wiped out the drug trade in all of Greater Boston. Single-handedly. You tore it all down.”

Maven shrugged. “It won’t even last a day. Bad guys looking to fill in the void as we speak.”

“But they have some fear in them now. That’s a start.”

Maven looked around. He would remember this room. In prison, on long days in his cell, he would picture the old, imperfect glass of the cabinets, smell the congealed syrup and toaster crumbs, the tired white paint of the apartment walls. He would never forget the room he surrendered his life in.

The bruises in his back had fused into a brace of pain. He had done something to his shoulder that didn’t start hurting until now. Even his teeth felt loose as he pushed at them with his notched tongue. But his blood felt clean for the first time in a long time. He was impatient, ready to go.

“So how do we do this?” he said.

Lash had never got a decent read on Maven until now. “Black Falcon Terminal. The mess that went down. You bandits were there, weren’t you?”

Maven nodded.

“You came down and saved my ass. Why?”

Maven shrugged. “I don’t even know.”

Lash liked that answer. He let go of his sidearm and leaned forward, folding his hands on the table.

“Okay, here’s the thing. You come to me at an awkward time. I don’t want to say you went and turned yourself in to the wrong guy, but... see, you wouldn’t know this, but I got my task force taken away from me. After that clusterfuck at Black Falcon, the one that was meant for you. Yeah. So they offered me reassignment overseas. And I was all set to walk, I even had this letter, this pretty little thing, all typed out. Had my boy proofread it for me — that’s what I’m paying his tuition for, right?” Lash smiled at himself. “But I couldn’t do it. I don’t know. Couldn’t go out like that. And that’s when it occurred to me. See, overseas means less oversight. More wiggle room. The game we’re playing here, the street game — it’s just a cycle. A carousel going round and round. And the cycle is endless, you know that. All a man can hope to do is define himself in it. And you did that, you made it to the center, flipped the off switch. Stopped the fucker dead. Even for just a day.”

Maven straightened a bit. He sensed something coming, something he hadn’t expected at all. What was it Danielle had said to him that day in Gridley, against the flat edge of a painted rock by the side of the railroad tracks? Don’t you know by now that nothing ever happens the way you think it will?

“This is my last chance to truly impact this game,” said Lash. “I don’t see anything left for me but to go all in. And to go all out. And if they don’t like it? Hell, in my mind, I’m already gone. Like you.”

Lash hesitated a moment. It was reckless, what he was about to do — but recklessness was exactly what the situation required.

This guy had something. Something Lash could channel and use.

“Long windup, but here’s the pitch.” Lash laid a hand flat on the table, calling for a new card from the dealer. “What if, instead of turning you in — I was to offer you a job instead?”