Devils in Exile

Gridley

They turned onto Marlborough Street, narrower than the other avenues in the Back Bay, quieter, lined with trees and gas lamps. The formerly Brahmin, currently swanky side of town.

The clicking of the suitcase wheels over the brick sidewalk stopped at a low, black, wrought-iron gate outside a street-level real estate office, listing sheets taped to the window underneath a sign reading ROOF DECK PROPERTIES AND MANAGEMENT.

Royce pushed through the ornamental gate toward the stone steps. Maven looked up at the curved-front Victorian brownstone, then followed.

Inside the unlocked first door, Royce waved to the side office entrance, where a frazzled-looking receptionist on the phone waved back and reached beneath her desk to buzz them inside. The second door in front of them buzzed and Royce pulled it open, revealing a chandelier of violet-tinted glass hanging in a richly paneled lobby. A thin Oriental runner led to the foot of a broad, curving staircase.

“Eleven real estate agents working their asses off,” said Royce on the way up the stairs, “hustling student apartments, business sublets, artist lofts. Knocking each other over to land exclusive listings. The business is actually profitable, not that I give a damn. It’s a laundry machine to me. A front. Cash goes in dirty and comes out clean. But the workers, they have no idea. So they keep busting their asses for their commissions, trying to keep the office afloat. Poor fucks.”

He stopped at the only door on the first-floor landing. His key turned in the lock, and Maven followed him inside to a splendid, modern kitchen with beet red walls, glass-front cabinets, stainless-steel fixtures. A floor-through apartment, running left through an archway to a larger room in the rear, and right down a short hallway to the street-facing front.

Maven closed the door, and the entire city vanished. Royce set the suitcase gently down atop the silver-speckled countertop. He opened a panel on the island unit and a gasp of freezer steam escaped, and he withdrew two chilled pint glasses. He opened the door to a giant silver refrigerator, a bank vault of food, and pulled out two bright red, bottle-shaped aluminum cans of Budweiser. “They only drink American. I’m betting you won’t mind.”

“Who’s they?” said Maven, still back on his heels. “You don’t live here?”

“Me? I live upstairs,” said Royce, pointing. He opened the bottle and poured for Maven, the golden yellow beer sliding down the frosted side of the glass, then poured his own. He handed Maven his glass and clinked it.

“To gay sex,” Royce said, watching Maven almost choke. “I got you.”

Maven grinned, then drank down about half, as much as he could handle until the coldness started to close his throat. The suitcase was just sitting there on the counter. He forced himself to look away. Through the short hallway to the front, he saw a large pool table. “Damn,” he sighed, moving to it.

The table had tassels on the sides and soft, ropy purses for pock ets. Massive mahogany legs. A real Victorian-type piece set out on a plush Oriental rug, the entire room given over to it.

Maven ran his fingers over its crimson cloth playing surface. A cue-stick rack hung on the wall between two enormous World War II — era propaganda posters. AVENGE DECEMBER 7 rallied the first, an angry man raising his massive fist into the air. BOOKS ARE WEAPONS IN THE WAR OF IDEAS proclaimed the second, a giant book burning in vivid color. The opposite wall was dominated by a stone-manteled fireplace.

“They had to bring this thing up from the outside, like a piano,” said Royce, coming along behind him.

Maven went to the far, curved wall, the centered window offering a view across Marlborough Street, and, over them, the top of the Prudential building beyond.

Cars lined both sides of the street below, the wind spiriting the last of the fallen tree leaves. From the east, two men came along the brick sidewalk, each carrying a duffel bag. Maven made the Latino and the blond, approaching the front door below.

He stepped back from the window. He felt anxious suddenly, out of place. He needed a moment to get his shit together, and emptied his beer glass. “There a bathroom?”

It smelled clean, spiced with cologne. The shower curtain was brass-colored and drapes-thick, the walls and floor made of marble tile.

He ran cold water, splashing some on his face, then looked at himself in the mirror over the sink. He wondered again, How did I get here, exactly?

The ceiling creaked. Light footsteps along the third floor overhead. Somebody upstairs. Faint music too.

Then voices down the hall. Maven hated being the new guy. The first day of school all over again. He sucked it up and opened the door into the hallway.

The Latino and the blond all-American had dumped their duffels in the kitchen, turning to Maven as he entered.

“We’re good?” said the Latino, referring to Maven.

Royce said, “What do you think?”

The Latino then came forward, offered his hand. Maven shook, a good Marine grip. “Name’s Suarez. Carlito Suarez.”

“Neal Maven.”

“Carlito, just like Al Pacino in that movie.” Suarez grinned. “Only more badass.”

The blond came forward with a similar grip. “Jimmy Glade. How’s it goin’? Where’d Royce find you?”

“Pulled him off the scrap heap,” said Royce, coming out with more beers, passing them around, no glasses this time. “Same as you.”

Glade said to Maven, “You snore, man?”

Carlito said of his big blond friend, “Milkshake here likes his beauty sleep.”

Maven shook his head in confusion.

Royce said, “Jimmy’s going to be your roommate.”

Maven stopped with his bottle at his lips. “My roommate?”

“You’re moving in. This is your new place.”

Maven stared at him. “I’m doing what?”

Royce stepped over to the suitcase. “Sticking close is how we do. This is your barracks now. Eat together, sleep together.”

“Not together together,” stressed Glade.

“And, rent-free,” said Royce, drawing the zipper along the edges of the suitcase. “Except on paper.”

“More flow for the tax man,” said Carlito.

“You’re learning,” said Royce, lifting the top of the suitcase as if he were opening the white box cover on a cake.

The cash was laid out in overlapping stacks of elasticized bundles. All Jacksons and Franklins, staring faceup.

A moment of reverence as they all took in the beautiful sight.

Carlito said, “Fuckin’ Fourth of July.”

He gave Glade some skin. Glade said, “’Lito, you get any chub out there today? What about you, Maven? Get any chub on that lick? A combat rodney?”

Maven said, “Not like I’m getting right now.”

Glade nodded in agreement. “Chub factor of three. Just north of flaccid.” He finished his beer. “Saving it for tonight, is all.”

A key scratched in the lock. Royce dropped the cover on the money bag, but it was purely precautionary and nobody was really concerned.

In walked the black guy, the fifth member of the crew. Royce said, “What took so long?”

“Settling up at the front desk,” he said, laying down a tan garment bag. “Who the fuck cleared out the wet bar?”

Glade smiled, pulling a handful of vodka nips from his pockets.

“That fucking nine-dollar Snickers, that’s coming out of your kick too.” The black guy sized up Maven, standing on the side of the island, and still didn’t smile. “So what’s the verdict on the FNG?” FNG: fucking new guy. “We going to deep-six this motherfucker, or what?”

When the others laughed, Maven smiled. The black guy kept his snarl, but some play came into his yellowed eyes.

“Just shittin’,” he said, offering Maven his hand.

Royce did the introduction: “Neal Maven, meet Lewis Termino.”

They shook, Maven hearing something in the name.

Termino said, “You look like you heard of me before. You grow up in Brockton?”

“Near there.”

“Lewis ‘the Dynamo’ Termino.” He dropped his chin and assumed a loose-fisted fighter’s stance. “Rocky Marciano, he was the pride of Brockton. But Dynamo was its soooul.”

“I do remember,” said Maven.

“He had all the tools,” said Royce. “Fast hands, granite jaw. All class. Only problem? Feet of fucking clay.”

“I’d rather stay and take a beating than retreat. Turns out that ain’t good for judges’ cards, or a long-term career.”

Glade uncapped all four nips, sliding them around the island. Royce watched everyone drink together. “Now we’ve got trust. We’ve got a foundation. We sealed the deal with a crime. Better than a contract inked in blood. Maven — you’re one of us now.”

Glade said, “Soldiers of fortune.”

“You got something on us,” said Carlito, swallowing, “and we got something on you.”

Royce said, “It’s the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. The best possible basis for a secure and honest partnership.”

Termino nodded and opened the suitcase lid on the cash. “Nobody pushes the button on anyone else without everyone going ka-plooey.”

Maven did not feel the vodka burn until he was in the pool-table room with Glade and Carlito. Royce and Termino remained behind in the kitchen to handle the split. The bluster and the buddy talk was easy to fall back into, caught up in the crosscurrent of a waning adrenaline charge and his burgeoning buzz. The cold beer warmed Maven’s tongue magically, and he had questions, lots of them.

He learned that, whether he rented or owned it, the building belonged to Royce. Neither of the other two had any idea how he had made his wad in the first place.

Maven learned that they had not been at this long. “Not long enough” was Carlito’s answer, as he banked the eight ball into a corner pocket.

Maven learned that the hotel jump was maybe 5 percent of the total effort expended on this job. Most of it was van surveillance and telephone traps.

He learned that Royce was the one who put them on the Venezuelan. They did not know how he originated the information, nor did they care.

“When Royce found me,” said Glade, “I was detailing cars in a mall parking garage. Pocketing fucking nickels and dimes found under the seat cushions. I’m out running this half-triathlon to get my ass back into fighting shape, and this guy comes up to me on the last leg, running beside me, gets me talking. Half out of breath, we’re shooting the shit like we’re at a cocktail party or something. And he lays all this broad shit out on me, smart stuff, where I’m at, where I’m going.”

“Yeah,” said Maven. “Exactly.”

“Fearless leader, you know?” said Glade. “So I don’t ask.”

Carlito nudged Maven, looking down the short hallway into the kitchen, Royce and Termino stacking cash on the kitchen island. “Mad money, dude. It’s sick.”

Glade said, “Royce takes a double share off the top, and all I know about that is, he earns it, for sure.”

Maven sank a ball, then attempted a touch shot and missed completely. “What about Termino?”

Carlito said, “He’s older. An acquired taste, but tough as fuck.”

Glade said, “He and Royce served together in Germany.” He paused to chalk up. “What about you? Royce said Special Forces.”

“Yeah,” Maven allowed.

“Where’d you get dirty over there?”

“All over,” said Maven. “Mostly north of Baghdad. Samarra.”

“I was in Samarra,” said Carlito. “Late ’04. Samarra, Fallujah. Every fucking resistance base. Just my good luck.”

Glade said, “You did the job.”

“Yeah, I did the fucking job.” Carlito smacked the cue ball down into a cluster of solids and stripes, not aiming anywhere in particular, just breaking them up as hard as he could. “And what fun we had. That was the asshole of all assholes.” Carlito straightened and said to Maven, with a thumb toward Glade, “Milkshake here still believes in the war.”

“Fuck, yeah, I do. I didn’t waste five years of my prime for nothing. Maven here stands with me, don’t you, New Guy?”

“Enough,” said Royce, coming into the room. “Fucking boring.” Termino followed with the open suitcase, setting it down on the pool table. “It’s payday, boys.”

They gathered around.

Royce said, “It was sixteen keys, total. I know, we were hoping for twenty or more. The Maracones were getting them for a nice round thirty each, either a sweetheart deal or the price per key is falling again. Thirty times sixteen is what, Carlito?”

Carlito answered, “A lot of dough.”

“Four hundred and eighty thousand.”

Royce separated big stacks of cash. Maven moved his hand off the felt bumper so that he would not leave a sweat mark.

“Divide by six, that’s eighty grand each. Six being two shares for me, one each for you three.” He pushed piles toward each man like casino winnings. “And one for the new guy, Maven.” Maven’s came last, smaller than the others, but still a lot of green. “Maven gets a half share. Consider it a gift.”

“A generous fucking one at that,” said Termino.

“Start-up money. Our investment in you. You could park cars for a full year and never see that much.” Royce looked to the others. “Maven’s other half, the forty, was cut in fourths, so ten more on top for each. Bringing your total to ninety. Not too shabby.”

“Well goddamned done,” said Glade, getting skin from Carlito and vice versa.

Termino said, “If only this shit had been brown and not white.”

The others nodded. Royce explained, for Maven’s benefit, “What Lew is whining about here is the fact that heroin is worth more than twice as much per kilo as cocaine. Scag has the biggest upside, but we can’t always pick our poisons, can we?”

Termino said, “I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’.”

“Let me give you some perspective, Maven. Jimmy here still doesn’t understand why every kilo isn’t worth millions automatically, but it’s simple economics. Wholesale versus retail. The per kilo cost of cocaine in Bolivia or Colombia is about fifteen hundred dollars. That’s its export value. As soon as it crosses the border into the United States, the price jumps two hundred per cent. Actual price varies from region to region, but thirty g’s is the average Boston area wholesale price right about now. The buyer, the Maracones in this case, then break these kilos into more affordable ounce lots. Ounces are again broken down into grams by midsize shops, and grams into powder bags and crack caps by street crews. Two things happen at each step. One, the purity gets cut. Two, the price goes up. For scag, the basic rule is seven to one. For every one wholesale kilo, seven kilos of product eventually hits the streets. It’s like black magic. Cocaine purity runs a bit higher, but consider this. Step down one kilo to say three-quarters purity, and you’ve just turned one thousand grams of product into one thousand three hundred and thirty-three grams total.”

Glade said, “This is where my head starts to hurt.”

“Staying conservative, say that every one-thousand-three-hundred-and-thirty-three-gram magic kilo was broken up into one thousand grams of crack and three hundred thirty-three grams of powder. For simplicity’s sake. Say two hundred dollars per crack gram, one hundred dollars per gram of powder. Carlito, compute that?”

“I’d run out of fingers and toes pretty quick.”

“About a quarter mil. That’s retail gross earnings, per original wholesale kilo. So, sixteen kilos? Four million dollars’ worth of action we took off the street today. Four mil. That’s a shitload of ten-dollar street-corner deals. One number I don’t have for you is how many lives we just saved. Overdoses, drug crime. Think on that.”

Maven tried to. He thought of the money changing hands all across metro Boston.

Royce said, “The others, they’ve heard this before, but my bunkmate, back in Germany, he died of an overdose. I was the one who found him. He was my best buddy out there, and I never even saw it coming. And that still fucking haunts me to this day. The waste of it. Why I’m a little psycho about this, understand? A little fucking evangelical. My tolerance for this shit is zero. In case you were wondering how I came to this unusual line of work. It’s taken me a long time to put this thing together, and now it’s starting to flower, starting to bear some serious fucking fruit.” He nodded to the table. “So, Maven, consider yourself lucky. Even thankful.”

Maven nodded. A big pile of cash sat out in front of him. “I do.”

As the others celebrated, Royce walked Maven back into the kitchen. “You have questions.”

Maven said, “I have a lot of fucking questions.”

“Save them. We’ll go over things step-by-step these next couple of days. Starting tomorrow morning, when we go out and rent you a safe-deposit box. A big one. A bank account won’t do.”

“But... how is all this possible?”

“Drug dealers are a paranoid lot. You have to be either fucking crazy or fucking hard-core to think about crossing them. We happen to be both. I didn’t bring you in for your personality, I brought you in because no one else can do what we do. The equipment, the training. The work is hard and it can be tedious, but now you see it more than pays off in the end.”

“But how do you know—”

“I have some connections. And that, right there, is the sum total of how forthcoming I am going to be on this matter. I will tell you nothing more, and you will ask me nothing more from this day forward. Can you live with that?”

Royce’s entire demeanor had changed. Looking at him, Maven felt ungrateful. “Sure.”

Royce shook his head. “Not ‘sure.’ I want it clear. I want it absolutely rock solid, right here, right now. Your pledge.”

Maven nodded. “Okay. Yes.”

“All right.” Royce backed off a bit, but kept his tone serious. “We’re doing good here. Every fucking crumb of that shit that goes down the drain — we’ve made a difference. And the best part of it is, nobody else will ever know.”

A knock at the front door interrupted their talk. Royce turned to answer it, then looked back to Maven. “Oh, and one more thing. Danny doesn’t know anything. And that’s how it stays. For your safety, for everyone’s safety. Understood?”

“Sure. No problem. Just one question.”

“What’s that?”

“Who’s Danny?”

Royce smiled and opened the door. Danielle Vetti stepped inside. “Are we still going out tonight?”

Royce turned and said, “Danny, this is Neal Maven, the guy from the parking lot. He’s with us now.”

She showed Maven a flat smile of supreme disinterest, then went right back to Royce. “I need a new dress.”

“Of course you do. The ones in your closet upstairs, it would be ridiculous of me to even consider suggesting you wear one of those twice.”

She wore a fitted shirt that was very fitted, a snug, military-style jacket over it, and shimmery black slacks. “Maybe, if we went to a different club for a change, then I could wear the same dress more than once. But since we always go to the same club, and sit in the same exact booth, and do the exact same fucking thing, I need something new.” She drew a nail across his cheek. “I have to look good for you, don’t I?”

“Ah. It’s for me you do this.”

“Always, baby.”

“Tell you what.” Royce thumbed over at Maven. “Maven here’s recently come into some money. He’ll need some fresh duds for tonight also, but if I turn him loose on his own, he’ll go raid the military surplus store. Why don’t you let him accompany you over to Newbury Street, help him pick out something competent to wear, and as a thank-you, I’m sure Maven will buy you your dress.”

Royce looked over at Maven.

Maven said, “Uh... sure.”

Danielle looked at Royce doubtfully, then over at Maven. “Any dress?”

Maven shrugged. “Why not?”

“Fine,” she decided, turning to leave. “Come on.”

He wasn’t even sure the store they were in was a store. It was more like walking around some stranger’s huge, dramatically lit walk-in closet.

No circular racks. The clothes hung on angled rails or else lay folded on white shelves. Nothing had a price tag.

Danielle went around feeling fabrics with a practiced hand. She eased a striped jacket off a padded mannequin and held it to his chest. She had been quiet and a little sulky on the way over, but moving around the store seemed to lift her mood.

She grabbed two pairs of pants for him and led Maven to the back.

“So,” she said, “you’re getting into the real estate game?”

She said this with a smile, as though she knew more, or perhaps wanted him to believe she did.

Maven was in way over his head, and the adrenaline fizzle coupled with the beer-and-vodka buzz didn’t help.

“I guess I am,” he said.

The fitting rooms were open stalls, no doors, facing a carpeted walkway ending at a three-paneled mirror. Maven stepped into the farthest stall and pulled off his jeans, a wad of twenties and hundreds bulging the left front pocket. He came out to the mirror in the first pair of pants, and Danielle hated them immediately, pinching the fabric at his thigh, then tugging on the crotch.

“No. Off. I’ll be back.”

He was standing in his underwear when she reappeared. She held two more pairs up to his waist, then took away one and waited outside for him to pull on the other.

Now he was getting chub. Wouldn’t be good if she came yanking down on his inseam again. He needed to distract himself. Start talking.

“Uh, so you grew up around here, right?”

“I guess,” came her voice.

“You went to Gridley High School, right?”

He received no answer. He zipped up, figuring she had walked off to find a matching belt or something. He pulled on the shirt and jacket and stepped out, and there she was, standing in front of the mirror, facing her three selves. She looked at him in the reflection. “I don’t recognize you.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t,” said Maven. “I was a couple of years behind you. My sister, she was in your grade.”

Danielle squinted, unsure of this whole thing now.

“Alexis. Alexis Maven. My half sister, actually.”

“Alex Maven?” said Danielle, her squint relaxing just a bit. “Holy shit. We used to smoke together sometimes. Out at the ‘lounge.’ The woods behind the north wing?”

Maven nodded as though he had ever been there.

Danielle turned, looking Maven up and down. She hadn’t really looked at him since they’d arrived, only his clothes. “So you’re Alex’s younger brother.”

He nodded. “Half brother.”

“Small world.” She stepped behind him, plucking at the shoulders of his jacket. “She was a party girl, wasn’t she? What’s Alex doing now?”

“She’s dead.”

The tugging stopped. Danielle’s eyes flared as though he’d said something embarrassing, not her. “Sorry.”

“She never left town,” he said. “Kind of dug her own grave there. I remember, I saw you once, after you graduated. At the South Shore Plaza, spraying perfume on women walking into Filene’s.”

Danielle hissed out a laugh. “I was saving up. For New York. Modeling.”

Maven nodded. “That figures.”

She resumed with his jacket, feeling it under his arms, ignoring what he had intended as a compliment. “I had everything but the height, they said.”

He nodded. “So how’d you wind up back...?”

“Here? Long, boring story.” She came around in front of him. “You getting all this down, or what?” She got out of his way, and Maven looked at himself in the three-way mirror. “So what do you think?”

He barely recognized himself.

“You feel good, right?” she said. “You feel different, don’t you?”

He turned to one side, then the other. “Actually, I kind of do, yeah.”

“Bolder. Sexier. Isn’t that what you want, Gridley?”

She was studying the fit of his clothes, while he was studying her.

“Yeah,” he said.