by Chuck Hogan
Lash returned to his pacing. “That’s the one part that doesn’t play, isn’t it? Cops who turn like this, they hide behind the badge. Who wouldn’t? You’re gonna go dirty, why play fair? You’re gonna use the golden key that opens every door in town. And there’s a big difference between taking a shot at some guy trying to rip you off, versus capping a fed. About a life’s sentence difference.”
Lash looked back at Harleton, the man wearing a funny, distant-looking smile on his face.
Lash said, “You’re wondering about cops. Thinking this could help you, help your case. Only thing is—I’m not even going to bother talking to your known associates. So if you go blabbing any of this to your lawyer, they’ll know you were the source, and they’ll think you were talking to us feds.” Lash made a snick noise with his cheek. “I don’t know. Maybe they’ll kill you anyway. For knowing they got taken—for seeing it. They don’t like that. Maybe you lost money too, maybe you financed some of this hijacked cake. Though I doubt it. These aren’t your people. This is more like you owe them something. Like you’ve been living out on the wild side. That it, tubby?”
The guy was getting pissed. Lash should have stopped there but he couldn’t pull back. This guy in front of him was the embodiment of his own nightmare about raising a son.
“Vengeful little kid cutting up Mommy’s dresses. When you screw out of here, jumping bail and fleeing the country, who’s going to pay? As always, your beautiful, loving parents. Only this time, they’re going to pay in bullets. I’m sure the last thing they’ll be thinking about is their son, whose fat finger is practically pulling the trigger. Thinking that maybe they should have handled you differently. That maybe getting you out of trouble isn’t the same as raising you right.”
Harleton looked as if a stopper in his throat had been pulled, the crust of recalcitrance and malfeasance that clogged his head beginning to drain down. He looked as contrite as he’d ever been in his entire life. And yet Lash knew it wouldn’t last. He’d still go off running with his parents’ lives in his pockets like the gold from their teeth, and crying all the way.
Lash said, as he turned to leave, “Thanks, you’ve been a help.”
CURTIZ KNOCKED ON LASH’S DOOR, CARRYING IN HIS BACKGROUND work on Vasco, the Venezuelan they had pulled out of the thawed Charles River. They called this a digital profile, outlining the last days of a dead man via his electronic echo.
Curtiz focused on Vasco’s credit card purchases and mobile phone records.
“We never found the phone,” said Lash.
“Tracked his number via his e-mail account. It was a U.S. phone. GPS triangulation puts the phone at the Sheraton Boston on Dalton Street when it went dead.”
“He was registered at the Boston Harbor Hotel.” Lash turned his Zippo over and over in his hand. The map of Vietnam inscribed on the back had all but worn smooth. “I don’t suppose GPS can give us a room number?”
“Only reads horizontally. But I went in and had them go back through the register for that day, they gave me this printout. See there?”
Curtiz had highlighted the name Maracone, a two-night registration in a junior suite on the twenty-ninth floor.
“No complaints from the hotel that day, nothing logged anyway. But there was a housekeeping note saying that the telephone was gone from the room and had to be replaced. The charge was added to the bill.” Curtiz handed Lash a copy of Maracone’s room bill. “Maybe they cut the room phone and disabled all the mobiles, including Vasco’s. Makes sense, right?”
“Perfect sense,” said Lash.
“Here’s the other peculiar thing. See his call log? It’s summarized there on the first page. His minutes don’t add up. More airtime used than total logged calls.”
Lash flipped through the pages. “Phone company mistake?”
“Could be. They never made a mistake on my bill though. You want to leave it at that?”
Lash shook his head. “I guess I don’t.”
HE WAS LOOKING FOR A MAN NAMED SCHRAMM WHO SOLD GOTHIC and Celtic jewelry out of a cart set up near the Cheers bar reproduction at Faneuil Hall. Lash poked around, eating a soft-serve ice cream cone, while Schramm flirted with two truant teens shopping for pewter pendants and sterling-silver belly rings.
The waiting allowed Schramm to make Lash as a cop. Once the girls moved along, Schramm went up to him and said, “Look, man, I’m out of it. I did my bid.”
“I have only come here seeking knowledge. Somebody gave me your name.”
Schramm wore a winged-reaper ring on his middle finger, a death’s-head pin sewn into the skin over his right temple. “Can I see the shield?”
Lash obliged.
“So we’re talking casually here, then?”
“So casual.” Lash showed him the printout with the airtime discrepancy. “What am I looking at, a cloned phone?”
“Nobody clones phones, not anymore. Too traceable now that carriers do radio fingerprinting. It catches clones by picking up the unique rise time signature—”
“If you could,” said Lash, putting up the stop sign, “just put it in layman’s terms, and then maybe step it down another couple of notches. I’m moving through this digital world at thirty-three and a third revolutions per minute.”
Schramm made a forget-that motion with his hands. “For the minute numbers to be off, that means somebody had to mess with the internal chip. You do that, you can change a device made for transmitting into an actual broadcaster. A RAT phone, or remote access tool. You control it remotely, usually by sending an SMS—I mean, a text message. You can intercept calls, but more to the point, you can turn a phone into a microphone. Like a bug. You can listen in. Takes a little know-how, but the most important thing is access. Setting up the target phone. You either need to give your mark a tampered phone, or else physically get your hands on theirs for a certain amount of time.”
“Okay, so—somebody close.”
“Somebody close. Or else a real good thief.”
Lash chewed on that. “They use this in law enforcement?”
“You don’t know?”
“Told you, I’m made of vinyl. These lines you see in my face are analog grooves.”
Schramm patted his pocket to show that it was empty. “I don’t carry a phone no more. Such a thing as too much convenience. Too much reliability. Too easy to exploit.”
Lash nodded, wondering what it meant that some of the best advice he’d received in his life, he’d got from thieves.
DAMSEL
THEY BROKE EARLY FROM THE CLUB, GETTING BACK TO THE MARLborough Street pad a little after one. Royce was still at Precipice, but no Danielle. Maven realized he hadn’t seen her in a few days. Termino stayed out on a midnight rendezvous; Suarez drank too many vodkas and not enough Red Bulls and passed out snoring on the sofa with his hand down his pants; Glade was doing his Glade thing with two legal secretaries, holed up in his and Maven’s room. Glade’s ministrations generally took him into the wee small hours, plying these girls with Midori, getting them used to the camera. The first ten, fifteen, twenty times Maven had watched the resulting video, it was great. Now it was like a porn he’d seen over and over. It had got so that he was blaming the victims for their pliability, rather than his sociopathic roommate, in the same way Maven used to get pissed off at Iraqis for making him shoot at them.
So he was shit out of luck and would have to bunk out here on the opposite end of the sectional from snoring Suarez. Maven wandered to the other end of the apartment, fishing a Red Stripe out of the beverage refrigerator and racking up balls on the pool table. He broke hard, scattering the balls, suspended in the leftover buzz of another lost night. He lined up a few shots, then set down his cue. Even the pool table had lost its allure.
Maven heard creaking above him. He looked up at the high ceiling. Footsteps overhead. Could have been Royce back home, but he didn’t think so. The footsteps moved toward the street, and he moved with them, to the French doors opening onto Marlborough.
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br /> He stood out in the night air, knowing she was above him. He was with her and not with her, the story of his life. Across the way, in a large, angled picture window, he saw Danielle’s reflection. Standing out on the top-floor balcony with a drink in her hand, wearing a short robe and not much else. She looked out into the night like a woman in a high castle. A damsel, only not in distress. Just a damsel.
A breeze came up, a whiff of ocean air brushing his cheek at the same time it shifted the hem of her robe around her thighs, and Maven had to turn away. Had to go back inside, and then, once there, had to get out of that place. He took off downstairs, moving to the sidewalk, hitting the chill and not knowing where he was going. He reached the corner before looking back, and when he did, the top-floor balcony was vacant.
He walked away from the river, toward Commonwealth Avenue, needing to move, working off the alcohol and the discontent. City Convenience at the corner of Massachusetts and Commonwealth avenues was a bright storefront in an otherwise darkened city. He went inside.
Similar to his convenience store in Quincy, only with prices higher by 30 percent. The guy working a laptop behind the counter gave Maven an unsmiling nod, checking him over for stickup potential, and Maven thought of Ricky and felt even worse.
He walked down the hospital-bright aisles, not wanting anything. So he was still smitten with Danielle—fine. He could live with that. In fact, it wasn’t so bad. Having his ultimate girl right there, yet out of reach—up on that balcony—freed him to be a little more reckless with other girls.
This was how he was feeling when a group of young women walked in, weaving and husky-voiced from talking over loud music all night. They wanted bottled water, Maven standing near the drink cooler. He glanced over without too much optimism—then took a second look at the one in front.
Brunette ringlets. A beaded choker around her neck.
She drifted near, choosing between flavored waters, her friends still farther back. Aware of him, yet sober enough to avoid eye contact.
“Unicorns and gift bags,” he said.
She shot him a so-not-interested squint—followed by a glimmer of recognition.
“That club,” she said. “Precipice. That awful place.”
“It is, isn’t it?” he said, smiling. “But this guy I work with, these people I know, it’s like their spot, so …”
She nodded. “You didn’t look like everyone else there. So thrilled with themselves.”
“It’s Samara, right?”
Her friends appeared, protectively backing her up. “How did you remember my name?”
“Well, it’s unusual.”
“So I’m told.”
“It’s also the name of this city in Iraq.”
She nodded. “I’ve heard it mentioned on NPR once or twice.”
“Once or twice,” he said, smiling to himself.
“So, were you … um … ?”
“I was.”
“Ah.” She smiled uncomfortably. “Wow. What was that like?”
“Less awful than Precipice.”
She smiled again, aware that she had asked a dumb question. Her friends looked him over, not making this easy. Samara was Indian by heritage, and American by voice, but something about her—her name, and maybe her exoticism, but also something more—put him in the mind of that rarely glimpsed, peaceful side of Eden, during the war.
She was still smiling at him and not looking away.
Maven said, “I believe it was Nietzsche who once said that the most difficult thing a man can do in this life is to ask a girl out in front of her friends.”
Two of the girls laughed, while the other one, whom Maven recognized from Precipice, gave him a corny scowl.
“Okay,” said Samara.
They got out their phones, exchanging numbers side by side.
“One r,” Samara corrected him.
“One r.” He thumbed OK to save her contact info. “Okay. So I’ll call you.”
“Okay,” she said, closing her phone.
OUTSIDE, TURNING THE CORNER BACK ONTO COMM. AVE.,THE WALK back to Marlborough Street made him remember the balcony.
He found her number in his phone and pressed SEND.
She answered, “Hi?”
“Hey. I tried waiting that two-day thing before calling you, but it just wasn’t working out …”
ANESTHETIC
MAVEN LAY ON HIS BACK IN FULL CAMO ON A BED OF DIRT IN A wetlands field, holding a cold carbine flat against his chest, his finger along the magazine feed outside the pistol grip. A warm, still Sunday morning, clouds drifting across the sky. Kids used to find shapes in them, but he never could. Every cloud he saw looked just like a cloud.
He checked his timepiece, then glanced over at the building through the waving weeds. A warehouse at the swampy end of a Raynham industrial park, a granite and marble wholesaler with a storefront named TAKE FOR GRANITE. One of the Crossbone Champs did some part-time stonecutting for the guy who owned the business.
Eighteen thousand ecstasy pellets at $11.40 per. The price had risen sharply, due to recent scarcity. More demand than supply, thanks in large part to the sugar bandits.
That was $205,200. Plus another $40 K or so in uncut cocaine. A quarter mil on the table.
Maven eyed the advance men waiting near a Chevy, their inked arms crossed. One wore a wild gray beard, the other a brown, braided pony, both in jeans and boots and leather vests. But no club markings: the Crossbone Champs were not flying their colors this morning.
The rest of them showed up in a convoy of three cars—cages, as they called them—looking like the road crew for .38 Special. The buyers arrived less than a minute later, an enterprising concern of younger men led by the nephew of a former capo of the Providence, Rhode Island, Mafia, looking to reestablish the family’s influence in that region.
Both factions went inside. Maven touched the talk button on his Bluetooth. “Go time.”
“Let’s bring it,” answered Termino, little more than a hiss in Maven’s ear. Termino and Glade and Suarez were already in position inside the warehouse.
The advance bikers and two mafiosi lingered outside, the bikers sneering over at the buyers, everything a macho trip with these guys. One biker chuckled and said something to the other, then the one with the ponytail tossed away the cigarette he’d been smoking and walked in Maven’s direction. He stopped just off the blacktop, unzipping his fly and taking a long leak into the weeds.
His stream stopped as he saw Maven sit up just a few yards away. He saw the camo and the carbine pointed at him, and the crow’s-feet at his narrowing eyes tightened.
Maven said, “Don’t zip up. Don’t do anything.”
The biker’s urine stream resumed.
Shrubs and thorny overgrowth provided Maven with good cover from the others. In his ear, he heard Termino shouting commands inside, taking control of the room.
Maven saw the other biker look over at his not-moving buddy. The mafiosi stood near their cars, not paying much attention.
Then things started to go bad in his ear.
Glade’s voice now. “Hey—you stay down—stay down!—don’t—”
The yelling was cut short by a brraapp of gunfire so loud, Maven flung the device from his ear.
The other biker drew a pistol from the back of his jeans and started for the door.
Maven’s biker tried to zip up before drawing his piece. Big mistake. Maven was up too fast, throating the biker with the butt of his carbine, the big man dropping hard.
More gunfire from inside as Maven ran across the blacktop.
The other biker fired at the stunned mafiosi, who took cover behind the cars, now firing back. The biker was hit in the gut but kept going.
Maven reached the rear corner, taking cover there. A bay door near him started to rise, opening a few feet, and Maven took a knee, carbine aimed.
It was Glade. He scrambled out fast, Suarez spilling out after him, but heavily, dropping to the blacktop. Maven saw blood o
n Suarez’s leg.
Termino followed, sliding out and turning, firing behind him. Maven stepped up, in a good crouch, sighting inside the warehouse over the top handle of the carbine. He saw rows of granite slabs stood up on long edges. A spit of flame lashed out from the left, and he answered, the carbine rattling, kicking back hard at his shoulder. Glade hauled out two cases of Olde English 800, glass bottles clanking inside, as Maven held them off. Glade dragged out a vinyl Puma duffel bag, a few shots rapping off the inside of the half-raised bay door.
Maven saw the strap hanging off the bottom of the bay-door handle and took a chance. He launched himself up off one of the rubber truck bumpers built into the exterior of the bay, grasping the strap and firing into the warehouse as his weight rode the door down and closed.
More rounds rapped the inside of the door. Maven spun to the corner, leaning around it. No gunfire there. He sighted on the vehicles, squeezing the trigger, tires bursting air and moisture, the bodies of the cars sinking.
He spun back to the others, grabbing the Olde English case Glade couldn’t handle, and following them into the wetlands, jogging backward, his muzzle on the rear bay door.
THEY GOT DEEP INTO THE WEED GROWTH, PUTTING SOME TREES between them and the warehouse. Suarez was biting down on the neck of his armored vest, screaming into it as Termino carried him on his shoulder.
“What the fuck?” said Maven.
“Fucking bikers,” said Glade, breathing hard on the run. “Fucking rather be shot than ripped off.”
One of Suarez’s screams escaped his vest.
“Pass out already,” grumbled Termino.
“How bad?” said Maven.
“Thigh,” said Glade.
Outer thigh, okay, just muscle damage. Inner thigh could mean the femoral artery, bleeding out, death within two minutes. Termino would be drenched in Suarez’s blood if it were the artery.
They hustled through a swampy field of dead, denuded trees, a clearing that had seen a fire. Termino stopped near a drainpipe, close to the cars, parked in the parking lot of an out-of-business windshield-replacement shop. He dumped Suarez onto a bed of grass, and Maven saw the leg wound, blood pulsing down his pants. Termino fished a telephone out from his vest and tossed it to Maven before ripping open Suarez’s jeans around the wound.