by Chuck Hogan
Suarez said, “You going to ditch us now? You’re leaving us a man down.”
“Biggest haul of our young lives, Mave,” said Glade. “Why you pick now to flake?”
Their words were nothing compared to what Maven saw in Royce’s face. Maven had ruined what they’d had, and he wondered what it would look like from here.
BLACK FALCON
TRICKY SAT ALL THE WAY TO THE LEFT IN BACK, UP AGAINST THE tinted window so he couldn’t be spied through the windshield—so far over that he disappeared out of Lash’s rearview mirror altogether.
Lash took him down the street past the Black Falcon marine industrial park. The Edison plant was across the channel to the right, Logan Airport ahead of them across Boston Harbor. Lash said, “What about this blond guy here?”
The guy was well built, athletic, wearing a green tracksuit and jogging slowly with white speaker buds in his ears.
“Naw,” said Tricky. “Don’t know him.”
“He’s been hanging around. Did this loop three times yesterday.”
“This is still Southie right here. Lotta fools dope up and go exercise. White guys, mostly.”
Lash followed the road left around the turn. “We’re gonna unplug this thing today.”
“Today?” Tricky sat up a bit. “You sure?”
“Never sure. Never, ever sure.”
The light, repetitive thumping was Tricky’s fingers paradiddling on the back of Lash’s headrest. “Damn.”
“What?”
“Just … did I make the right decision, you know? For me.”
“You made the right decision.”
“If things go wrong, then what? Where am I then?”
“Nobody on my end knows about you yet. No one’s known this whole time, and there’s no point in bringing them in now. But people will know you after.”
“Fuck,” Tricky said. “That’s dangerous shit. They gonna put me and my money on a beach somewhere?”
“Not likely. But someplace safe.”
“Nowhere’s safe for a snitch.” Lash heard a sigh come out of Tricky. “I must be out of my Negro mind. You always said you wanted me out of the game.”
“And you better stay out.”
Foot tapping joined the thumping, a riff of nerves. “Where is this place anyway? I never been down here.”
“Just passed it.”
Tricky turned to look, his fingers stopping. “Bandits profit from inside info—why not me?”
“First smart thing you’ve done since I’ve known you. Just keep thinking about the money.”
“Exactly right,” said Tricky, his fingers resuming their patter. “You just read my damn horoscope.”
GLADE CALLED IN. “MOVEMENT UP IN THE WINDOWS, BUT NOTHING by the door. Guess I’m in for another loop.”
Maven thought that Glade’s jogging around the Black Falcon in a tracksuit was way too obvious, but couldn’t say anything to Termino and Suarez. They sat together inside a van in a lot at the head of the loop. They were having trouble getting their eyeballs on the stash house—the “house” in question being the office of a seafood importer sandwiched between freight terminals.
Maven said to Glade, “What about that Sequoia that went by?”
“Didn’t see it.”
“Silver. Tinted windows in back.”
Glade said, “Lotta cars out here, Mave.”
Maven hung up on him. Over on Dry Dock Avenue, an Edison crew worked their second day on a streetlight, with no cop detail. Maven mentioned it earlier, but Termino only thought he was looking for a way out.
Maven said, “This loop is essentially a dead end. Only one exit.”
Suarez said, “We could go into the drink.”
Termino said, “First of all, and come up where? We’d have to swim two miles—and they’d still find us. Second—I, for one, don’t love that dirty water. Syphilis down there.”
Maven said, “We don’t even know how many doors we have to go through.”
Termino said, “So we have to get fancy. We’ve done it before. Stop shitting on this, Maven, and man up.”
The passing rumble was that of the Edison truck surging down the street, pulling up just out of sight—right about where the seafood importer’s office was.
Two SUVs followed it at a high rate of speed.
They heard the loud banging of a door being rammed open.
Termino said, “What in the goddamn—”
Maven picked up the ringing phone. Glade said, “Shit, I’m fucking bailing.”
Three gunshots—muffled, from inside the building—were followed by yelling.
“A setup,” said Termino.
Maven broke apart the work phone and reached for his backpack.
More gunfire. Glade went jogging past them, toward Summer Street. Suarez jumped into the driver’s seat and started the engine, but Maven pulled on his arm. “Leave it. Bail.”
Termino was already out the side door and walking away. Maven went out the other door, then Suarez, heading off in different directions.
People exited the adjoining marine park buildings, fleeing toward Maven as he crossed onto Dry Dock Avenue. He saw the Edison truck and the SUVs with police lights flashing in their taillights.
Automatic gunfire blasted down from the second-floor windows, spraying the vehicles. Agents wearing body armor and DEA vests crouched behind them, pinned down.
Maven watched the action from behind a skinny, city-planted tree. The feds were taking heavy heat, outflanked and overmatched. Then he saw a long-limbed DEA agent ducking behind a vehicle’s front end, yelling into a mobile phone.
Agent Lash. Calling in more backup. He evidently couldn’t hear anything from his phone and took a chance, ducking and running behind a pickup truck.
It was a raid. It had gone wrong, and fast. This was an ambush.
Lash pulled a sidearm and peeked over the bed of the pickup, squeezing off shots at the building—ducking back when retaliatory rounds plunked the vehicle.
Maven dug into his backpack. He carried an all-black Beretta 92, an instrument of his paranoia. He slipped it out of its nylon bag and slid off the safety, holding it low against his leg, starting down the far side of the road, moving from car to car as more people fled past him.
One of the SUV’s gas tanks exploded. Not a spectacular ball of flame, but a concussive burst that lifted the back of the vehicle and threw back the men behind it. No one was on fire, but they were hurt, rolling from side to side in the road.
Maven came up beside a black guy sitting with his back against a blue Honda, biting the neck of his navy blue Champion hoodie and saying over and over, “Shit, shit, shit.”
Maven peeked through the cracked window glass and saw Lash reloading, the pickup not thirty yards away. He moved up one more car, not wanting to be seen.
In the second-floor window above, Maven saw a shirtless blond guy wearing a gun strap across his bare chest. The shooter aimed down at Lash. Maven straightened and fired over the Honda’s roof—too far away to be accurate, but enough to break the glass and send the shooter ducking for cover.
Maven spun back down and wondered what sort of insanity had caused him to do that. His lack of judgment turned him ice-cold, and he ducked away to the previous car as a hail of rounds came whistling near.
LASH FLATTENED OUT AND SLID UNDERNEATH THE PICKUP. THEY were surrounded. Lash heard fire behind him.
He looked up at the undercarriage of the truck and remembered the exploding SUV, and that made him slide partly out, enough to see the shirtless shooter in the window firing down into the street.
Lash’s first round cracked the rifle’s stock. The second burst red over the shooter’s neck. Shots three, four, and five struck the chest of the howling shooter, who was too dumb to fall.
Lash scrambled out from beneath the truck. Sirens in the distance, all the sounds combining in his head to form a machinelike roar.
The raid was a disaster. The bad guys had been waiting for them in
side. Lash wondered if, in hoping to draw out the Sugar Bandits, maybe he had waited too long.
He remembered the gunfire behind him and looked across the street. He saw a body behind a car. Maybe the shooting from that side of the street was friendly fire, saving him from the assassin above.
Lash raced back there, one round chipping the tar at his feet. He dove over the trunk of the Honda, falling to the sidewalk near the man’s boots.
The man lay on his side. No armor, nothing identifying him as law. Lash crawled up on him, seeing broken glass from the car windows on his sweatshirt, blood soaking the neck of his hoodie.
Lash rolled him faceup. It was Tricky. His head was ringed as usual in a drawstring hood, and Lash reached inside, putting his bare hand over the neck wound, just as he had all those years before.
This gash was worse, obliterating his former scar.
“The fuck are you doing here, man?” said Lash.
Tricky tried to swallow, couldn’t. His hand gripped Lash’s wrist, holding him tight. “Protecting my investment,” he coughed out, gritting his teeth.
“What are you talking about, Trick?”
“You. Something happened to you, I’m fucked.”
“You goddamn fool,” said Lash, which was not what he meant to say. Lash looked around for the gun. “Where’s the piece?”
“Gotta save me again, man.”
Lash looked up the road for ambulances, a cruiser, anything. “Shit, Tricky, hold on. Hold the fuck on.”
Tricky stared, but no longer at Lash’s face. His grip slackened, and the pressure of the blood pushing through Lash’s fingers ebbed.
“Hold on!” said Lash.
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?”