The Town: A Novel

by Chuck Hogan

  She recalled a news story about a woman who was accidentally knocked overboard a moored cruise ship. She came up to the surface unhurt, treading water, but trapped by the tide pushing the massive ship back against the dock. She would have been crushed to death if she hadn’t wriggled out of her evening dress and kicked off her heels, swimming straight down into the blackness, feeling her way blindly along the hull to the deep bottom keel, then pulling herself past it and kicking free, lungs bursting as she surfaced on the other side, naked and alive.

  Had Claire made it to the other side? Was she coming up for air now?

  The police were already in her foyer, and she reached for Doug’s hand one last time before they were separated forever. His body had settled against the chair, his hand impossibly heavy now and wanting to fall. She noticed dirt under his fingernails and darkening his cuticles, and thought immediately of her garden. She couldn’t imagine any reason why he would have gone there—nor why she felt so certain that he had.

  Walk to the water until you can feel it on your toes. Then take off the blindfold.

  She felt the same sensation of passing as she had watching her young brother die: of something coming to nothing, yes, but at the same time, a conferring of responsibility, a covenant passed from the dead to the living.

  Claire was taking off the blindfold now. She looked deep into Doug’s dimming eyes, reminded of hearth fires and how, even after the flames died, the glowing cinders were slow to cool. She wondered what it was that Doug MacRay saw as the glow of his life faded. She wondered what died last in the heart of a thief.

  54

  END BEGINNING

  “CAN’T DO IT,” SAID Jem. “I can’t fucking do it. He’s turning my fucking stomach with this. We ordered these sandwiches what, twelve hours ago? You couldn’t get cold cuts like the rest of us, Magloan? Sitting here with your soggy-ass steak sub, these fucking limp peppers.”

  Dez said, “Never mind that he’s been eating the thing for like, three hours.”

  “This isn’t eating anymore,” said Jem, “this is lovemaking. He’s getting it on with a steak sub. Somebody cover my young, impressionable eyes.”

  Dez said, “Joanie does usually go around with a smile on her face.”

  “Oh—no question Gloansy gives primo head,” Jem said. “I can vouch for that.”

  Doug shushed their groaning laughter, not very concerned about the audio sensors inside the vault’s antitamper package, but careful just the same. The four of them sitting on the floor behind the teller counter in dusty blue jumpsuits, the bank brightening with morning light, trucks and cars rumbling outside through Kenmore Square.

  “Know what we need?” said Gloansy, still munching. “Those headsets with ear wires, like in the movies. So we can talk while we’re in different rooms.”

  “Headsets are gay,” said Jem. “You’d look like a girl folding pants at the Gap. Walkie-talkies—that’s a man’s radio.”

  “I’m talking hands-free,” said Gloansy. “Gun in one hand, bag of cash in the other, capeesh?”

  “Do not say capeesh. You sound like a douche.” Jem got to his feet, stretched. “See, this is too fucking relaxed here. This isn’t robbing. This, we could do back at my place. Why going in on the prowl sucks. All night, cutting a hole in the fucking ceiling. Like working for a living.”

  “Prowl is smart,” said Doug.

  “Prowl is pussy,” said Jem.

  Doug checked the wall clock. “You want strong, kid, we go strong in about ten minutes. Let’s pack this shit up.”

  Gloansy said, “But I haven’t finished my snack.”

  Jem snatched it out of his hands and mashed it, threw it into their trash bag. “You finished now? ’Cause I got a fucking bank to rob.”

  Doug checked his Colt’s load and dropped it back into his pocket, knowing he was much more likely to hit someone over the head with the thing than he ever was to fire it. As obsessive as Doug was about the jobs they pulled, Jem’s weapons source was the one detail he preferred to know nothing about. If indeed it was the Florist or one of the dust-brained kids in the Florist’s employ, that would only piss Doug off.

  Gloansy got to his feet without his Mountain Dew. Doug told him, “You gonna leave your tonic there, you might as well write your name and Social Security number on the wall in blood.”

  “I got it, I got it,” said the freckled wonder, stowing it in the open work duffel near the bleach jugs.

  They went on with their bickering for a few more precious preheist minutes, and Doug took a step back and realized that this was the part of the job he liked best. The intervals of downtime when they were all just kids again, four messed-up boys from the Town, so good at being so bad. He realized he never felt more secure, more at peace, more protected, than he did then, cooping inside a bank they were about to rob. Nobody could touch them there. Nobody could hurt them except each other.

  Jem said, “Bad news, Monsignor. Rolling Stone said U2’s next album is disco.”

  Dez rubbed at his eyes, prodding his contact lenses. “Not true.”

  “It happens, kid. These things can’t last forever. Got to end sometime.”

  “We’ll see,” said Dez, wiring his police radio into his ear. “We shall see.”

  Jem pulled a paper Foodmaster bag out of the work duffel. “Game faces,” he said, handing out black ski masks.

  “This is it?” said Gloansy, pulling on the knit mask. “This what you been so top-secret about?”

  Jem grinned his grin and went back into the bag. “Feast your eyes, ladies.”

  Doug received his goalie mask and looked it over—the oval eyes, the jagged, black, hand-drawn stitches.

  “Gerry Cheevers,” said Gloansy, awestruck, pulling it on over his ski mask.

  Jem pulled a gun into his blue-gloved hand and said, “Let’s make some motherfucking bank.”

  The other masks nodded, smacked fists all around, Doug looking at the stitched-up faces of his friends. Dez went to take his position inside the shaded front windows, Gloansy remaining behind the counter.

  Doug turned past the vault, following Jem down the short hallway to the back door where they faced each other in the shadows, standing silent and still on either side. Doug had no dark premonitions about the job as he pulled the black .38 into his hand. The only thing bothering him now was that the fun part was already over.

  A car pulled up outside, doors opening, shutting. “Fucking clockwork,” hissed Jem’s empty-eyed mask.

  Claire Keesey. That was the branch manager’s name. She drove a plum Saturn coupe with a useless rear spoiler and a bumper sticker that said BREATHE! She was single, as far as Doug could tell, and he wondered why. Surprising, the things you could learn about a person from a distance, the impressions that you formed. Tailing her for so long, watching her from afar, had raised more questions than answers. He was curious about her now. He wondered, with the idle affection of a guy thinking about a girl, what she was going to look like up close.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Debts owed to: Charlotte, for unwavering support; my father, source of strength and inspiration; my Melanie and my Declan; the uncanny NewGents; Richard Abate, Prince of Agents; Colin Harrison, who enriched this book in record time; Kevin Smith at Pocket; Sarah Knight and everybody at Scribner; and Nan Graham and Susan Moldow.

  Scribner proudly presents

  Devils in Exile

  By

  Chuck Hogan

  Now available from Scribner

  Turn the page for an excerpt from

  Devils in Exile…

  THE LOT

  A COLD SATURDAY NIGHT IN November.

  Neal Maven stood on the edge of the parking lot, looking up at the buildings of downtown Boston. He was wondering about the lights left shining in the windows of the top-floor offices—who does that, and why—when a thumping bass line made him turn.

  A silver limousine eased around the corner. Its long side windows were mirrored so that the less fortunate
could see themselves watching the American dream pass them by. Maven stuffed his hands deep inside the pouch pockets of his blanket-thick hoodie, stamping his boots on the blacktop to keep warm.

  Nine months now. Nine months he’d been back. Nine months since demobilization and discharge, like nine months of gestation, waiting to be reborn back into the peacetime world. Nine months of transition and nothing going right.

  He had already pissed through most of his duty pay. The things you tell the other guys you’re going to do once you get back home—grow a beard, drink all night, sleep all day—those things he had done. Those goals he had achieved. The things the army recommends doing before discharge, to ease your transition—preparing a résumé, lining up housing, securing employment—those things he had let slide.

  A lot of businesses still stuck yellow support our troops ribbons in their front windows, but when you actually showed up fresh from Iraq, looking for work, scratching your name and address on an application pad, they saw not a battle-tested hero but a potential Travis Bickle. Hiring a guy with more confirmed kills than college credits was a tough sell. Maven could feel civilians’ discomfort around him, their unease. As if they heard a tick, tick, tick going inside his head. Probably the same one he heard.

  Barroom conversations took on subtext.

  “Let me buy you a drink, soldier” meant If you wig out and decide to start shooting up the room, spare me, I’m one of the good guys.

  “You know, I came close to enlisting myself” meant Yeah, September eleventh made me piss my pants, but I somehow pulled myself together and haven’t missed an episode of American Idol since.

  “I supported you boys one hundred percent” meant Just because I have a rib-bon magnet on my car doesn’t mean you can look at my daughter.

  “Great to have you back” meant Now please go away again.

  He finally did drop by the VA for some career guidance, and a short-armed woman with a shrub of salt-and-pepper hair and everyday compassion sat down and banged out that magical résumé, omitting any reference to combat experience. What he considered to be his proudest accomplishment in life, aside from not getting maimed or killed in action—namely, passing the six-phase Qualification Course at Fort Bragg, earning his Special Forces tab in the run-up to the Iraq invasion—was shrunken to a bullet point on the “Skill Sets” section of his résumé. “Proficient at team-building and leadership skills.” Not “Mud-hungry, man-killing son of a bitch.” So much of his life since coming back had been about writing off what had happened.

  The resulting document was a skimpy little thing that whimpered, “Please hire me.” He had fifty of them printed on twenty-four-pound paper at Kinko’s and seeded another seventy-five around the city via e-mail, to a great and profound silence.

  The parking-lot-guard job—6 p.m. to 2 a.m., three nights a week—came via a posting on craigslist. The owner of the parking lot was a builder looking to jab another diamond pin in the cushion of downtown Boston. The property manager who hired Maven, a square-shouldered navy vet of two Vietnam tours, clapped him on the back fraternally and then explained that he would break Maven’s thumbs if he stole so much as a penny.

  After a week or two of long hours stamping his feet out in the bitterly cold night, warding street people away from soft-top Benzes and Lexus SUVs, this threat took the form of a challenge. Every shift now, Maven showed up thinking he wouldn’t steal, only to soften after long hours soaking in the lonesome marinade of night. $36.75 FLAT FEE, ENTER AFTER 6 P.M., NO BLOCKING, EASY-IN/EASY-OUT. He kept it to one or two cars a shift, nothing serious. Latecomers always, inebriates pulling in after midnight, addressing Maven as “my man” or “dude,” and never requesting a receipt, never even noticing him lifting the gate by hand. All they cared about was tucking their silver Saab in near the downtown action, wanting nothing to disrupt the momentum of their weekend night.

  It was funny money, the $73.50 he skimmed. He wasted it accordingly, opening the gate at quarter to two and walking a few blocks south to Centerfold’s in the old Combat Zone, dropping his dollars on a couple of quick beers and a table dance before lights-up at two. He was in a bad way. Any money he had left over, he would take two blocks over to Chinatown, ordering a pot of “cold tea” along with the club zombies and the Leather District poseurs and the college seniors too cool for Boston’s puritanical 2 a.m. closing time. Maven sat alone at a cloth-covered table, the piped-in Asian music trickling into his beer buzz like sweet rain as he drank the teapot of draft Bud, throwing back pork dumplings like soft, greasy aspirins. Then he overtipped the rest, tightened up his boot laces, and strapped on his shoulder pack for the long run home.

  Home was Quincy, 8.2 miles away.

  Running was a purge and a meditation. His thick boots clumped over the cracked streets of rough neighborhoods, along dormant Conrail tracks, and under expressway bridges. Past dark playgrounds and suspicious cars idling at corners, traffic lights blinking yellow overhead, people calling out from porches and stoops, “Who’s chasin’ you, man?”

  Quincy is home to beautiful ocean-view properties, seven-?figure marina condos, and is the original homestead of this country’s first father-son presidents, the Adamses.

  Maven’s converted attic apartment was nowhere near any of these. It had sloped ceilings in every room, a stand-up shower with almost zero water pressure, and stood directly under the approach path into Logan.

  This was where he lived now. This was who he was.

  Sometimes, during his run, he remembered the dancers and the way they eyed themselves in the strip club’s mirrored walls as they worked the stage: so unashamed and even bored by their public nudity, as though they considered themselves just part of the spectacle, and not in fact its focus.

  This was Maven’s attitude toward himself and his own life now. He felt as though he were watching a man slowly slipping over the edge of a deep chasm, not at all concerned that this man was him.

  SIX NIGHTS BEFORE, HE had nearly killed a man.

  The rain had been coming down hard that shift, hard enough to wash away the usual symphony of the downtown weekend: no laughter from passing couples; no Emerson students gloating in packs; no snatches of discussion from scarf-wearing theatergoers; no club-hoppers tripping over sidewalk cracks and laughing off their ass.

  The gate had a small booth, but with the rain banging on the tin roof like gunshots, it was easier just to stand outside, letting the rain rap his poncho hood and shoulders, blowing down in sheets from the high security lamps like the rippling sails of a storm-?battered ship. He imagined himself a rock beneath a waterfall, and the sensation, as such, was not unpleasant; this was the kind of mind game he had taught himself in the Arabian desert.

  People think it never rains over there, but it does: rarely and suddenly, as out of place as applause inside a church. Desert rain tastes silty and runs in dirty black tears down your face. Boston rain, on the other hand, thanks to recycled industrial emissions, tastes and smells as sweet as a soft drink.

  Since returning to the States, Maven had battled reimmersion issues common among discharged Iraq veterans. A heightened startle reflex; avoidance of crowded places; sudden, overwhelming anxiety attacks. Discarded food containers, dead animals on the roadside, a man walking alone into traffic: in Iraq, the appearance of these things portended death. Any of them had the potential to detonate fatally without notice. His time over there had been one of unremitting suspense, which he had met with unrelenting vigilance, one of many habits he was still having trouble unlearning.

  Two things conspired to distract him from his usual psychotic vigilance that night. The insulating rain was one of them. The other was a gleaming black Cadillac Escalade that pulled in around ten.

  The Escalade was a big SUV, the driver sitting at about Maven’s eye level. Nothing about him jumped out at Maven: black hair, a no-nonsense face, perfectly shaped shirt collar, jutting chin. The dash was loaded with electronics, more sophisticated than anything in Maven’s entir
e apartment.

  As the driver went poking into the sun visor for cash, a woman leaned forward in the passenger seat. She threw a brief glance Maven’s way—nothing more than a peek around a blind corner—just curious to put a face to the dark figure working in the rain. The liquid crystal display of the navigation screen lit her green and blue like some beautiful android. Maven glimpsed a flawless neck, a delicately pointed chin, and a tantalizingly thick line of cleavage.

  All in an instant. She eased back again—no spark in her eyes, no recognition, nothing.

  “Messy night, huh?”

  The guy was talking to him, a neatly creased fifty clipped be?-tween his fingers. The windshield wipers flicked rain into Maven’s face.

  “Yeah,” said Maven, slow to recover, his hands disappearing inside his pants pockets within the poncho, making change.

  The guy accepted the damp bills and coins and spilled them into his cupholder. “Stay dry, man.”

  He pulled in and parked, exiting with a wide black umbrella, and Maven watched them walk away arm in arm, focusing on the woman’s bare shins beneath the cut of her dress, her heels picking at the sidewalk, the sound fading into the rain.

  Maven knew her. Knew of her, anyway. A girl from his high school. Older than him by three years, a senior when he was a freshman, but as clear and as fixed in his memory as the bikini model who used to smile down at him from the poster on his bedroom wall. Smiled knowingly, with one crooked thumb hooked in the side string of her pink bikini bottom, drawing it an inch away from her cocked hip. That kind of memory.

  Her name came back to him with the slap and sting of a snowball to the face: Danielle Vetti.

  He said it aloud a few times in the rain. “Danielle Vetti, Dan?ielle Vetti, Danielle Vetti.” Watching it steam and disappear. He was amazed to have seen her again, marveling at the gyrations the paths of their lives had to have taken in order to intersect once again, momentarily, that rainy night. The mere memory of her, and this one-second encounter—even the taste of her name in his mouth, after all those years—all put a charge into him the likes of which he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.