“Oh, Jesus, don’t do this—”
“I’m doing it. I can’t be taking you from him. That’s not me. Even if it is me... I’m not going out on him like that. I’m not. It has to be your decision. I can get you out of this. But you need to make the move.”
She looked away, closed her eyes. He had dropped too much on her.
“I don’t want an answer now,” he told her. “I want you to be sure.”
A car horn in the street got their attention, opened her eyes.
“You need to get out of here,” she said. “Before he comes back.”
The stairs were too risky. Danielle opened a door off the kitchen that led up six steps to the roof. Maven went out into the sunlight, shoes crunching stones. Instead of moving straight to the fire escape, he stood and took in the city from above.
He wasn’t sorry to leave it. He had no choice now. Instead of feeling depressed — at the ruination of his relationship with Royce, and the truth about Danielle — he felt strangely, cautiously elated. All the strings were cut. The lack of a choice made his path clear.
Loose Ends
The movers were gone. Maven reassembled Samara’s bed and hooked up her wireless router and screwed in her curtain rods. At her insistence he checked the bathroom for landlord cameras and helped her test the intercom. While she unloaded her kitchen glassware, he walked to Chef Chang’s for takeout, rehearsing what he was going to say when he got back. He returned and, over orange-flavored chicken eaten off paper plates on a cardboard box, he broke up with her.
He said all the things you say, about how great she was and how sorry he felt, and he meant every word.
She sat there stunned, staring at the open boxes and empty walls. “This isn’t happening. How can I live here now? This place you got me. Everywhere I look... every time I walk in that door...” She looked at him as though he had morphed into someone else. “There’s something wrong. I’ve felt it.”
“No. Well — one thing. This client. Long story, but... see, I’m being sued. It’s a bullshit case, but they’re trying to serve me, you know, and they don’t have my address, so...”
“They don’t have the address of your office?”
“No, they have that. They don’t know that I live upstairs from there. So — remember my motorcycle registration? I’m just saying, if a guy comes around, a tall guy, black, older, pretty smooth — he might even try to show you a badge or claim he’s law enforcement or something — just know that you don’t have to tell him anything, okay? You don’t know me. I don’t want to see you dragged into this.”
She stared at him in such a way that he wasn’t sure she’d heard a word he’d said.
“Okay?” he said.
“Did you take money from someone?”
“What? No.”
“My dad, I didn’t tell you this, I don’t tell anyone, but he took some money from some clients, there was a scandal. He went to jail, I mean prison, for almost a year... and we had to move. But he paid it all back, and so I know how it is to fall behind sometimes and maybe get desperate...”
“Jesus — no, it’s nothing like that. I just... I just want to tie up all our loose ends.”
She stared, openmouthed. “God, that’s an ugly phrase.”
“I’m sorry.”
He had unpacked the contents of her desk with an eye out for anything linking him to her. His number was still in her phone, but he was going to dump that mobile. And with the bandits disbanding, there soon would be nothing to trace.
She stared at him, darkening, actively trying to read his mind. “Is it your boss’s girlfriend?”
Maven was stunned. He thought about lying, then blurted out, “Yes.”
“What?” She was more stunned than he had been. “What do you mean, yes? What the hell does that mean?”
“You just said—”
“I wasn’t serious. Oh my God...”
And on it went for another hour, Samara vacillating between sadness and anger, between self-examination and self-righteousness, the argument running its course until it ended as only it could, with her ordering him to get out.
He lingered at the stoop outside, letting the night air get at him. Knowing he had acted in her own best interest didn’t stop him from feeling like a shit. But if this was the worst of it, then he would be lucky.
They watched the Dr. Who guy, Curt Bellson, his comings and goings. They listened to calls he made and received. The usual drill, but executed with more care this time. A bit more respect for the process.
They staked out his South End condo. They double-tailed his Saab 9–3 convertible all around town, keeping an eye out for other tails: bounty hunters, or DEA. They even played “flat tire” outside a rambling old farmhouse in the rural suburb of Easton, surrounded by acres of cranberry bog, where the deal was set to go down.
Things fell into place quickly as Bellson moved up the timetable. This busy Boston dermatologist was on the verge of financial ruin, needing the proceeds from this deal to pay off partners in a real estate venture that had gone bust in the recession.
Maven focused on the work, pouring all his extra energy into hating this guy. Taking him down was going to be a pleasure.
Spanking
The windows of the corner office overlooked Government Center and Downtown Crossing. Lora Jeffers, the special agent in charge, came around from her desk and gave his hand a good shake, called him Marcus. Lash knew what was coming. She sat down and closed her laptop to see him better.
She started by listing his procedural lapses. Never registering his confidential source with the DEA. Using an informant with whom he had a personal connection. No Form 356 payment authorizations.
“I never paid him a cent,” said Lash. “He never asked, until this. Yes, we had a personal connection. He owed me his life.”
“No Form 512, the CS Establishment Report? No prints on file?”
“I knew who he was.”
“That’s not the point, Marcus, and you know it. № 473 Cooperation Agreement? Not one DEA-6 report? Nothing memorializing any of your contacts with him?”
“No paper whatsoever. He was too highly placed to go on the registry.”
“Not so far as the DEA is concerned. Not so far as I am concerned.” She placed her palm flat on top of her desk. “We use interdiction and eradication, Marcus. Title Three intercepts, surveillance...”
Lash tuned her out, looking over at the M. C. Escher prints on her wall. The hand drawing the hand; the stairs rising up and leading down at the same time.
When he came back, she was telling him, “You’ve got plenty of years in, enough to know the consequences. Nothing will happen officially until things settle. When it is to be done, it will be done quietly, out of respect for you. You’ll just have to dangle until events run their course.”
“You’re shutting it down. Just say it. The machine needs to run the way it’s always run. Someone will come in with orders to drive it into the ground until it can be called a failure and taken apart for good. Windfall is kaput.”
“Marcus, I do believe we have a case here where the old ways, the accepted ways, the proven ways, bear out. You lost a very valuable informant, and we have three agents in the hospital. You should count yourself lucky they will all survive.”
“What went wrong at the Black Falcon terminal had nothing to do with tradecraft. We walked into an ambush. That Jamaican wasn’t waiting for us. He wasn’t looking for cops to shoot. He was lying in wait for these Sugar Bandits who’ve been raising hell all over town.”
“These so-called Sugar Bandits are as much myth as they are substance. There is a turf battle going on—”