The door pulled open. “Hey, you’re early—”
The words died in Ricky’s open mouth as he recognized Maven.
“Neal?” he said, unable to hide his shock at Maven’s appearance.
Inside the kitchen, boxes of sugary cereal stood in the center of a Formica table. The house apartment hadn’t been updated since the late 1970s. Evidently the utilities were included in the rent because it was like a sauna inside and the radiator kept hissing.
Ricky looked drawn, purple under the eyes. A shaving cut under his chin had scabbed. He wore baggy, pajama-type shorts and a V-necked T-shirt with yellow underarm stains.
“You okay?” said Ricky. “You want something?”
Maven pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and sat, his feet burning.
Ricky seemed agitated, not knowing how to act or even how to stand still. “What happened to your... your face?”
“I fell down a flight of stairs.”
“Must have been one hell of a flight of stairs.” Ricky moved to the counter, opening cabinets fast. “Something to eat, maybe?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Uh... how about Campbell’s Chunky soup? Date’s okay.”
Maven rested an arm on the table. “Anything.”
Ricky plugged in an electric can opener, which made a whirring sound Maven hadn’t heard since he was a boy. Then a grinding noise, the can jumping off the blade halfway around. Ricky swore and fumbled for something in a drawer. He jimmied the can top with a long screwdriver in his good hand. “So. What brings you by?”
“I’ve got nowhere else to go. No money. No home. No clothes. Literally nothing.”
Ricky glanced back, still struggling with the can. “How can that be? What about your buddies?”
“They’re dead.”
Ricky’s screwdriver jimmying stopped. Then someone rapped at the door.
“Shit. Hey, that’s just a friend of mine... hang on, I’ll have him come back.” Ricky wiped his hands on his shorts and went out, closing the first door behind him before opening the second.
Maven got to his feet. He stood by the wall, listening, unable to make out anything. Hearing voices but not words.
Something came over him, and he rushed through the doors to the exterior landing.
The guy Ricky stood close to wore a parka and a knit cap. “Oh, hi,” said the guy, before Maven grabbed him by the front of his coat, spinning and throwing him inside through the two open doors, propelling him backward through the kitchen and into a living-room easy chair.
Ricky came rushing in behind them. “Neal — what in the hell?”
Maven held the guy by his collar, his other fist cocked. “Who are you! Who sent you!”
The guy in the chair couldn’t get out any words.
Ricky said, “Neal, that’s Greg, my buddy Greg...”
Greg looked freaked-out as Maven patted him down, going through his coat pockets, searching him hard. “Who sent you here?”
Ricky put a hand on Neal’s arm. “Neal, hey, come on—”
Maven shoved Ricky backward, and Ricky hit the TV table, knocking over one of his cheap speakers.
Maven found a couple of bucks in the guy’s jeans pocket and threw it into his lap. Then he found a medical vial inside the phone pocket of his coat. Maven yelled, “What the fuck is this?” Greg said nothing, looking to Ricky for help, not receiving any. Maven tossed the vial onto the sofa. “Who’s your supplier? Talk!”
Greg realized he was about to get hit. “I... a guy I work with.”
“Who?”
“Just a guy. I work at a managed-care facility.” Greg was teary. “A goddamn nursing home. He gives it to me, I bring it to Ricky. Ricky’s my friend. He’s sick.”
Maven caught his breath. He straightened, releasing Greg.
Greg was hyperventilating. “What are you? Some kind of cop?”
Maven reached down for him again, and Greg flinched as if he were going to get beat up, but Maven only pulled him to his feet. Maven fixed his coat somewhat, then stepped back. “Get out of here. Don’t ever come back.”
Greg looked at Ricky a moment, waiting for a contradictory word. Then he stuffed his money back inside his coat pockets and walked out the doors.
Maven stared at the floor, knowing he had lost it, knowing he wasn’t fully in control of himself yet.
When he looked up, the vial was gone from the sofa. Ricky stood with his head down.
Maven walked to the kitchen. He bent back the cover of the hacked-open can and gobbled down the cold soup. Lumpy, gelatinous paste, but he barely tasted it, the food landing in his stomach like a fist.
He slid the long-shaft screwdriver into his belt. He found Ricky’s car keys hanging on a peg near the door, next to Ricky’s patrol cap. Maven took both.
Maven said, “I need to borrow your car.”
Dark Energy
He drove the Parisienne back into Boston, cruising a gas station sharing a parking lot with a McDonald’s just two blocks from a Topeka Street methadone clinic. He parked and walked over to the gated trash pen beside the gas station, away from the brightest lights. He waited with his hands in his pockets, Ricky’s cap brim low over his eye bandage, until a guy in a black-and-gold Bruins hoodie sauntered past.
“Don’t be so fucking obvious, man.”
Maven let the guy cross the parking lot before following him. A row of trash-strewn evergreens lined a fence.
The runner doubled back, hands in his front pouch pockets. “Well?”
“I want it,” said Maven.
The runner looked him over, sniffling. “You don’t look cop.”
“You neither.”
He decided. “Front me ten, see what I can do.”
“I’m trusting you?”
“That’s how it works. Where the fuck you been?”
Maven said, “Iraq.”
“Huh.” The runner hunched his shoulders against the cold. “That’s fucked-up.” He snuffled deep, swallowing snot. “So, welcome back. Now pay to play.”
Maven made as if he were going to do so, then grabbed the runner by his neck, spinning him around and putting the screwdriver to his throat, the point poised at his carotid artery.
He reached inside the runner’s pouch and took from him a flip knife and a phone. “Where’s the holder?”
“The who?”
Maven pressed the point harder against the runner’s throat, enough to feel the artery pulsing through the handle.
“You crazy?”
“Wanna find out?” said Maven.
Around the corner on Atkinson, a wire-topped chain-link fence ran to a shorter wooden fence abutting a stone wall. The holder emerged from his nook, seeing the figure jogging toward him under the weak, yellow streetlights in a Bruins sweatshirt, hood up.
Maven shocked him, grabbing him by the throat. The holder bore a little chin growth trimmed into a diamond, and Maven stuck the point of the runner’s flip knife blade just below it.
He frisked the holder, coming away with another phone and knife, pocketing them, then bracing the holder’s throat with his forearm. He used the knife blade to slice through the fabric beneath the guy’s bulging cargo pants pocket and removed a folded wad of cash.
The holder couldn’t talk because of the Baggies of crack cocaine tucked under his tongue. Maven chopped him below his diamond-bearded chin, covering his mouth until the guy had no choice but to choke them down.
Maven said, “Whose corner is this?”
“My fucking corner.”
“Who you front for?”
The holder said, “You crazy.”
Maven took out the holder’s phone and opened it, snapping a photograph of the guy. “Everyone in your contact list gets this, with a message saying you’re five-oh and you flipped—”