The Exiled (12 page)

T
here was no reception in the mountains. By the time they got back to town, Raney's voice mail was full. At first, Bay sounded upset, like someone struggling to suppress information he'd rather not have in the first place. By the end, he was mad, as if Raney's absence marked a deliberate betrayal.

“Goddamn it, Raney, I can't say this shit over the phone. My stomach's churning. Get to my office now.”

“Everything all right?” Clara asked.

They were sitting in his car, in front of Mavis's store, Daniel asleep in the backseat.

“I don't know,” he said. “Bay wants to see me. He wouldn't say why.”

“Back to work, then.”

“Back to work.”

“Thank you,” she said. “It was good to get away. Even just for a morning. Good for me and for Daniel.”

“Shut the door and take a seat,” Bay said.

“What has you so riled?”

“Mavis's prints came back.”

“And?”

“Her name wasn't Mavis at all.”

He tossed a manila folder across the desk. Raney opened it, started reading. Cheryl Wilner, born 1940. Six counts of solicitation between '56 and '59, two in Philadelphia, four in Boston. In 1960: a warrant for capital murder, still open. She and her pimp, Jonathan Flory, were wanted in the stabbing death of thirty-nine-year-old Mundell Stewart, a bachelor with a trust fund. Stewart's body was discovered by the cleaning crew in a Roxbury motel on the morning of September 18. Witnesses, including the night clerk, saw both Wilner and Flory exit the deceased's room at approximately midnight. Stewart's wallet and keys were not found at the scene, and his 1958 Jaguar was gone from the lot. Subsequent investigation revealed that Stewart's Beacon Hill loft was burglarized later that morning, though there was no sign of forced entry. Police discovered his Jaguar parked in the building's underground garage.

“Well,” Raney said. “I guess we know who Jack Wilkins is. And where he got his taste for cars.”

“A pimp and a prostie. Part of me still thinks there has to be a mistake.”

“It's sad,” Raney said.

“How do you figure?”

“She was sixteen the first time they cited her. Chances are she started younger.”

“Yeah, and she died a drug-trafficking murderess.”

“Some people don't recover.”

“From what?”

“The hand they were dealt.”

Bay pushed a quarter around the surface of his desk.

“I had no idea who she was, Raney. None whatsoever. Not even when I was sleeping with her. But you had her pegged from the get-go. How?”

“I didn't have forty years of memories standing in the way.”

“I don't suppose this changes our case any.”

“It explains some things. Bob Sims told me Jack had a fetish for call girls. Said he did his fishing in Nevada.”

“I believe it. Jack never did care who Mavis was seen with.”

“The good news is we get to help the Boston PD close a forty-two-year-old cold case.”

“Shit,” Bay said. “Right under my fucking nose.”

An hour later, Bay called Raney back to his office.

“They found the Jaguar. And a body lying twenty yards away, with three bullets in its back.”

“Adler?”

“That's what we're going to find out,” Bay said.

“Where?”

“About an hour north of here.”

“North?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I figured he'd be taking the dope back East.”

“If it's Adler,” Bay said.

It was Adler—a tight cluster of bullet holes in the center of his back, his salmon-colored shirt running with blood. The staties had taped off a wide perimeter. Camera crews from across the state gathered on every side. The area was secluded, the road unpaved. Kurt must have been avoiding the highways. The front driver's side of the Jaguar was caved in. Someone had knocked the car into an arroyo, then shot Adler while he ran for cover. There was blood from a head wound on the steering wheel. Adler, disoriented, had fled without his weapon: a .38 lay under a fold of newspaper on the passenger seat.

The responding officers found 9mm shell casings among the tire tracks and skid marks. The trunk of the Jaguar was left open, nothing but a hand jack and a blanket inside. In Adler's pockets, a wallet and a hotel key card. No phone.

Raney and Bay stood on opposite sides of the body. He'd fallen forward, landed with his head turned, half his face exposed. Raney bent down, brushed away the ants.

“Pretty spot to die in,” Bay said.

“He couldn't have been here long,” Raney said. “The animals hadn't found him yet.”

“Whoever killed him didn't do much to cover it up.”

“His mind was somewhere else.”

“So he has the coke now?”

“He must. If he didn't, the key card would be missing. The question is, why come so hard after
this
supply? The guy we're chasing is willing to go to war with a Mexican cartel and a Boston crime boss.”

“He seems up to the job, too,” Bay said.

“Someone with military training, maybe.”

Technicians loaded the Jaguar onto a flatbed truck. There would be more processing, more waiting. Raney followed Bay back to the squad car. Bay turned the ignition but didn't pull out.

“You positive it's just one guy?” he asked.

“No, but this is starting to feel personal. Like some kind of vengeance specific to this package. Rivera said Mavis was already dead when he found her. He said he was jumped from behind. But if the stocky bald man had the drop on Rivera, then why not just shoot him, like he did Kurt?”

“Maybe he went there to kill a sixty-two-year-old woman. Maybe he didn't bring his gun. Or maybe Rivera's a fucking liar.”

“I think he wanted the fight. He wanted to inflict pain. Maybe he wanted to feel pain. Maybe this all starts with his own sense of guilt.”

“That's a lot of maybes,” Bay said.

“What else do we have?”

“We have his DNA. And we have DNA tests that take two menstrual cycles to come back.”

“There might be another way to ID this guy, or at least get a photo of him. Where are the lab techs with Mavis's computer?”

“Nowhere fast. We can force the issue, drive up there ourselves tomorrow. Why? What are you thinking?”

“Clara said Mavis was seeing someone online.”

“You think our guy is the someone?”

“It would fit.”

“If you're right, he sure had it figured from all angles.”

“Yeah, and he's not done. There's still whoever Jack and Mavis sold to.”

Raney sat up in bed, laptop on his knees, downloading the photos of Mavis's invoices. He found nothing: no code to crack, no trail leading back to the buyer or buyers. Just the purchase and sale of art supplies, the pages out of order, as though Mavis had spilled them across the floor and shuffled them back together.

He called up a search engine and typed in his daughter's name. He let his ring finger hover over the Return key, a ritual he'd performed almost daily since the county issued him a laptop. Always he resisted, shut the page. There was no upside to watching from afar.

He set aside his computer, lay picking small noises from the silence: a passing car, a dog barking from some distant ranch, a breeze rattling the windowpanes. For the better part of eighteen years he'd slept alone, woken alone. It was a fact of his life he rarely questioned. But now the solitude made him feel absurd, unreal—a creature cut off from every other creature. He thought that Clara, lying alone in her bed just a few short blocks away, must be feeling something similar. He checked his phone to make sure the ringer was turned on, then cursed himself for behaving like a teenager.

He sat up, reached for his suitcase. He remembered a line from
The
Maltese Falcon,
a film he'd watched time and again with his father:
I won't because all of me wants to
. He dug out a single bag, flushed it whole.

T
he warehouse was brimming, bodies pressing together on every side of the ring. Dunham stood with Raney by the skirts, watching Spike redeem himself, tagging a bodybuilder's face as though he were working a speed bag.

Dunham wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.

“It's like a fucking sauna for the homeless in here,” he said. “Since you KO'd Spike, every luckless shit sack thinks he can spot a ringer. Fuck my uncle—I'll retire off this place.”

“Want to slip me a percentage?”

“What, I'm not paying you enough?”

“I don't know what that would be.”

Dunham grinned, looked at his watch. “When's this guy gonna show?”

“Any minute.”

“Remind me how you know him.”

“From inside.”

“Cellie?”

“Bible school.”

“Bible school?”

“It helps with parole.”

The bodybuilder's head took a double bounce off the canvas. The crowd jeered, stamped their feet.

“Nice one, Spike,” Dunham called. “These fuckers all bet against you.”

Spike stepped over his opponent, stared down at Raney.

“I'm waiting on that rematch,” he said.

“Sorry,” Raney said. “I retired.”

“Smart,” Spike said.

The emcee announced the next fighter—a scrawny teenager from Bed-Stuy.

“Jesus,” Dunham said. “The stripper I fucked last night weighs more than this kid.”

He stepped up on the edge of the ring, scanned the back wall, pointed.

“I swear to God, Cobra,” he said, “if you don't drop this stick inside a minute you're finished.”

The undercover sidled up next to Raney, tapped his shoulder. He was over six feet, between 230 and 250, his dull-brown hair streaked silver and pulled back in a ponytail. He wore a black leather jacket open in the front, his gut spilling over his jeans. Raney nodded, waited for Dunham to hop back off the canvas.

“This is Doug Farlow,” Raney said. “Doug, this is Joey Dunham.”

They shook hands. Farlow smiled, held Dunham's stare.

“You've got a good thing here.”

“Thanks,” Dunham said. “You want to go a few rounds? You look like you could handle yourself.”

“Maybe if you've got a senior division.”

The bell rang. Dunham looked up at Cobra.

“What the fuck is this asshole bobbing and weaving for?
Knock the kid out!
Christ, I can't watch this shit. Let's find somewhere quiet.”

He led them through the crowd and into a windowless side room furnished with a minibar and a long folding table. He turned to Farlow.

“You just got out, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you know the drill.”

“Which one?” Farlow said. “There were a lot of drills.”

“The one where you strip.”

“You're shitting me.”

Dunham shook his head, locked the door from the inside.

“Your boys already patted me down.”

“The totem poles are mostly for show. It's not personal.”

“Joey, come on,” Raney said. “I vouched for the guy.”

“So maybe you should join him.” To Farlow: “You can say no, and we'll all just go about our evening.”

Farlow kicked at the floor.

“Don't worry,” Dunham said. “I won't stick my finger up your ass. Deadly's going to do that.”

Raney and Farlow swapped looks.

“It's a joke, fellas. Don't be so serious.”

Farlow tossed his jacket onto the table, followed by his jeans, T-shirt, boxers. Dunham made a spinning motion with his index finger. Farlow held his arms out to the side, turned in a slow circle.

“A sight to behold, I know.”

“You've got nothing to be ashamed of,” Dunham said. “Deadly, give his clothes the once-over.”

Raney emptied Farlow's pockets, felt inside his pants legs, shook out his boots.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Let me see his wallet.”

Raney tossed it over. Dunham checked the billfold, flipped through the glassine windows.

“Your parole officer's a woman?” he said.

“How do you like that?”

“What's her name? I can't quite make it out on the card.”

“Jesus, you're careful,” Farlow said. “I call her Pamela Polack. I don't know how you say the last name. It starts with
W-R
and ends with ‘zinski.'”

“Is she nice-looking, at least?”

“With a name like that?”

Dunham grinned. Farlow zipped up his fly, pulled on his T-shirt.

“No hard feelings,” Dunham said.

“It's just business, right?”

“Speaking of which…”

Dunham and Raney sat on one side of the table, Farlow on the other. Dunham lit a cigarette, slid the pack over.

“So what are we talking about?”

“It's simple,” Farlow said. “I've got a connect in DC. He'll deliver up to twenty kilos, at twelve thousand dollars per, plus a ten-percent handling fee. This stuff is as close to pure as it gets. You step on it three times over, sell it to some hillbilly dealers I know in Maine for whatever price you want. Fiends up there can't get anything better.”

“How do you know these hillbillies?”

“They're blood. Two cousins and a half brother.”

“And what about your connect?”

“He's sixty-four and never served a day. No flash, no conflict. Lives in a one-bedroom apartment over a dry cleaner's and steers clear of street sales. He keeps a small crew of guys he came up with.”

“The senior citizen brigade.”

“Watch it, son,” Farlow said. “I'm not so far off myself.”

“Why do you need me?”

“Funding,” Farlow said. “I'm cash poor. Not to mention my front-line days are behind me. I told myself if I ever got busted again I'd tie it off right there. I don't want to die in a jumpsuit surrounded by COs calling me Pops. A one-bedroom over a dry cleaner's would suit me fine. Minimal risk, just enough reward. That's all I'm after.”

Dunham rocked back in his chair. Farlow held his cigarette between his middle and ring fingers, pawed at the smoke with his free hand. He was steady, deliberate. Dunham seemed to like him. Raney wanted to ask how he'd lasted so long.

“One thing bothers me,” Dunham said.

“What's that?”

“I thought hillbillies ate tree branches and bathed in mud puddles. How'd they come by this kind of cash?”

“You can make money anywhere,” Farlow said, “as long as you know how to cook meth and film little girls touching themselves. It ain't pretty, but that's what it is.”

“No, it ain't pretty,” Dunham said. “But green is green.”

“We have a deal, then?”

“Give me a day to think on it. I'll have Deadly send word.”