The dope inside was caked and chunky, dull white with a yellowish tinge.
“Cocaine hydrochloride,” said Royce, picking at the drug with the tip of the blade. “One metric kilogram. About thirty grand worth, wholesale. Or a ten-to-life stretch, depending on which way you look at it. Five or more kilos means possession with intent to distribute, jumping it up to forty to life. If real cops busted in here right now, our next lunch in the outside world would be in about 2050. A science-fiction stretch. Just to put this into perspective.”
He handed over the parcel, slit side up, and Maven was holding a kilo of uncut cocaine. It was lighter than he had imagined, like a flat loaf of unleavened bread.
Royce grabbed a second kilo and slit its green plastic, this time bisecting the sealing tape. He carried it to the open toilet, dumping the coke into the bowl, kneading the clumps until the package was empty.
He pushed the handle, the mixture swirling until it was swallowed down the drain, the bowl refilling with clear water.
Royce said, “The sewer rats dance tonight.”
He had Maven dispose of the one in his hand, and they switched off flushing away the rest. The cocaine didn’t dissolve well, sinking slowly into the water like cake mix. Maven lost count, but there were fewer than twenty flushes.
When they were done, Royce mashed up the wrappers and brought them out to the white paper bag on the bed. He dumped them in, then his white-dusted gloves.
Maven followed suit. Then they returned to the bathroom and removed their jackets and holsters, patching up their FBI signs and unstrapping the armor vests, stripping off their masks and piling everything into the suitcase, which they then brought back out to the main room. The dealers remained on the floor, music pounding in their ears. The others were all unmasked now too, packing up. Maven was handed the white paper bag full of pistol magazines, coke wrappers, and unpowered mobile phones. Royce grabbed a suitcase roughly the same size as the Venezuelan’s, but softer.
Back into the stairwell, down two flights to twenty-seven, then along the L-shaped hallway to the elevators and down. They exited at the second floor, the mall level, Royce wheeling his travel bag behind him past the kiosks and upscale stores.
At the edge of the food court, Royce nodded toward a trash container, and Maven dumped the white bag with evident relief.
Past Legal Sea Foods, they rode the long escalator down to revolving doors, exiting onto Boylston Street, where a cold, canyonlike wind cuffed them, street grit spraying their skin as they crossed three lanes of traffic to the shelter of a side street.
“And that,” said Royce, “is that.”
“Christ,” said Maven, running off a string of expletives, the by-product of adrenaline-induced elation.
“Take it easy,” said Royce, keeping an even pace.
Maven reined in his manic exhilaration, moving past a mother walking a blanketed newborn. What he was feeling could almost have been a contact high from flushing all that coke. “Now what?”
“Now we walk.”
They were already walking. Maven wanted to sprint. “What about them back there?”
Royce crossed Newbury Street, not waiting, traffic stopping for him. “They’ll get themselves free eventually. By now they know they got ripped off. I want them to think we took the product too. Double the pain, double the blame.”
As they approached Commonwealth Avenue, Maven shoved his hands into his pockets to keep them from flying away. “FBI? Fucking hell.”
Royce nodded. “We’re breaking all kinds of laws here. Point is to settle them down immediately. Especially in a public place like that, a hotel. Get them under control fast. Thinking it’s an orderly raid, something their lawyers can beat. Getting arrested to them is like a dentist appointment. Getting ripped off — that’s another thing entirely.”
Maven eyed the suitcase, rolling at Royce’s heels like a puppy. “How much is in there?”
Royce shrugged, though Maven could tell he knew already. “Dealers can’t exactly run to the cops to make up their loss. That’s why getting out clean is imperative. No gunplay, no going off and capping anybody if we can help it. Because gunshots bring heat, and dragging the law into this thing defeats our advantage.”
Royce slowed to a stop, turning to Maven on the sidewalk in the median pedestrian mall of Commonwealth Avenue.
“I want you to never, ever forget how stupendously fucking dangerous this is, what we just did. Taking big money away from well-funded sadists. We made it look easy back there only because we’ve been working this thing for weeks, planning it out, training to get it right. One little mistake, one slipup — and we’re smoked. Done for. Not that it would end fast. These fuckers would want to get their pound of flesh, you can believe it. Getting jacked makes them punk. Street cred is everything out here. Why retaliation is a motherfucking guarantee — if we screw up. Which we will not.”
Royce’s stare was intense, but nothing at that point, not even the fear of death, could have doused Maven’s flame. He nodded, hands squirming in his pockets, anxious to get wherever they were going.
Gridley
They turned onto Marlborough Street, narrower than the other avenues in the Back Bay, quieter, lined with trees and gas lamps. The formerly Brahmin, currently swanky side of town.
The clicking of the suitcase wheels over the brick sidewalk stopped at a low, black, wrought-iron gate outside a street-level real estate office, listing sheets taped to the window underneath a sign reading ROOF DECK PROPERTIES AND MANAGEMENT.
Royce pushed through the ornamental gate toward the stone steps. Maven looked up at the curved-front Victorian brownstone, then followed.
Inside the unlocked first door, Royce waved to the side office entrance, where a frazzled-looking receptionist on the phone waved back and reached beneath her desk to buzz them inside. The second door in front of them buzzed and Royce pulled it open, revealing a chandelier of violet-tinted glass hanging in a richly paneled lobby. A thin Oriental runner led to the foot of a broad, curving staircase.
“Eleven real estate agents working their asses off,” said Royce on the way up the stairs, “hustling student apartments, business sublets, artist lofts. Knocking each other over to land exclusive listings. The business is actually profitable, not that I give a damn. It’s a laundry machine to me. A front. Cash goes in dirty and comes out clean. But the workers, they have no idea. So they keep busting their asses for their commissions, trying to keep the office afloat. Poor fucks.”
He stopped at the only door on the first-floor landing. His key turned in the lock, and Maven followed him inside to a splendid, modern kitchen with beet red walls, glass-front cabinets, stainless-steel fixtures. A floor-through apartment, running left through an archway to a larger room in the rear, and right down a short hallway to the street-facing front.
Maven closed the door, and the entire city vanished. Royce set the suitcase gently down atop the silver-speckled countertop. He opened a panel on the island unit and a gasp of freezer steam escaped, and he withdrew two chilled pint glasses. He opened the door to a giant silver refrigerator, a bank vault of food, and pulled out two bright red, bottle-shaped aluminum cans of Budweiser. “They only drink American. I’m betting you won’t mind.”
“Who’s they?” said Maven, still back on his heels. “You don’t live here?”
“Me? I live upstairs,” said Royce, pointing. He opened the bottle and poured for Maven, the golden yellow beer sliding down the frosted side of the glass, then poured his own. He handed Maven his glass and clinked it.