One kid grabbed a stick off the ground, the longest he could find. He poked the guy’s shin. He got no response and poked it again, harder.
The guy groaned and shifted. He sat up. He shielded his face from the harsh winter sun. His eye, and almost half of his face, were thickly bandaged. He fell back, dizzy.
He wasn’t wrinkled like the old-time junkies, but the kids knew high when they saw it.
“Hey.” Maven reached out from the box, dazed and trying to see. “Hey, fellas...”
He received a smack on the top of his wrist and pulled back. He looked again, each of the boys wielding a fallen branch.
Maven said, “Hey, I—”
A whack across his chest. Another against his shoulder. A crack against the crown of his head, and he rolled into a defensive ball.
The blows rained down, barely felt on the surface, only their reverberation throughout his muscles and his bones.
Maven came to fighting off the stick kids, but now it was two blue-gloved EMTs, working by the light of a cop’s flashlight in the park.
“What did you take, sir?”
Maven tried to sit up. They pushed him back down.
“How long have you been out on the streets?”
They put a penlight in his one eye, flicking it back and forth.
“Nothing,” the EMT muttered to himself. “Sir? Hello? What happened to your eye?”
Maven tried to respond, but could not put any words together.
Next thing he knew, he was wide-awake in a sickening surge of full consciousness. It looked like an emergency room, but the walls were rocking, streetlights and upper-story apartment windows rushed past the windows. He was inside an ambulance, strapped to a stretcher.
The EMT had boosted him with Narcan, the opiate antidote. All of Maven’s claustrophobia from being confined at Lockerty’s came roaring back, and he thrashed and tore at the single strap across his waist, loosening it enough to slide out onto the floor. The EMT first banged on the partition for help, then held his arms out toward Maven as though he were trapped with a bear.
Maven stood inside the rocking vehicle. He was still alive. He was free somehow. He was back in Boston.
The driver slid open her window and Maven reached through and grabbed her throat. She cut the wheel, supplies spilling from the side of the ambulance. The impact with the telephone pole sent the stretcher into the partition, then back against the doors, popping them open. Maven stumbled out and fell to the curb, hurrying away, half-blind, from the gathering people and the lights.
Maven entered the Verizon store, the first customer of the day. The red-shirted greeter welcomed him, Maven pushing past her to the demo phones, all working models.
He squinted at the phone, his vision blurred, his head splitting. He dialed information, asking for Gridley, Massachusetts, a listing for Vetti. The automated system gave him a number and connected him.
While the phone rang, Maven was aware of the salesmen talking about him, trying to figure out what to do about this bandaged bum using the free service in their store.
Danielle’s mother picked up. Maven told her that he was a friend of her daughter’s, trying to track her down.
“I don’t give out that information,” said Mrs. Vetti.
“A phone number, an address. Anything. It’s critical.”
“I just don’t give out that kind of information.”
“Do you... can you tell me, is she all right? Is Danielle okay?”
A long pause made him fear the worst. “Who is this?”
“A friend. I was at your house for your other daughter’s birthday.”
Another pause. Her hand over the receiver. “She needs a name.”
“She—?” Maven straightened. “Is she there? It’s Neal Maven.”
Mrs. Vetti repeated the name. After some muffled back and forth, the phone was handed to a different person.
“Who is this?” Danielle’s voice.
“Danny?”
A breathless pause. “Neal?”
“You’re all right,” he said, suddenly near tears. “You’re okay.”
“Neal Maven... you’re alive? He said... he said you were...”
“I’m at a phone store, downtown. What are you... what are you doing at your parents’?”
“Brad... he dumped me. Dumped me flat. Threw me out, left me with nothing.”
“You’re lucky he didn’t... he had Glade and Suarez rubbed out. Did you know that?”
“I knew they were... gone.”
“I need you. To see you. I need your help.”
Maven lurked around the Boston Flower Exchange on Albany Street, a long, low, fully enclosed, warehouse-style wholesale flower market. Trucks off-loaded flowers from the port and backed them into the exchange, where they were sold to New England retailers. The sign said it was closed on Sundays, and while a few cars dotted the parking lot, the area itself was quiet.
He leaned against the outside wall, hacking into his hand, still sick from whatever shit they’d put in him. It was wearing off now, the pain in the back of his eye as intense as it was unreachable. He was jittery when he should have been hungry. The constant drip of anesthetics and painkillers had turned him halfway into a junkie.
A black Highlander pulled into the lot. Maven remained in the doorway, hidden yet hopeful, having forgotten to ask Danielle what kind of car she would be driving. The SUV pulled near, coming in at an angle, and he stepped out into view.
The tinted windows made Maven stop, but too late. The pas senger’s door opened, and a bald guy with a tribal tattoo on the side of his neck stood out, brandishing a MAC-10 with a muzzle suppressor.
The other doors opened and more men emerged, and Maven’s heart dropped through a gallows trapdoor. He was grabbed and pushed inside the flower exchange. He tried to fight, but he was dizzy and weak and didn’t have much more in him.
He was pulled past empty stalls and shuttered kiosks offering ribbons, silks, and baskets. They stopped at an open spot formed by the intersection of two aisles and kicked Maven to his knees. He slumped there, head down and throbbing, the building spinning around him.
A voice said, “Straighten him up. I want a good look.”
Maven’s head was pulled back to raise his face. A blurry figure appeared from behind the gunmen arranged in a half-circle. Termino.
“I thought the bitch was delusional. Truly, I did. Coke bugs or some such. But damn.” He stopped right in front of Maven. “Back from the grave.”
Maven stared, Termino swimming in his vision. “She called you?”
Termino grinned, working down the webs of his black leather gloves. “To get back in the boss’s good graces? Junkie hookers’ll do anything for the pure.”
Maven’s chest was empty. No air for speech.
“Forgot,” said Termino. “You were sweet on her, weren’t you?”
Maven stared, waiting for Termino to break character. “It was all bullshit?”
Termino shrugged. “Just the stuff that mattered.”
“You ran on us. At the bog.”
“I never even showed.” Big smile as Termino walked a full circle around Maven. “It was over already. You’d served your purpose. You wanted out — so we arranged to take you out.”
Maven looked at the others around him. He was looking for Royce. “He couldn’t come himself.”
“Oh, he’s here.” One of the goons passed Termino a notebook computer, and he opened it, speaking directly to the screen. “You ready for this?”
A familiar voice said, “Let me see.”
Termino turned the laptop around so that the screen faced Maven. The video-over-Internet connection showed Royce seated behind a desk, before a window. Black collar, clean haircut.