Devils in Exile by Chuck Hogan Read Free Book Online Page A

the far corner, reading room numbers as he went.
    “What … the … hell?” whispered Maven, between breaths.
    Royce shushed him. “What do you think about the jacket?”
    Maven swallowed. “The jacket?”
    “A Zegna. Cashmere, retails about two grand. The briefcase?”
    “Yeah?”
    “A thirteen-hundred-dollar Mulberry. Now, what’s that tell you?”
    “The guy overpaid.”
    “You say that because you’ve never touched anything of real quality.” Royce said this without insult, a simple declaration. “What you should realize is that the stuff he’s used to carrying inside that case must be worth considerably more than the case itself.”
    The guy slowed before a room halfway down the hall. Both Royce and Maven ducked away from the window, in case the guy looked left and right before going inside.
    Maven said, “What does this matter to you?”
    He heard faint knocking. Maven edged back to the window just in time to see the door open and the guy step inside.
    Royce pulled open their door and went silently down the carpeted hallway. At first, Maven thought they were moving to the same door, only to stop behind Royce at the one before it.
    A DO NOT DISTURB card hung on the handle. Maven heard a television playing inside.
    Royce produced a key card from his jacket pocket, fed it into the slot, and when the light turned green, he eased the door open with barely a click, moving inside.
    Maven lingered where he was. Another moment of hesitation. He felt strangely exposed, standing alone in the hallway. The door was closing and he stopped it with his fingertips just as the lock was about to catch.
    He entered and shut it quietly behind him. Past a closet and large bathroom on his right, the room opened into a wide suite. Two men, both of them close to Maven’s age, stood between a writing table and the loud boxing match on television. A laptop was on the table, and one of the men, a blue-eyed Latino, watched the screen intently, listening through headphones, not even looking up at Maven. The other one, a spike-haired, blond, all-American type, wore a gun in a shoulder holster, and didn’t take his eyes off Maven until Royce gave him a nod.
    A third man, closer in age to Royce, his skin dark brown, reclined on the high, made bed with his fingers laced behind his head. The television remote was nestled in his crotch, a handgun on the comforter at his side. The guy sized up Maven without expression before returning to the roaring of the Ali-Holmes fight being rebroadcast on ESPN Classic.
    The room smelled of coffee and last night’s Chinese food. The curtains opened on west-facing windows, looking out over Fenway Park and the city limits to neighboring Brookline beyond.
    A thin, firm cable ran from an intermediate box plugged into a USB port on the laptop, leading under the locked door between the adjoining rooms. Royce plucked one of the earphones off the Latino’s head and joined him, listening.
    Maven saw a video playing full-screen, good quality from a low, Dutch angle, as though from a camera dropped on the floor. The side of a bed, the top of a closet, the ceiling.
    The Latino tapped the keyboard arrows, and the cable under the door quivered the slightest bit, the camera view twitch-panning incrementally.
    On-screen, the man in the sage green jacket walked into view.
    The cable under the door was a scope camera snooping into the adjoining room.
    The Latino guy looked at Maven for the first time. “This the new man?” he said softly.
    Royce, watching the laptop feed, nodded.
    Maven opened his mouth to speak, but Royce silenced him with an open hand. On the screen, two other men appeared, just heads and shoulders, but Maven could see that they were heavyset, both wearing New England Patriots team jerseys. They looked like brothers. The man in the sage green jacket opened the straps of his briefcase on the bed and handed them a paper packet. The brothers opened the packet and emptied the powdery contents into a