The Exiled by Christopher Charles

keep this feeling.”
    He pulled a small, clear Baggie of white powder from his jacket pocket.
    “Peruvian shit. The stuff out of Mexico will make your brain fizzle.”
    He dug his wallet from his jeans, spread an assortment of licenses and credit cards on the dashboard.
    “Try some,” he said. “You look tired. I need you to keep up. You did good tonight. We’re going to be great friends.”
      
    They met at District Attorney Stone’s apartment on West 96th Street, far from any courthouse or precinct station. Stone ordered lunch from a Thai place, gave Raney the tour while they waited for the food to arrive. A long and lean two-bedroom, an art collection in its early stages—small modernist canvases that reminded Raney of Dunham’s bathroom. Stone’s home office was decorated in laminated news articles chronicling his successes, everything from maximum sentences for street-level dealers to a 120-year bit for a serial killer preying on Columbia undergrads. The Times described him as “a man whose small stature belies his ferocity.” He was known for apoplectic cross-examinations, for crowding the witness stand while spewing out harangues. Op-ed after op-ed called him heroic; one called him a legend at forty. Still, he hadn’t touched anything the size of Meno’s organization. Raney saw himself in the middle of a pitched battle between two giants who would only meet face-to-face once Stone had already won.
      
    Raney told him everything over a heaping plate of noodles—from the weed outside the club to the killing in the crack house to the coke in the car. Stone rolled his cloth napkin between his fists as though it were a snowball.
    “How are you holding up?” he asked.
    “I had a man murdered at my feet, and I’ve broken just about every law I’m sworn to uphold.”
    “Apart from that.”
    “Hungover.”
    “Sometimes justice has to work backwards.”
    Raney sniggered.
    “Listen to me,” Stone said. “Everything you did was to protect yourself and your cover. There’s a bigger picture here.”
    “Bigger than homicide?”
    “Bigger than a single homicide, yes.”
    “Okay, but why not arrest Dunham now? Threaten him with life twice over. Get him to turn witness. There’s bad blood between him and Meno.”
    “Because we don’t know enough yet.”
    “Meno ordered the job.”
    “You can’t be sure. You said so yourself: Dunham wouldn’t give a name.”
    “He killed a man,” Raney said.
    “A man you beat unconscious. How do you think that will play in court?”
    “He came at me with a knife.”
    “You came at him with a baseball bat and a gun.”
    “Yeah, but I’m the good guy.”
    “The man was still defending himself.”
    “So what’s the endgame here? Why am I doing this?”
    “We want to dismantle Meno’s organization. Top to bottom. We want to cripple it so severely that no one rises up to take his place. This isn’t about putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.”
    “A dead junkie is a bullet wound?”
    “For now. We’re building a case. He’ll be a part of that case. He’ll get his day in court.”
    “And in the meantime I keep playing accessory?”
    “If things continue at this pace, it won’t be long. I promise you.”
      
    He rented a room in Fort Hamilton, just across the bridge from Dunham’s club. He told Sophia it was for her protection. He repeated the DA’s words: It won’t be long . Sophia looked at him as though she knew better, as though she saw the end in the beginning.

10
    R aney pulled the curtain back, watched the contrails of an airplane fade into a sky that was just starting to brighten. It would be an hour before the diner opened. He splashed water on his face, then noticed for the first time that the bathroom, with its claw-foot tub and double sink, was at least as big as the room he’d slept in. The lore about the place being a brothel for pioneer soldier boys seemed more likely: they’d simplified the conversion by making every other room