The Reapers

by John Connolly

  Willie punched him on the arm. “No, you knucklehead. Thoughtful, like when you start thinking about stuff, remembering.”

  “Well, stop it. It never helped you before, and you’re too old to start getting good at it now.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” A beer was thrust into his hand, a Brooklyn Lager. He’d begun to drink it only recently. He liked the idea that there was an independent brewery over in Williamsburg once again, and he felt that he should support it. It helped that the stuff they brewed there tasted good, so it wasn’t like he had to make any allowances.

  He cast a final look at the three men in the corner. Angel returned it and raised his glass in salute. Beside him, Louis did the same, and Willie lifted his bottle in acknowledgment. A feeling of warmth and gratitude washed over him, so strong that it made his cheeks glow and his eyes water. He knew what these men had done in the past, and what they were capable of doing now. Something had shifted in their world, though. Maybe it was the influence of the third man, but they were the good guys, in their way. He tried to remember something someone had said about them once, something about angels.

  Ah, that was it. They were on the side of the angels, even if the angels weren’t entirely sure that this was a good thing.

  And then he recalled who it was that had said it: it was the third man, Parker. The Detective. As if on cue, the Detective turned around, and Willie felt himself trapped in his regard. The Detective smiled, and Willie smiled back. Even as he did so, he could not shake off the sensation that the Detective knew exactly what Willie had been thinking.

  Willie shivered. He’d been lying when he’d told Arno that it was his birthday that was making him act funny. That was part of it, but it wasn’t the whole story. No, for the last couple of days Willie had been getting the feeling that something was wrong. It wasn’t anything that he could put his finger on. The day before, there had been a blue Chevy Malibu parked across the street from the auto shop, two men sitting in the front seat, and it seemed to Willie like they were watching him, because when he started paying attention to them they moved off. Later, he dismissed it as paranoia, but he was certain that he had seen the car again today, this time parked farther down the street, the same two men once again occupying the front seats. He thought of mentioning the sightings to Louis, then dismissed it. It wasn’t the time or the place. Maybe he was just feeling weird because of the day, because he was now entering his seventh decade. Still, he couldn’t quite shake off the belief that something was bent out of shape slightly. It was like when his wife had filed for divorce, and the shop was about to be taken away from him, the knowledge that a crack had appeared in his existence, that his world was about to be transformed by something from outside, something hostile and dangerous.

  And there was nothing that Willie could do to stop it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT WAS AFTER 1:00 A.M. Most of the revelers had gone home, and only Arno and Willie and a man named Happy Saul remained of the main group. Happy Saul had suffered nerve damage to his face as a child, and it had contorted his mouth into a permanently fixed grin. Nobody ever sat next to Happy Saul at a funeral. It looked bad. Unusually-for it was often the case that men with nicknames like “Happy” or “Smiley” tended to be seriously angry and depressed individuals, the kind who never saw a bell tower without experiencing visions of themselves picking off bystanders with a rifle-Happy Saul was a contented guy, and good company. At that very moment, he was telling Willie and Arno a joke so inconceivably filthy that Willie was sure he was going straight to hell just for listening to it.

  Angel and Louis were now alone in the corner. The Detective had gone. He didn’t drink much anymore, and he had an early start back to Maine the next morning. Before he left, Willie opened the gift that the Detective had brought: it was a bill of acceptance for a delivery of old packing crates, signed by Henry Ford himself, framed with a picture of the great man above it.

  “I thought you could hang it in the shop,” said the Detective, as Willie gazed at the photograph, his fingertips tracing the signature beneath.

  “I’ll do that,” said Willie. “It’ll have pride of place in the office. Nothing else around it. Nothing.” He was touched, and a little guilty. His earlier thoughts about the Detective now seemed un-generous. Even if they were true, there was more to him than his demons. He shook the Detective’s hand. “Thank you,” he said. “For this, and for coming along tonight.”

  “Wouldn’t have missed it. Be seeing you, Willie.”

  “Yeah, next time.”

  Willie had returned to Arno and Happy Saul.

  “Nice thing to get,” said Arno, holding the frame in his hands.

  “Yeah,” said Willie. He was watching the Detective as he said goodnight to Nate and headed into the night. Even though Willie was at least two sheets to the wind, there was an expression on his face that Arno had never seen before, and it worried him.

  “Yeah, it is…”

  The two men sat close together, but not too close, Louis’s arm draped casually across the seat behind his partner’s head. Nate didn’t have a problem with their relationship. Neither did Arno, or Willie, or even Happy Saul, although if Happy Saul did have a problem there would have been no way to tell without asking him. But not everyone in Nate’s was so liberal minded, and while Angel and Louis would happily have confronted, and then quietly pummeled, anyone who had the temerity to question their sexuality or any displays of mutual affection that they might have felt inclined to show, they preferred to keep a low profile and avoid such encounters, in part so that they wouldn’t cause trouble for Nate, and in part because other aspects of their lives demanded that they remain inconspicuous whenever possible, inasmuch as a tall, immaculately attired black man who could cause sweat to break out on an iceberg on a cold day and a small, shabby person who, when he walked down the street, made it look like the garbagemen had missed some of the trash could fail to attract attention to themselves.

  They had moved on to brandy, and Nate had broken out his best snifter glasses for the occasion. The glasses were big enough to house goldfish. There was music playing in the background: Sinatra-Basie from ’62, Frank singing about how love is the tender trap. Nate was polishing down the bar, humming along contentedly to the song. Usually, Nate would have started to close up by now, but he appeared in no hurry to make people leave. It was one of those nights, the kind where it felt like the clocks have been stopped and all those inside were safely insulated from the troubles and demands of the world. Nate was content to let them stay that way for a while. It was his gift to them.

  “Looks like Willie had a good time,” said Louis. Willie was swaying slightly on his chair, and his eyes had the dazed look of a man who has recently been hit on the head with a frying pan.

  “Yeah,” said Angel. “I think some of those women wanted to give him a special gift all of their own. He’s lucky to be wearing his clothes.”

  “We’re all lucky that he’s wearing his clothes.”

  “There is that. He seems kind of, I don’t know, not himself tonight?”

  “It’s the occasion. Makes a man philosophical. Makes him dwell on his mortality.”

  “That’s a cheerful thought. Maybe we could start a line of greeting cards, put that on them. Happy Mortality Day.”

  “You been pretty quiet tonight as well.”

  “You complain when I talk too much.”

  “Only when you got nothing to say.”

  “I always have something to say.”

  “That’s your problem right there. There’s a balance. Maybe Willie could install a filter on you.” His fingers gently brushed the back of his partner’s neck. “You gonna tell me what’s up?”

  Although there was nobody within earshot, Angel still glanced casually around before he spoke. It never hurt to be careful.

  “I heard something. You remember William Wilson, better known as Billy Boy?”

  Louis nodded. “Yeah, I know who he is.” />
  “Was.”

  Louis was silent for a moment. “What happened to him?”

  “Died in a men’s room down in Sweetwater, Texas.”

  “Natural causes?”

  “Heart failure. Brought on by someone sticking a blade through it.”

  “That don’t sound right. He was good. He was an animal, and a freak, but he was good. Hard to get close enough to take him with a knife.”

  “I hear there were rumors that he’d been overstepping the mark, adding flourishes to simple jobs.”

  “I heard that, too.” There had always been something wrong with Billy Boy. Louis had seen it from the start, which was why he had decided not to work with him, once he was in a position to pick and choose. “He always did like inflicting pain.”

  “Seems like someone decided that he’d done it once too often.”

  “Could have been one of those things: a bar, booze, someone decides to pull a knife, gets his friends to help,” said Louis, but he didn’t sound like he believed what he was saying. He was just thinking aloud, ruling out possibilities by releasing them into the air, like canaries in the coal mine of his mind.

  “Could have been, except the place was near empty when it happened, and we’re talking about Billy Boy. I remember what you told me about him, from the old days. Whoever took him must have been a whole lot better than good.”

  “Billy was getting old.”

  “He was younger than you.”

  “Not much, and I know I’m getting old.”

  “I know it, too.”

  “That you’re getting old?”

  “No, that you’re getting old.”

  Louis’s eyes briefly turned to slits.

  “I ever tell you how funny I find you?” he asked.

  “No, come to mention it, you don’t.”

  “It’s cause you ain’t. At least now you know why. The blade enter from the front, or the back?”

  “Front.”

  “There a paper out on him?”

  “Someone would have heard.”

  “Could be that someone did. Where’d you get this from?”

  “Saw it on the internet. I made a call or two.”

  Louis rolled the glass in his hands, warming the brandy and smelling the aromas that arose. He was annoyed. He should have been told about Billy Boy, even as a courtesy. That was the way things were done. There were too many markers in his past to allow such matters to go unmentioned.

  “You always keep tabs on the people I used to work with?” he said.

  “It’s not a full-time job. There aren’t many of them left.”

  “There aren’t any of them left now, not with Billy Boy gone.”

  “That’s not true.”

  Louis thought for a moment. “No, I guess not.”

  “Which brings me to the next thing,” said Angel.

  “Go on.”

  “The cops interviewed everyone who was in the bar when they found him. Only one person had left: a little fat guy in a cheap suit, sat at the bar and drank no-name whiskey from the well, didn’t look like he could afford to change his drawers more than once every second day.”

  Louis sipped his brandy, letting it rest in his mouth before releasing it to warm his throat.

  “Anything else?”

  “Bartender said he thought he saw some scarring just above the collar of the guy’s shirt, like he’d been in a fire once. Thought he saw some at his right wrist as well.”

  “Lot of people get burned.” Louis said the words with a strangeness to his tone. It might almost have been called dispassionate, had there not been the sense that behind it a great depth of feeling lay hidden.

  “But not all of them go on to take someone like Billy Boy with a knife. You think it’s him?”

  “A blade,” said Louis thoughtfully. “They find it in the body?”

  “No. Took it with him when he left.”

  “Wouldn’t want to leave a good knife behind. He was a shooter, but he always did prefer to finish them up close.”

  “If it’s him.”

  “If it’s him,” echoed Louis.

  “Been a long time, if it is.”

  Louis’s right foot beat a slow, steady cadence upon the floor.

  “He suffered. It would have taken time for him to recover, to heal. He’d have changed his appearance again, like he did before. And he wouldn’t come out of hiding for a standard job. Someone must have been real pissed at Billy Boy.”

  “It’s not only about the money, though, right?”

  “No, not if it’s him.”

  “If he’s back, Billy Boy might just be the start. There’s the small matter of you trying to burn him alive.”

  “There is that. He’ll still be hurting, even now, and he won’t be what he was.”

  “He was still good enough to take Billy Boy.”

  “If it’s him.” It sounded like a mantra. Perhaps it was. Louis had always known that Bliss would come back some day. If he had returned, it would be almost a relief. The waiting would be over. “It’s because he was so good to begin with. Even with a little shaved off, he’d still be better than most. Better than Billy Boy, that’s for sure.”

  “Billy Boy’s no loss.”

  “No, he ain’t.”

  “But having Bliss back in the world isn’t so good either.”

  “No.”

  “I’d kinda hoped that he was dead.” Much of this had been before Angel’s time, before he and Louis had met, although he and Louis had encountered Billy Boy once, out in California. It was an accidental meeting at a service station, and Louis and Billy Boy had circled each other warily, like wolves before a fight. Angel hadn’t thought much of Billy Boy as a human being then, although he accepted that he might have been prejudiced by what Louis had told him. Of Bliss, he knew only of what he had done to Louis, and what had been done to him in return. Louis had told him of it because he knew that it was not over.

  “He won’t be dead until someone makes him dead, and there’s no money in that,” said Louis. “No money, and no percentage.”

  “Unless you knew he had your name on his list.”

  “I don’t believe he sends out notifications.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  Angel tossed back half of his brandy, and began to cough.

  “You sip it, man,” said Louis. “It ain’t Alka-Seltzer.”

  “A beer would have been better.”

  “You have no class.”

  “Only by association.”

  Louis considered for a moment.

  “Well,” he said, “there is that…”

  The apartment shared by the two men was not as those who knew the couple only casually might have imagined it to be, given their disparate dress codes, attitudes to life, and general demeanor. It occupied the top two floors of a three-story over-basement building on the farthest reaches of the Upper West Side, where the gap between rich and poor began to narrow significantly. The apartment was scrupulously tidy. Although they shared a bedroom, each had his own room in which to retire and in which to pursue his particular interests, and while Angel’s room bore the unmistakable signs of one whose skill lay in the picking of locks and the undermining of security systems-shelves of manuals, assorted tools, a workbench covered with both electrical and mechanical components-there was an order to it that would have been apparent to any craftsman. Louis’s room was starker. There was a laptop computer, a desk, and a chair. The shelves were lined with music and books, the music leaning, perhaps surprisingly, toward country, with an entire section for black artists: Dwight Quick, Vicki Vann, Carl Ray, and Cowboy Troy Coleman from the moderns, DeFord Bailey and Stoney Edwards from the earlier period, along with a little Charlie Pride, Ray Charles’s Modern Sounds in Country and Western, some Bobby Womack, and From Where I Stand, a boxed set detailing the black experience in country music. Louis found it hard to understand why so many others of his race failed to connect with this music: it spoke of rural poverty, of lo
ve, of despair, of faithfulness and infidelity, and these were experiences known to all men, black as well as white. Just as poor black people had more in common with poor whites than with wealthy blacks, so too this music offered a means of expression to those who had endured all of the trauma and sadness with which it dealt, regardless of color. Nevertheless, he had resigned himself to being in a minority as far as this belief was concerned, and although he had almost managed to convince his partner of the merits of some things at which he might previously have scoffed, including regular haircuts and clothing stores that did not specialize in end-of-line sales, black country music-in fact, any country music-remained one of Angel’s many enduring blind spots.

  The apartment consisted of a modern kitchen, rarely used, that led into a large living room cum dining room, and Angel’s workshop, all on the lower floor. On the upper floor, there was a luxurious bathroom that Louis had appropriated for himself, leaving the en-suite shower room to his partner; Louis’s office; a smaller guest bedroom, with a small shower room, neither of which had ever been used; and the main bedroom, which was lined with closet space and, apart from the odd book, remained, by mutual effort and consent, in a state of interior design catalog neatness. There was a gun safe behind the mirror in the guest shower room. Whenever they were in the apartment, the safe remained open. At night, they each kept a weapon close at hand in the main bedroom. When the apartment was empty, the gun safe was kept locked and the mirror carefully put back in its original position using a hinge-and-lock mechanism operated by a small click switch a finger’s length behind the glass. They took care of the cleaning and maintenance of the apartment themselves. No strangers were ever admitted, nor friends or acquaintances, of which there were few in any case.

  They hid in plain sight, these men. They used prepaid cell-phones, switching them regularly, but they never paid for the devices themselves: instead, homeless men and women were given money to make the purchases in stores scattered over four states, and a middleman was used to collect and pass on the phones. Even then, the cells were used only when absolutely necessary. Most of their calls were made from pay phones.