The Reapers

by John Connolly

“I prefer ‘Special Agent Bruce.’”

  Willie stared at Bruce impassively. There was a moment of strained silence between the two men, until Willie sighed theatrically and continued.

  “Special Agent Bruce, I don’t understand what your problem is here. We didn’t get a chance to make these guys a cup of coffee so they could sit down and explain their motives to us. They came in, busted my nose, told me what they wanted, and you know the rest.”

  “Yeah, I know. You’re heroes. There’s already a guy from the Post outside, waiting to take your picture. You’re going to be famous. Should be good for business.”

  “Sure,” said Willie, a touch uneasily.

  “You don’t sound too happy about it,” said Bruce.

  “Who needs that kind of publicity?”

  Bruce’s grin widened. “Exactly!” he said. “That’s just my point. Who needs it? Not you, and maybe not your partner in this operation.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t you? Who bailed you out when you were in trouble back in the day? Your ex-wife wanted you to sell the business as part of a divorce settlement, right? Things weren’t looking good for you and then, suddenly, poof! You got the money to pay her off without having to sell. Where’d the money come from?”

  Special Agent Bruce seemed to know a lot about Willie’s business. Willie wasn’t sure that he approved of his tax dollars being spent in this way.

  “A Good Samaritan,” he said.

  “What was his name?”

  “Came through an agency. I don’t recall any names.”

  “Yeah, Last Hope Investments, which was in existence for about as long as a mayfly.”

  “Long enough to help me out. That’s all that matters to me.”

  “You ever pay back the loan?”

  “I tried but, like you say, Last Hope don’t exist no more.”

  “Hardly surprising, if they go around making loans and then not seeking payment on them. Curious name, too, don’t you think?”

  “Not my problem. I declared the loan. I’m all straight.”

  “Who owns this building?”

  “Property company.”

  “Leroy Frank Properties, Incorporated.”

  “That’s it.”

  “You pay rent to Leroy Frank?”

  “Fifteen hundred a month.”

  “Not much for a big place like this.”

  “It’s enough.”

  “You ever meet Leroy Frank?”

  “You think if I worked in a Trump building I’d meet Donald?”

  “You might do, if he was a friend of yours.”

  “I don’t think Donald Trump is friends with many of his tenants. He’s the Donald, not-”

  “-not Leroy Frank,” Bruce finished for him.

  Willie shook his head, a simple man faced with someone who seemed intent upon deliberately misinterpreting everything that was said.

  “I told you: I never met no Leroy Frank. I cover my rent, I run my business, I pay my taxes, and I never even got so much as a parking ticket in my life, so I’m all square with the law.”

  “Well,” said Bruce, “you must be just about the honestest man between here and Jersey.”

  “Maybe even farther than that,” said Willie. “I met people from Jersey.”

  Bruce scowled.

  “I’m from Jersey,” he said.

  “Maybe you’re the exception,” said Willie.

  Bruce looked momentarily confused, then decided to let that particular conversation slide.

  “He’s hard to trace, this Leroy Frank,” he resumed. “Quite the paper trail around his companies. Oh, it’s all clean and aboveboard, don’t get me wrong, but he’s a mystery. Hard for a man to stay so enigmatic these days.”

  Willie said nothing.

  “You know, what with this threat of terrorism and all, we’ve been spending a lot more time looking into finances that don’t add up like they should,” said Bruce. “It’s easier than it used to be. We got more powers than before. Of course, if you’re innocent then you’ve got nothing to fear-”

  “I hear Joe McCarthy used to say that,” said Willie, “but I think he was lying.”

  Bruce realized that he wasn’t getting anywhere for the present. He took his considerable weight off the Olds, which seemed to groan with relief. His grin faded and his scowl returned. Willie figured it was only ever going to be a short vacation for that scowl at the best of times.

  “Well, I guess I’ll be going, but we’ll be seeing each other again,” said Bruce. “You happen to meet the mysterious Leroy Frank, you tell him I said hi. Unfortunate that all of this should happen in one of his properties. Be a shame if someone suggested to the press that it might be worth looking into the ownership of this place. It could threaten his anonymity, force him out into the light.”

  “I just pay my money into the bank,” said Willie. “The only question I ask is, ‘Can I get a receipt?’”

  Special Agent Lewis emerged from the office. If anything, her expression looked more pinched than before, and she was practically shaking with frustration. Willie suppressed a smile. Arno did that to people. Trying to get answers from him when he didn’t want to give them was like trying to straighten a snake. Bruce picked up immediately on his partner’s unhappiness, but didn’t comment upon it.

  “Like I said, we’ll be back,” he told Willie.

  “We’ll be here,” said Willie.

  As the two agents departed, Arno appeared beside him.

  “Gee, that lady was tense,” he said. “I liked her, though. We had a nice talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Ethics.”

  “Ethics?”

  “Yeah, you know. Ethics. The rights and wrongs of things.”

  Willie shook his head. “Go home,” he said. “You’re making my head hurt even more.”

  He called Arno’s name just as the little man was preparing to disappear into the night. “Be careful what you say on the telephone,” he told him.

  Arno looked puzzled. “All I ever say on the telephone is ‘It’s not ready yet,’” he said. “That, and, ‘It’s going to cost you extra.’ You think the FBI might be interested in that?”

  Willie scowled. Everybody, it seemed, was a comedian. “Who knows what they’re interested in,” he said. “Just watch what you say. Don’t speak to any of those reporters outside. And show some respect, dammit. I pay your wages.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Arno as the door closed slowly behind him. “Me, I’m gonna buy a yacht with my money this week…”

  Louis made the call just as soon as the bodies had been disposed of. It was a matter of priorities. He left his name with the answering service, thinking, as he did so, that the voice on the end of the line sounded very similar to that of the woman who answered all calls for Leroy Frank. Maybe they incubated them somewhere, like chickens.

  His call was returned ten minutes later. “Mister De Angelis says he will be available at twelve twenty-six tomorrow, around seven,” the neutral female voice told him.

  Louis thanked her, and said that he understood perfectly. As he hung up the phone, memories of previous meetings flooded back to him, and he almost smiled. De Angelis: of the angels. Now there was a misnomer.

  Shortly after seven the next evening, Louis stood on the corner of Lexington and 84th. It was already dark. The sidewalks on this odd little stretch of the city’s thoroughfares were relatively quiet, for most of its businesses, the odd bar and restaurant excepted, were already closed. A damp mist had descended over Manhattan, presaging rain and lending an air of unreality to the vista, as though a photographic image had been placed over the cityscape. To the left, the vintage sign over Lascoff’s drugstore was still illuminated, and if one squinted, it was possible to imagine this stretch of Lexington as it might have looked more than half a century earlier.

  The Lexington Candy Shop and Luncheonette was a throwback to that era. In fact, its roots were older still: it
had been founded by old Soterios in 1925 as a chocolate manufactury and soda fountain, then passed on to his son, Peter Philis, who had, in turn, passed it on to his son, the current owner, John Philis, who still operated the register and greeted his customers by name. Its windows were filled with special edition Coca-Cola bottles, along with a plastic train set, some photos of celebrities, and a bat signed by the Mets’ pure hitter Rusty Staub. It had been known as “Soda Candy” to generations of children, for that was what was written above its door, and its façade had remained unchanged for as long as anyone could remember. Louis could see two of its white-coated staff still moving around inside, although the front door was now locked, for the Lexington Candy Shop and Luncheonette only opened from seven until seven, Monday to Saturday. Nevertheless, the green plastic mat remained outside the door, waiting to be taken in for the night. On it was written Soda Candy’s numerical address: 1226.

  Louis crossed the street and knocked on the glass. One of the men cleaning up glanced sharply to his left, then emerged from behind the counter and admitted Louis, acknowledging him only with a nod. He closed and locked the door before he and his companion abandoned their tasks and disappeared behind another door at the back marked “No Admittance. Staff Only.”

  The place was just as Louis remembered it, although it had been many years since he had been inside. There was still the green counter, its surface marked by decades of hot plates and cups, and the green vinyl stools that rotated fully on their base, a source of endless amusement to children. Behind the counter stood twin gas-fired coffee urns, and a green 1942 Hamilton Beach malted machine and matching Borden’s powdered malt dispenser, along with an automatic juicer from the same period.

  Soda Candy was famous for its lemonade, made to order, the lemons squeezed while you watched, then stirred with sugar syrup and poured into a glass with crushed ice. Two glasses of that same lemonade now stood before the man who occupied the corner booth. The staff members had dimmed the fluorescents before they left, so it seemed to Louis that the old man who waited for him had somehow sucked the illumination from the room, like a black hole in human form, a fissure in time and space absorbing everything around him, the good and the bad, light and not-light, fueling his own existence at the cost of all who came into his sphere of influence.

  It had been some years since Louis and the man named Gabriel had met, but two men whose lives had once been so closely linked could never truly sever the bond between them. In a sense, it was Gabriel who had brought Louis into being, who had taken a boy with undeniable talents and forged him into a man who could be wielded as a weapon. It was to Gabriel that those who needed to avail themselves of Louis’s services had once come. He was the point of contact, the filter. His precise status was nebulous. He was a fixer, a facilitator. There was no blood on his hands, or none that one could see. Louis trusted him, to a degree, and distrusted him to a larger degree. There was too much about Gabriel that was unknown, and unknowable. Still, Louis was conscious of something that resembled affection for his old master.

  He was smaller than Louis remembered, shrinking with age. His hair and beard were very white, and he seemed lost in his big black overcoat. His right hand trembled slightly as he gripped his glass and raised it to his lips, and some of the lemonade slopped onto the table-top.

  “It’s cold for lemonade, isn’t it?” said Louis.

  “Cold doesn’t trouble me,” Gabriel replied. “And one can get coffee anywhere, even if the coffee here is particularly good. I suspect it may be to do with the gas urns. But great lemonade, well, that is rarer, and one should grasp the opportunity to taste it when it arises.”

  “If you say so,” said Louis as he slipped into a seat opposite, careful to keep both the staff exit and the main door in view, and placed the newspaper he had been holding in the center of the table. He didn’t touch the glass.

  “You know, they filmed parts of Three Days of the Condor here? I think Redford sat just where you are sitting now.”

  “You told me that before,” said Louis. “A long time ago.”

  “Did I?” said Gabriel. He sounded regretful. “It seemed appropriate to mention it, given the circumstances.” He coughed. “It’s been a long time: a decade or more, ever since you discovered your conscience.”

  “It was always there. I just never paid too much attention to it before.”

  “I knew I was losing you long before our paths diverged.”

  “Because?”

  “You started asking ‘Why?’”

  “It began to seem relevant.”

  “Relevance is relative. In our line of work, there are those who consider the question ‘Why?’ to be a prelude to ‘How deep would you like to be buried?’ and ‘Roses or lilies?’”

  “But you weren’t one of those people?”

  Gabriel shrugged. “I wouldn’t say that. I just wasn’t ready to feed you to the dogs. I tried to ease your concerns, though, before I allowed you to go free.”

  “‘Allowed’ me?”

  “Permit an old man to indulge himself. After all, not everyone got to walk away.”

  “There weren’t many left when I did.”

  “And none like you.”

  Louis did not acknowledge the compliment.

  “And, if I may say so, my moral compass was surer than you gave me credit for,” said Gabriel.

  “I’m not certain I believe that, no offense meant.”

  “None taken. It is true, though. I was always careful about the work I farmed out to you. There were times when I walked a thin line, but I do not believe that I ever willingly overstepped it, at least, not where you were concerned.”

  “I appreciate that. I just think the line got thinner as time went on.”

  “Perhaps,” Gabriel conceded, “perhaps. So, what happened last night? I understand you received visitors?”

  Louis was not surprised that Gabriel was aware of what had occurred at the apartment building. At the very least, he would have made inquiries after Louis’s call was received, although Louis suspected that Gabriel knew of what had happened before the call was even made. Someone would have told him. That was how the old systems worked, and that was why the silence over Billy Boy’s death had disturbed him so much.

  “It was amateur hour,” said Louis.

  “Yes. The auto shop was a surprise, though. It appeared unnecessary and crude, unless someone was trying to send out a message. If so, then why target your residence at the same time?”

  “I don’t know,” said Louis. “And it made the papers. Willie won’t like the publicity. I don’t like it either. It’ll draw attention. Already has.”

  Gabriel dismissed Louis’s concerns with a wave of his hand. “The papers have no interest in who owns buildings, merely who dies in them and who has sex in them, and not necessarily in that order.”

  “I wasn’t talking about reporters.”

  Gabriel glanced out of the window, as if expecting agents of the state to suddenly materialize from the gloom. He seemed disappointed when they did not. Louis wondered how distant Gabriel now was from his former life. He no longer had his assassins, his Reapers, to call upon, but he would not have resigned himself to a quiet retirement. He knew too much already, but he always desired to know more. Perhaps he no longer dispatched killers to do dirty work for others, but he remained a part of that world.

  Discreetly, Louis tapped the newspaper. Inside it was the flattened candle holding the wounded man’s prints and copies of the photographs taken with Arno’s cellphone, as well as additional prints from the two men who had died at the apartment building.

  “I brought you some items that caught my eye. I’d like you to take a look at them.”

  “I’m sure the police will be looking at them, too.”

  “Maybe you can do it more quickly. A favor from your friends.”

  “They’re not the kind who give favors without asking something in return.”

  “Then you’re going to owe them two, be
cause I have another one to ask.”

  “Name it.”

  “There were two federal agents nosing around Willie’s place. They were asking questions about Leroy Frank.”

  “I’ve heard nothing about an investigation. It could be that they found a thread elsewhere and something has unraveled. Then again, they’ve become so much more dogged in recent years. There was a time when terrorism used to be good for business. Now it’s all become very complicated: the slightest hint of a suspicious payment and there are all kinds of questions being asked, even of someone as blameless in such matters as Leroy Frank.”

  “Well, it could be embarrassing for a lot of people if they keep tugging on threads.”

  “I’m sure that something can be done,” said Gabriel. “In the meantime, the matters in hand are more pressing: who did this, and how can we ensure that it does not happen again?”

  “‘We’?”

  “I feel a certain responsibility for your well-being, even after all this time. Also, in a sense, your problems are my problems, especially if they relate to something that occurred on my watch, as it were. It could, of course, be the case that it’s related to your other activities. Your friend Parker has a way of making interesting enemies.”

  “Willie said the guy never mentioned Parker. It was about me.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “It narrows the field. I haven’t heard anything about a price on your head and, as you say, this was amateur hour. Anyone who put a paper out on you would be sure to hire more professional staff. If I were you, I’d be rather offended that someone might think you could be dealt with in such an uncouth fashion.”

  “Yeah, I’m all torn up. Speaking of which, I hope you sent flowers for Billy Boy.”

  Gabriel nodded sympathetically. “It wasn’t entirely unexpected. His illness was quite advanced. Radical surgery was called for. It appears somebody took it upon himself to offer it.”

  “I’m sure he would have liked a second opinion.”

  “He got the best treatment available. The end, when it came, was quite swift.”

  “Blissful, even.”

  A spasm of unease animated Gabriel’s face.