It was a dull job, and they had passed the time as best they could. While the Loweins slept, Bliss spoke in the most general terms of his life as a Reaper, imparting to Louis occasional words of advice. He talked of sharpshooting, for one of Bliss’s skills lay in the use of the rifle. He told Louis of the origins of the term “sniper” in the hunting of game fowl in India in the nineteenth century; of Hiram Berdan, the Civil War general who was an exponent of the art and helped to perfect the techniques still used by snipers to this day; of the Englishman, Major Hesketh-Pritchard, who organized the first Army School of Sniping, Observing, and Scouting during World War I in response to the German sniper attacks on British soldiers; of the Russian teams in World War II, and the less-efficient use of snipers by the Americans, who had yet to realize that arming a unit marksman with an M1, M1C, or M1903 was not the same as creating a sniper.
Louis listened. It seemed to him that the skills valued in a sniper were not without relevance to his own situation: intelligence, reliability, initiative, loyalty, stability, and discipline. It made sense to train repeatedly, to keep one’s abilities honed; to maintain prime physical condition, because with that came confidence, stamina, and control; not to be a smoker, for an unsuppressed cough could betray a position, and the desire for a cigarette would bring with it nervousness, and irritation, and a commensurate lowering of efficiency; and to be emotionally balanced, without anxiety or remorse when it came to a kill.
Finally, Bliss told Louis of the importance of the “walkaway.” Snipers, and Reapers, were weapons of opportunity. It was important to prepare, so that one was ready when the opportunity presented itself. Good preparation could create opportunities, but sometimes the opportunity would not present itself, and it was not wise to force the situation. Another chance would come, if one were patient and prepared.
But there would be times when all was not right, when one’s instincts told one to leave, to drop everything and walk away. Bliss spoke of a job down in Chile. He had been tracking the target through his sight and was moments away from taking the shot, when one of the bodyguards had glanced up at the window where Bliss lay in wait. Bliss knew that he was invisible to the guard. It was almost dusk, and he was swathed in black, nonreflective material against a darkened window in an anonymous block of apartments. Even the muzzle of the rifle had been blackened. There was no way that the bodyguard’s gaze should have fallen upon him, yet it had.
Bliss did not even consider taking the shot, although his finger was already tightening on the trigger. Instead, he had walked away. It was a setup. Someone had informed. He had escaped from the building with only seconds to spare, leaving his rifle behind. Gabriel had understood, and the leak was found and plugged.
“Remember,” Bliss had said. “You only have one life. Your duty is to make it last. The trick is knowing when to stand, and when to walk away.”
Now it was after two in the morning. The Loweins were asleep upstairs, the adults together in one room on the second floor, the children next door. The third floor was unoccupied. Twice every hour, Louis or Bliss would check up on them. Downstairs, a radio played Connie Francis: a recording of some old show. It was Bliss’s choice, not Louis’s. He tolerated it out of deference to the older man.
Bliss had left him sitting in an armchair while he went upstairs to make sure all was okay with the Loweins. Only after five minutes had passed, and Bliss had not returned, did Louis stir from his chair. He walked to the hallway.
“Bliss?” he called. “You okay?”
There was no reply. He tried the walkie-talkie, but got only static in return.
He removed his gun from his holster and began to climb the stairs. The children’s bedroom door was open, and the two kids were curled up in their beds. The nightlight by the wall had been turned off. When Louis had last checked, the light had been on. He knelt and flipped the switch.
There was blood on the sheets, and one of the spare pillows lay on the floor, feathers pouring from twin bullet holes. He moved closer to the first bed and pulled the sheet from David Lowein. The boy was dead, the blood soaking into the pillow under his head. He checked the other bed. David’s sister had been shot once in the back.
Louis was about to call in help, then stopped. There was movement in the parents’ bedroom. He could hear footsteps. He killed the nightlight and moved toward the connecting door. It stood slightly ajar. Slowly, he pushed it open, and waited.
Nothing.
He moved into the room, and a pale figure stumbled toward him. Celice Lowein’s cream nightdress was soaked with blood from the wound to her chest. He thought that she was trying to reach for him, her left hand outstretched, red with her blood and the blood of her husband who lay dead on the bed behind her, but then realized that she was staring past him, using the last of her strength to find her children.
He put his hand out to stop her, and she came to rest against it, teetering on the balls of her feet. She looked at him, and her mouth opened. There was desolation in her eyes, and then even that was gone as the life left her and she collapsed on the floor.
Just too late he heard the footsteps behind him. He prepared to turn, but the gun touched the back of his head and he froze.
“Don’t,” said Bliss’s voice.
“Why?” asked Louis.
“Money. Why else?”
“They’ll find you.”
“No, they won’t. Kneel.”
Louis knew that he was going to die, but he would not die on his knees. He twisted, his own weapon a dark blur in his hand, and then Bliss’s gun spoke and all went black.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WILLIE BREW AND ARNO had decided, after consultation with Louis, that the auto shop should reopen. Louis had been against it, fearing for their safety, but Willie and Arno had been entirely for it, fearing for their sanity if they were not allowed to return to their little haven of automobiles, engine parts, and overalls. They had cars to repair, they argued, and promises to keep. (Actually, Arno had preceded the latter with something about having miles to go before he slept, which Willie suspected might have been part of a poem or a song or something, and he had given Arno a scowl that left him in no doubt that such contributions were not only unwelcome, but might result in engine oil being poured down his throat.)
Absent from the surroundings of his beloved auto shop, and cut off from the routines that had sustained him for so many years, Willie had found himself thinking too much. With thoughts came regrets, and with regrets came the urge, always present, never forgotten, to drink more than was wise in order to lift his mood. It was almost a contradiction in terms, but Willie was by nature a solitary man who was happiest surrounded by others, and in the role to which he was best suited: dressed in blue bib overalls with grease on his hands, in intimate congress with a motorized vehicle. The private part of himself could retreat, comfortable in the knowledge that it was not required to be fully engaged for the commission of such routine acts, while something automatic kicked in and allowed another part of himself to play the role of the cranky yet ultimately genial proprietor. Without the latter character in which to lose himself temporarily, Willie was in danger of losing the best part of himself permanently.
For this reason, even on Sundays he and Arno could often be found in the shop, tinkering away while the radio played in the background, both men oil-smeared and at peace. There was always work to be done, for they had earned their reputation and there was no shortage of willing customers for their services. Willie had also been spurred on to greater efforts by his desire to pay back the loan that he had received from Louis all those years before. Although he was grateful for what had been done, he disliked being beholden to any man financially. Money cast a shadow over any relationship, and Willie’s relationship with Louis was more unusual than most. It was predicated on the fact that Willie knew what Louis did, yet had to act as if he did not; that he was aware of the blood on this man’s hands, and it did not concern him. The attack on his place of busi
ness, and the knowledge that he had come very close to dying in it, had added another problematical dimension to his involvement with Louis. Yet Willie knew that it could never end, not entirely, for the bonds that tied them together were not merely financial. Even so, by severing the monetary connection he would be making a statement about his own independence. Perhaps also on some deeper, half-acknowledged level, he was investing the paying off of the loan with a greater significance, as though it represented the more final separation for which he secretly wished.
But for now, here in these grubby premises, surrounded by familiar sights and smells, such matters could be forgotten. This was his place. Here, he had purpose. Here he could be both himself, and something more than himself. It was important to him to reclaim it after the attack. It had been violated by the incursion of the two armed men, but by returning to it and using it for the purpose for which it had been created, he and Arno could cleanse it of that stain.
In the end they had forced Louis to concede, helped by the fact that Angel was on their side. This was largely because, in certain matters, Angel felt duty bound to take the opposite side to that of his partner in order to keep him on his toes, no matter how sensible a position said partner might be occupying at the time. In that way, at least, they resembled settled couples the world over. But Angel also understood Willie better than Louis did. He knew how important the auto shop was to him, and how much the attack had angered and shaken him. Willie, Angel knew, would rather have died under the gun in his shop than peacefully at home in his bed. In fact, Angel suspected that Willie’s ultimate desire was to be crushed under some suitably extravagant piece of American engineering upon which he happened to be working at the time-a ’62 Plymouth Fury, maybe, or a ’57 Dodge Royal two-door sedan-just as Catherine the Great of Russia was often said to have died under the stallion with which she was about to copulate. The relationship between mechanics and cars, particularly classic cars, had always struck Angel as slightly odd, and the affection displayed for them by Willie and Arno as particularly unsettling. Sometimes, when he entered the garage, he half expected one or both of them to be found smoking a postcoital cigarette in the backseat of a forty-year-old automobile. Actually, he expected to find worse than that, but he preferred not to torture himself with images of Willie and Arno engaged in sexual acts of an automotive nature.
So now Willie and Arno were back in the place that they loved, the radio tuned, as it always was, to WCBS at 101.1. The station was on a fifties jag that night: Bobby Darin, Tennessee Ernie Ford, even Alvin and the Chipmunks-and here Willie, usually a man of some tolerance, was tempted to take a hammer to the speakers, especially when Arno, who could be an irritatingly uncanny mimic when he chose, began to sing along from under the hood of a ’98 Dodge Durango with a busted radiator hose and twin white stripes down the body that appeared to have been painted by someone cross-eyed.
It was after ten, and yet they were still working, neither man troubled by the lateness of the hour. Familiar smells, familiar sounds. This was home to them. They were fixing things, and content to be doing so.
Well, reasonably content.
“For the love of sweet Jesus and His holy divine mother,” said Willie, “cut that out!”
“Cut what out?”
“The singing.”
“Was I singing?”
“Dammit, you know you were singing, if you can call it that. If you’re gonna sing along to something, sing along to the Elegants or the Champs. You don’t even do a bad Kitty Kalen, but not, not Alvin and the goddamned Chipmunks.”
“David Seville,” said Arno.
“Who?”
“That was the Alvin and the Chipmunks guy. David Seville. It was 1958 when he started, except he wasn’t really David Seville, he was Ross Bagdasarian. Armenian, from Fresno.”
“There’s a Fresno in Armenia?”
“What? No, there’s no Fresno in Armenia.” Arno paused. “Not that I know of. No, he was of Armenian descent. His people just ended up in Fresno. Jeez, why is it so hard to talk to you? It’s like dealing with a geriatric.”
“Yeah, well, maybe it’s because you don’t know anything useful. How come you don’t know anything useful anyway? You got all this stuff in your head-poetry, monster movies, even damned chipmunks-and you still can’t find your way around a Dodge transmission without a map and a bag of supplies.”
“If I’m so bad, how come you ain’t fired me yet?”
“I have fired you. Three times.”
“Yeah, well, how come you let me back again?”
“You work cheap. You’re lousy at what you do, but at least you don’t cost much to keep.”
“Bad food,” said Arno.
“And such small portions,” said Willie, and the two men laughed. The sound was still echoing in the farthest corners of the auto shop when Willie tapped lightly but audibly three times on the side of his work bench, a signal that they had agreed upon as a warning of potential trouble. From the corner of his eye, Willie saw Arno reach for a baseball bat that he had begun to keep close to hand as of that day, but otherwise the little man did not move. Willie shifted his right hand to the front pocket of his capacious overalls, where it gripped a compact Browning.380 that had come from Louis.
Then Arno heard it: two knocks on the door. The auto shop was locked down. Now there was someone outside in the dark, demanding to be let in.
“Shit,” said Arno.
Willie stood. He held the Browning down by his side as he walked to the door and risked a glance through the interior grill and the Plexiglas of the window, trying not to make his head a target, then hit the exterior light.
The man standing outside was alone, and his hands were buried deep in the pockets of his overcoat. Willie couldn’t tell for sure if he was armed. If he was, he wasn’t waving it around.
“Are you Willie Brew?” the man asked.
“That’s me,” said Willie. He had never been much for the “who’s asking” school of greeting and debate.
“I have a message for Louis.”
“I don’t know a Louis.”
The man drew closer to the glass so that he could be certain that Willie would hear what he had to say, then continued as though Willie had never spoken.
“It comes from his guardian angel. Tell him to drop the job and come home, him and his friend. Tell them both to walk away. He asks, you’re to say that Hoyle and Leehagen are intimately acquainted. Are you clear on that?”
And something told Willie that this man was, however confusingly, trying to do Louis a good turn, and to deny any further knowledge of him would not only be fruitless, but might also result in harm to the two men who were, after Arno, closest to Willie.
“If this message is so important, you ought to tell him yourself,” said Willie.
“He’s out of contact,” he said. “Where he is, cells don’t work. If he calls you, pass the message on to him.”
“He won’t call here,” said Willie. “That’s not how he operates.”
“Then he’s not coming back,” said the man.
He turned to walk away. After a second’s hesitation, Willie opened the door and followed him into the night, slipping the gun into the pocket of his overalls. The visitor was approaching the rear passenger-side door of a black Lincoln town car that had been parked out of Willie’s line of sight. As Willie appeared, the driver’s door opened and a man emerged. He didn’t look like any chauffeur that Willie had ever seen. He was young, and neatly dressed in a gray suit, but he had eyes so dead they properly belonged in a jar somewhere. His right hand was hidden behind the door, but Willie knew instinctively that there was a gun in it. He gave silent thanks that he had not walked out of the garage with the little Browning visible. Instead, he held his hands away from his body, as though preparing to hug the man that he was following.
“Hey,” said Willie.
The man stopped, his hand on the handle of the car door.
“Who are you?” asked Willie.<
br />
“My name is Milton. Louis will know who I am.”
“That’s no good to me. He’s gone. They’re both gone. Can’t you do something? Can’t you help them?”
“No.”
“I’m not even sure where they are,” said Willie, and he heard the hint of pleading in his voice, of desperation, and felt no shame. Angel had told him a little, but it had meant nothing to him. He was surprised that Angel had chosen to share any details at all with him, but he had been more concerned about returning to his beloved auto shop at the time. All he had was the name of a town upstate. What the hell use was that if they were in trouble? He wasn’t a one-man army. He was just an overweight guy in overalls, with a gun that he didn’t want to use.
But Louis and Angel were important to him. Whatever his fears and reservations, they had saved him, in their way. Willie was under no illusions: when Louis had first approached him, it was not out of altruism. It had suited him to have Willie in the building that he had acquired, for reasons that Willie himself still did not quite understand. Yet, self-interested or not, Louis had permitted Willie to keep doing what he loved. That was a long time ago, and things were different now. They had paid for his birthday party. They had even given him a gift: a Rolex Submariner Oyster, discreetly handed to him after everyone was gone from Nate’s that night. It was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen that did not have four wheels. Never had he even imagined that he would own something so lovely. He was wearing it now. Only for an instant had he considered putting it in a drawer and saving it for special wear. He didn’t do “special.” If he put it in a drawer, then it would stay there until he died. Better to wear it, and enjoy the fact of it upon his wrist.
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