The Reapers: A Thriller-CP-7 (12 page)

And this was the thing: they were both looking at Willie like he was already dead. Willie knew who they were. He knew that, not far from the front entrance to his beloved auto shop, there would be a blue Chevy Malibu parked, ready to whisk these men back to wherever they had come from as soon as their work here was done. He should have said something the first time he saw the car. Now it was too late.

Willie stood. He still had a lug wrench in his right hand.

“We’re closed, fellas,” said Willie.

But these men were not here about a car, and anything that Willie said to the contrary was just delaying the inevitable, a pretense for which they would have no patience. They were here on business, and Willie tried to figure out if there was anyone he had bugged so much that they’d want to sic two guys like this on him. He decided that he couldn’t find a name. There was nobody who hated him this much. This wasn’t about him. A message was being sent, and it would be sent through Willie, through the breaking of his bones and the ending of his life. Then the gum chewer produced a gun from beneath his jacket. He didn’t even point it at Willie, just let it dangle by his side like it was the most natural thing in the world to walk into a man’s premises and prepare to kill him. He kept his thumb and forefinger in position while he stretched the remaining fingers, an athlete giving his muscles a final loosening before stepping into the blocks.

“Drop the wrench,” said his goateed buddy.

Willie did. It made a loud clang as it hit the concrete floor.

“You don’t look so good,” said Goatee. Willie tried to place the accent, but couldn’t. There might have been some Canadian in there someplace. Not that it mattered, not now.

“I had a rough night.”

“Well, I hate to say it, but your day ain’t about to get much better.”

Goatee punched Willie hard. Willie didn’t have a chance to prepare for the blow. It hit him full in the center of the face and broke his nose. Willie went down on his knees, his hands already raised to catch the first flow of blood. He heard the second man snicker, then move off. The door to the storage area opened. Willie peered through his fingers, and saw the gum chewer enter the room, his gun raised now. For once in his life, Willie prayed, don’t let Arno do anything dumb. Goatee now had his own gun in his hand.

“You know,” he continued, “you ought to be more particular about who you go into business with. I mean, I know men who keep company with faggots. I don’t respect ’em, and I can’t say that I much like what they do together, but it happens. Then, Lord knows, I’ve known men to keep company with killers. You might say that I am one of those men, and my buddy back there is as well. We’re both like that, in a way: we kill people, and we keep each other company while we do it. But you, you’re covering all the bases at once. Hanging out with fag killers: that’s quite something. Guess you ought not to be surprised at what comes next.”

He pointed the gun at Willie’s head, and Willie closed his eyes. He heard a shot, and grimaced, but the sound hadn’t come from up close. Instead, it echoed inside the storage room. The noise distracted Goatee for an instant. His head turned, and in that moment Willie was on him. He picked up the wrench as he came, raising it almost to his shoulder and then bringing it down sharply just above the man’s gun hand. He thought that he felt a bone snap, and then the gun was on the floor and Willie’s weight was forcing the other man back against the trunk of the red Olds on which Arno had been working. Even with one hand injured, Goatee was still fast. His left hand lashed out, catching Willie’s busted nose and sending fresh daggers of pain through his face, blinding him for an instant. Willie kicked with his right foot, and the steel toe cap of his work boot connected with a thigh, deadening it so that his opponent stumbled as he stretched to reach his gun. The action caused Willie to lose his own balance, and he fell. He managed to knock the gun away with the side of his foot, sending it skidding into the shadows of the garage, just as he heard a second shot and glass breaking. He tried to make himself smaller, to find some cover, and when he looked up the back window of the Olds had shattered and Goatee was moving away quickly, still limping on his dead leg. There was a third shot, and Goatee’s right shoulder was pushed forward, even as he slipped out of the garage door and disappeared into the night, his departure hastened by a final shot that struck the brickwork nearby. Arno was standing at the entrance to the storage room, a gun in his hand. The gun wasn’t very steady, and looked too big for Arno to hold. Arno didn’t like guns and, as far as Willie knew, had never fired one before. It was a wonder that he’d managed to hit his target at all. Arno moved cautiously toward the garage door. There was the sound of a car starting up, then driving away. Willie struggled to his feet. “What happened to the other fella?” he asked.

“I hit him with a hammer,” said Arno. He was very pale. “His gun went off when he fell. You okay?”

Willie nodded. His nose hurt like damnation, but he was alive. His hands were shaking, and now he felt sure that he was going to vomit. He reached out and gently removed the gun from Arno’s hand, putting the safety on as he did so.

“What was all that about?” asked Arno.

“I need to make a call,” said Willie. “Find some wire and tie up the guy in the storage room.”

Arno didn’t move. “I don’t think we’re gonna have to do that, boss,” he said. Willie looked at him. “Jesus, how hard did you hit him?”

“It was a hammer. How hard do you think?”

Willie shook his head, although he wasn’t sure whether in despair or admiration.

“I’m working with fucking Rambo now,” he said. “I don’t even know how you managed to wing that other guy.”

“I was aiming for his feet,” said Willie.

“What were you trying to do, make him dance? Aiming for his feet. Jesus. Lock the doors.”

Arno did as he was told. Willie went into his office and picked up the phone. He knew by heart the number that he dialed.

The call transferred to a machine. Then he tried the service, and the woman named Amy took his number and said that she’d pass on the message. Finally, he tried the cell, using this week’s number, to be utilized only in the gravest of emergencies, but a voice told him that the phone was off.

For Louis and Angel had troubles of their own.

Mrs. Bondarchuk was in the hallway when she heard the buzzer sound. She looked through one of the frosted-glass panes of the inner door and saw a man standing on the stoop outside the main door. He was dressed in a blue uniform and had a package in one hand and a clipboard in the other. Mrs. Bondarchuk pressed the intercom switch just as the buzzer sounded again. Her Pomeranians began yapping.

“Can I help you?” she asked, in a tone that suggested any help would be a long time coming. Mrs. Bondarchuk was wary of all strangers, and especially men. She knew what men were like. There wasn’t a one that could be trusted, the two gentlemen who lived upstairs excepted.

“Delivery,” the voice came back.

“Delivery for whom?”

There was a pause.

“Mrs. Evelyn Bondarchuk.”

“Leave it inside,” said Mrs. Bondarchuk, hitting the switch that opened the outer door only.

“Are you Mrs. Bondarchuk?” said the delivery man, as he stepped into the entrance.

“Who else would I be?”

“Need you to sign for it.”

There was an inch-wide slot in the inner door for just such eventualities.

“Put it through the hole,” said Mrs. Bondarchuk.

“Lady, I can’t do that. It’s important. I need to hold on to it.”

“What am I going to do with a clipboard?” asked Mrs. Bondarchuk. “Sell it and fly to Russia?

Put the clipboard through the hole.”

The front door closed behind the man. She could see him properly now. He had dark hair and bad skin.

“Come on lady, be reasonable. Open up and sign.”

Mrs. Bondarchuk didn’t like the suggestion that she was being in any way unreasonable.

“I can’t do that. You’ll have to go, and you can take your parcel with you. Leave the number and I’ll collect it myself.”

“This is stupid, Mrs. Bondarchuk. If you don’t accept it, I got to haul it all the way downtown again. You know, it could get lost,” the man said, his implication clear. “Maybe it’s perishable. What then?”

“Then it’ll start to smell,” said Mrs. Bondarchuk, “and you’ll have to throw it away. Leave now, please.”

But the man did not leave. Instead, he drew a pistol from beneath his uniform and aimed it at the glass. It had a cylinder attached to the end of it. Mrs. Bondarchuk had seen enough cop shows to know a silencer when she saw one.

“You dumb old bitch,” he said as Mrs. Bondarchuk’s finger left the intercom button, ending their conversation, while her left hand hit the silent alarm. The man glanced over his shoulder at the empty street behind him, then aimed the pistol at the glass and fired twice. The sound was like a pair of paper bags bursting, and almost simultaneously two impact marks appeared in front of Mrs. Bondarchuk’s face, but the glass did not break. Like most things about the building, Mrs. Bondarchuk included, it was more formidable than it first appeared. The man outside seemed to realize that his efforts were in vain. He slammed his gloved hand once against the glass, as though hoping to dislodge it from its frame, then opened the main door again and ran onto the street. For a time, all was quiet. Then Mrs. Bondarchuk heard noises from the basement at the back of the house. She checked her watch. Five minutes had passed since she had hit the silent alarm. If, after ten minutes, nobody came, her instructions were to call the police. Her two gentlemen had been very specific about this when the new security system was installed, and it had been repeated in an official letter to Mrs. Bondarchuk from Mr. Leroy Frank himself. It informed her that a private security firm, a very exclusive one, was employed to monitor Mr. Frank’s properties in order to take some of the pressure from the city’s finest. In the event of trouble, someone would be with her in less than ten minutes. If, after that time, no help had arrived, only then should she call the police.

The sounds from the back of the house persisted. She hushed her Pomeranians and quietly made her way downstairs to where the back door opened onto a small paved area where the trash cans were kept. The door was reinforced steel, and there was a spy hole in the center. She looked through it and saw two men, both of them wearing courier uniforms, attaching something to the exterior of the door. One of them, the man who had fired at the front door, looked up, and guessed that she was there from the change in the light. He waved a slab of white material, like a piece of builder’s putty. Something that resembled the stub of a pencil stuck out of one end, with a wire attached.

“You ought to step back from the door,” he said, his voice muffled by the steel yet audible.

“Better still, lie against it, see what happens.”

Mrs. Bondarchuk moved away, her hands pressed to her mouth.

“No,” she said. “Oh, no.”

She had to call the police. She retreated farther. She needed to get back to her apartment, needed to summon help. Mr. Leroy Frank’s security people had not come. They had let her down, just when she most needed them. She began to run, and realized that she was crying. Her ears were filled with the sound of yapping Pomeranians.

Twin shots came from outside the door. They were much louder than the earlier shots, and they were followed by the sound of something heavy falling against the metal outside. Mrs. Bondarchuk froze, then turned in the direction of the door. She raised the tips of her fingers to her mouth. They trembled, tapping lightly on her fleshy lips.

“Mrs. Bondarchuk?” someone called, and she recognized Mr. Angel’s voice. “You okay in there?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Who were those men?”

“We don’t know, Mrs. Bondarchuk.”

We. “Have they gone?”

There was a pause. “Uh, in a way,” said Mr. Angel.

Mrs. Bondarchuk went back to her apartment, closed and locked the door, and sat with a pair of Pomeranians on her lap until Mr. Angel came to see her some time later with a chocolate cake from Zabar’s. Together, they ate a slice of cake each and drank a glass of milk, and nice Mr. Angel did his best to put Mrs. Bondarchuk’s mind at rest.

CHAPTER SIX

TO WILLIE’S SURPRISE, AND to Arno’s relief, the man in the storeroom wasn’t dead. His skull was fractured, and he was bleeding from his ears, which Willie didn’t consider to be a good sign, but he was definitely still breathing. This took the decision on what to do next out of Willie’s hands. He wasn’t about to let a stranger die on his floor, so he called 911 and, while they waited for the ambulance and the inevitable cops to arrive, he and Arno got their stories straight. It was a bungled holdup, pure and simple. The men had been looking for money and a car. They were armed and, in fear of their lives, Willie and Arno had tackled them, leaving one unconscious on the floor and forcing the other to flee, wounded. Willie took one further precaution. With Arno’s help, and using a candle that he warmed and flattened on the radiator, he took the unconscious man’s prints by pressing his fingers against the warm wax. He then placed the candle behind a pile of old documents in the office closet, and locked the door. The man wasn’t carrying a wallet or any other form of ID, which Willie thought was odd. He knew that the cops would probably print him, but he also understood that Louis might want to make some inquiries of his own. To further assist Louis in any such endeavor, Willie told Arno to take some pictures of the guy, using his cellphone. Willie’s cellphone didn’t take photos. It was so low-tech that it made a tin can on the end of a piece of string look like a viable alternative, but that was just the way Willie liked it.

Both Willie and Arno played their parts to perfection when the cops arrived: they were honest men faced with the threat of harm and, possibly, death, who had fought back against their aggressors and now stood, shocked but most definitely alive, in the center of the small business they had so determinedly defended. It wasn’t far off the mark either. The cops listened sympathetically, then advised them both to come down to the station the next morning in order to make formal statements. Arno asked if he was going to need a lawyer, but the detective in charge told him that he didn’t think so. Off the record, he said that it was unlikely any charges would be pressed even if the mook died. No DA liked prosecuting an unpopular case, and Arno was in a position to offer an ironclad self-defense plea. The next step, he said, was to identify the gentleman in question, since the only items in his pockets were gum, a roll of tens, twenties, and fifties, and a spare clip for his gun. Willie and Arno did their best to look surprised at this news. Willie reckoned they were 99 percent done when a pair of new arrivals, one male and one female, entered the garage. They both wore dark suits, and when they showed their IDs to the patrolman at the garage door he looked over his shoulder when they had passed and mouthed the word “feds” to his colleagues inside, as if they hadn’t already guessed who the visitors were. Willie’s face had been taped up by one of the medics. The medic had reset Willie’s nose in his office, thus saving him a trip to the hospital, and it was now throbbing balefully. Added to the nausea that he was still experiencing from his hangover and the comedown from the adrenaline rush of the fight, Willie was having trouble remembering the last time he’d felt so bad. Now, as he sat on a stool beside the busted Olds, Arno nearby, he watched the two agents approach and, with a dart of his eyes, signaled to Arno that there was trouble on its way. Willie was no expert on law enforcement, or the niceties of jurisdiction, but he had lived in Queens long enough to know that the FBI didn’t show up every time someone waved a gun in an auto shop, otherwise they’d never have time to do anything else.