The Reapers: A Thriller-CP-7 (23 page)

So Angel broke a cardinal rule. He confided in another. Not everything, but enough that, if things began to fall apart, someone would know where to look for them, and whom to punish.

That evening, they ate together at River on Amsterdam. It was a quiet meal, even by their standards. Afterward, they had a beer in Pete’s, once the office crowd had departed along with the free munchies, and half watched the Celtics make dull work of the Knicks. To amuse himself, Angel counted the number of people who were using hand sanitizer, and stopped once it threatened to move into double figures. Hand sanitizer: what was the city coming to, he wondered. I mean, he could understand the logic of it. Not everyone who used the subway was exactly spotlessly clean, and he’d taken cab rides that had required him to send his clothes to the laundry the following day just to get the stink out, but seriously, he wasn’t sure that a little bottle of mild hand sanitizer was the answer. There was stuff breeding in the city that could survive a nuclear attack, and not just cockroaches. Angel had read somewhere that they’d found the gonorrhea virus in the Gowanus Canal. On one level, it was hardly surprising: the only thing that you couldn’t find in the Gowanus Canal was fish, or at least any fish that you could eat and live for longer than a day or two once you’d consumed it, but how dirty did a stretch of water have to be to contract a social disease?

Usually, he would have shared these thoughts with his partner, but Louis was elsewhere, his eyes on the flow of the game but his mind intent upon very different strategies. Angel finished his beer. Louis still had half a glass left, but there was more life in the Gowanus.

“We done?” said Angel.

“Sure,” said Louis.

“We can watch the end of the game, if you want.”

Louis’s eyes drifted lazily toward him. “There’s a game?” he said.

“I guess there is, somewhere.”

“Yeah, somewhere.”

They walked through the brightly lit streets, side by side, together but apart. Outside a bar at the corner of 75th, Navy boys were shouting come-ons to the young women strolling by, drawing smiles and daggered glances in equal measure. One of the sailors had an unlit cigarette in his mouth as he stood at the door of the bar. He patted his pockets for a lighter or a book of matches, then looked up to see Angel and Louis approaching.

“Buddy, you got a light?” he asked.

Louis reached into his pocket and withdrew a brass Zippo. A man, he believed, should never be without a lighter or a gun. He flipped and flicked, and the sailor shielded the flame instinctively with his left hand.

“Thanks,” he said.

“No problem,” said Louis.

“Where you from?” asked Angel.

“Iowa.”

“The hell is someone from Iowa doing in the Navy?”

The sailor shrugged. “Thought it might be good to see some ocean.”

“Yeah, not a lot of ocean in Iowa,” said Angel. “So, you seen enough yet?”

The sailor looked downcast. “Buddy, I seen enough ocean to last me a lifetime.” He took a long drag on his cigarette and tapped the heel of a shiny black shoe upon the ground.

“Terror firmer,” said Angel.

“Amen to that. Thanks for the light.”

“Our pleasure,” said Louis.

He and Angel walked on.

“Why would anyone join the Navy?” asked Angel.

“Damned if I know. Iowa. There’s a guy only ever saw pictures of the sea, and decided it was for him. Dreamers, man. They forget they have to wake up sometime.”

And in that moment their silence became more companionable than it had previously been, and Angel resigned himself to what was being done, because he was a dreamer, too.
II

The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

—MATTHEW 9:37

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE MEETING WAS HELD in one of the private dining rooms of a members’ club between Park and Madison, almost within complaining distance of the latest Guggenheim exhibition. There was no sign on the wall beside the door to indicate the nature of the establishment, perhaps because it was not necessary. Those who needed to know its location were already aware of it, and even a casual observer would have realized that here was a place defined by its exclusivity: if one had to ask what it was, then one had no business doing so, since the answer, if given, would be entirely irrelevant to one’s circumstances.

The precise nature of the club’s exclusivity was difficult to explain. It was more recently established than similar institutions in the vicinity, although it was by no means without history. Because of its relative youth, it had never turned away a prospective member on the grounds of race, sex, or creed. Neither was great wealth a prerequisite of membership, since there were those on its books who might have struggled to pay for a round of drinks in an institution less tolerant of its members’ occasional struggles with solvency. Instead, the club operated a policy that might most accurately have been described as reasonably benevolent protectionism, based upon the understanding that it was a club that existed for those who disliked clubs, either because of an inherently antisocial bent or because they preferred others to know as little about their business as possible. Phones of any kind were forbidden in the public areas. Conversation was tolerated if it was conducted in the kind of whispers usually considered audible only to bats and dogs. Its formal dining room was one of the quietest places to eat in the city, in part because of the virtual ban on any form of vocal communication, but mostly because its members generally preferred to dine in the private rooms, where all business was guaranteed to remain undisclosed, for the club prided itself on its discretion, even unto death. The waiters were one step removed from being deaf, dumb, and blind; there were no security cameras; and nobody was ever referred to by name, unless they indicated a preference for such familiarity. Membership cards carried only a number. The top two floors contained twelve tastefully, although not opulently, furnished bedrooms for those who chose to spend the night in the city and preferred not to trouble themselves with hotels. The only questions ever asked of guests tended to involve variations upon certain themes, like whether they might like more wine, and if they might, perhaps, require some assistance making their way up the stairs to bed.

There were eight men, including Angel and Louis, gathered on this particular evening in what was unofficially known as “The Presidential Room,” a reference to a famous night when a holder of the highest office in the land had used the room to satisfy a number of his needs, of which eating was only one.

The men ate at a circular table, dining on red meat—venison and fillet steak—and drinking Dark Horse shiraz from South Africa. When the table was cleared, and coffee and digestifs had been served to those who required them, Louis locked the door and spread his maps and graphs before them. He went over the plan once, without interruption. The six guests listened intently, while Angel watched their faces carefully for any flickers, any reactions that might indicate that others shared his own doubts. He saw nothing. Even when they began asking questions, they were purely on matters of detail. The reasons for what was about to take place did not concern them. Neither did the risks, not unduly. They were being well paid for their time and expertise, and they trusted Louis. They were men used to fighting and they understood that their compensation was generous precisely because of the dangers involved.

At least three—the Englishman, Blake; Marsh, from Alabama; and the mongrel Lynott, a man who had more accents than the average continent—were veterans of any number of foreign conflicts, their allegiances determined by mood, money, and morality, and generally in that order. The two Harrys—Hara and Harada—were Japanese, or said they were, although they possessed passports from four or five Asian countries. They looked like the kind of tourists one saw at the Grand Canyon, mugging cheerfully for the camera and making peace signs for the folks back home. They were both small and dark, and Harada wore black-framed glasses that he always pushed up on the bridge of his nose with his middle finger before speaking, a tic that had led Angel to wonder if it wasn’t simply a subtle way of giving the world the bird whenever he opened his mouth. He and Hara looked so innocuous that Angel found them deeply unsettling. He had heard of some of the things they had done. He hadn’t been sure whether to believe the stories or not until the two Harrys passed on a film to him that they claimed had made them laugh harder than anything they had seen before, tears already rolling down their cheeks as they exchanged favorite plot points in their native tongue. Angel had blocked out the name of the film for the sake of his own sanity, although he had a memory of acupuncture needles being inserted between a guy’s eyelid and eyeball and then being “pinged” gently with a fingertip. What was particularly disturbing was that the movie had been the Harrys’ Christmas present to him. Angel wasn’t a guy to go around branding people as abnormal without good reason, but he figured the Harrys should have been strangled at birth. They were their mothers’ little joke at the world’s expense.

The sixth member of the team was Weis, a tall Swiss who had once served in the pope’s guard. He and Lynott seemed to have some minor beef going, if the look that passed between them when they had realized they were to dine together was anything to go by. It was just one more reason for Angel to feel uneasy. Those kinds of tensions, especially in a small team, tended to spread out and make everyone edgy. Still, they all knew one another, even if only by reputation, and Weis and Blake were soon deep in conversation about mutual acquaintances, both living and dead, while Lynott appeared to have found a point of shared interest with the Harrys, which confirmed Angel’s suspicions about all three of them.

By the end of the evening, the teams had been decided: Weis and Blake would secure the northern bridge, Lynott and Marsh the southern. The Harrys would work the road between the two bridges, traveling back and forth at regular intervals. If required, they could move to support either of the bridge teams, or take it upon themselves to hold a bridge if one of those teams had to cross the river to support Angel and Louis in their escape.

It was decided that they would leave the next day, staggering their departures, staying in preassigned motels within easy reach of their target. Shortly before dawn, when each team was in position, Angel and Louis would cross the Roubaud to kill Arthur Leehagen, his son Michael, and anyone else who got in the way of this stated aim.

When their six guests had departed, and the check had been settled, Angel and Louis separated. Angel returned to their apartment, while Louis went downtown to a loft in TriBeCa. There he shared a final glass of wine with a couple named Abigail and Philip Endall. The Endalls looked like any normal, well-to-do couple in their late thirties, although normal was not a word that applied to their chosen line of work. As they sat around the dining table, Louis went through a variation of his original plan with them. The Endalls were the jokers in Louis’s pack. He had no intention of tackling Leehagen with only Angel by his side. Before any of the other teams were even in place, the Endalls would be on Leehagen’s land, waiting.

That night, Angel lay awake in the darkness. Louis sensed his sleeplessness.

“What is it?” asked Louis.

“You didn’t tell them about the fifth team.”

“They didn’t need to know. Nobody needs to know every detail except us.”

Angel didn’t reply. Louis moved beside him, and the bedside light went on.

“What is it with you?” said Louis. “You been like a lost dog these last two days.”

Angel turned to look at him. “This isn’t right,” he said. “I’ll go along with it, but it isn’t right.”

“Taking Leehagen?”

“No, the way you’re going about it. Pieces aren’t fitting the way that they should.”

“You talking about Weis and Lynott? They’ll be fine. We keep them away from each other, that’s all.”

“Not just them. It’s this small team, and the holes in Hoyle’s story.”

“What holes?”

“I can’t put my finger on them. It just doesn’t ring true, not all of it.”

“Gabriel confirmed what Hoyle told us.”

“What, that there was a beef between him and Leehagen? Big deal. You think that’s enough of a reason to kill someone’s daughter and feed her to hogs, to pay the best part of a million dollars in bounty on the heads of two men? No, I don’t like it. It seemed like even Gabriel was holding something back. You said so yourself after you spoke to him. Then there’s Bliss…”

“We don’t know that he’s out there.”

“I smell him all over Billy Boy.”

“You’re turning into an old woman. Next you’ll be talking about getting a cat, and clipping coupons.”

“I’m telling you: something is off.”

“You that worried, then stay here.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Then get some sleep. I don’t need you any edgier than you already are for this.”

Louis turned out the light, leaving Angel in darkness. He did not sleep, but Louis did. It was a gift that he had: nothing ever got in the way of his rest. He did not dream that night, or he could not remember if he did, but he woke up just before dawn, Angel at last sleeping beside him, and his nostrils were filled with the smell of burning.

Their names were Alderman Rector and Atlas Griggs. Alderman was out of Oneida, Tennessee, a town where, as a child, he had witnessed police and civilians hunt down a Negro hobo who had stepped off a freight train at the wrong station. The man was pursued through the woods as he fled for his life until, after an hour had gone by, his bullet-riddled body was dragged through the dirt and left by the station house for all to see. His mother had named him Alderman out of spite for the white people who were determined that such a title would never be available to him in reality, and she stressed to the boy the importance of always being neatly dressed and of never giving a man, white or black, an excuse to disrespect him. That was why, when Griggs tracked him down at the cockfight, Alderman was dressed in a canary-yellow suit, a cream shirt, and a blood-orange tie, with two-tone cream and brown shoes on his feet and, screwed down so hard upon his head that it left a permanent ring in his hair, a yellow hat with a red feather in the band. Only when you got up close could you see the stains on the suit, the fraying on the collar of the shirt, the ripples in the tie where the elastic in the fabric had begun to give, and the bubbles of hardened glue holding his shoe leather together. Alderman owned only two suits, a yellow and a brown, and they were both items of dead men’s clothing, bought from the widows before the coffin lid had been screwed down on their previous owners, but, as he often pointed out to Griggs, that was two suits more than a whole lot of other men owned, whatever the color of their skin.