The Reapers

“Chief Wooster,” he said, nodding with a pretence of amiability.

“Special Agent Vallance,” said Wooster. He didn’t stand. Vallance had never addressed him by anything but his first name before, and Wooster had returned the familiarity, even when there was business at hand. Vallance was giving him the nod, letting him know that this was serious, that both he and Wooster were being watched. Still, Wooster wasn’t about to stand down on his own turf without a fight, and there was the matter of that butt to consider.

Wooster looked past Vallance to where the other four men stood, the old-looking guy in the middle of the pack, smaller than the others but with his own, quiet authority.

“What you got here, a wedding party?” asked Wooster.

“Can we talk inside?”

“Sure.” Wooster rose and spread his hands expansively. “Everybody’s welcome here.”

Only Vallance and the older man entered, the latter closing the door behind them. Wooster could feel the eyes of his men and his secretary on him, boring through the glass. Knowing that he was on show before his own people made him step up to the plate. He straightened his shoulders and stood taller, his back to the window, not bothering to adjust the blinds, so that they had the sun in their eyes.

“What’s the deal, Agent Vallance?”

“The deal is that boy you’re sweating back there.”

“Everybody sweats here.”

“Not like him.”

“Boy is a suspect in a murder investigation.”

“So I hear. What have you got on him?”

“Got probable cause. Man he killed may have murdered his mother.”

“May have?”

“He ain’t around to ask no more.”

“From what I hear, he was asked before he left this world. He didn’t fess up to anything.”

“He did it, though. Anyone believes he didn’t is ready to meet Santa Claus.”

“So, probable cause. That all you got?”

“So far.”

“The boy bending?”

“The boy’s not the kind to bend. But he’ll break, in the end.”

“You seem real sure of that.”

“He’s a boy, not a man, and I’ve broken better men than he’ll ever be. You want to tell me what this is about? I don’t think you have jurisdiction here, Ray.” Wooster had given up being polite. “This isn’t a federal beef.”

“We think it is.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Dead man was a crew chief on the new road by the Orismachee Swamp. That’s a federal reserve.”

“Will be a federal reserve,” Wooster corrected him. “It’s still just swamp now.”

“Nope, that swamp, and the road that’s being built, have just come under federal jurisdiction. Declaration was made yesterday. Rushed through. I got the paperwork here.”

He reached into his inside jacket pocket, produced a sheaf of typed documents, and handed them to Wooster. The chief found his glasses, perched them on his nose, and read the small print.

“So”, he said, when he was done, “that don’t change a thing. Crime was committed before this declaration was made. It’s still my jurisdiction.”

“We can agree to differ on that one, Chief, but it doesn’t matter anyhow. Read closer. It’s a retrospective declaration, back to the first of the month, just before road construction began. It’s a budgetary thing, they tell me. You know how the government works.”

Wooster examined the paper again. He found the dates in question. His brow furrowed, and then blood soared to his cheeks and forehead as his anger grew.

“This is bullshit. The hell should this bother you anyway? It’s colored on colored. It’s not a rights issue.”

“This is now a federal matter, Chief. We’re not pressing charges. You’ve got to cut the boy loose.”

Wooster knew that the case was slipping away from him, and with it some of his authority and his standing with his own staff. He would never be able to recover it. Vallance had made him his bitch, and the boy in that cell was going to skate, and laugh at Wooster while he was doing it.

And Wilfrid back there, with his prematurely graying hair and his neat, if slightly threadbare, clothes, had something to do with it, of that Wooster was sure.

“And where do you fit into all this?” he asked, now directing the full force of his ire at his second visitor.

“I apologize,” said the little man. He stepped forward and stretched out a perfectly manicured hand. “My name is Gabriel.”

Wooster didn’t move to shake the hand that had been offered to him. He simply left it to hang in the air until Gabriel allowed it to fall. Screw you, he thought. Screw you, and Vallance, and good ma

“You haven’t answered my question,” said Wooster.

“I’m here as a guest of Special Agent Vallance.”

“You work for the government.”

“I supply services to the government, yes.”

That wasn’t the same thing, and Wooster knew it. He was smart enough to grasp the underlying meaning of what had just been said. Suddenly, he got the sense that he was very much out of his depth, and that however angry he was, it would be unwise to ask any more questions of Gabriel. He had been trussed up like a hog ready for the spit. All that remained was for someone to shove a spike in his ass and all the way up through his mouth, and Wooster intended to avoid that fate at all costs, even if it meant giving up the boy.

He sat down in his office chair and opened a file. He didn’t notice what it was, and he didn’t read what was written on its pages.

“Take him,” he said. “He’s all yours.”

“Thank you, Chief,” said Gabriel. “Once again, my apologies for any inconvenience caused.”

Wooster didn’t look up. He heard them leave his office, and the door close softly behind them.

Chief Wooster. The big fish. Well, he’d just been shown the reality of his situation. He was a little fish in a small pond who’d somehow drifted into deep waters, and a shark had flashed its teeth at him.

He stared at the closed office door, visualizing again the wall beyond, the observation room behind it, and the boy in his cell, except now it was Gabriel watching him, not Wooster. Sharks. Deep waters. Unknown things coiling and uncoiling in their depths. Gabriel watching the boy, the boy watching Gabriel, until the two blended together to become a single organism that lost itself in a blood-dark sea.

CHAPTER FIVE

WILLIE BREW’S HEAD HURT.

Things hadn’t started out too badly. He’d woken feeling dehydrated, and aware that, despite the fact he hadn’t shifted position an inch in the night, he still hadn’t slept properly. Maybe I’ll get away with it, he thought. Maybe the gods are smiling on me, just this once. But by the time he reached the auto shop his head had started to pound. He was sweaty and nauseated by noon, and he knew things would go downhill from there. He just wanted the day to come to an end so that he could go home, go back to bed, and wake up the next morning with a clear head and a deep and abiding sense of regret.

It had been this way with him ever since he had given up hard liquor. In the good old, bad old days, he could have knocked back the guts of a bottle of even the worst rail booze and still been able to function properly the next morning. Now he rarely drank anything but beer, and then usually in moderation, because beer killed him in a way liquor never had. Except a man didn’t reach the big six-oh every day, and some form of celebration was not only in order, but expected by his friends. Now he was paying the price for seven hours of pretty consistent drinking.

Even lunch hadn’t helped. The auto shop was located in an alley just off 75th Street between 37th and Roosevelt, close by the offices of an Indian attorney who specialized in immigration and visas, an astute choice of business address on the attorney’s part as this area had more Indians than some parts of India. Thirty-seventh Avenue itself had Italian, Afghan, and Argentinian restaurants, among others, but once you hit 74th Street it was Indian all the way. The street had even been renamed Kalpana Chawla Way, after the Indian astronaut who had been killed in the Columbia shuttle disaster in 2003, and men in Sikh turbans handed out menus throughout the day to all who passed by.