The Reapers

Watching, feeling shock, but no regret.

“He’ll live. For now.”

Louis and Angel were back in their apartment. It was late afternoon. The call had come through to Louis. Angel did not know from whom, and he did not ask. He only listened as his lover repeated what he had been told.

“He’s a tough old bastard,” said Angel.

There was no warmth to his tone. Louis recognized its absence.

“He would have let you die, if it suited him. It wouldn’t have cost him a moment’s thought.”

“No, that’s not true,” said Louis. “He would have spared a moment for me.” He stood at the window, his face reflected in the glass. Angel, damaged himself, wondered how much more damaged in turn this man whom he loved could be to retain such affection for a creature like Gabriel. Perhaps it was true that all men love their fathers, no matter how terrible the things they do to their sons: there is a part of us that remains forever in debt to those responsible for our existence. After all, Angel had wept when the news of his own father’s death had reached him, and Angel’s father had sold him to pedophiles and sexual predators for drinking money. Angel sometimes thought that he had wept all the harder because of it, wept for all that his father had not been as much as for what he was.

“If Hoyle is right, then Leehagen found Ballantine,” said Louis. “Maybe Ballantine gave him Gabriel.”

“I thought he always insulated himself,” said Angel.

“He did, but they knew each other, and there was probably only one layer, one buffer, between Ballantine and Gabriel, if that. It looks like Leehagen found it, and from there made the final co

“What now?” asked Angel.

“We go back to Hoyle, then I kill Leehagen. This won’t stop otherwise.”

“Are you doing it for your sake, or for Gabriel’s?”

“Does it matter?” Louis replied.

And in that moment, had he been there to witness it, Gabriel might have seen something of the old Louis, the one he had nurtured and coaxed into being, shining darkly.

Benton called from a phone box on Roosevelt Avenue.

“It’s done,” he said. Benton’s wrist and shoulder ached, and he was sure that the latter had begun to bleed again. He could feel dampness and warmth there. He should not have taken it upon himself to fire the shots at the old man, not with the wounds that he had received at the auto shop, but he was angry, and anxious to make up for his failure on that occasion.

“Good,” said Michael Leehagen. “You can come home now.” He hung up the phone and walked down the hall to the bedroom in which his father lay sleeping. Michael watched over him for a couple of minutes, but did not wake him. He would tell him of what had transpired when he awoke.

Michael had no idea who the old man really was. Ballantine had spoken of him only in the most general of terms. It was enough that he had been involved in his brother’s slaying, and was meeting Louis, the man directly responsible for his brother’s death. The attack would be one more incentive for Louis to strike back, one more reason for him to travel north. At last Michael had begun to understand his father’s reasoning: blood called for blood, and it should be spilled where his brother lay at uneasy rest. He still believed that his father was overestimating the potential threat posed by Louis and his partner once they were lured north, and there had been no need to involve the third party, the hunter, the one named Bliss, but his father was not to be dissuaded, and Michael had given up the argument almost as soon as it had begun. It didn’t matter. It was his father’s money and, ultimately, his father’s revenge. Michael would acquiesce to the old man’s wishes, for he loved his father very much, and when he was dead, all that was once his would become his son’s.

Michael Leehagen might have been a king in waiting, but he was loyal to the old ruler.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THEY DIDN’T GIVE HOYLE notice of their arrival. They simply turned up in the lobby after hours and told one of the security staff to inform Simeon that Mr. Hoyle had visitors. The guard didn’t seem unusually troubled by the request. Angel guessed that, given the fact of Hoyle’s residency in the building, and his reluctance to face the world on its own terms, the guards had grown used to human traffic at odd hours.

“What name should I give?” asked the guard.

Louis did not answer. He merely stood beneath the lens of the nearest camera, his face clearly visible.

“I think he’ll know who it is,” said Angel.

The call was made. Three minutes went by, during which an attractive woman in a tight-fitting black skirt and white blouse passed through the lobby and eyed Louis appreciatively. Almost imperceptibly, except to Angel, Louis’s posture changed.

“You just preened,” said Angel.

“I don’t think so.”

“Yeah, you did. You stood straighter. You became straight. You de-gayed.”

The doors of the private elevator opened in the lobby, and the guard gestured at them to enter. They walked toward it.

Louis shrugged. “A man likes to be appreciated.”

“I think you’re confused about your sexuality.”

“I got an eye for beauty,” said Louis. He paused. “So does she.”

“Yeah,” said Angel, “but she’ll never love you as much as you do.”

“It is a burden,” said Louis, as the doors closed.

“You’re telling me.”

Only Simeon was waiting for them in the lobby when they arrived at Hoyle’s penthouse. He was dressed in black pants and a long-sleeved black shirt. This time, the gun that he wore was clearly visible: a Smith & Wesson 5906, housed in a Horseshoe holster.

“Customized?” asked Louis.

“Maryland,” said Simeon. “Had it dehorned.” He drew the gun smoothly and rapidly and held it so that they could see where the sharp edges had been removed from the front and rear sights, the magazine release, the trigger guard extension, and the hammer. The display functioned both as a surprising act of vanity on Simeon’s part that Angel would not have associated with a man like him, and also as a warning: they had arrived unscheduled, and at a late hour. Simeon was wary of them.

He put the gun back in its holster and wanded them almost casually, then showed them once again into the room overlooking the pool. This time, the pattern created by the ripples on the wall was distorted and irregular, and Angel could hear the sound of someone swimming. He wandered over to the glass and watched Hoyle performing butterfly strokes through the water.

“He swim a lot?” he asked Simeon.

“Morning and evening,” said Simeon.

“He ever let anyone else use that pool?”

“No.”

“I guess he’s not the sharing kind.”

“He shares information,” said Simeon. “He’s sharing it with you.”

“Yeah, he’s a regular fountain of knowledge.”

Angel turned away and joined Louis at the same table at which they had sat with Hoyle earlier in the week. Simeon stood nearby, allowing them to see him, and him to see them.

“How come you work for this guy?” asked Louis at last. The sounds of swimming had ceased. “Can’t be too much call for your talents, stuck all the way up here with someone who don’t get out much.”

“He pays well.”

“That all?”

“You serve?”

“No.”

“Then you wouldn’t know. Paying well covers a lot of sins.”

“He got a lot of sins to cover?”

“Maybe. It comes to that, we’re all si

“Guess so. Still, those Marine skills of yours, they’ll get rusty, sins or no sins.”

“I practice.”

“Not the same.”

Angel saw Simeon twitch slightly.

“You implying that I might need to use them soon?”

“No. Just saying that it’s easy to take these things for granted. You don’t stay sharp and they may not be there for you when you need them.”