The Reapers

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 business, 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 co

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, Te

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 go

“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.”