The Reapers

With that, Arno turned his back on them and left the bar. He walked down the street to the auto shop and entered through the side door. He hit the lights and breathed in deeply, before walking to the little office and taking the bottle of Maker’s Mark from the filing cabinet. He poured what was left into Willie’s mug, headed out onto the floor, pulled Willie’s favorite stool from a corner, and sat down.

Then Arno, now truly alone, began to weep.

The pool cleaners arrived at the Hoyle building, as always, at 7:00 P.M. after Hoyle had just finished his evening swim. Maintenance checks were always performed in the evening, while Hoyle prepared for di

Nicholas Hoyle’s pool was state-of-the-art, the most technically advanced that money could buy. At the touch of a button, a river effect could be created giving the sensation of swimming against the current, variable according to the exercise level required. It had a UV sterilizing system, complete with auto-chlorine dosing to maintain the chlorine levels, an automatic backwash filter, and an automatic pH controller. A Dolphin 3001 pool cleaner took care of routine brushing and vacuuming, and the entire system was overseen by a control panel enclosed in a small ventilated cabin next to Hoyle’s private sauna. Although it was all environmentally costly, Hoyle had made some provisions for power saving and privacy. The lights came on upon entry and turned themselves off when Hoyle exited. Once he was inside the pool area, an internal palm-print-activated lock made it virtually impregnable.

But, as with all such advanced systems, routine maintenance was essential. The pH electrodes needed to be cleaned and calibrated, and the chlorine and pH adjusting solutions replenished, so the two Asians had brought all the necessary fluids and test equipment with them. Simeon watched as the cleaners performed the usual routines, chatting animatedly as they did so. When they were done, he signed off on their work and they departed, bowing slightly to him as they entered the elevator and thanked him.

“Polite little fellas, ain’t they?” said Aristede, who had worked for Hoyle for almost as long as Simeon.

“I guess,” said Simeon.

“My old man never trusted them, not after Pearl Harbor. I liked those ones, though. He’d probably have liked them, too.”

Simeon didn’t comment. Regardless of race or creed, he tended to keep his feelings about others to himself.

The woman who owned the pool company was named Eve Fielder. She had taken over the ru

“Happy?” she asked the man seated across from her.

The man wore a ski mask. He was short, and she was sure that he was white. His colleague, who was tall and, judging by the flashes of skin that she could see beneath the mask, black, was sitting quietly at the kitchen table. He had tuned her satellite radio to some godawful country-and-western station, which suggested a degree of sadism in those who were currently holding her hostage. Alone. For the first time in years, she wished that she was not divorced.

“Contented,” said the small man. “It’s the best we can hope for in life.”

“So what do we do now?”

He checked his watch.

“We wait.”

“For how long?”

“Until the morning. Then we’ll be on our way.”

“And Mr. Hoyle?”

“He’ll have a very clean pool.”

Fielder sighed.

“I get the feeling this is going to be bad for my business.”

“Probably.”

She sighed again.

“Any chance we could turn off that hick music?” she asked.

“I don’t think so, but he’ll be gone soon.”

“It really sucks.”

“I know,” he said. He sounded sincere. “If it’s any consolation, you’re only going to have to listen to it for an hour. Me, I got a life sentence with that as the sound track.”

Hoyle worked in his private office until shortly after 9:00 A.M. He was an early riser, but he liked to break up his morning with exercise. He spent an hour on the stairmaster in his personal gym before stripping down to his trunks and entering the pool area. He stood at the side of the pool, his toes hanging over the edge. He put on his goggles, took a deep breath, then dived into the deep end, his body barely making a splash as it broke the water, his arms outstretched, bubbles of water emerging from his nostrils and floating upward. He stayed under the water for half the length of the pool, then kicked for the surface.

The dosing system had been altered during the maintenance check, making the water slightly acidic, and sodium cyanide had been added to the chlorine dosing system. When the door lock was activated, and the internal lights came on, the cyanide solution was released rapidly into the acidified water, resulting in the release of hydrogen cyanide.

Hoyle’s pool area had just become a gas chamber.

Hoyle was already feeling dizzy by the end of the second lap, and his sense of direction seemed to have deserted him because he had finished his lap against the side of the pool, not the end. He was having trouble breathing and, despite his exertions, his heartbeat was slowing. His eyes began to itch and burn. There was a pungent taste in his mouth, and he vomited into the water. His lips were hurting, too, and then the pain was all over his body. He started to kick for the ladder, but he could barely lift his feet. He tried to shout for help, but the water had entered his mouth, and now his tongue and throat were burning, too.

Hoyle panicked. He could no longer move sufficiently to keep himself afloat. He sank below the surface and thought he could hear shouting, but he could see nothing because he was already blind. His mouth opened and he started to drown, the water seeming to scald his insides.

Within minutes, he was dead.

By the time Simeon realized what was happening, it was too late for him to save his employer. He managed to override the security system, but the instant that he smelled the air in the pool he was forced to seal it off once again. As an additional precaution, he evacuated the penthouse until the area had vented, then went back in alone. He stared at Hoyle’s body, suspended in the water.

Simeon’s cellphone rang. The caller display told him that the call was coming from a private number.

“Simeon,” said a man’s voice.

“Who is this?”

“I think you know who it is.” Simeon recognized Louis’s deep tones.

“Was this your doing?”

“Yes. I didn’t notice you leaping in to save him.”

Simeon instinctively looked around, staring at the tall buildings that surrounded the pool, their windows gazing back at him, impassive and unblinking.