The Reapers

And, despite it all, Willie had loved almost every minute of his life there. Then his wife had tried to take it away from him, and even with Arno adding to the fund the money that he had saved there still wasn’t enough to pay her off. To cap it all, the landlord had put the building up for sale, so even if Willie managed to satisfy his old lady’s demands he still wasn’t sure that he would have a business once the premises were sold. He had been left with forty-eight hours to make a decision, forty-eight hours to write off nearly twenty years of effort and commitment (he was thinking of the garage, not the marriage), when a tall black man in an expensive suit and a long black overcoat arrived at the door of the little office in which Willie tried, and usually failed, to keep track of his paperwork, and offered him a way out.

The man knocked gently on the glass. Willie looked up and asked what he could do for him. The man closed the door behind him, and something in Willie’s stomach tensed. He might have been a mechanic in the military, but he’d learned how to fire a gun, and he’d had to use it more than once, although as far as he knew he’d never managed to kill anybody with it, mainly because he hadn’t really tried. Mostly, he had just done his best to avoid getting his own head shot off. He wanted to fix things, not break them, didn’t matter if they were jeeps, helicopters, or human beings.

In turn, he’d been surrounded by other men who were like him, and some who were not, the kind who were willing and able to kill if push came to shove. There were the ones who did so reluctantly, or pragmatically, and there were a couple who were just plain psychotic, who liked what they did and got off on the carnage they wreaked. And then there were those-and he could have counted them on his thumbs-who were naturals, who killed cold-bloodedly and without remorse, who derived satisfaction from the exercise of a skill with which they had been born. They had something quiet and still inside them, something that could not be touched, but Willie often suspected that the thing inside them was hollow, and it contained a raging maelstrom that they had either learned to accommodate or declined to acknowledge, like the great protective frame that houses a nuclear reactor. Willie had tried to stay away from such men, but now he sensed that, once again, he was in the presence of one of them.

It was dark outside, and Arno had just gone home. He had wanted to stay with Willie, knowing that, if things didn’t work out, tomorrow would be their final day in the shop, and he didn’t want to lose a single minute that might otherwise have been spent in its environs, but Willie had sent him on his way so that he could be alone. He understood Arno’s need to be there because he felt it himself, but this was still his business, his place. Tonight, he would sleep here, surrounded by the sights and smells that meant most to him in the world. He could not imagine a life without them. Perhaps, he thought, he could get some work in a body shop elsewhere, although he would find it difficult to toil for someone else after so many years as his own boss. In time, he might even be able to set himself up again in other premises, if he could save enough money. His bank had been sympathetic to his plight, but finally unhelpful. He was a man in the throes of a painful and potentially ruinous divorce, with a business (soon to be half a business, and that was no business at all) that was profitable but not profitable enough, and such a man was not worth the bank’s time or money.

Now his solitude had been disturbed by the visitor, and to Willie’s burdens had been added a strong helping of unease. Willie could have sworn that he had locked the door behind Arno when he left, but either he hadn’t done it properly or this was an individual who wasn’t about to let the small matter of a locked door stand in the way of whatever business he might wish to conduct.

“Sorry, we’re closed,” said Willie.

“So I see,” said the man. “My name is Louis.”

He extended a hand. Willie, who was never one to be ruder than necessary, shook it.

“Listen, I’m happy to meet you, but it doesn’t change anything,” said Willie. “We’re closed. I’d tell you to come back another day, but I got my hands full just finishing what’s out there already, and I’m not even sure if I’ll still be here once the sun sets tomorrow.”

“I understand,” said Louis. “I heard that you were in trouble. I can help you out of it.”

Willie bristled. He thought he knew what was coming. He’d seen enough jumped-up loan sharks in his time not to be dumb enough to put his head between their jaws. His wife was about to take half of all that he had. This guy was trying to take what was left.

“I don’t know what you heard,” Willie replied, “and I could give a damn. I can take care of my own problems. Now, if you don’t mind, I got things to do.”

He wanted to turn his back on the man in a gesture of dismissal, but despite his bravado he felt that the only thing worse than facing the visitor would be not facing him. You didn’t turn your back on a man like this, and not only because you might end up with a knife in it. There was a dignity about him, a stillness. If he was a loan shark, then he wasn’t a typical one. Willie might have differed on occasion with some of his customers (and, indeed, Arno) on the definition of how much rudeness was appropriate in the course of one’s daily affairs, but he wasn’t about to cross this man, not if he could help it. He’d talk his way out of it politely. It would be a strain, but Willie would manage it.

“You’re going to lose this place,” said Louis. “I don’t want that to happen.”

Willie sighed. The conversation, it seemed, was not at an end.

“What’s it to you if I do?” he asked.

“Call me a Good Samaritan. I’m worried about the neighborhood.”

“Then run for mayor. I’ll vote for you.”

The man smiled. “I prefer to keep a lower profile.”

Willie held his gaze. “I’ll bet you do.”

“I’ll invest in your business. I’ll give you exactly 50 percent of what it’s worth. In return you’ll pay me a dollar a year as interest on the loan until it’s paid off.”

Willie’s jaw went slack. This guy was either the worst loan shark in the business, or there was a catch in the deal big enough to snap Willie in two.

“A dollar a year,” he said, once he’d managed to get his mouth under control again.

“I know. I drive a hard bargain. Tell you what, I’ll leave you to think about it overnight. I hear your wife has given you forty-eight hours to reach a decision, and half of them are already gone. I guess I’m just not as reasonable as she is.”

“Nobody ever called my old lady reasonable before,” said Willie.

“She sounds like a special person,” said Louis. His expression was studiedly neutral.

“She used to be,” said Willie. “Not so much anymore.”

Louis handed Willie a card. On it was a telephone number, and the image of a snake being crushed underfoot by a winged angel, but nothing else.

“There’s no name on the card,” said Willie.

“No, there isn’t.”

“Hardly worth having a business card that doesn’t have a business on it. Must be hard to make a living.”

“You’d think, wouldn’t you?”

“What do you do, kill snakes?”

And the words were no sooner out of Willie’s mouth than he regretted them, his mind uttering a silent “Goddamn” as it realized that it had lost the race to catch up with his tongue.

“Kind of. I’m in pest control.”

“Pest control. Right.”

The man extended his hand once again in farewell. Almost in a daze, Willie shook it.

“Louis,” said Willie. “That’s it, just Louis?”

“Just Louis,” said the man. “Oh, and as of today, I’m your new landlord.”

And that was how it had begun.

Willie splashed water on his face. From outside, he heard laughter, and a voice that sounded like Arno’s giving his opinion on the Mets, an entirely negative view that seemed to involve only the word “Mets” and a seemingly infinite series of variations on a second word that Arno, who prided himself on his sophistication when he wasn’t on his fourth double vodka, liked to refer to as “the copulative.” Arno was fu