The Reapers

Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops. I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

– WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, ROMEO AND JULIET, III, V

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

GABRIEL OPENED HIS EYES. For a few moments, he had no awareness of where he was. There were unfamiliar sounds, and he was surrounded by too much white. This was not home: home was reds and purples and blacks, like the interior of a body, a cocoon of blood and muscle and tendon. Now, that protection had been stripped away, leaving his consciousness vulnerable and isolated in this strange sterile environment.

His responses were so sluggish that it took him time to recognize that he was in pain. It was dull, and it seemed to have no single locus, but it was there. His mouth was very dry. He tried to move his tongue, but it was stuck to his palate. Slowly, he formed spittle to release it, then licked his lips. He could not move his head more than an inch to the right or the left, not at first, and, anyway, it hurt him to do so. Instead, he worked on his arms, his hands, his fingers, his toes. As he did so, he tried to remember how he had come to be here. He had almost no recollection of anything that had happened after he had left Louis in the bar.

No, wait, there was something: a stumble, an old man’s fear of falling, then a burning, like hot coals inserted deep into the core of his being. And sounds, faint but still audible, like the popping of distant balloons. Gunshots.

There were stinging sensations in the back of his left hand and in the crook of his right arm. He saw the drip needle in the soft skin on the right, then took in the green plastic connector at the top of the second needle that had been inserted into a vein in the back of his hand. He thought that he might have vague memories of waking before now, of lights shining in his eyes, of nurses and doctors bustling around him. In the interim, he had dreamed, or perhaps it had all been a dream.

Like most men, Gabriel had heard the myth that one’s life flashed before one’s eyes in the moments before death. In reality, as he had felt the cold rasp of death’s scythe cutting through the air close by his face, its chill in stark contrast to the burning that had followed the impact of the bullets, he had experienced no such visions. Now, as he pieced together what had occurred, he recalled only a vague sense of surprise, as though he had bumped into a stranger on a street and, looking into his face to apologize, had recognized an old acquaintance, his arrival long anticipated.

No, the events of his life had come to him only later as he lay in a drug-induced stupor on the hospital bed, the narcotics causing the real and the imagined to mingle and interweave, so that he saw his now-departed wife surrounded by the children they had never had, an imaginary existence the absence of which brought no sense of regret. He saw young men and women dispatched to end the lives of others, but in his dreams only the dead returned, and they spoke no words of blame, for he felt no guilt at what he had done. For the most part, he had rescued them from lives that might otherwise have finished in prisons or poor men’s bars. Some of them had come to violent ends through Gabriel’s intervention, but that ending had been written for them long before they met him. He had merely altered the place of their termination, and the duration and fulfillment of the life that preceded it. They were his Reapers, his laborers in the field, and he had equipped them to the best of his abilities for the tasks that lay before them.

Only one walked in Gabriel’s dreams as he did in life, and that was Louis. Gabriel had never quite understood the depth of his affection for this troubled man. His dream gave him an answer of sorts.

It was, he thought, because Louis had once been so like himself.

Gabriel heard a chair shift in the corner of the room. He opened his eyes a little wider. Carefully, he turned his head in the direction of the sound, and was pleased to find that he had more movement than before, even if the discomfort that it caused was still great. There was a shape against the window, a disturbance in the symmetry of the horizontal bars of the half-closed blinds. The shape grew larger as the man rose from his chair and approached the bed, and Gabriel recognized him as he drew closer.

“You’re a difficult man to kill,” said Milton.

Gabriel tried to speak, but his mouth and throat were still too dry. He gestured at the jug of water by his bedside, and winced at the pain the movement brought. It was that damned needle in the back of his hand. He could feel it in the vein. Gabriel had been hospitalized twice in the previous ten years: once for the removal of a benign tumor, the second time for a hairline fracture of his right femur, and on both occasions he had been strangely resentful of the connector in his hand. Odd, he thought: the injuries that have brought me to this place are more serious and painful than a thin strip of metal inserted into a blood vessel, and yet it is this upon which I choose to focus. It is because it is small, a nuisance rather than a trauma. It is understandable. Its purpose is known to me. And today, at this moment, it represents the first step in coming to terms with what has happened.

Milton poured a glass of water for him, then held it to Gabriel’s mouth so that he could sip from it, supporting the old man’s head gently with his right hand as he did so. It was a curiously intimate, tender gesture, yet Gabriel was resentful of it. Before, they had been equals, but they would never be so again, not after Milton had seen him reduced to this, not after he had touched his head in that way. Even though there was kindness in the action, Milton could not have been unaware of what it meant to Gabriel and his dignity, his sense of his own place in the complex universe that he inhabited. A little of the liquid dribbled down Gabriel’s chin, and Milton wiped it for him with a tissue, compounding Gabriel’s anger and embarrassment, but he did not show his true feelings, for that would be to surrender entirely to them and humiliate himself still further. Instead, he croaked a thank you and let his head sink back onto the pillows.

“What happened to me?” he asked, the words little more than a whisper.

“You were shot. Three bullets. One missed your heart by about an inch, another nicked your right lung. The third shattered your collarbone. I believe the appropriate thing to say in these situations is that you’re lucky to be alive. Not for the first time, I might add.”

He lowered his head slightly, as though to hide the expression upon his face, but Gabriel’s eyes had briefly closed and he missed the gesture.

“How long?” asked Gabriel.

“Two days, or a little more. They seem to think you’re some kind of medical marvel; that, or God was watching over you.”

The ghost of a smile formed on Gabriel’s lips. “Except God does not believe in men like us,” he said, and was pleased to see a frown appear on Milton’s face. “Why”-he paused to draw a breath-“are you here?”

“Can’t one old friend visit another?”

“We’re not friends.”

“We are as close to friends as either of us have,” said Milton, and Gabriel inclined his head slightly in reluctant agreement. “I’ve been watching over you,” continued Milton. He gestured toward the camera in the corner.

“You’re a little late.”

“We were concerned that someone might try to finish the job.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It doesn’t matter what you believe.”

“And are you my only visitor?”

“No. There was another.”

“Who?”

“Your favorite.”

Gabriel smiled again.

“He believes this was linked to the earlier attacks,” said Milton. “He’s going after Leehagen.”

The smile faded as Gabriel regarded Milton carefully.

“Why should Leehagen interest you?”

“I never claimed that he did,” said Milton, as he waited to be questioned further. He thought that he saw something flit across Gabriel’s features, a vague awareness of hidden knowledge. Milton leaned in closer to him. “But I have some information for you. You asked me to find out what I could about Leehagen and Hoyle; most of it I suspect you already know. There was an anomaly, though, for want of a better word.”

Gabriel waited.

“The one who called himself Kandic wasn’t hired to kill Leehagen.”

Gabriel considered what he had been told. His mental functions were still impaired by the drugs, and his mind was clouded. He tried desperately to clear it, but the narcotic fug was too strong. Under other circumstances, he would have made the deductions required alone, but now he needed Milton to lead him. He swallowed, then spoke.

“Who was he sent to kill?”

“My source says Nicholas Hoyle.”

“By Leehagen?”

Milton shook his head. “Someone further afield. Hoyle is involved in an oil deal in the Caspian. It appears that there are some who would prefer it if he was involved no longer. My source also says that whatever occurred between Hoyle and Leehagen in the past, it has now been forgotten, if the feud ever truly existed in the form that was claimed. It seems they have used the rumor of their mutual antagonism to their shared advantage. ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend’: at times, Hoyle’s rivals have approached Leehagen, and Leehagen’s enemies have approached Hoyle. Each man used the approaches to learn what he could to the other’s advantage. It’s an old game, and one that they’ve played well. They also share an interest in young women-very young women-or they did until Leehagen’s illness began to take its toll. Leehagen still supplies Hoyle’s needs. The girls have to be untouched. Virgins. Hoyle has a phobia about disease.”

“But his daughter,” said Gabriel. “His daughter was killed.”

“If she was, it was not at Leehagen’s instigation. It had nothing to do with him, or any feud, real or imagined, with Hoyle.”

“Real or imagined,” repeated Gabriel softly. He was feeling nauseated, and the pain seemed to have intensified. It was a trap, a ruse. He closed his eyes. What was that saying? There is no fool like an old fool.

“Help them,” said Gabriel. He gripped the sleeve of Milton’s jacket, ignoring the stinging in the back of his hand.

“And whom should I help?”

“Louis. The other. Angel.”

Milton sat back in his chair, gently releasing the cloth of his jacket from Gabriel’s fingers. It was a gesture of disengagement, of distancing.

“I can’t do that,” he said. “Even after what was done to you, I can’t intervene. I won’t.”

The tension in Gabriel’s body could not be sustained. He was weakening. He sagged back into the pillows, his breath now coming in short bursts, like that of a runner at the end of a long race. He knew that the end was coming.

Milton rose. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Tell Willie,” said Gabriel. There was a blackness descending upon him. “Tell Willie Brew. Just that. All I ask.”

And as he lost consciousness, he thought that he saw Milton nod.

The house stood on an acre of land, the building itself spreading over three floors and four thousand square feet. It was secure behind high walls, with motion-activated lights in the yard and an alarm linked to a private security firm that employed men known to have no qualms about drawing, and using, their weapons.

The house was occupied by a man named Emmanuel Lowein, his wife, Celice, and their two children, David and Julie, aged eleven and twelve, respectively. Also with them for the past two days were two men who spoke little and slept less. They kept the Loweins and their children away from the windows, ensured that the drapes remained closed, and monitored the grounds using a system of remote cameras.

Louis had never been in the safe house before, and he knew Bliss only by reputation. Lowein had information about a number of South American politicians that friends of Gabriel were very anxious to acquire. Lowein, in turn, wanted security for his family and a new life far from jungles and juntas. Gabriel was acting as the go-between, and Louis and Bliss had been assigned as added security while the negotiations were continuing. Lowein was a target, and there were those who were anxious that he should be silenced before he had a chance to share what he knew. Gabriel had long held the view that, in the event of an individual or individuals being targeted by professionals, one could do a lot worse than have men of a similar mind-set as part of the guard detail.

Bliss was almost a decade older than Louis. Unlike Louis, he had high-profile kills to his name, but there were rumors that he now wished to fade into the shadows for a time. Men in their line of work eventually began to accumulate a long list of enemies, principally among those who refused to acknowledge the separation between the killer and those who had ordered the kill. To the professionals, the Reapers, it made no sense: one might as well blame the rifle itself, or the bullet, or the bomb. Like them, the Reapers were simply tools to be applied toward the ultimate end. There was nothing personal about it. Nevertheless, such reasoning could not always be understood by those who had suffered loss, whether that loss was personal, professional, political, or financial in nature.

But Gabriel did not want Bliss to leave him, and did not seem to trust Bliss entirely now that he seemed intent upon ending their relationship and refusing to do Gabriel’s bidding for much longer. Thus it was that Bliss had been assigned, with Louis, the temporary custody of the Lowein family. There would be no more kills for him for the time being, and perhaps not ever again.

It was a dull job, and they had passed the time as best they could. While the Loweins slept, Bliss spoke in the most general terms of his life as a Reaper, imparting to Louis occasional words of advice. He talked of sharpshooting, for one of Bliss’s skills lay in the use of the rifle. He told Louis of the origins of the term “sniper” in the hunting of game fowl in India in the nineteenth century; of Hiram Berdan, the Civil War general who was an exponent of the art and helped to perfect the techniques still used by snipers to this day; of the Englishman, Major Hesketh-Pritchard, who organized the first Army School of Sniping, Observing, and Scouting during World War I in response to the German sniper attacks on British soldiers; of the Russian teams in World War II, and the less-efficient use of snipers by the Americans, who had yet to realize that arming a unit marksman with an M1, M1C, or M1903 was not the same as creating a sniper.

Louis listened. It seemed to him that the skills valued in a sniper were not without relevance to his own situation: intelligence, reliability, initiative, loyalty, stability, and discipline. It made sense to train repeatedly, to keep one’s abilities honed; to maintain prime physical condition, because with that came confidence, stamina, and control; not to be a smoker, for an unsuppressed cough could betray a position, and the desire for a cigarette would bring with it nervousness, and irritation, and a commensurate lowering of efficiency; and to be emotionally balanced, without anxiety or remorse when it came to a kill.

Finally, Bliss told Louis of the importance of the “walkaway.” Snipers, and Reapers, were weapons of opportunity. It was important to prepare, so that one was ready when the opportunity presented itself. Good preparation could create opportunities, but sometimes the opportunity would not present itself, and it was not wise to force the situation. Another chance would come, if one were patient and prepared.

But there would be times when all was not right, when one’s instincts told one to leave, to drop everything and walk away. Bliss spoke of a job down in Chile. He had been tracking the target through his sight and was moments away from taking the shot, when one of the bodyguards had glanced up at the window where Bliss lay in wait. Bliss knew that he was invisible to the guard. It was almost dusk, and he was swathed in black, nonreflective material against a darkened window in an anonymous block of apartments. Even the muzzle of the rifle had been blackened. There was no way that the bodyguard’s gaze should have fallen upon him, yet it had.

Bliss did not even consider taking the shot, although his finger was already tightening on the trigger. Instead, he had walked away. It was a setup. Someone had informed. He had escaped from the building with only seconds to spare, leaving his rifle behind. Gabriel had understood, and the leak was found and plugged.

“Remember,” Bliss had said. “You only have one life. Your duty is to make it last. The trick is knowing when to stand, and when to walk away.”

Now it was after two in the morning. The Loweins were asleep upstairs, the adults together in one room on the second floor, the children next door. The third floor was unoccupied. Twice every hour, Louis or Bliss would check up on them. Downstairs, a radio played Connie Francis: a recording of some old show. It was Bliss’s choice, not Louis’s. He tolerated it out of deference to the older man.

Bliss had left him sitting in an armchair while he went upstairs to make sure all was okay with the Loweins. Only after five minutes had passed, and Bliss had not returned, did Louis stir from his chair. He walked to the hallway.

“Bliss?” he called. “You okay?”

There was no reply. He tried the walkie-talkie, but got only static in return.

He removed his gun from his holster and began to climb the stairs. The children’s bedroom door was open, and the two kids were curled up in their beds. The nightlight by the wall had been turned off. When Louis had last checked, the light had been on. He knelt and flipped the switch.

There was blood on the sheets, and one of the spare pillows lay on the floor, feathers pouring from twin bullet holes. He moved closer to the first bed and pulled the sheet from David Lowein. The boy was dead, the blood soaking into the pillow under his head. He checked the other bed. David’s sister had been shot once in the back.

Louis was about to call in help, then stopped. There was movement in the parents’ bedroom. He could hear footsteps. He killed the nightlight and moved toward the connecting door. It stood slightly ajar. Slowly, he pushed it open, and waited.

Nothing.

He moved into the room, and a pale figure stumbled toward him. Celice Lowein’s cream nightdress was soaked with blood from the wound to her chest. He thought that she was trying to reach for him, her left hand outstretched, red with her blood and the blood of her husband who lay dead on the bed behind her, but then realized that she was staring past him, using the last of her strength to find her children.

He put his hand out to stop her, and she came to rest against it, teetering on the balls of her feet. She looked at him, and her mouth opened. There was desolation in her eyes, and then even that was gone as the life left her and she collapsed on the floor.

Just too late he heard the footsteps behind him. He prepared to turn, but the gun touched the back of his head and he froze.

“Don’t,” said Bliss’s voice.

“Why?” asked Louis.

“Money. Why else?”

“They’ll find you.”

“No, they won’t. Kneel.”

Louis knew that he was going to die, but he would not die on his knees. He twisted, his own weapon a dark blur in his hand, and then Bliss’s gun spoke and all went black.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

WILLIE BREW AND ARNO had decided, after consultation with Louis, that the auto shop should reopen. Louis had been against it, fearing for their safety, but Willie and Arno had been entirely for it, fearing for their sanity if they were not allowed to return to their little haven of automobiles, engine parts, and overalls. They had cars to repair, they argued, and promises to keep. (Actually, Arno had preceded the latter with something about having miles to go before he slept, which Willie suspected might have been part of a poem or a song or something, and he had given Arno a scowl that left him in no doubt that such contributions were not only unwelcome, but might result in engine oil being poured down his throat.)

Absent from the surroundings of his beloved auto shop, and cut off from the routines that had sustained him for so many years, Willie had found himself thinking too much. With thoughts came regrets, and with regrets came the urge, always present, never forgotten, to drink more than was wise in order to lift his mood. It was almost a contradiction in terms, but Willie was by nature a solitary man who was happiest surrounded by others, and in the role to which he was best suited: dressed in blue bib overalls with grease on his hands, in intimate congress with a motorized vehicle. The private part of himself could retreat, comfortable in the knowledge that it was not required to be fully engaged for the commission of such routine acts, while something automatic kicked in and allowed another part of himself to play the role of the cranky yet ultimately genial proprietor. Without the latter character in which to lose himself temporarily, Willie was in danger of losing the best part of himself permanently.

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 connection he would be making a statement about his own independence. Perhaps also on some deeper, half-acknowledged level, he was investing the paying off of the loan with a greater significance, as though it represented the more final separation for which he secretly wished.

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, Tennessee Ernie Ford, even Alvin and the Chipmunks-and here Willie, usually a man of some tolerance, was tempted to take a hammer to the speakers, especially when Arno, who could be an irritatingly uncanny mimic when he chose, began to sing along from under the hood of a ’98 Dodge Durango with a busted radiator hose and twin white stripes down the body that appeared to have been painted by someone cross-eyed.

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 gonna sing along to something, sing along to the Elegants or the Champs. You don’t even do a bad Kitty Kalen, but not, not Alvin and the goddamned Chipmunks.”

“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.”

“He won’t call here,” said Willie. “That’s not how he operates.”

“Then he’s not coming back,” said the man.

He turned to walk away. After a second’s hesitation, Willie opened the door and followed him into the night, slipping the gun into the pocket of his overalls. The visitor was approaching the rear passenger-side door of a black Lincoln town car that had been parked out of Willie’s line of sight. As Willie appeared, the driver’s door opened and a man emerged. He didn’t look like any chauffeur that Willie had ever seen. He was young, and neatly dressed in a gray suit, but he had eyes so dead they properly belonged in a jar somewhere. His right hand was hidden behind the door, but Willie knew instinctively that there was a gun in it. He gave silent thanks that he had not walked out of the garage with the little Browning visible. Instead, he held his hands away from his body, as though preparing to hug the man that he was following.

“Hey,” said Willie.

The man stopped, his hand on the handle of the car door.

“Who are you?” asked Willie.

“My name is Milton. Louis will know who I am.”

“That’s no good to me. He’s gone. They’re both gone. Can’t you do something? Can’t you help them?”

“No.”

“I’m not even sure where they are,” said Willie, and he heard the hint of pleading in his voice, of desperation, and felt no shame. Angel had told him a little, but it had meant nothing to him. He was surprised that Angel had chosen to share any details at all with him, but he had been more concerned about returning to his beloved auto shop at the time. All he had was the name of a town upstate. What the hell use was that if they were in trouble? He wasn’t a one-man army. He was just an overweight guy in overalls, with a gun that he didn’t want to use.

But Louis and Angel were important to him. Whatever his fears and reservations, they had saved him, in their way. Willie was under no illusions: when Louis had first approached him, it was not out of altruism. It had suited him to have Willie in the building that he had acquired, for reasons that Willie himself still did not quite understand. Yet, self-interested or not, Louis had permitted Willie to keep doing what he loved. That was a long time ago, and things were different now. They had paid for his birthday party. They had even given him a gift: a Rolex Submariner Oyster, discreetly handed to him after everyone was gone from Nate’s that night. It was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen that did not have four wheels. Never had he even imagined that he would own something so lovely. He was wearing it now. Only for an instant had he considered putting it in a drawer and saving it for special wear. He didn’t do “special.” If he put it in a drawer, then it would stay there until he died. Better to wear it, and enjoy the fact of it upon his wrist.

He owed these men. He would do whatever he had to in order to help them, even if it meant getting down on his knees in the middle of the street before a stranger and his armed acolyte.

And the visitor relented, if only slightly.

“They’re hunting a man named Arthur Leehagen. He lives upstate in the northern Adirondacks, not far from Massena. Now that you know where they are, what are you going to do about it?”

He opened the door and got into the car, pulling the door closed after him without another word to Willie. All the time, the man with the dead, unblinking eyes kept watch. Only when the rear door was closed, and his charge was safe, did he get into the front seat and drive away.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

ONCE AGAIN, THE AUTO shop was locked down. The radio had been silenced, and the lights around the two vehicles upon which Willie and Arno had been working were now extinguished, the cars standing raised in the gloom on their hydraulic lifts like forgotten patients on a pair of operating tables, abandoned by the surgeon for more deserving cases.

Willie and Arno were in the small office at the rear of the premises, surrounded by invoices and scribbled notes and oil-stained boxes. There was only one chair, which Willie was occupying. Arno squatted on the floor, small and thin, his head slightly too large for his body, a gargoyle evicted from its pedestal. Each had a cup in his hand, and a bottle of Maker’s Mark stood on the desk between them. If ever there was a time for hard liquor, Willie supposed that this was it.

“Maybe it’s not as bad as it sounds,” said Arno. “They’ve been in trouble before, and they came out of it okay.”

He didn’t sound as though he entirely believed his own words, even if he desperately wanted to.

Willie took a sip of booze. It tasted terrible. He wasn’t sure why he even kept it in his filing cabinet. It had been a gift from a grateful customer, although not one grateful enough to give a better bottle as a token of appreciation. Willie had been meaning to give it away for, oh, at least two years now, but he kept holding off just in case it came in useful for something. Tonight, it just had.

“After all, it’s not like we can call the cops,” said Arno.

“No.”

“I mean, what would we tell them?” Arno’s brow briefly furrowed in concentration, as though he were already trying to construct in his mind a plausible yet entirely fictitious explanation for some imaginary law enforcement officer.

“And it’s not as if we can go up there and help them either. You can use a gun, but I never held one in my life until last week, and that didn’t go so good. I nearly killed you with it.”

Willie nodded glumly.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Arno continued. “I’ll do whatever it takes to help them, up to a point, but I fix cars for a living. For what we’re talking about here, that’s not going to be too much use to anyone.”

Willie put his mug aside. “I hate this stuff,” he said wearily, and Arno wasn’t sure if he was talking about the booze or something else. Willie rested his elbows on his desk, cupped his hands before him, and buried his face in them, his eyes closed, his fingertips almost touching across the bridge of his nose.

Arno watched his boss with an expression of tenderness on his face. It would be true to say that Arno loved Willie Brew. He loved him completely and devotedly, although had he ever chosen to say so out loud Willie would have had him committed. Willie had given him a place in which to work that was as much a sanctuary as Arno’s cluttered, paper-filled apartment. He respected Arno’s skills, even if he was scrupulously careful never to demonstrate that respect through either word or deed. He was Arno’s closest friend, the one to whom Arno had turned when his beloved mother died, the man who had helped him carry her casket, walking alongside him with two anonymous undertakers behind. He was the finest mechanic Arno had ever met, and the most decent of men. Arno would have done anything for Willie Brew. He would even have died for him.

But he would not die for Louis and Angel. He liked Angel, who was at least friendly at times in a vaguely human, nonthreatening way. Louis, though, he did not like. Louis scared him to hell and back. He knew that this was a man whom he should respect, someone of power and lethality, but Arno respected Willie more. Willie had earned his respect through his actions, through his humanity. Louis required respect in the way a panther did, because only an idiot wouldn’t respect something so potentially dangerous, but that didn’t mean you wanted to spend any more time in the panther’s cage than was absolutely necessary.

He recalled how Willie had spoken to him the morning after that first meeting with Louis. Willie had bought coffee and doughnuts, and the smell of them had been wafting from the office when Arno arrived for what he fully expected to be his last day in the auto shop. Willie had told him of Louis and his offer, and of how he felt that he had no choice but to accept it. That was how he put it, Arno remembered: he would take the loan, but only reluctantly. Willie was too wise to the ways of the world to imagine that such gifts came without conditions both acknowledged and unacknowledged. At the time, Arno had just been grateful that they would be able to continue in business, and he didn’t care if the guy offering the loan had cloven hooves and horns coming out of his head. That changed once he met Louis, and saw the physical form that was about to cast a shadow over what had previously been a regular business. Angel had lightened that shadow a little, but for many years Arno and his beloved boss had still been forced to work under it, and Arno was human enough to resent that fact.

Now Angel and Louis were in trouble, and while Arno knew that they had acted in response to what had occurred earlier, that they had no choice in the matter and their own survival, and perhaps even the related survival of Arno and Willie, was dependent upon their actions, Arno wasn’t so naive as to believe that, in the normal course of events, men with guns just arrived out of the blue to kill people because the mood struck. This was payback for something that had been done by Louis. Arno didn’t want to see Angel and Louis dead, but he could understand why someone else might want to.

Willie stood and began rummaging through the papers on the desk. Eventually, after a box of nuts and assorted unpaid bills had tumbled to the floor, he found what he was looking for: his battered black address book. He thumbed through the pages, stopping at N-P.

“Who you gonna call?” asked Arno, and then added, in a misplaced attempt at humor: “Ghostbusters?”

A strange smile appeared on Willie Brew’s lips. It made Arno even more nervous than he was already.

“In a way,” said Willie.

Arno saw him pick up a pen and begin writing down a number: first a 1, followed by 2-0-7, and Arno then knew to whom they were turning for help. He poured himself another shot of Maker’s Mark and added a little more to Willie’s cup.

“For luck,” he said.

After all, he figured, if the Detective was involved then someone was going to need it. He just hoped it wouldn’t be Willie and him.

Willie went down the block to Nate’s to make the call. He was concerned that the feds might be tapping the line in the auto shop. He had even been worried for a time that they might have planted a bug in his office, but despite the filth and the general clutter of his workplace Willie knew every inch of it intimately, and the slightest change in his environment would have been immediately apparent to him. The phone was another matter. He knew from watching HBO that they no longer needed to stick little devices in the receiver. This wasn’t the Cold War. They could probably tell what you had for lunch just by pointing a gizmo at your belly. Willie was particularly cautious about cellphones, ever since Louis had informed him of just how easily they could be tracked and their communications intercepted. Louis had explained to him how a cellphone acts like a little electronic beacon, even when powered off, so that its owner’s position could be pinpointed at any time. The only way to render yourself invisible was to take out the battery. That bothered Willie more than anything else, the idea that his every move might be tracked by unseen watchers in a bunker somewhere. Willie wasn’t about to head off to Montana and live in a compound with guys who watched Triumph of the Will to get off, but equally he didn’t see any point in making things easier for the government than they already were. It wasn’t like Willie was a spy, it was just that he didn’t much care for the idea of people eavesdropping on anything he might have to say, however inconsequential it might be, or monitoring his movements, and his involvement with Louis had made him realize that he could become, however tangentially, a target for any investigation that might focus on his business partner, so it paid to be careful.

Nate raised a hand in greeting to Willie when he entered the bar, but Willie merely grimaced in response.

“What can I get you?” asked Nate.

“I need to use your phone,” said Willie. There was a crowd of loud young women at the back of the bar, where the public phone stood close to the men’s room, and there was something in Willie’s voice and expression that told Nate this wasn’t the kind of call you wanted someone to overhear.

“Go in back,” said Nate. “Use my office. Close the door.”

Willie thanked him and slipped under the bar. He took a seat at Nate’s desk, a desk that, in its general neatness and sense of order, bore no resemblance to his own. Nate’s phone was an old rotary dial model, adapted for the modern age but still requiring the judicious application of a forefinger to make a call. The one time Willie was in a hurry, and trust Nate to have a phone that Edison could have built.

First of all, Willie called the answering service and left a message for Angel and Louis, repeating verbatim what the man named Milton had told him to say in the faint hope that one of them might pick it up before all of this went any further. Next he called Maine. The Detective wasn’t home, so Willie decided to try the bar in Portland where he was now working. It took him a while to remember the name. Something Lost. The Lost Something. The Great Lost Bear, that was it. He got the number from 411, and the phone was answered by a woman. He could hear music playing in the background, but he couldn’t identify it. After a couple of minutes, the Detective came on the line.

“It’s Willie Brew,” said Willie.

“How you doin’, Willie?”

“Uh, up and down, up and down. You didn’t see the papers?”

“No, I was out of town for a while, up in the County. I just got back this morning. Why?”

Willie gave him a summary of all that had happened. The Detective didn’t ask any questions until Willie was done. He just listened. Willie liked that about him. The man might have made him nervous for reasons that he both could and could not put his finger on, but there was a calmness about him at times that reminded Willie of Louis.

“Do you know where they went?”

“Upstate. The guy who warned us mentioned somewhere near Massena, someone named Arthur Leehagen.”

“Are there procedures in place for when something goes wrong?”

“There’s an answering service. I leave a message, and then they can pick it up. They’re supposed to check it every twelve hours when they’re away. I’ve done that, but I don’t know when last they called to check in and, y’know, it doesn’t seem right just to wait around in the hope that it’ll all work out.”

The Detective didn’t even bother to ask about cellphones.

“What was that name you were given again?”

“Leehagen. Arthur Leehagen.”

“All right. You at the shop?”

“No, I’m down at Nate’s. I’m worried that my phone might be tapped.”

“Why would someone tap your phone?”

Willie explained about the visit by the feds.

“Hell. Shout me the number of where you are.”

Willie gave it to him, then hung up the phone. There was a soft knock at the door.

“Yeah?”

Nate appeared. He had a snifter with two fingers of brandy in his hand.

“Thought you might need this,” he said. “On the house.”

Willie thanked him, but waved the glass away. “Not for me,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a long night.”

“Somebody die?” asked Nate.

“Not yet,” said Willie. “I’m just trying to keep it that way.”

When he returned to the auto shop nearly an hour later, Arno was still sitting in the office, but the bottle of Maker’s Mark had been put away, and instead there was the smell of brewing from the Mr. Coffee machine.

“You want some?” asked Arno.

“Sure.”

Willie went to a shelf and removed a Triple A road atlas. He opened it to the New York page and began tracing a route with his finger. Arno filled a mug with coffee, added some creamer, then put it by his boss’s right hand.

“So?” Arno asked.

“Road trip.”

“You’re going up there?”

“That’s right.”

“You think that’s a good idea?”

Willie thought for a second. “No,” he said. “Probably not.”

“The Detective going too?”

“Yeah.”

“Driving?”

“Yeah.”

“Couldn’t he fly? Wouldn’t it be quicker?”

“With guns? He’s not Air America.”

Willie considered removed his bib overalls, then decided against it. He was happier wearing them, and anything that lightened his current mood wasn’t to be dismissed easily. Instead, he shrugged on an old jacket over them.

“You stay here,” he said to Arno. “In case they call.”

“I wasn’t going anyway,” said Arno. “I told you. I’m not that kind of guy.”

“I just thought you were going to offer, like in the westerns.”

“You kidding? You ever see a Scandinavian western?”

Willie tried to remember if Charles Bronson had been Scandinavian. Actually, he thought that Bronson might have been Lithuanian. He was an -anian anyway, that much he knew.

“I guess not,” he said at last.

Arno followed him to the rear of the auto shop, where Willie’s old Shelby stood in the yard. It looked like it wouldn’t go two miles without shedding parts and oil, but Arno knew that there wasn’t a better-maintained automobile this side of New Jersey.

“Okay.” Willie nodded at Arno. Arno nodded back. He suddenly felt like the little woman in the relationship. He was tempted to hug Willie, or straighten the collar on his shirt. Instead, he contented himself with simply shaking his boss’s hand and advising him to be careful.

“Look after my place, now,” said Willie. “And, listen, if all this goes to hell, you close up and walk away. Contact my lawyer. Old Friedman knows what to do. I put you in my will. You got no worries if I die.”

Arno smiled. “I knew that, I’d have killed you myself long before now.”

“Yeah, well that’s why I didn’t tell you. That, or you’d just be bitchin’ at me for your cut all the time.”

“Drive safe, boss.”

“I will. Don’t pay any bills while I’m away.”

Willie climbed in the car, backed out of the yard. He raised a hand in farewell, then was gone. Arno went back inside, and saw that Willie hadn’t even touched his coffee. It made him sad.

It was a long ride north, as long a drive as Willie had ever tackled without a proper break. He was tempted once or twice to stop for coffee or a soda, something with caffeine and sugar in it to keep him alert, but he had a bladder that was ten years older than he was and he didn’t want to waste even more time by having to pull off the highway to relieve himself twenty minutes after he’d finished whatever he’d had to drink. He listened to WCBS until it began to fade, then found a Tony Bennett cassette in the glove compartment and let that play instead. There was a tightness in his gut. At first, he wondered if it was fear, but then he realized that it was anticipation. He had been coasting for a long time, living from day to day, doing what he loved but never stretching himself much, never testing himself. Willie had thought those days were behind him, that they were part of his youth, but he had been proved wrong. He patted the Browning in his jacket pocket. It seemed too small and light to be of use, but it also felt as if it was radiating heat, so that he could sense its warmth against the side of his leg. He tried to imagine using it, and found that he could not. This was a weapon for killing up close, and Willie had never had to look a man in the face when he fired off a shot at him. As for dying, he didn’t believe that he was frightened of it: the manner of it, perhaps, but not the fact of it. After all, he had reached an age where dying had started to become an objective reality instead of an abstract concept.

No, the thing that worried him most was the possibility of letting Angel and Louis down, or the Detective. He didn’t want that to happen. He wanted to do the right thing. He prayed for the courage to step up to the plate if the call came.

Willie reckoned it was six, maybe six and a half hours from Queens to where he was due to meet the Detective. At least it was highway most of the way, so he maintained a steady eighty for most of the journey, and it wasn’t until he turned off 87 that the landscape and the road began to change in earnest and he was forced to slow down. Not that he could see any of it, but he didn’t need to be a psychic to sense the change in atmosphere from the interstate to the county roads. The highway kept nature at bay: it was six lanes of fast-moving traffic, and Willie had only a limited degree of sympathy for any of the roadkill that he passed along the way. But when he left the interstate for the smaller roads, his mood and perspective changed. Here, nature was much closer. The trees crowded in upon him, and the only light that he had to guide him came from his own headlights and the warning reflectors occasionally embedded in the tarmac. It rained for a time, and the drops looked like starbursts exploding in his high beams. Something flew across his line of sight, so big and close that he was certain for an instant that it was going to crash through his windshield. At first, he thought it was a bat, until he realized that bats didn’t grow that large, not outside of B movies, and that it was in fact an owl on the hunt for prey. He felt strangely elated by the sight: the only owls he had ever seen before were on TV, or in the zoo. Even then, he could not have guessed how big and heavy they appeared to be when in flight. He was relieved that he hadn’t hit it at speed: the bird would have taken his head off.

Willie was a creature of the city, and of New York in particular. It wasn’t that he considered green fields merely to be suburbs waiting to happen. He wasn’t entirely without sensitive feelings. No, it was just that New York wasn’t like other states: it was a place defined by its largest city in a way that nowhere else in the country was. When you mentioned New York to most people, either American or foreign, they didn’t think of the Adirondacks, or the Saint Lawrence, or of forests and trees and waterfalls. They thought of a city, of skyscrapers and yellow cabs and concrete and glass. That, too, was Willie’s New York. He could not equate it with its rural obverse.

He realized that Angel and Louis had probably come this way. He was shadowing them, driving in their tracks. The thought seemed to renew his sense of purpose. He checked his mileage and calculated that he had only an hour or so to go before he reached the place where he was supposed to meet the Detective. He felt his stomach tighten again. The gun was heavy in his pocket.

He drove on.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

JUST AS ANGEL AND Louis had hours before, Willie emerged from small towns and forests into a cluster of motels and casinos close to the Canadian border.

He’d only been this far upstate once before, and that was farther west, over at Niagara. He and his ex-wife had gone there for their honeymoon. In January. He must have been crazy but, then again, he had been in love, and neither of them was exactly a summer person. He’d had enough of heat and sweat in Vietnam, and she had simply wanted to see the falls. She told him they would be even more spectacular in winter, surrounded by ice and snow. He supposed they had been pretty impressive, although the chill that had entered his bones should have served as a warning for what was to come later in their married life. All things considered, he ought to have stuck her in a barrel right there and then and pushed her over the edge.

He spotted the Detective’s Mustang parked outside the Bear’s Den, a big truck stop and diner about ten miles from Massena, and experienced a sense of pride at the sight of the vehicle. He had sourced that car for the Detective, beating the dealer down on price until he thought the guy was going to start weeping on the lot. Willie had then brought the Mustang back to the shop and taken it to pieces, checking every moving part, substituting those that were worn or threatened to give up the ghost in a year or two. Seeing it here, far to the north, he felt the way a school principal might feel upon encountering a former student who had done particularly well for himself. He half expected the car to beep softly in recognition as he approached. After he had parked, he walked around the Mustang twice, giving both the interior and exterior a brief examination. When he was done, he sighed contentedly. There were one or two little nicks to the paintwork, and the treads on the right front tire were wearing thin, but otherwise she seemed to be in good condition. Still, he wanted to take a lengthy look under the hood soon. He was sure there were halfway-decent mechanics up in Maine, but they couldn’t love his babies the way that he did. He patted the hood affectionately and entered the diner, passing some tattered stuffed bears in a glass case beside the main door, their fur rubbed bare in places. They made him depressed, and he quickened his step to put them from his sight.

It was shortly after 6:00 A.M., and the sky was only just beginning to lighten. The rain had stopped falling for a while, but the sky was gray and brooding, and Willie knew that there would be more to come. The Bear’s Den was a big place, and it was already half filled with people eating breakfast in the booths. They were smoking, too. It reminded Willie, once again, that NYC rules didn’t apply up here. You tried lighting up over breakfast in the city and there would be a cop kneeling on your back before you could get to the funny pages, assuming your fellow diners didn’t beat you to death first.

The Detective was seated in a red vinyl booth at the back of the room, a little fake hay bale made from wood shavings on the windowsill beside him, topped with a miniature scarecrow and plastic pumpkins. He was wearing dark-blue jeans, a black T-shirt, and a black military jacket. He hadn’t removed the jacket, despite the warmth of the diner. Willie could guess why. There was a gun under there somewhere. The Detective was supposed to have surrendered all of his weapons after his permit and license were revoked, but Willie figured that only counted for the ones the cops knew about. Like Louis, the Detective wasn’t the kind to go around advertising all of his possessions.

There was a cup of coffee before him, and the remains of bacon and poached eggs. Willie took the seat across from him and a waitress appeared. He ordered coffee and toast. He wasn’t very hungry. He wasn’t tired either, or not as tired as he had expected to be. That surprised him. Then again, he wasn’t a big sleeper at the best of times. Four, maybe five hours a night was usually enough for him.

“I see you couldn’t resist giving the Mustang a once-over,” said the Detective. He was smiling.

“You send them out into the world, and all you can hope is that the world treats them the way it should,” said Willie. “Like children.”

He saw the Detective’s smile flicker slightly, and wished that he hadn’t mentioned children. You lose a child, especially the way this man had lost his, and it will always be a red, raw wound to you.

“She running okay?” asked Willie, moving on to safer ground.

“She’s running fine.”

“Helps not having her shot up by folk.”

Willie had never quite forgiven the Detective for allowing his previous Mustang, also sourced by him, to be shot to pieces in some godforsaken Maine town. The car had been beyond salvation, although Willie had been forced to rely on Angel’s testimony in that regard. Willie had offered to transport the car back down to Queens at his own expense to see what could be done, but Angel had put a consoling hand on Willie’s shoulder and quietly suggested to him that this might not be a good idea. He reckoned the sight of what was left of the car would be too upsetting for Willie. It was the equivalent of a closed casket at a beloved relative’s funeral.

“I do try to avoid getting shot up whenever I can,” said the Detective.

How’s that working out for you, Willie was tempted to ask. The Detective exerted a seemingly irresistible force of attraction over bullets, knives, fists, and just about anything else that could potentially do a body harm. Even sitting this close to him made Willie nervous.

The coffee and toast arrived, distracting him for a time from his concerns for his personal safety. The coffee tasted good, and he could feel his brain responding to the rush of sugar and caffeine.

“Is it okay to talk here?” asked Willie.

“I wouldn’t. We can talk in the car. I take it they haven’t called, though?”

“No.” Suddenly, Willie’s cell beeped. He found it in his overalls and felt his hopes rise, until he saw the message welcoming him to Canada.

“We’re not in Canada, right?” he said.

“Not unless they’ve invaded quietly.”

“Fucking Canadians,” said Willie, turning his disappointment to anger and aiming it north. “Be just like them.”

He went back to nibbling at his toast. He had a lot of questions he wanted to ask, not least of which was if they were up here alone. The Detective was good at what he did. Angel and Louis had said so often enough, and Willie had no reason to doubt their word, but he wasn’t sure if two men would be able to handle whatever they were about to face. Much as he loved Angel and Louis, Willie had no pressing desire to throw himself on their pyre for no good reason. Suddenly, the gravity of the situation impacted upon him fully. He put down his piece of half-finished toast. What little appetite he had disappeared. He excused himself and went to the men’s room, and there he doused his face and neck with cold water and dried himself with a wad of paper towels, then went back outside.

The check had been paid, and the Detective was waiting for him at the door. If he knew what Willie was feeling, he gave no indication of it.

“You need anything from your car?” the Detective asked.

“No. I got all I need here.”

Instinctively Willie patted the Browning once again, and instantly felt ridiculous. He sounded like a gunfighter: a smug gunfighter, the kind that got shot at the end of the third reel. The Detective looked at him quizzically.

“You okay, Willie?”

“I didn’t mean that to sound the way it did,” said Willie apologetically. “You know, like I was Dirty Harry or someone. I’m just not used to this kind of thing.”

“If it’s any consolation, I do this a lot, more than I’d like, and I’m not used to it either.”

They both got into the Mustang, and the Detective pulled away from the curb. He drove for about a mile until he came to a deserted lot, then pulled in and killed the engine. The Detective produced a series of pages. They were satellite images, printed in high resolution from a computer. One showed a large residence. The second showed a town. On others there were roads, streams, fields.

“Where’d you get these, the CIA?” asked Willie.

“Google,” said Parker. “I could plan an assault on China from a home computer. Arthur Leehagen has a compound south of here; that’s the main house by the lake. It looks like there are two roads in and out, both heading roughly west. They cross a stream, which means Leehagen’s land is almost entirely surrounded by water, except for two narrow tracts to the north and south where the stream comes close to the lake before veering away. The southern road veers northwest, and the northern road southwest, so they come close to meeting near Leehagen’s house. Two other roads intersect them, running north to south, the first near the stream, the second about a mile or so in.”

As he spoke, the Detective pointed out the details on one of the images. Willie didn’t own a computer. He figured it was too late in life to worry about these things, and he had little enough spare time as it was. He had a vague notion of what a Google might be, but he couldn’t have explained it to anyone in a way that made sense, not even to himself. Still, he was impressed by what the Detective was showing him. Wars had been fought with less detailed information in hand than this. Hell, he’d fought in one of them.

“You okay with the gun you’ve got?” asked the Detective.

“Louis gave it to me.”

“It should be good, then. You fired a weapon recently?”

“Not since Vietnam.”

“Well, they haven’t changed much. Show me the gun.”

Willie handed the Browning to the Detective. It weighed less than two pounds fully loaded, and had a blued finish. It was a pre-1995 model, as the magazine had a thirteen-round capacity, not a ten. The chamber was unloaded, according to the indicator on the extractor.

“Nice and light,” said Parker. “Not new, but clean. You got a spare clip?”

Willie shook his head.

“With luck, you won’t have to use it. If we have to empty clips, then we’re probably outnumbered, so it won’t matter too much either way.”

Willie didn’t find this entirely reassuring.

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

“Sure.”

“Is it just us? I mean, no offense meant, but we ain’t exactly Delta Force.”

“No, it’s not just us. There are others.”

“Where are they?”

“They went on ahead. In fact-” Parker checked his watch. “-we ought to be joining them about now.”

“I had another question,” said Willie, as the Detective started the engine.

“Go ahead.”

“Is there a plan?”

The Detective looked at him.

“Not getting shot,” he replied.

“That’s a good plan,” said Willie, with feeling.

The Detective kept the headlights on as they drove. Willie thought they might be a little high, but he said nothing. He could worry about headlights another day. Getting shot was on his mind. He’d been shot at in Nam, but no bullets had even come close to him. He was kind of hoping to keep things that way. Still, it paid to know what to expect. He’d been around men who’d been shot, and the range of reactions had startled him. Some screamed and cried, others just stayed silent, holding all the pain inside, and then there were those who acted like it was a minor thing, as though the wind had just been taken out of them a little by a shard of hot metal buried deep in their flesh. Finally, he felt compelled to ask the question.

“You’ve been shot, right?” he asked the Detective.

“Yeah, I’ve been shot.”

“What was it like?”

“I don’t recommend it.”

“You know, I’d figured that out for myself.”

“I don’t think mine was your typical experience. I was in freezing water, and I was probably already in shock when I got hit. It was a jacketed bullet, so it didn’t spread out on impact, just passed straight through. It got me here.” He pointed to his left side. “It was mainly fatty tissue. I don’t even remember too much pain at first. I got out of the water and started walking. Then it began to hurt like hell. Bad, really bad. A woman-” Here, the Detective paused. Willie didn’t interrupt, merely waited for him to continue. “-a woman I knew, she had some nursing experience. She sewed it up. I kept going for a couple of hours after that. I don’t know how. I think I was still in shock, even then, and we were in trouble, Louis, Angel, and I. It happens that way, sometimes. People who’ve been injured find a way to keep going because they have to. I was running on adrenaline, and there was a girl missing. She was Walter Cole’s daughter.”

Willie knew about this. He had heard some of the story from Angel.

“A couple of days after it was over, I collapsed. The doctors said it was a delayed reaction to all that had happened. I’d lost some teeth, and I think what they did to repair that damage hurt almost as much as the gunshot. Anyway, it seemed to precipitate everything that followed, like my body had decided enough was enough. They tried to put me in the hospital, but I rested up at home instead. Took a while for the gunshot wound to stop hurting. When I turn a certain way, I think I can still feel a twinge. Like I said, I don’t recommend it.”

“Right,” said Willie. “I’ll remember that.”

They turned off the main road, heading south. Eventually, the Detective slowed, searching for something to his right. A road appeared, marked “Private Property.” The Detective turned onto it and followed it for a short distance until they came to a bridge, where he stopped the car. They sat there, neither of them moving. There was a light in the trees, and Willie thought that he could hear a repetitive beeping sound. He looked to his left and saw that the Detective had a gun in his right hand. Willie took the Browning from his jacket pocket and removed the safety. The Detective looked at him and nodded.

They got out of the car simultaneously and moved in the direction of the light. As they drew closer, Willie could see the vehicle more clearly. It was a Chevy Tahoe. Its side window had disintegrated, and the body of a man lay slumped over one of the seats, a ragged wound torn in his chest. The Detective skirted the Chevy, his gun raised, until he came to a second body farther into the woods. Willie joined him and looked down at the remains. The man was lying facedown with a hole in the back of his head.

“Who are they?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” He knelt and touched the man’s skin with the back of his hand. “They’ve been dead for a while.” He looked at their boots. They were clean, shining with what Willie thought was almost a military polish. There was only a little mud on them.

“Not from around here,” said the Detective.

“No,” said Willie. He looked away. “You think these guys came with Louis and Angel?”

The Detective thought about it. “They wouldn’t have tried to take Leehagen alone, not with so much territory to cover. It would make sense to try to hold the bridges. So my guess is, yes, they were part of whatever Louis was planning, which means Leehagen’s people found them and killed them.”

He approached the bridge and stared across it toward the dark woods beyond.

“So where’s the rest of the cavalry?” asked Willie.

The Detective sighed and gestured across the bridge. “In there. Somewhere.”

“I’m guessing that’s not where they’re supposed to be, right?”

The Detective shook his head. “These guys are never where they’re supposed to be.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE TWO MEN WERE named Willis and Harding. Coincidentally, they shared a first name: Leonard. It was what had set them at each other’s throats when they were small boys in a small town in a large state, the kind of town where it mattered who was Leonard Number One and who was Leonard Number Two.

As things turned out, the two boys were pretty evenly matched, and in time a bond of friendship had developed between them, a bond that was finally cemented when they stomped a man named Jessie Birchall to death outside a bar in Homosassa Springs, Florida, for having the temerity to suggest that Willis ought not to have touched Jessie’s fiancée on the ass as she was making her way to the ladies’ room. The fiancée in question claimed to have no memory of what the two young men had looked like when the police came to question her, even though one of the men had hit her hard enough to break her left cheekbone when she attempted to intervene on her fiancé’s behalf, a forgetfulness not unconnected to the fact that Willis, his hands still warm with the dying man’s blood, had whispered in her ear for thirty seconds while Jessie Birchall suffocated in redness on the garbage-strewn concrete of the parking lot, time enough to let his little lady know exactly what would happen to her if she saw fit to share with the law everything that she had witnessed. Actually, Jessie Birchall’s fiancée hadn’t liked him that much anyway, not enough to endure what Willis was proposing. She was only eighteen, and there would be other fiancés.

Eventually, Willis and Harding ended up in the pay of Arthur Leehagen, a man whose illegal means of making money sat easily, if discreetly, alongside his more legitimate business concerns. Willis and Harding, like a number of Leehagen’s more specialized employees, were involved principally with the former activities, although they had proved useful whenever problems had arisen with the latter as well. When the cancers had begun to bloom like dark red flowers, it was Willis and Harding who had been sent out to talk to the more indignant sufferers, the ones who were threatening loudly to sue, or to go to the newspapers. Sometimes it took just one visit, although occasionally the two men had been forced to wait outside school gates to smile at mothers picking up their children, or to sit high in the bleachers during cheerleading practice, watching those short skirts ride up, their eyes lingering hungrily on thighs and breasts. And if the coach decided to ask them what they thought they were doing, well, the coach had kids, too. As Willis liked to say, there was plenty for everybody, boys and girls alike, and he was not a picky man. And if the cops were called, then Willis and Harding were Mr. Leehagen’s men, and that was as good as diplomatic immunity right there.

And if someone was stubborn enough, or foolish enough, to ignore those warnings, well…

Willis and Harding might almost have been related, because they looked a little alike. Both were tall and rangy, with straw-blond hair darkening to red, and pale skin dotted with the kinds of freckles that joined together in places to form dark patches on their faces like the shadows cast by clouds. Nobody had ever asked them if they were related, though. Nobody ever asked them much of anything. They had been employed precisely because they were the type of men whom it seemed unwise to question. They spoke rarely, and when they did it was in tones so quiet and unobtrusive that they seemed to belie the substance of what was being said, yet left the listener in no doubt about their sincerity. It was whispered that they were gay, but in fact they were omnisexual. Their intimacy with each other had never extended to the physical, yet each was otherwise happy to sate his appetites wherever the opportunity lay. They had shared men and women, sometimes together, sometimes apart, the objects of their attentions sometimes submitting willingly, and sometimes not.

As the sky grew lighter that morning, and the rain briefly ceased, they were both identically dressed in jeans, black work boots, and billowing blue denim shirts as they sat in the cab of the truck, Willis driving, Harding staring out of the window, idly blowing cigarette smoke into the air. Their primary role in the operation was to keep watch on the northern bridge and its surrounds, as well as patroling the outer ring road of Leehagen’s property in case, through some miracle, the two trapped men managed to break through the initial cordon.

Beside them were the guns they had used to kill Lynott and Marsh. Others had taken care of the second pair of men. Willis had felt a grim satisfaction that Benton, despite his protests, had been excluded. Willis didn’t like Benton: he was a local bully boy who would never graduate to the majors. Willis was of the opinion that he and Harding should have been sent to New York, not Benton and his retard buddies, but Benton was a friend of Michael Leehagen’s, and the old man’s son had decided to give him a chance to prove himself. Well, Benton had proved something, that was for sure, but only that he was an asshole.

Now that the men at the bridges were dead, Willis and Harding were no longer concerned about further incursions, although they planned to stick to the outer road, just in case. Their thoughts had moved on to other matters. Like a number of Leehagen’s employees, Harding didn’t understand why they weren’t simply being allowed to deal with the other intruders themselves. He didn’t see the point in paying someone good money to do it for them. It never struck him that the man who would be arriving to kill them might have personal reasons for doing so.

He was distracted from his meditations by a single word from Willis.

“Look.”

Harding looked. An enormous 4x4 was parked on the right-hand side of the road, facing in their direction. On either side of the road, pine trees stretched away into the distance. There was a man sitting on a log close to the truck. He was chewing on a candy bar, his legs stretched out in front of him. Beside him was a carton of milk. He did not appear to have a care in the world. Willis and Harding both simultaneously decided that this would have to change.

“The hell is he doing?” said Willis.

“Let’s ask him.”

They pulled up about ten feet from the monster truck and climbed out of the cab, shotguns now cradled loosely in their arms. The man nodded amiably at them.

“How you boys doin’?” he said. “It’s a fine morning in God’s country.”

Willis and Harding considered this.

“This isn’t God’s country,” said Willis. “It’s Mr. Leehagen’s. Even God doesn’t come here without asking.”

“Is that so? I didn’t see no signs.”

“You ought to have looked closer. They’re out there, ‘Private Property’ printed clear as day on every one. Maybe you just don’t read so good.”

The man took another bite of his candy bar. “Aw,” he said, his mouth full of peanuts and caramel, “maybe they were there and I just missed them. Too busy watching the sky, I guess. It is beautiful.”

And it was, a series of oranges and yellows fighting against the dark clouds. It was the kind of morning sky that inspired poetry in the hearts of even the most tongue-tied of men, Willis and Harding excepted.

“You’d better move your truck,” said Harding, in his quietest, most menacing voice.

“Can’t do that, boys,” said the man.

Harding’s head turned slightly to one side, the way a bird’s might at the sight of a worm struggling beneath its claws.

“I don’t think I heard you right,” he said.

“Oh, that’s okay, I didn’t think I heard you right either,” said the man. “You talk kind of soft. You ought to speak up. Hard for a man to get another man’s attention if he goes around whispering all the time.” He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again his voice rumbled up from deep in his chest. “You need to get some breath in your lungs, give the words something to float on.”

He finished his candy bar, then carefully tucked the wrapper into the pocket of his jacket. He reached for the carton of milk, but Harding kicked it over.

“Aw, I was looking forward to finishing that,” said the man. “I’d been saving it.”

“I said,” repeated Harding, “that you better move your truck.”

“And I told you that I can’t do it.”

Willis and Harding advanced. The man didn’t move. Willis swung the butt of his shotgun around and used it to break the right headlamp of the 4x4.

“Hey, now-” said the man.

Willis ignored him, proceeding to the left headlamp and shattering that, too.

“Move the truck,” said Harding.

“I’d love to, honest I would, but I really can’t oblige.”

Harding pumped a round into the chamber, placed the shotgun to his shoulder and fired. The windshield shattered, and the leather upholstery was pockmarked by shot and broken glass.

The man put his hands in the air. It wasn’t a gesture of surrender, merely one of disappointment and disbelief.

“Aw, fellas, fellas,” he said. “You know there was no need to do that, no need at all. That’s a nice truck. You don’t want to do things like that to a nice truck. It’s-” He struggled for the right words. “-a matter of aesthetics.”

“You’re not listening to us.”

“I am, but you’re not listening to me. I told you: I’d like to move it, but I can’t.”

Harding turned the shotgun on him. If anything, his voice grew softer as he spoke again.

“I’m telling you for the last time. Move. Your. Truck.”

“And I’m telling you for the last time that I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not my truck,” said the man, pointing behind Harding. “It’s their truck.”

Harding turned around. It was the second-last thing he ever did.

Dying was the last.

The Fulci brothers, Tony and Paulie, were not bad men. In fact, they had a very clearly developed, if simple, sense of right and wrong. Things that were definitely wrong included: hurting women and children; hurting any member of the Fulcis’ distinctly small circle of friends; hurting anyone who hadn’t done something to deserve it (which, admittedly, was open to differing interpretations, particularly on the part of those who had been on the receiving end of a pummeling from the Fulcis for what seemed, to the victims, like relatively minor infractions); and offending Louisa Fulci, their beloved mother, in any way whatsoever, which was a mortal sin and not open to discussion.

Things that were right included hurting anyone who broke the rules listed above and-well, that was about it. There were creatures swimming in ponds that had a more complicated moral outlook than the Fulcis.

They had come to Maine when they were in their early teens, after their father had been shot in a dispute over garbage collection routes in Irvington, New Jersey. Louisa Fulci wanted a better life for her sons than for them to be drawn inevitably into the criminality with which her late husband had been associated. Even at the ages of thirteen and fourteen respectively, Tony and Paulie looked like prime candidates for use as instruments of blunt force. They were then barely five feet four inches tall but each weighed as much as any two of his peers, and their body fat ratio was so low that a waif model would have wept for it.

Unfortunately, there are individuals whose physical appearance condemns them to a certain path in life. The Fulcis looked like criminals, and it seemed inevitable that criminals they would become. The possibility of their cheating fate was further hampered by their emotional and psychological makeup, which might charitably have been described as combustible. The Fulcis had fuses so short that they barely existed. As time went on, a great many medical professionals, including a number attached to prison welfare and probation services, attempted, unsuccessfully, to balance the Fulcis’ moods by pharmaceutical intervention. What they discovered in the process was quite fascinating, and interesting papers for professional and academic study might well have resulted had the Fulcis been willing to stay still long enough to cooperate in their formulation.

In most cases of psychological disorder, aberrant behavior could be moderated and controlled through the judicious application of a cocktail of assorted medications. It was simply a matter of finding the right combination of drugs and encouraging the subject to take them regularly and continually. Where the Fulcis were concerned, though, it was discovered that the drugs would only operate effectively for a short period of time once they had lodged in their system, frequently one month or less. After that, their effectiveness dwindled, and upping the dosages did not result in any corresponding decrease in psychotic behavior. The medical professionals would then return to the drawing board, come up with another potential winning combination of blue, red, and green pills, only to discover that, once again, the Fulcis’ natural inclinations appeared to reassert themselves. They were like organ recipients rejecting a donor kidney, or captive lab rats that, faced with an obstacle preventing them from reaching their food, gradually worked out a way to get around it.

One of the psychiatrists even went so far as to title a possible paper on the Fulcis. It was called Viral Psychosis: A New Approach to Psychotic Behavior in Adults. His theory was that the Fulcis’ psychosis bore some resemblance to the manner in which certain viruses mutated in response to medical attempts to counter them. The Fulcis were psychotic in a way that went far beyond any normal conception of the term. The paper was never published because the psychiatrist was afraid of both the mockery of his peers and the potential damage that might be inflicted upon his person if the Fulcis discovered that he had referred to them as psychotic, even under the guise of protective pseudonyms. The Fulcis were not stupid. A senior law enforcement figure had once suggested that the Fulcis “couldn’t even spell rehabilitation.” This was untrue. The Fulcis could spell it. They just had no concept of how it might be applied to their own situation, for they had no insight into their own psychosis. They were happy. They loved their mother. They valued their friends. It was all very straightforward. As far as the Fulcis were concerned, rehabilitation was for criminals, and they were not criminals. They just looked like criminals, which wasn’t the same thing at all.

Some branches of the law had been given cause to differ with the Fulcis’ interpretation of their condition over the years. The brothers had been jailed in Seattle for the theft of $150,000 worth of Russian vodka from the port, even though they had only been hired to drive the trucks. Nevertheless, they were the ones who were found in possession of the booze, and they took the fall. They had also done time in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the Canadian maritime province of New Brunswick, mostly for offenses involving what their good friend Jackie Garner liked to call “transfers of ownership,” occasionally involving a degree of violence if someone deliberately or inadvertently broke one of their rules. As with the law, ignorance was no defense.

But the most significant moment in their lives occurred when they were arrested for murder in Connecticut. The death in question was that of a bookie named Benny the Breather, who had engaged in a little creative accounting that did not meet with the approval of his bosses. These bosses were distantly related to some of the individuals who had been involved in the garbage disposal dispute that had ended the life of the Fulcis’ father. Benny the Breather was so named in honor of a conviction for making lewd and lascivious telephone calls to various women who had been less than flattered by his attentions. Since Benny had made all of the calls from the comfort of his own bed, it hadn’t taken the police long to track him down. In the course of his arrest, Benny had taken a nasty tumble down the stairs of his apartment block due to the fact that one of the women he had called was the wife of a sergeant at the local precinct. This fall had left Benny with a slight limp, so he was also sometimes known as Benny the Gimp. Benny hadn’t cared much for either of his nicknames, and had been known to protest vociferously at the use of either of them, but the judicious introduction of a bullet to his head had solved the problem for all concerned.

Unfortunately, a good citizen had witnessed the crime and came forward with a description of the men responsible, which happened to match that of the Fulci brothers. They were hauled in, identified in a lineup, and tried for murder. Circumstantial evidence was found confirming their presence at the scene, which was nearly as surprising to the Fulcis as their initial identification in the lineup, given that they hadn’t killed anyone, and certainly not Benny the Breather, aka Benny the Gimp.

The judge, taking into account psychiatric reports, sentenced them to life imprisonment, and they were sent to separate institutions: Paulie to the Level Four Corrigan Correctional Institution in Uncasville, and Tony to the Level Five Northern Correctional Institution in Somers. The latter was designed primarily to manage those inmates who had demonstrated an inability to adjust to confinement and posed a threat to the community, staff, and other inmates. Tony’s immediate incarceration there-do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars-was ordered because his mind began to shake off the shackles of his medication while his trial was still ongoing, resulting in an altercation that left one jailhouse cop with a broken jaw.

And there the brothers might have remained-puzzled, hurt, and innocent-had the men who ordered the killing of Benny the Breather/Gimp not felt a pang of guilt at seeing two Italian-Americans wrongfully convicted of murder, particularly two Italian-Americans whose father had died in the service of a greater criminal good, leaving a widow who was regarded by one and all as a model of ethnic motherhood. Some calls were made, and it was suggested to a crusading attorney that the convictions in question were unsafe. The case against the Fulcis was further weakened when two similarly large gentlemen were arrested in New Haven following the attempted murder of a nightclub owner and were found to be in possession of the weapon that had killed Benny. Apparently, it had some kind of sentimental value to one of them, and he had been reluctant to part with it.

The result was that the Fulcis were pardoned and released after thirty-seven months in jail, and obtained a very nice settlement from the state of Connecticut for their troubles. This they used to ensure that their mother would be kept in comfort and style for the rest of her days. Louisa, in turn, gave the brothers a weekly allowance to do with as they chose. They chose mainly to buy beer and ribs, and a monster Dodge 4x4 that they customized to within an inch of its life. Next to their mother, and each other, it was their most cherished possession on earth.

It was this truck that Willis and Harding had just busted up with their shotguns.

“Wow,” said Jackie Garner, because it was he who had been sitting by the side of the road, waiting for the Fulcis to finish their business in the woods, “you guys are so screwed.”

Thus it was that when Harding turned around he saw two very large and very irate men emerging from the woods. One was hurriedly zipping up his fly. The other was staring unhappily at the truck. Their faces, which tended toward redness even at times of relative calm, had assumed the complexion of a pair of mutant plums. To Harding, they looked like trolls dressed in polyester, twin refrigerators in big-man pants and jackets. They couldn’t even walk properly, they were so wide. Instead, they shambled from side to side, like wind-up robots. The sight of the two men lumbering in their direction was so confusing to Harding and Willis that it took them a moment or two to react, so that Harding was still raising his shotgun when Tony Fulci’s fist connected with his face, breaking a number of bones simultaneously and sending him flying backward into Willis, who at that moment had lifted his own weapon and was about to fire. The shot tore through Harding and killed him instantly, even as Jackie Garner rose up and clubbed Willis across the back of the head with the butt of a pistol. Paulie then finished the job by pounding on Willis some more, until he was on the verge of departing this life and following his partner to his final reward, at which point Paulie desisted because his hand hurt.

Tony rounded on Jackie Garner.

“You was supposed to watch the fucking truck, Jackie,” he said.

“I was watching the truck. They asked me to move it, but you had the keys. I didn’t know they were going to start shooting it up.”

“You still ought to have said something to them.”

“I tried to say something.”

“Yeah? Well it wasn’t the right thing.” Tony reached out and yanked the candy bar wrapper from Jackie’s pocket. “How come you got time to finish a Three Musketeers bar but you ain’t got time to watch the truck? You can’t do both at once? I mean, the fuck, Jackie? You know, it’s just-the fuck.”

Jackie assumed a conciliatory pose and tone. “I’m sorry, Tony,” he said. “I don’t think they were reasonable men. You can’t talk to unreasonable men.”

“Well then, you ought not to have talked to them. You ought to have killed them.”

“I can’t just go killing people over a truck.”

“It wasn’t a truck. It was our truck.”

His brother was tenderly stroking the hood of the truck and shaking his head. With a last despairing look at Jackie, Tony went over to join him.

“How bad does it look?”

“Upholstery’s ripped to pieces, Tony. There’s some holes to the paintwork, too. Lights are shot. It’s a mess.” He was on the verge of tears.

Tony patted his brother on the shoulder.

“We’ll fix her up. Don’t worry. We’ll make her as good as new.”

“Yeah?” Paulie looked up hopefully.

“Better than new. That right, Jackie?”

Jackie, sensing that the storm was already blowing over, offered his support for this view.

“If anyone can do it, you guys can.”

Paulie got into the cab, having first carefully wiped it clear of glass, and started the truck. He let it run for a minute until he was satisfied that no damage had been done to the engine. Tony stood beside Jackie. Willis was still breathing, but only barely. Tony stared down at him. Jackie thought that he looked like he wanted to finish the job.

“You think Parker will be pissed at us?” he said.

The Fulcis admired Parker. They didn’t want him to be angry.

“No,” said Jackie. “I don’t think he’ll even be surprised.”

Tony brightened. He and Paulie dumped Harding’s body in the back of the dead men’s pickup, then tied Willis’s hands and legs with baling wire that they found in the cab and left him, unconscious, beside his dead colleague. Jackie then drove the truck into the woods and left it there, out of sight of the road.

“You think those guys were related?” Paulie asked his brother, as they waited for Jackie to return. “They looked like they was related.”

“Maybe,” said Tony.

“Pity they was such assholes,” said Paulie.

“Yeah,” said Tony. “Pity.”

There was a radio on the dashboard of the truck. It crackled into life just as Jackie Garner finished hiding the truck in the woods.

“Willis,” said a voice. “Willis, you there. Over.”

Jackie nearly didn’t answer it, then decided, aw, why not? He’d seen movies in which people found out the bad guy’s plans by pretending to be someone else on a phone or a radio. He didn’t see why it couldn’t work on this occasion.

“This is Willis. Over.”

There was a pause before the reply came.

“Willis?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Over.”

“Who is this?”

Dammit, thought Jackie, this is harder than it looks in the movies. I ought to learn to leave well enough alone.

“Sorry,” he said. “Wrong number.”

After all, there didn’t seem to be anything else to say. He put the radio down, then hurried back to join the Fulcis. They looked up in surprise at the sight of Jackie running.

“Time to go,” said Jackie. “Company’s coming.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THEY DIDN’T DIE.

That was the first thing that struck Angel once they had made it to the trees: they were still alive. Running across the stretch of ground between the garage and the forest had been one of the most terrifying experiences of his life. All the time, he had been waiting for the moment of impact, the second when his body would buck as the first shot struck him, the sensation like a hard punch from a seasoned fighter, to be followed by searing pain and then…What? Death, either instant or slow. Another wound, Louis dragging him across the damp grass as he bled slickly, leaving a dark line as the life flowed from him, knowing that this time there would be no second chances, that he would die here, and Louis might die alongside him?

And so he had run hard, fighting the instinct to make himself as small as he could, knowing that to do so would slow him down. Be smaller, or be faster, that was the choice. In the end, he had opted for speed, every muscle in his body tense, his face contorted in expectation of the bullets that must inevitably begin to fly. He knew that he would be hit before he heard the shot that had taken him, so the silence, broken only by the sounds of breathing and footfalls, was of no consolation.

Both men zigzagged as they crossed the open ground, altering their pace and direction unexpectedly to throw off any shooters. The tree line began to loom closer, so close that, even in the murk, Angel could pick out details of bark and leaves. Farther back, the forest faded into shadows and gloom. There could be any number of men in there waiting for them, drawing a bead on the moving targets or holding their aim on a single spot, waiting for the target to come to them. Perhaps Angel would see the muzzle flash in the shadows before he died, the last flicker of light before the final darkness to come.

Fifteen feet. Ten. Five. Suddenly, they were among the trees. They dropped to the ground among the bushes, then crawled slowly away from where they had landed, careful to make as little noise as possible, avoiding undergrowth that might move and give away their positions. Angel glanced at Louis, who was about ten feet to his right. Louis raised a palm, indicating that he should stop. Something flew high above their heads in the dark, but neither man lifted his eyes to follow its progress. Instead, they waited, their attention fixed on the forest before them, their sight now adjusted to the darkness.

“They didn’t shoot,” said Angel. “How come they didn’t shoot?”

“I don’t know.”

Louis searched the woods for movement, for any sign that they were being watched. He found nothing, but he knew that there were men out there somewhere. They were being toyed with.

He indicated that they should move forward. Using the trees as cover, they made slow, careful progress, each taking his turn to move, then pausing to cover the advance of the other, conscious that they needed to watch not just what lay ahead of them, but what might appear from behind. They saw nothing. The forest appeared to be clear, but neither man fooled himself into thinking that this meant their presence was unremarked. The bodies had been left in the trunk of their car for them to find, and the car itself had been put beyond use. A message had been sent. They were alive, but only on the whim of others.

Louis thought again of the woman at the window. Was it too much of a coincidence that she should have appeared at just the moment that he and Angel had fixed their sights upon the house? Perhaps they had been permitted to see her, and then they had responded exactly as anticipated: they had aborted their plan and returned to their vehicle, but by then the trap had been sprung. Now they had no choice but to keep moving and wait to see how events played out, so they continued through the forest, never allowing their guard to relax even slightly, constantly turning, watching, listening. They were exhausted by the time they had gone only three-quarters of a mile, but by then the trees had begun to thin, and there was open ground visible in front of them. It sloped upward to the inner ring road. Beyond it was more forest.

They stopped while they were still hidden, the road a raised spine before them. They could see no sign of movement upon it. Louis sniffed the air, trying to pick up any hint of cigarette smoke or food that might have carried on the breeze, indicating the presence of men nearby. There was none.

He and Angel were almost within touching distance.

“I go on three, you go on four,” he whispered. The slight delay would make them harder targets if the road was being watched, the second man distracting from the first, sowing just enough confusion to give them an edge. He raised his right index and middle fingers, spreading them apart to form a V. “I go left, you go right. Don’t stop until you get to the trees.”

Angel nodded. They stayed low until they reached the edge of the forest, then Angel watched Louis’s lips make the count. One. Two.

Three.

Louis sprinted for the road. A second later Angel was moving, veering away from his partner, zigzagging once again but not as violently as before, intent only on getting across the open road, where he would be most vulnerable, as quickly as possible.

They did not even make it to where the ground began to rise. The first shot sent a spume of dirt into the air a couple of inches from Angel’s feet. The second and third struck the road itself, and then the scattered shots became a fusillade, forcing the two men back into the forest. They flattened themselves on the ground, and returned fire with the Steyrs, aiming at the muzzle flashes, keeping to short bursts in order to conserve their ammunition. Louis saw a figure running low, wearing a green combat jacket. He fired, but the man kept moving. He was beyond the limited range of the Steyrs.

“Stop firing,” he told Angel after each of them had exhausted a magazine, and instantly Angel did as he was told, reloading with his face pressed hard against the ground.

The shooting from the other side of the road did not cease, but neither did the shots draw any closer. Instead, the shooters seemed happy to knock bark from the trees behind them, too far over their heads to do any damage as long as they stayed down, or to send clouds of dust and gravel spurting from the surface of the road. Slowly, Angel and Louis moved back into the cover of the trees.

Only then did the gunfire stop, although their ears still rang from the noise. They could see them now: a line of three men in hooded ponchos, barely visible in the woods on the other side of the road. One held his rifle at port arms while the others leaned against the trees to his left and right, rifles at their shoulders, sighting down the barrel at their targets. They did not seem troubled that Angel and Louis could see them. Then more men appeared from the north and south, following the road, and took up positions among the trees. Some of them even seemed to be smiling. It was a game, and they were winning. Angel dropped the Steyr and raised his Glock, but Louis reached out and indicated that he should hold his fire.

“No,” he said.

They’ve strung themselves out along the road, thought Louis. They took note of where we came in, then made an educated guess at where we’d come out. The line might have been thinner a little farther to the east or west, but they knew that they could reinforce it quickly.

From somewhere on the other side of the road, he heard the crackle of a radio, then it was lost in the sound of an approaching vehicle, and a flatbed truck appeared from the south and stopped thirty or forty feet away from where Angel and Louis knelt. They could see the shapes of two men in the cab. The truck idled. Nobody moved.

“What the hell is this?” asked Angel.

But Louis did not reply. He was performing calculations in his mind: times, distances, weapons. He tried to work out their chances of killing the two men in the truck if they used the cover of the forest to work their way south. They were good, but the chances of getting away from the pursuers who would inevitably follow were less favorable: close to zero, he reckoned.

And yet this couldn’t go on indefinitely. They were being contained for a purpose. He wondered if there were men already approaching from behind, cutting them off. They were like foxes fleeing the hunters only to find that the entrance to their den had been sealed, forcing them to turn and face the dogs.

“We go back,” he said.

“What?”

“They’ve closed off the road, for now. They also know where we’re at, and that’s not good. We use the forest while we can. There’s a house to the northeast. It was on the satellite photographs. Could be we can lay our hands on a car or a truck there, or at least a phone.”

“We could call the cops to come get us,” said Angel. “Tell them we came here to kill someone by mistake.”

Rain began to fall, large drops that made a slapping noise upon the leaves above them. Even though the sun had now almost risen, the sky above them remained cloudy and dark. The rain fell harder and faster, quickly soaking them to the skin, but the men watching from the woods did not move. The rain slid from their slickers and ponchos. They had been prepared for rain. They had been prepared for everything. Slowly, Louis and Angel retreated into the trees.

There was massive internal bleeding. His brain swelled inside his skull, causing more hemorrhaging. They fought for him, trying to prevent herniation, for that would be the end of him. They removed bone fragments, and a clot, and the bullet. Finally, all of their work would leave only the faintest of scars, hidden by his hair.

And while they battled to save him, Louis sat by a lake, surrounded by trees. Across the water, he could see the house in which he had grown up. It was empty now, fallen into ruin. It was no longer home. He could not go back there, so there was no life within its walls. There was no life anywhere. The woods were quiet, and no fish swam in the lake. He sat in the dead place, and he waited.

After a time, a man emerged from the darkness of the forest to the east. His face was gone, and his teeth were bared in his lipless mouth. He had no eyes with which to see, but he turned his head toward Louis. The wounds to his face made him look as though he were grinning. Perhaps he was. Deber had always been grinning, even when he killed Louis’s mother.

To the west, a light appeared, and the Burning Man took his place by the water, his mouth forming words, speaking soundlessly to his son of rage and wrath.

North: the house. South: Louis. East: Deber. West: the Burning Man. Compass points.

But Louis was not the southern point. He heard footsteps behind him, and a hand gently brushed the back of his neck. He tried to turn, but he could not.

And his grandmother’s voice whispered: “These are not the only choices.”

It was the beginning of the end, the seed that would lead to the slow flowering of a conscience.

The wound took a long time to heal. The bullet had penetrated his skull, but had not passed into his brain. His mother had always told him he had a hard head. Even after his survival was assured, he had trouble forming certain words and distinguishing colors, and his vision was blurred for months. He was tormented by phantom sounds, and by pains in his limbs. Gabriel was tempted to cut him loose, but Louis was special. He had been the youngest of Gabriel’s recruits, and he still had the potential to exceed all of Gabriel’s expectations. He responded quickly to therapy, in part because of his own natural strength, but also, Gabriel knew, out of a desire for revenge. Bliss had disappeared, but they would find him. They could not let what he had done go unpunished.

It took ten years to track him down. When he was found, Louis was sent to execute him.

He was living in Amsterdam as a Dutch national, under the name van Mierlo. Some surgery had been performed on him; not much, but just enough on the nose, eyes, and chin to ensure that if any of his old acquaintances crossed his path they would fail to recognize him immediately. It was all about buying time: hours, minutes, even seconds. Louis knew that Bliss would have spent the years since the Lowein incident preparing for the day when he might be found. He would be ready to run at any time. He would know his environment intimately, so that the slightest change in routine would alert him. He would always be armed. He would own a car, kept in a secure private parking garage not far from where he lived, but would rarely use it. It would be kept for emergencies, in case the airport or the trains were closed to him for any reason, or when alternative travel arrangements were denied him.

He stuck to taxis, catching them on the street instead of calling for them in advance, and never taking the first that came along, always waiting for the second, third, or even fourth. Once each month, he visited his lawyer in Rotterdam, taking the train from Centraal. He was renting a four-story building on Van Woustraat, but appeared to have done nothing to the first floor, living on the second and third. Louis guessed that both the first and fourth floors would be booby-trapped, and that a bolt hole of some kind existed in Bliss’s living quarters, providing access to one of the adjoining buildings.

Louis wondered if Bliss knew that he was still alive. Probably, he thought. In the event that he was found, Bliss would expect Louis himself to come. He would be anticipating a knife, a gun to the head, just as Deber had so many years before. Perhaps he even feared an attempt to capture him and return him to the United States for Gabriel to deal with as he saw fit. But Louis would be present; of that Bliss was certain, be- cause Bliss did not know Louis, not as Gabriel did and not, in his final, agonized days, as Deber had.

Louis left the Netherlands without Bliss ever catching sight of him, and another man took his place for the final days, but during Louis’s time there he tracked Bliss, using Gabriel’s assistance as well as his own initiative. They found bank accounts. The office of his lawyer was searched. Business interests, and properties owned, were identified. Even his car was found.

Then, during Louis’s final days in Amsterdam, relations between the Dutch government and the transport unions deteriorated. A series of strikes was anticipated. One week later, Bliss went to his garage to pick up his car in order to drive to Rotterdam. There was a cassette player in the dashboard. He turned on the stereo as he maneuvered out of his space, the nose of the car angling upward with the slope, but instead of the anticipated Rolling Stones he heard a woman’s voice. Connie Francis, he thought. It’s Connie Francis singing “Who’s Sorry Now?”

But I don’t own any Connie Francis.

Oh, you clever boy.

He already had one foot on the ground when the mercury tilt switch activated, and the car, and Bliss, were engulfed in flame.

“He survived,” Gabriel told Louis. “You should have found another way.”

“That way seemed appropriate. Are you sure he’s not dead?”

“There were no remains found in the car, but fragments of skin and clothing had adhered to the garage floor.”

“How much skin?”

“A great deal, apparently. He must have been in considerable pain. We traced him to a doctor’s surgery on Rokin. The doctor was dead when we found him, of course.”

“If Bliss lives, he’ll come back at us someday.”

“Perhaps. Then again, it may be that all that is left is a charred husk with the man we knew trapped inside.”

“I could find him again.”

“No, I don’t think so. He has money, and connections. This time, he’ll bury himself deep. I think we shall have to wait for him to come to us, if he comes at all. Patience, Louis, patience…”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

BLISS SAT IN THE dining room of Arthur Leehagen’s house, the table at his back and an empty Hardigg Storm case at his feet. He wore a raincoat, and he held a soft waterproof hat in his hands. In front of him was a window, but until a short time before he had been able to see nothing through the glass and had, instead, focused entirely on his own reflection. He was not weary. He had come so far, and the moment for which he had long wished was almost upon him.

He recalled those first hours, when he was convinced that all of the skin had been seared from his body, the agony as he had stumbled into the night, his mind clouded entirely by pain. It had taken a great effort of will to compartmentalize his suffering, to clear a tiny corner of his consciousness so that reason could take over from instinct. He had made it to a phone, and that had been enough. He had money, and with money you could buy anything, if you had enough of it: a hiding place, transport, treatment for one’s wounds, a new face, a new identity.

A chance to live.

But such pain. It had never gone away, not truly. It was said that one forgot the intensity of one’s former agonies as time went on, but that was not true for Bliss. The memory of the pain that he endured had been seared both in and on him, in his spirit and on his body, and even though the physical reality of it had faded, the memory of it remained sharp and clear. Its ghost was enough to evoke all that had once been, and he had used that capacity to relive it in order to bring him to this place.

He heard footsteps behind him. Michael Leehagen spoke, but Bliss did not turn around to acknowledge his presence.

“There’s been contact,” Leehagen said.

“Where?”

“The inner ring, close by the southern intersection.”

“Did your father’s men do as they were told?”

There was a pause before Michael answered. Bliss knew that the reminder of his father’s authority would rankle. It served no purpose other than to amuse Bliss. It was a reminder that Michael had overstepped his authority in ordering the attack on Gabriel. Bliss had not forgotten it. There would be a reckoning once the job was done. Benton, the man who had pulled the trigger, would be the sacrificial lamb on the altar of Bliss’s atonement for the shooting. It was for Bliss, and no other, to decide if Gabriel lived or died. Bliss understood that Gabriel could not have let his treachery go unpunished, and he bore him no animosity for the long hunt that had ensued. It was Louis that Bliss wanted. Louis had burned him. Louis had made it personal.

“They forced them back. They didn’t aim to kill.”

Bliss blew air through his nose, like an amused bull. “Even if they didn’t, they probably wouldn’t have hit anything, unless it was in error.”

“They’re good men.”

“No, they’re not. They’re local thugs. They’re farmboys and squirrel eaters.”

Michael didn’t dispute the accuracy of the description.

“There’s something else. We lost contact with two of our people, Willis and Harding, on the outer ring. A stranger came on their radio.”

“Then I suggest you deal with the problem.”

“We’re doing that now. I just thought you should know.”

Bliss stood, turning now for the first time but still ignoring the man who stood at the door. On the table behind him, resting on its Harris bipod, was a Chandler XM-3 sniper rifle with a titanium picatinny rail and recoil lug, and a Nightforce NXS day optic sight. The Hardigg case also contained a universal night sight, which Bliss had not fitted in the hope that there would be enough light for him to track his prey. He stared through the window at the spreading dawn, masked somewhat by the rain that had begun to fall. Day was coming in earnest.

Beside the Chandler was a second rifle, a Surgeon XL. Bliss had been torn between the two, although “torn” was an exaggeration of the relative equanimity with which he now made his choice. Unusually for a man in his particular line of work, Bliss had no excessive fondness for guns. He had encountered those for whom the tools of their trade exerted an almost sexual attraction, but he felt no kinship with them. On the contrary: he considered their sensual regard for their weapons as a form of weakness, a symptom of a deeper malaise. In Bliss’s experience, they were the kind of men who gave amusing names to their sexual organs, and who sought a release from killing similar to that which they found in the act of congress. Such beliefs were, for Bliss, the height of foolishness.

The XL was a.338 Lapua Magnum, with a Schmidt & Bender 5-25 x 56 scope mounted on its rail and a multiport jet muzzle brake to tame the recoil. The stock was Fiberglas, and altogether the gun weighed just slightly more than twenty pounds. He lifted the rifle, put his left arm through the sling, and let his left shoulder take the weight. He had always preferred his right, but since that day in Amsterdam he had learned to adapt in this matter as in so much else.

“You’re going now?”

“Yes.”

“How will you find them?”

“I’ll smell them.”

Leehagen’s son wondered if the strange, scarred man was joking, and decided he was not. He said nothing more as he watched Bliss leave the house and walk across the lawn in search of his prey.