The Reapers

EPILOGUE

IF NICHOLAS HOYLE WAS concerned for his safety after what had occurred, then he gave no sign of it. His daughter was buried in a cemetery in New Jersey, but Hoyle did not attend the funeral, and neither did any of the men whom Louis and Angel had encountered at Hoyle’s penthouse, the enigmatic Simeon included. It appeared that Simeon had an apartment of his own somewhere in the Hoyle building, because when he did leave the penthouse he always returned before dark, and he was never alone on his sojourns. None of this concerned Angel and Louis, who were content merely to watch and wait. Over the course of six weeks they, and others, kept vigil from a rented apartment overlooking Hoyle’s building, noting all that went on, keeping track of delivery companies, office cleaners, and the other outside services that kept the building running. In all that time, they saw no sign of Hoyle himself beyond the doors of his apartment. He was sequestered in his fortress, unassailable.

On the day after Loretta Hoyle was buried in New Jersey, Willie Brew was laid to rest in Queens. The Detective, Angel, and Louis were there, as was Willie’s ex-wife and all of his friends. It was a well-attended affair. The mechanic would have been proud.

After the funeral, a small group retired to Nate’s to remember Willie. Angel and Louis sat in a corner alone, and nobody bothered them, not until an hour had passed and Arno arrived at Nate’s door. His absence until that point had been noted, but nobody knew where he was or what he was doing. He made his way through the crowd, ignoring outstretched hands, words of condolence, offers of drinks. He paused briefly in front of the Detective and said: “You should have looked out for him.”

The Detective nodded, but said nothing.

Arno moved on to where Angel and Louis were sitting. He reached into the inside pocket of the only suit that he owned and withdrew a white envelope, which he handed to Louis.

“What is it?” said Louis, taking the envelope.

“Open it and see.”

Louis did so. It contained a bank draft.

“It’s for twenty-two thousand three hundred and eighty-five dollars,” said Arno. “It’s all the money that Willie owed you on your loan.”

Louis placed the draft back in the envelope and tried to hand it to Arno. Around them, the bar had gone quiet.

“I don’t want it,” said Louis.

“I don’t care,” said Arno. “You take it. It’s money that was owed to you. Now the debt is paid. We’re all square. I don’t want Willie lying in the ground owing something. He’s done now. We’re done. In return, I’d appreciate it if you’d stay away from our place of business in the future.”

“Our” place of business. Willie’s and his. That was the way it had always been, and that was the way it would stay. Willie’s name would remain above the door, and Arno would continue to service the cars that came his way, overcharging only slightly.

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

Then Arno, now truly alone, began to weep.

The pool cleaners arrived at the Hoyle building, as always, at 7:00 P.M. after Hoyle had just finished his evening swim. Maintenance checks were always performed in the evening, while Hoyle prepared for dinner, so as not to disturb his routine. The cleaners were met in the outer lobby by Simeon and another guard named Aristede, and there they were wanded and frisked. The two men who arrived on this particular evening were not the usual cleaners. Simeon knew them all by sight and name, but these guys he had never seen before. They were a pair of Asians: Japanese, he thought. He called the owner of the pool company at home and she confirmed that yes, they were her men. Two of the regular cleaners were sick, and the others were tied up with jobs all over the place, but the Japanese guys were good workers, she said. At least, she thought they were Japanese. To be honest, she wasn’t quite certain either. Simeon hung up, gave the cleaners a final pat-down just to be safe, checked their tool kits and chemical containers for weapons, then admitted them to Hoyle’s inner sanctum.

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

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

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

“I guess,” said Simeon.

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

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

The woman who owned the pool company was named Eve Fielder. She had taken over the running of it after her father died and had built it into a well-regarded concern catering to upscale clients and private health clubs. Right now, she was staring at the receiver that she had just replaced in its cradle and wondering for just how much longer her company would be of any concern at all.

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

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

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

“So what do we do now?”

He checked his watch.

“We wait.”

“For how long?”

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

“And Mr. Hoyle?”

“He’ll have a very clean pool.”

Fielder sighed.

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

“Probably.”

She sighed again.

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

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

“It really sucks.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Within minutes, he was dead.

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

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

“Simeon,” said a man’s voice.

“Who is this?”

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

“Was this your doing?”

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

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

“He was my employer. I was hired to protect him.”

“But not to die for him. You did your best. You can’t protect a man from himself.”

“I could come after you. I have my reputation to consider.”

“You’re a bodyguard, not a virgin. I think your reputation will recover. If you come after me, your health won’t. I suggest you walk away from this. I don’t believe that you knew everything of what passed between Hoyle and Leehagen. You don’t strike me as the kind of man who would comfortably set up another. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’d like to contradict me.”

Simeon didn’t speak for a time.

“Okay,” he said. “I walk.”

“Good. Don’t stay in the city. Don’t even stay in the country. I’m sure a gentleman of your abilities won’t find it hard to pick up work somewhere else, far away from here. A good soldier can always find a convenient war.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then our paths might cross again. Someone once told me to avoid leaving witnesses. I wouldn’t want to start thinking of you in that way.”

Simeon ended the call. He put the cellphone and his security pass by the side of the pool and left Hoyle’s penthouse. He traveled down to the lobby and walked quickly but casually from the building, facing the great skyscrapers that dominated the skyline, their windows reflecting the late fall sun and the white clouds that scudded across the sky. He did not doubt for one minute that he was fortunate to be alive. He felt only a slight twinge of shame at the fact that he was running away. Still, it was enough to make him pause in an effort to reassert his dignity. He stopped and looked up at the buildings around him, his eyes moving from window to window, frame to frame. After a time, he nodded, both to himself and at the man who he knew was following his progress:

Louis, the killer, the burning man.

Louis, the last of the Reapers.