The Reapers: A Thriller-CP-7 (18 page)

Things had changed, though, in recent months. Parker was no longer a licensed PI. He felt that he was being watched by those who had taken his license away, that a wrong move could put him in jail, or draw attention to his friends, to Louis and Angel. Angel wasn’t certain how they had managed to avoid that attention until now. They had been careful and professional, and luck had played a part at times, but those factors in themselves should not have been enough, could not have been enough. It was an enigma.

But with Parker out of commission, Louis had been denied one of the outlets for his urges. He had begun to speak of taking on jobs again. The move against the Russians had been inspired less by the immediate threat to Parker than by Louis’s desire to flex his muscles. Now it seemed that he and Angel were under attack from forces they had not yet fully identified. And what most disturbed Angel was the suspicion that Louis was secretly pleased at this development. Then there was Gabriel, who bore some responsibility for their current situation, since, if what Hoyle had told them was true, it was he who had dispatched Louis to kill Leehagen’s son to begin with. Angel had never met the old man, but he knew all about him. The relationship that existed between Gabriel and Louis was ineffably complex. Louis seemed to feel that he owed some debt to Gabriel, even though Angel believed that Gabriel had manipulated and, possibly, corrupted Louis for his own ends. Now Gabriel was, however peripherally, back in Louis’s life, like a hibernating spider spurred into motion by the warmth of the sun and the vibrations of insects close to its dusty web. It suggested to Angel that aspects of Louis’s past, his old life, were now leaching into the present, and poisoning them as they came.

If Louis sometimes frightened Angel, then Angel remained frustratingly unknowable to his partner. Despite all that had happened to him, there was a gentleness at the heart of Angel that might almost have been construed as a weakness. Angel felt things: compassion, empathy, sorrow. He felt them for those who were most like him, troubled children in particular, for Louis knew that every adult who was abused as a child holds that child forever in his heart. That did not make his emotions any less admirable, and Louis recognized that he himself had been colored and changed by the years he had spent in the company of this odd, disheveled man. He had been humanized by him, yet what was a virtue in Angel had become a chink in Louis’s armor. But then the moment he began to have feelings for Angel he had sacrificed a crucial element of his defenses. His forces, in a sense, had been divided. Where once he had only to worry about himself—and that concern was tied up with the nature of his profession—he now had to contend with his fears for another. When Angel had almost been taken from him, held to ransom and mutilated by a family that had no intention of ever releasing him alive, Louis had seen, for an instant, what he would become without his partner: a creature of pure rage who would be consumed by his own fire.

What he did not tell Angel was that part of him devoutly wished for such a consummation. Parker, too, had altered him, for in the detective Louis saw elements of both Angel and himself combined: he had Angel’s compassion, his desire not to let the weak be ground down by the strong and the ruthless, but also something of Louis’s willingness, even need, to strike out, to judge and to inflict punishment. There was a delicate balance between Parker and Louis, the latter knew: Parker held the worst of Louis back, but Louis allowed the worst of Parker to find an outlet. And Angel? Well, Angel was the pivot around whom the other two moved, a confidant of both, containing within himself echoes of both Louis and Parker. Yet wasn’t that true of all of them? It was what bound them together, that and an emerging sense that Parker was moving toward a confrontation of which they, too, were destined to be a part. He had never imagined that he would end up tied to such a man as Angel. In fact, for many years he had chosen not to acknowledge his sexuality to himself. It was a shameful thing when he was young, and he had suppressed it so well that any expression of it had proved difficult for him as he grew older.

And then this strange person had tried to burgle his apartment. He hadn’t even done it particularly well, the proof being that he had ended up under Louis’s gun while attempting to get his television out of a window. Who, Louis often wondered, enters an apartment that is clearly tastefully decorated, with some small, easily transportable objets d’art, and then tries to steal a heavy TV set? It was no wonder that Angel had ended up in jail. As a thief, he was a spectacular failure, but as a lockpicker, well, that was where his true genius lay. In that, he was gifted. It was, Louis suspected, God’s little joke on Angel: he would give him the skills required to gain access to any locked room, but would then deprive him of the guile required to make practical use of those skills, short, of course, of actually becoming a locksmith and earning an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, a concept that Angel found repugnant.

Almost as repugnant to Louis was his partner’s distinctive fashion sense. At first, Louis thought it was an affectation; that, or pure cheapness. Angel would scour the bargain racks at Filene’s, TJ

Maxx, Marshalls, anywhere that primary colors were gathered together in unlikely combinations. He didn’t care much for outlet malls, unless their stores, too, had a rail that had been discounted so much that the stores were pretty much paying customers to take stuff away. No, outlet malls were too easy. Angel liked the hunt, the thrill of the chase, that moment of pleasure that came from unexpectedly finding a lime-green Armani shirt reduced to one tenth of its original price, and a pair of designer jeans to match, assuming by “matching” one meant “clashing unbearably.”

The thing about it was, Angel would be immensely, genuinely proud of his purchases, and it had taken years for Louis to realize that, every time he commented unfavorably on his partner’s choice of attire, something inside Angel cringed, like a child that has tried to please a parent by cooking a meal, only to get all of the ingredients wrong and find himself chastised instead of praised for his efforts. It didn’t matter that, when it came to clothing, Angel seemed to be colorblind. This was designer clothing. It had cost him next to nothing, but it was good quality and had a label that people would know. As a child, Angel had probably dreamed of wearing nice clothes, of owning expensive things, but as an adult he could not justify to himself the expense of such items. They were meant for others, not for him. He did not consider himself worthy of them. But he could cheat by buying them for next to nothing, since no justification would be required if they were cheap.

Louis had once bought Angel a beautiful Brioni jacket as a gift, and the garment had languished in a closet for years. When Louis had eventually confronted Angel about it, Angel had explained that it was too expensive to wear, and he wasn’t the kind of guy who wore expensive clothes. Louis hadn’t understood the response then, and he wasn’t sure that he understood it a whole lot better now, but he had since learned to bite his tongue when Angel presented his latest purchases for approval, unless faced with provocation beyond the tolerance of mortal man to endure. For his part, Angel had started to learn that a bargain wasn’t a bargain if no one could look at it without shades or antinausea medication. An accommodation of sorts had therefore been reached.

Now, while Angel sat in his workroom and stared vacantly at the electronic components arrayed before him, Louis was in an anonymous office ten blocks away, a computer screen glowing before him, wondering if it might not be better to deal with Leehagen himself, to leave Angel behind. The thought lasted about as long as a bug in an oven. Angel would not stay. It was not in him to do so. Yet, unlike Angel, this was Louis’s purpose: to hunt, to provide the ultimate solution to any problem. He enjoyed it. Ever since the emergence of the Leehagen threat, he had felt more alive than he had at any other point in the last year. Old muscles were returning to life, old instincts coming to the fore. He, and the things and people that mattered to him, were in danger, but he felt himself capable of meeting and neutralizing the threat. Angel would stand alongside him, but he would not share Louis’s pleasure in what was to come, and Louis would try to hide his own as best he could. It was not a pleasure in killing, he told himself, but the pleasure that a craftsman takes in exercising his skills. Without that opportunity, well, he was just a man, and Louis did not care for being “just” anything.

He switched on the computer, and began tracking Arthur Leehagen. Gabriel sat in Wooster’s observation room. The boy was tall, although a little too slim, but that would change. He was handsome now, and would be handsome yet. There was a stillness to him that boded well. Despite his hours of interrogation, he held his head high. His eyes were bright and watchful. He did not blink often.

After a couple of minutes had passed, the boy’s posture changed slightly. He tensed, and his head tilted, like an animal that has sensed the approach of another but has not yet decided if it represents a threat. He knew that he was being watched and that it was no longer Wooster who was observing him.

Gabriel leaned forward in his seat and touched the glass, running his fingers over the boy’s head, his cheekbones, his chin, like a breeder checking the quality of a thoroughbred horse. Yes, he thought, you have the potential to become what I need.

There is a Reaper in you.

Gabriel knew that the vast majority of men were not born killers. True, there were many who believed themselves to be capable of killing, and it was possible to condition men to become killers, but few were born with that innate ability to take the life of another. In fact, throughout history it had been known that men in combat demonstrated a marked reluctance to kill, and would not do so even to save their own lives, or the lives of their comrades. During World War II, it was estimated that as few as 15 percent of all American riflemen in combat actually fired their weapons at the enemy. Some would fire wide or high, if they fired at all. Others would take on ancillary tasks such as carrying messages, transporting ammunition, even rescuing under fire fellow soldiers who had been injured, sometimes at far greater risk to themselves than might have been the case had they stayed in position and used their weapons. In other words, this was not a matter of cowardice, but a consequence of an innate resistance among humans to the killing of their own species.

All of that would change, of course, with improvements in the conditioning of soldiers to kill. Yet conditioning was one thing, while finding a man for whom that conditioning was not required was quite another. At times of fear or anger, human beings stop thinking with their forebrain, which is, in effect, the first, intellectual filter against killing, and start thinking with their midbrain, their animal side, which acts as a second filter. While there were those who suggested that, at this stage, the “fight or flight” mechanism came into play, the range of responses was actually more complex than that. In fact, to fight or to flee was the final choice, once posturing or submission had been eliminated.

Overcoming that second filter was one of the aims of conditioning, but there were those in whom that midbrain filter was absent. They were sociopaths, and in a sense, the purpose of conditioning was to create a pseudosociopath, one who could be controlled, one who would obey orders to fight and kill. A sociopath obeyed no orders, and therefore could not be controlled. A properly trained and conditioned soldier was a weapon in himself. In that process, of course, something good was lost, perhaps even the best part of the human being involved: it was the understanding that we do not exist merely as independent entities, but are part of a collective whole and that each death lessens that whole and, by extension, ourselves. Military training required that understanding to be nullified, that realization to be cauterized. The problem was that, like the early surgical procedures of ancients, this process of cauterization was based upon an inadequate understanding of the workings of human beings.

Fears of death or injury were not the main causes of mental breakdowns in combat; in fact, they were found to be among the least important factors. Nor was exhaustion, although it could be a contributor. Rather, it was the burden of killing, and of killing up close and knowing that it was your bullet or your bayonet that had brought a life to an end. Sailors did not suffer psychiatric casualties to any similar degree. Neither did bomber pilots dropping their loads high above cities that might have been, from their distant vantage point, entirely empty of citizens. The difference was one of proximity, of, for want of a better term, intimacy. This was death heard and smelled and tasted and felt. This was to face the aggression and hostility of another directed entirely at oneself, and to be forced to acknowledge one’s own aggression and hatred in turn. It was to recognize that one had become, potentially, both victim and executioner. This was a denial of one’s own humanity, and the humanity of others.

The boy named Louis was unusual. Here was an individual who had responded to a hostile stimulus in a forebrained way, approaching the threat as a problem to be solved. It wasn’t simply that the second, midbrain filter had been overcome; instead, Gabriel wondered if the issue had ever even reached that stage. This was a cold-blooded, premeditated killing. It indicated significant potential. The difficulty, from Gabriel’s point of view, lay in the physical distance from the killing itself that the boy had maintained. Gabriel understood the relationship between physical proximity and the trauma of killing. It was harder to kill someone up close with a knife than it was to shoot him at long range with a sniper’s rifle. Similarly, the sense of elation that frequently came with a kill was increasingly short-lived the closer the killer was to the victim, because in that situation guilt was as close as the body. Gabriel had even known soldiers to comfort the man whose life they had taken as he lay dying, whispering apologies for what had been done.