Free The Reapers: A Thriller-CP-7 by John Connolly

clothes.”
    “There is that. He seems kind of, I don’t know, not himself tonight?”
    “It’s the occasion. Makes a man philosophical. Makes him dwell on his mortality.”
    “That’s a cheerful thought. Maybe we could start a line of greeting cards, put that on them. Happy Mortality Day.”
    “You been pretty quiet tonight as well.”
    “You complain when I talk too much.”
    “Only when you got nothing to say.”
    “I always have something to say.”
    “That’s your problem right there. There’s a balance. Maybe Willie could install a filter on you.”
    His fingers gently brushed the back of his partner’s neck. “You gonna tell me what’s up?”
    Although there was nobody within earshot, Angel still glanced casually around before he spoke. It never hurt to be careful.
    “I heard something. You remember William Wilson, better known as Billy Boy?”
    Louis nodded. “Yeah, I know who he is.”
    “Was.”
    Louis was silent for a moment. “What happened to him?”
    “Died in a men’s room down in Sweetwater, Texas.”
    “Natural causes?”
    “Heart failure. Brought on by someone sticking a blade through it.”
    “That don’t sound right. He was good. He was an animal, and a freak, but he was good. Hard to get close enough to take him with a knife.”
    “I hear there were rumors that he’d been overstepping the mark, adding flourishes to simple jobs.”
    “I heard that, too.” There had always been something wrong with Billy Boy. Louis had seen it from the start, which was why he had decided not to work with him, once he was in a position to pick and choose. “He always did like inflicting pain.”
    “Seems like someone decided that he’d done it once too often.”
    “Could have been one of those things: a bar, booze, someone decides to pull a knife, gets his friends to help,” said Louis, but he didn’t sound like he believed what he was saying. He was just thinking aloud, ruling out possibilities by releasing them into the air, like canaries in the coal mine of his mind.
    “Could have been, except the place was near empty when it happened, and we’re talking about Billy Boy. I remember what you told me about him, from the old days. Whoever took him must have been a whole lot better than good.”
    “Billy was getting old.”
    “He was younger than you.”
    “Not much, and I know I’m getting old.”
    “I know it, too.”
    “That you’re getting old?”
    “No, that you’re getting old.”
    Louis’s eyes briefly turned to slits.
    “I ever tell you how funny I find you?” he asked.
    “No, come to mention it, you don’t.”
    “It’s cause you ain’t. At least now you know why. The blade enter from the front, or the back?”
    “Front.”
    “There a paper out on him?”
    “Someone would have heard.”
    “Could be that someone did. Where’d you get this from?”
    “Saw it on the internet. I made a call or two.”
    Louis rolled the glass in his hands, warming the brandy and smelling the aromas that arose. He was annoyed. He should have been told about Billy Boy, even as a courtesy. That was the way things were done. There were too many markers in his past to allow such matters to go unmentioned.
    “You always keep tabs on the people I used to work with?” he said.
    “It’s not a full-time job. There aren’t many of them left.”
    “There aren’t any of them left now, not with Billy Boy gone.”
    “That’s not true.”
    Louis thought for a moment. “No, I guess not.”
    “Which brings me to the next thing,” said Angel.
    “Go on.”
    “The cops interviewed everyone who was in the bar when they found him. Only one person had left: a little fat guy in a cheap suit, sat at the bar and drank no-name whiskey from the well, didn’t look like he could afford to change his drawers more than once every second day.”
    Louis sipped his brandy, letting it rest in his mouth before releasing it to warm his throat.
    “Anything else?”
    “Bartender said he thought he saw