The Reapers: A Thriller-CP-7 Read Free Page B

Perhaps, he thought, the bloodshed would have to begin sooner than expected.
    Today had been a bad day, another in a succession of bad days. There had been a problem with the restrooms that morning and the place still stank, even though the difficulty had apparently been solved once the drain people, from a firm trusted by the organization, got on the case. On another day, the Priest might well have left the club and gone elsewhere, but there was business to be conducted and loose ends to be tied, so he was prepared to put up with the lingering bad odor for as long as was necessary.
    He flicked through some photographs on the table before him: undercover policemen, some of them probably Russian speakers. They were determined, if nothing else. He would have them identified to see if there was some way of putting pressure on them through their families. The police were drawing ever closer to him. After years of ineffectual moves against him, they had been given a break. Two of his men had died in Maine the previous winter, along with two intermediaries. Their deaths had exposed a small but lucrative part of the Priest’s Boston operation: pornography and prostitution involving minors. He had been forced to cease providing both services, and the result had affected, in turn, the smuggling of women and children into the country, which meant that the inevitable attrition of his stable of whores, and the stables of others, could not be arrested. He was hemorrhaging money, and he did not like it. Others were suffering, too, and he knew that they blamed him. Now his club stank of excrement and it would only be a matter of time before the dead men were finally connected to him. But word had reached him that there might be a solution to at least one of his problems. All of this had started because a private detective in Maine could not mind his own business. Killing him would not get rid of the police—it might even increase the pressure upon him for a time—
    but it would at least serve as a warning to his persecutors and to those who might be tempted to testify against him, as well as giving the Priest a little personal satisfaction along the way. There was a shout from the doorway in Russian: “Boss, they are here.”

    One week earlier, a man had arrived at the offices of Big Earl’s Cleaning & Drain Services, Inc., on Nostrand Avenue. He had not entered through the brightly carpeted, fragrant-smelling lobby. Instead, he had walked around the side of the building to the maintenance yard and wastetreatment area. This area did not smell at all fragrant.
    He entered the garage and climbed a flight of steps to a glass booth. Inside was a desk, a range of mismatched filing cabinets, and two cork boards covered with invoices, letters, and a pair of outof-date calendars featuring women in a state of undress. Seated behind the desk was a tall, thin man in a white shirt offset by a green and yellow polyester tie. His hair was Grecian-formula brown, and he was fiddling compulsively with his pen, the sure sign of a smoker deprived, however temporarily, of his drug. He looked up as the door opened and the visitor entered. The new arrival was of below-average height, and dressed in a navy peacoat buttoned to the neck, a pair of torn, faded jeans, and bright red sneakers. He had a three-day growth of beard, but wore it in a manner that suggested he always had a three-day growth of beard. It looked almost cultivated, in an untidy way. “Shabby” was the word that came to mind.
    “You trying to quit?” asked the visitor.
    “Huh?”
    “You trying to give up cigarettes?”
    The man looked at the pen in his right hand as if almost surprised that there wasn’t a cigarette there.
    “Yeah, that’s right. Wife’s been at me to do it for years. The doc, too. Thought I’d give it a try.”
    “You should use those nicotine patches.”
    “Can’t get them to light. What can I do for you?”
    “Earl around?”
    “Earl’s dead.”
    The