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Twenty minutes or so after Ralph Platt had disappeared inside the guest bathroom out came Reeves Minot, sporting a fresh suit and a countenance to match.
Tom’s first thought upon seeing him saunter downstairs was that his disguises could use some improvement. The beard had definitely helped dissimulate the scar, which jumped out now from his shaven cheek like a deranged painter’s brush stroke on a plain canvas, perhaps distracting enough to fool the casual observer, but the gait, and the eyes – a more attentive glance at his ferret-like features and anybody would be able to tell Mr. Platt and Mr. Minot were one and the same. Maybe if he put on an accent, really made a show of it. Tom entertained himself for a little while wondering what kind of foreign inflection Reeves could pull off at least somewhat convincingly. He knew from personal experience that the man couldn’t pass for French if his life depended on it. His German was almost as hopeless. He’d yet to hear him attempt Italian, but his complexion might betray him sooner than his tongue and the name on his passport ever could. Besides, the circumstances for that were less than favourable.
Tom’s second thought was that he was unreasonably happy to see him alive and kicking.
“Well, look at you!” He said with a touch too much enthusiasm, after stubbing out his cigarette and standing up from the yellow armchair. Oh, to hell with it! Can’t a man be glad to know and old friend overcame a deadly adversity? “I’d challenge anyone to tell you’ve been put through the wringer.”
It was half a lie. Only half, for it was true that Reeves, with both eyes intact and all joints in their rightful sockets, didn’t have the looks of someone who’d recently been in the clutches of the Italo-American mafia, but the bloodless tint of his face made it pretty evident that something troubling had happened to him quite recently.
Reeves gave him a grimace of a smile. “Any news from Orly?”
“There’s a flight departing for Zurich at 1:20. If I drive you, you might still be able to catch it.”
“Good. I don’t have anything to pack, so I’m ready whenever you are. I’ll wait for you in the car.”
“About that,” Tom intercepted him halfway down the foyer. “I don’t think it’s wise for you to travel with no luggage.”
“I already did,” Reeves pointed out.
“Yes, and you were perhaps lucky not to arouse any suspicions,” countered Tom. Then, he proceeded to voice the concern he’d been mulling over between one drag of his Gauloise and the next. “Not to mention, police will be on high alert after yesterday’s shootout. They’re probably trying to make heads or tails of what happened down at the Trevannys’ as we speak and, since they’re unlikely to have found anything useful yet, they might start staking out the airports in the hopes of catching a fleeing culprit. A lone man travelling with nothing but the clothes on his back could raise some eyebrows. No, you must carry one. Nothing to worry about, though. I’ll lend you my own.”
The very notion seemed to indispose Reeves, who suddenly looked pained in the same way he had while recounting the treatment he’d received at the hands of the Genottis. “I’ve imposed enough.”
His objection fell on deaf ears.
He hadn’t even finished speaking, that Tom had already taken it upon himself to fetch a small suitcase from the closet in his own bedroom. He walked back to the sitting room with it, carrying under his other arm everything that could make up the average travelling set for a short business trip, a brief pleasurable retreat, whatever reasoning Reeves would present if questioned: a change of clothes, two pairs of clean underwear, pyjamas and socks. He did so with such haste and determination, that Reeves had no choice but to watch him fold and stuff everything inside, including the toothbrush he’d snatched on a whim from his personal bathroom. Although he doubted the agents would go as far as to check the contents, he thought it a good precaution. He detested doing things by halves.
Which was why, before taking him to the garage around the back, he also fitted Reeves with a raincoat, a camel toned one he hadn’t worn in ages, that prompted a second wave of protests despite Tom’s assurance that he wouldn’t miss it, truly. It was a little irksome to listen to him go on and on about not knowing when he’d get the chance to return it, and how it wasn’t really a loan if there was no guarantee he would even get the chance to, but Tom decided to be lenient. He couldn’t expect him to behave rationally so soon. In fact, it was an unexpected testament to Reeves’ willpower that he was able to affect a normal – normal for somebody who always appeared to be treading on the edge of a cliff, at any rate – demeanour.
“How about I visit you in Zurich when the dust settles? I can pick everything up then,” Tom suggested, and surprised himself in meaning it. He normally made this sort of promises only if he’d already prepared an excuse not to make good on them.
“I should be back in Hamburg, by then. Well, I hope so,” the other man mused, not as reticent as Tom had expected. He counted it as a win.
“Wherever is fine. Just keep me updated,” he replied, pausing to adjust Reeves’ collar and earning an oblique look for it.
“I guess I will.”
That was the end of the argument.
The early morning drizzle had relented, letting the odd sunray pierce through the clouds. Like it often happened, the promise, no matter how remote, of a sunny day improved Tom’s disposition considerably. Put him in the mood for chatting, too.
As they got into the car and began rolling down the gravel path, he couldn’t help but talk Reeves through his latest gardening projects. “I’ve been meaning to plant some lavender bushes over there, see? Along the wood’s border. Heloise says if we have to have some purple, she’d rather it be azaleas, but I’ve heard they’re quite challenging to maintain. I could hire a gardener, but it would feel like admitting defeat. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty – not just metaphorically, hah! If anything, I find it relaxing. I know what you’re going to say, and you’re free to laugh at me now, but there’s something about—”
He was cut off by a strange noise it took him a second to figure out hadn’t come from the Ford’s wheels screeching against the gravel, but from Reeves’ own mouth. Glancing sideways at the passenger seat, he caught the man’s right hand flying to his midsection.
“Are you alright, Reeves?” He asked.
“Yes, it’s… the burns. They’re still very tender, but I’ll manage.”
They made it about sixty feet beyond the front gates before Tom felt him start beside him again. He didn’t need to say anything, this time around. Only spare him another look, and—
“I think,” Reeves swallowed. “I think I need a moment.”
Tom pulled over.
“I’m terribly sorry. It must be these countryside roads. All uneven, you know. I believe I’ll do much better once we’re on the asphalt. ‘Suppose I’ll have to tough it out a bit longer. I just…” a tight chuckle, every bit as unconvincing as his previous smile, interrupted his speech. “Need a minute to gather myself.”
After checking his watch, Tom said, “Take your time. Worst comes to worst, you can catch the midafternoon flight.”
Then he killed the engine and draped one arm over the steering wheel, turning just enough to have a better view of his friend’s scrunched up eyebrows, and of his palm resting flat over whatever mess of burns must lay underneath his shirt. Reeves’ eyes had fallen shut. From the jerky rhythm of his breathing, it was clear he was attempting to collect himself and doing a pretty poor job at it.
He hadn’t looked nearly as miserable the day before, while they sped at breakneck pace to the hospital with a moribund Jonathan slumped against him in the backseat, nor later, as Tom drove them both home along those very same roads, glancing compulsively in the rearview mirror for the dreaded sight of blue lights in the distance. Perhaps he’d been so high on adrenaline from the tortures, the shootout, and everything in between, that his brain hadn’t yet had the chance to wrap itself around the pain.
“The ointment didn’t help?” He guessed out loud.
“A little, at first. I tried patching them up – had to help myself to your first-aid supplies, I’m sorry – but all I seemed to be able to do was make them smart more, so I gave up. I thought they’d improved when I woke up, the pain at least, but clearly I was wrong. I only hope they’re not infected.”
The offer tumbled out of Tom’s lips before he could judge it as preposterous as it in fact was. “Do you want me to take a look at them?”
“I don’t know how that would be of any use,” Reeves replied.
Of course he didn’t – there was none, save to satisfy Tom’s morbid curiosity. If it didn’t risk coming off as a laugh at his poor friend’s expenses, he would have chuckled at his own ridiculousness. Instead, he said the most sensible thing he could come up with on the spot to justify his momentary lapse.
“You said you couldn’t tell if they improved at all. I haven’t seen how bad they were yesterday, but I could still give you a second opinion. If they do look bad enough, maybe you’d better—”
“You’re not suggesting a hospital?” Reeves was staring right at him, now. It might have been Tom’s imagination, but he had turned paler at the prospect.
“Of course not!” He hastened to reassure him. “We’d have to spin quite the story to make it seem like an accident and, no offense meant, I don’t think you’d be able to keep up the charade with nurses and doctors prodding you every which way. I was thinking more of turning around and letting you recover another day or two, until you’re in shape to take the trip.”
He was ready for Reeves to scoff, and laid his hand on the ignition in preparation for him telling him to forget it and drive, no need to take advantage of his hospitality further, he would simply endure, and was therefore left bemused when, after a prolonged silence during which Reeves peered alternatively at the deserted road ahead of them and the driveway they’d just left behind, he finally sighed. “All right.”
Since he had foregone the seatbelt to spare himself at least some of the discomfort, he could go straight to tugging his shirt loose from his slacks, then begin unbuttoning it from the bottom up. Once he reached his sternum, he parted his lapels, moved his necktie aside, and pulled his undershirt up above his navel, wincing when the fabric rubbed against some especially sensitive spot.
“I think they were redder yesterday, but what do I know…” Tom vaguely registered him saying.
His attention was captivated elsewhere.
Over a dozen little dots marred the skin of Reeves’ stomach, scattered without rhyme or reason everywhere from just below his ribs all the way down to his belt, each a nasty shade of reddish-brown, sometimes bordering on black. The surrounding flesh looked inflamed; it was hardly surprising that it caused him so much trouble still. Albeit a far cry from the worst injuries Tom had ever witnessed – had inflicted, as well – the sight summoned a sickly taste in his mouth.
“They said they went easy on me,” Reeves continued. “And you know what? I believe them.”
Matter of fact, so did Tom. With the aftermath on full display, it was easy to picture a pack of Italian thugs – which his brain could only visualise as several identical copies of Lippo and Angy – holding him down by the arms and legs, crowding him like hunting dogs over a wild hare, and pressing smouldering cigarette butts to his skin. One for every insult, first, then one for every sobbed refusal to cooperate. And Reeves, wet-eyed and panicked, holding out until they started smothering him and waving a gun in his face to show how serious they were.
The gun brought another image along. That of Jonathan sagging, clutching his pierced chest. The sad, sad smile he’d had on before the death throes had taken over and the way – deliberate, Tom was convinced after replaying the scene in his head – he’d stepped in the path of the bullet meant for him. The reasoning behind such an insane gesture escaped him yet, and it made him nervous. Ill, if he dwelled on it for too long. Playing mother hen for Reeves had been a nice diversion, but his departure would be followed by many sleepless nights, he knew. Two men, one a near stranger, the other little more than a pleasant acquaintance, enduring torment, death even, to shield him. Part of him wanted to drive up to the morgue and seize Jonathan’s cold body by the shoulders to shake him until he explained himself. He couldn’t obviously.
But Reeves could.
“Why did you send them after Trevanny?”
Reeves looked and sounded uncomfortable when he answered, and not only because of the pains of rustling about with his clothes. “I had to give them a name, Tom. Otherwise, they would have—”
“No, I mean,” Tom cut in, suddenly aware of how poorly he’d worded his question. “Why not me?”
“After all the favours you’ve done to me?”
“Most of them repaid.”
“Either way, I’m not so ungrateful.”
Nor was he a charitable man. No-one could afford to be, in his line of work. He never seemed too upset when tragedy – often the violent, vengeful kind – struck one of his associates. Dispirited, yes, at times worried, but not so much as not to recount the details as soon as Tom showed any amount of interest. And he wanted to believe him a saint, now, willing to face torture in the name of something as immaterial as gratitude? Hah!
“Jonathan did you a favour or two as well, lately, if I’m not mistaken,” he retorted, letting a thread of irony seep into his tone.
Reeves’ response was uncharacteristically steely. “I told you, I didn’t want it to come to this, but he knew what he was signing up for the moment he took the gun. And he had to know what might happen once the job was done, too. He wouldn’t have been half as difficult to persuade, if he hadn’t.”
“Maybe he trusted you to cover him.”
It wasn’t meant to be an accusation, more like musing aloud. But the other man clearly interpreted it as one.
Reeves shifted in the passenger seat. He appeared to be on the verge of shooting him a retort several times before he actually did, sighing once more, and shaking his head as though disappointed with someone – himself. “What do you want me to say? That when they bombed my apartment I knew Trevanny was as good as dead, blood disease or not? That I couldn’t stomach the idea of them doing this to you, when I was the one who got you involved?”
“I involved myself, really,” with the benefit of hindsight, it hadn’t been his wisest decision, Tom was ready to admit. One thing for sure, he was going to swear off altruism for a good while.
“But I came to you first,” insisted Reeves. “And yes, perhaps I’d rather have seen him plugged than you. Is it so unthinkable?”
“And if they still weren’t satisfied?”
“What are you on about? They wanted a mastermind, I—”
“How much longer do you think you would have held out before you gave them my name too?”
Reeves took a moment to answer. There was a hint of strained laughter in his voice when he did. “Honestly, Tom, I don’t know why you’re so fixated on this, all of a sudden.”
“No particular reason,” Tom lied reflexively.
He was nearly seized by the impulse to run his thumb over the charred skin, then. Exciting and terrifying at once. By the way he’d been carrying himself, Reeves wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight. He was a talker more than he was a brawler, his recent ordeal had only reasserted it. It wouldn’t take more than a slight pressure for him to cave. The revolting feeling beneath Tom’s fingertips would be made up for by what words may come. Less sophisticated than the Italians, but the principle was the same; the threat of more suffering against a simple answer, the one to the question waltzing on the tip of his tongue.
Would you have died for me, Reeves?
One syllable to once and for all solidify the suspicion he had matured over the course of their acquaintance and treated like everything he found slightly vexing but had no power against: ignored it to the best of his abilities.
Reeves usually made it easy for him to do so. Most of the time, Tom had no clue where he’d set up base, his calls and letters came from unfamiliar addresses all over western Europe, the latter occasionally signed with strange monickers he could trace back to his friend only thanks to the unmistakable spiky handwriting. Absence might make the heart grow fonder, but the mind easily distracted also, and so the incidents that had birthed it remained locked up in some dusty drawer at the back of his mind, asleep until something – an odd phrasing, a stray glance – poked them awake again.
He recalled one instance. Like dusting off an old photograph, he saw Reeves’ cheeks, redder than usual after downing a few too many drinks, the wine stain on his own jacket, the potted plants rustled by a chilly breeze that nonetheless hadn’t deterred them from spending the majority of the night on the balcony, lounging against the railing, lighting each other’s cigarettes and taking about the fine arts market with their heads close to each other to be able to catch at least one every two sentences over the hubbub. Reeves’ hand would find Tom’s forearm whenever something required particular emphasis, and Tom would lean further in, where the combined smell of smoke and pricy champagne confused itself with Reeves’ own cologne.
“What was that with Ms. Venier?” Tom had asked, referring to a discussion he’d spied between him and their host, who had ambushed Reeves on his way back from the restroom.
“She got the wrong idea about the topic of our conversation and wanted to remind me that, while she has no personal bias against our kind, she’d still rather us be more discreet while in her house,” he’d said.
Long desensitized to the assumptions people tended to make about his inclinations, Tom had chuckled. “It’s a harmless mistake, though I do wish it would stop happening. I’m starting to believe not even introducing everyone to my wife would do the trick.”
A brief coughing fit had shaken Reeves’ frame. When he’d regain control of his windpipe, “You’re getting married?”
“God, Reeves, no. Not right away. But I’ve been thinking about my current lifestyle and, well… It won’t maintain itself forever. I can’t see myself taking up a regular profession, and since I don’t think I’m cut for yours, either, marriage is by far the least painful option,” it was something he’d been pondering for a while, the most straightforward solution to the financial anxiety that had sunk its claws into him as of late, whenever he tried to calculate the remainder Dickie’s generous inheritance. He could put up with a wife, he’d decided, much more easily than he could a nine-to-five job. Though the other man’s expression had almost made him second-guess himself. “Something funny?”
“No. I just didn’t peg you for the type,” despite it having obviously been intended as a light remark, Reeves’ features had been sombre as he’d lit himself another cigarette and didn’t offer to light Tom’s even though it had lost its spark.
Tom had meant to prod him about it, but he’d soon been whisked away to meet some Neapolitan itching to talk to somebody who spoke their language, and by the time the chance had presented itself he’d all but forgotten about it.
When was that, again? Three years ago? Five? It could have been any of the house parties he’d began attending obsessively upon his return from Greece, in the masochistic urge to know what was whispered about him, and about Dickie, and that boorish friend of his. After Derwatt, before Heloise. Heloise! He ought to call her after seeing Reeves off, a quick word to tell her all was well and the peril had passed. She wouldn’t be thrilled to know the man she so despised had had a hand in it, but that was for his future self to worry about. His present concerns seemed more important than a thousand silly marital disputes.
His eyes were still on Reeves quite literally baring his soft underbelly for him. His pale face and paler stomach riddled with sores for his sake – his sake! – and Tom was on the cusp of doing something callous yet, in a way, necessary. He saw himself reach out and fancied he could feel Reeves clutching his bicep in retaliation, tight enough to hurt. His own name uttered on the tail end of a shaky exhale that defeated all attempts at making it sound like a warning – something stirred in Tom’s gut, at that, not unpleasantly. Betrayal in Reeves’ gaze as his thin lips twitched, worked around a single word. The truth spilling out. Would he forgive him, Tom wondered? Right then, it seemed inconsequential. He’d just have to find out.
And he would have, had it not been for Reeves judging he’d gotten enough of an eyeful to form an opinion. As if abruptly conscious of his predicament, he shuffled his clothes back into place, not without some hissing and grimacing. Which made, in turn, Tom acutely aware of his own hand resting on Reeves’ leg. Stuck between an obscure urge and a shred of good sense, his touch had landed atop the other man’s knee.
Even more than the object of his fascination vanishing from his sight, that was what jarred him out of his reverie.
They had made for a rather unorthodox sight, he supposed, the two of them parked on the side of a rarely frequented road, Reeves with his shirt unbuttoned halfway up his chest. Ambiguous, if not for the reason any onlooker would have imagined.
“So, what’s the diagnosis?” Reeves attempted a joke.
Tom thought it best to provide some optimism. “I’ve seen worse.”
“Have you, now?”
“Oh, definitely. My aunt was – let’s say very draconian with her punishments. They’re not infected, I can tell you as much. In fact, I believe you’re over the hump!” He gave Reeves’s knee an encouraging pat. Too easy to make it seem like that was the intention all along, and he commended himself for it.
“Thank you, Tom. Tough it out it is, then,” Reeves said, although a small frown persisted on his face, the one of when he was sure somebody was trying to screw him over, and Tom pretended not to see him wince whenever a bump in the road jostled him.
They were at Orly a few minutes past noon.