But what Louis and Parker had in common more than anything else, Angel believed, was a kind of darkness. A version of Louis’s fire burned in Parker; a stranger yet more refined form of Louis’s hunger gnawed at him. In a way, they used each other, but each did so with the knowledge, and consent, of his peer.
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 Angeclass="underline" 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.