The Big Reap Read Online Free Page A

begrudge me a few minutes’ mourning.
    I didn’t figure, but I should have.
    You wanna know what really irks me about being damned? It’s not the big stuff – the guilt, the torment, the recriminations; those I figure I’ve got coming. It’s the little things that get me. Drop a hundred slices of toast, and none of ’em will land butter-up. Flip a hundred coins, and not once are you gonna call it right. Take a bad beat from the cosmos, lose a friend, and need one goddamn morning to yourself to get your head straight? Well too bad, because that’s precisely when the Welshman in the Bentley’s gonna show.
    I’m not talking metaphorically or anything. I mean I was standing in the cemetery, the chill November mist beading up on my meat-suit’s pea coat, when this dove-gray Bentley – mid-Sixties, if her curves were any indication, and in fresh-off-the-floor condition – splashes up the rutted drive, and out steps this big bruiser of a guy with arms like trees, no neck, a crooked nose, and a suit he probably coulda bartered for a second, lesser car. Black worsted-wool and well tailored, it somehow only served to accentuate his massive frame, his cauliflower ears, and his meaty boxer’s face. A pewter cravat hung around what passed for his neck – how it looped around and tied, I’ll never know – and a matching scarf was draped across his shoulders. Black leather gloves stretched tight as he flexed his ham-hock hands. He eyed me a moment in my borrowed meat-suit, a rail-thin teenaged boy who’d been struck down by an aneurism just last night. Then, in a heavy Welsh accent – all odd angles and hairpin turns – he said, “Sam Thornton?”
    â€œNever heard of him,” I replied, in my best attempt at cockney.
    â€œYour accent is bloody rubbish,” he said. “And anyway, you are him.”
    â€œOkay, I’m him.” I was aiming for nonchalant, although inside, I was reeling. When you make your way through the world in stolen bodies, hidden behind borrowed faces, you come to expect and even value a certain level of anonymity. Collectors ain’t the type to get bumped into by old classmates at the grocery store. “And you are?”
    â€œJust the hired help. The boss would like to meet you.”
    â€œWho, exactly, is the boss?”
    â€œThat’s really for the boss to say, isn’t it?”
    â€œSo I’m to come with you right now?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œWhat happens if I don’t?”
    The big man shrugged. His gloved hands tightened into fists. “Find out,” he said.
    I thought about it. Decided not to.
    â€œNo,” I said. “I’ll come.”
    And so I did.
    We drove for just over an hour, first on country roads, puddles gathering in the hollows of the tire-buckled tarmac and reflecting back a dotted line of cold gray sky, and then on roads with proper lines, and pale brick homes on either side. Eventually, we hit the motorway and headed north-west toward London. The whole time, my driver never said a word. My only company was the clatter of the tires against the pavement, and the swoosh of the wipers clearing the constant drizzle from the windshield. For a time, I tried to question him as to who his employer was and where, exactly, he was taking me, but the big mook just smiled at me, gap-toothed and crooked, in the rearview. So eventually, once his choice of roads tipped London as our likely destination, I gave up, settling into my leather seat back as warm and supple as first love and sleeping fitfully. It’s rare I find myself in such refined environs, and wherever he was taking me, there was no point in being exhausted when we got there.
    When the Bentley rocked to a halt, I woke with a start, unsure at first what continent I was on, or what meat-suit I’d dozed off wearing. But the swank interior of the Bentley’s cabin and the pale