by Child, Lee
Reacher woke at eight in the morning, warm, relaxed, peaceful, partially entwined with Abby, who slept on undisturbed. She was tiny beside him. She was more than a foot shorter, and less than half his weight. In repose she was soft and boneless. In motion she had been hard and lithe and strong. And certainly experimental. Her performance had been an art. That was for damn sure. He was a lucky man. He breathed deep and gazed up at the unfamiliar ceiling. It had cracks in the plaster, like a river system, painted over many times, like healed scars.
He disentangled himself gently and slid out of bed and padded naked to the bathroom, and then to the kitchen, where he set the coffee going. He went back to the bathroom and took a shower, and then he collected his clothes from all over the living room and got dressed. He took a third white china mug from the wall cabinet, and poured his first cup of the day. He sat at a tiny table in the window. The sky was blue and the sun was up. It was a beautiful morning. Faint sounds came in. Traffic and voices. People hustling and bustling, going to work, starting their day.
He got up and got a refill and sat back down again. A minute later Abby came in, naked, yawning, stretching, smiling. She took coffee and padded across the kitchen and sat in his lap. Naked, soft, warm and fragrant. What was a guy to do? A minute later they were back in bed. Even better than the first time. Experimental all around. Twenty whole minutes, soup to nuts. Afterwards they fell back, gasping and panting. He thought, not bad for an old guy. She snuggled against his chest, spent, breathing hard. He sensed the physical release in her. Some kind of bone-deep animal satisfaction. But something else also. Something more. She felt safe. She felt safe, and warm, and protected. She was luxuriating in it. She was celebrating the fact she was feeling it.
‘Last night,’ he said. ‘In the bar. When I asked you about the guy on the door, you asked me if I was a cop.’
‘You are a cop,’ she murmured.
‘Was a cop,’ he said.
‘Close enough for a first impression. I’m sure it’s a look you never lose.’
‘Did you want me to be a cop? Were you hoping I was?’
‘Why would I be?’
‘Because of the guy on the door. Maybe you thought I could do something about him.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Hoping would have been a waste of time. The cops don’t do anything about those guys. Never. Too much hassle. Too much money changing hands. Those guys are pretty much safe from the cops, believe me.’
Old disappointments in her voice.
As an experiment he asked, ‘Would you have liked it if I could have done something about him?’
She snuggled tighter. Unconsciously, he thought. Which he figured had to mean something.
She said, ‘That particular guy?’
‘He was the one in front of me.’
She paused a beat.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I would have liked it.’
‘What would you have liked me to do to him?’
He felt her stiffen against him.
She said, ‘I guess I would have liked you to mess him up.’
‘Bad?’
‘Real bad.’
‘What have you got against him?’
She wouldn’t answer.
After a minute he said, ‘There was something else you mentioned last night. You said texts would have gone out, with my description.’
‘As soon as they realized they lost you.’
‘To hotels and such.’
‘To everybody. That’s how they do it now. They have automated systems. They’re very good at technology. They’re very advanced with computers. They’re always trying new scams. Sending out an automatic all points bulletin is easy in comparison.’
‘And literally everyone gets the same alert?’
‘Who are you thinking of in particular?’
‘Potentially, a guy in a different division. In the moneylending section.’
‘Would that be a problem?’
‘He has a photograph of me. A close-up of my face. He’ll recognize the description, and he’ll text the picture in response.’
She snuggled closer. Relaxed again.
‘Doesn’t really matter,’ she said. ‘They’re all out looking for you anyway. Your description is more than enough. A photograph of your face doesn’t add much. Not from a distance.’
‘That’s not the problem.’
‘What is?’
‘The moneylending guy thinks my name is Aaron Shevick.’
‘Why?’
‘The Shevicks are my old couple. I did some business on their behalf. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But now the wrong name is out there. They could dig for an address. I wouldn’t want them showing up at the Shevick house, looking for me. That could lead to all kinds of unpleasantness. The Shevicks have enough on their plates already.’
‘Where do they live?’
‘Halfway to the eastern city limit, in an old postwar development.’
‘That’s Albanian territory. It would be a very big deal for the Ukrainians to go there.’
‘They already took over their moneylending bar,’ Reacher said. ‘That was way east of Center. The battle lines seem relatively fluid right now.’
Abby nodded sleepily against his chest.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘They all agree they can’t have a war, because of the new police commissioner, but all kinds of things seem to be happening.’
Then she took a deep breath and held it and sat up and shook herself awake and said, ‘We should go now.’
‘Where?’ Reacher asked.
‘We should go make sure your old couple is OK.’
Abby had a car. It was parked in a garage a block away. It was a small white Toyota sedan, with a stick shift and no hubcaps. Plus electrical ties holding on one of the fenders. Plus a crack in the windshield that made the view out front look like two overlapping halves. But the engine started and the wheels steered and the brakes worked. The glass in the windows was plain, not tinted, and Reacher felt his face was close to it, clearly visible to those outside, crammed as he was in a cramped interior. He watched for Town Cars, like he had crashed at the Ford dealer, and seen the night before, coming at him north and south on the street, but he saw none at all, and no pale men in dark suits either, loitering on corners, watching.
They drove the same way he had walked, past the bus depot, through the light, into the narrower streets, past the bar, and out again to the wider spaces. The gas station with the deli counter was up ahead.
‘Pull in there,’ Reacher said. ‘We should take them some food.’
‘Are they OK with that?’
‘Does it matter? They got to eat.’
She pulled in. The menu was the same. Chicken salad or tuna salad. He got two of each, plus chips, plus soda. Plus a can of coffee. Quitting eating was one thing. Coffee was a whole different thing entirely.
They drove into the development and worked their way around the tight right-angle turns to the cul-de-sac near its centre. They parked by the picket fence, with its nudging rosebuds.
‘This is it?’ Abby said.
‘Owned by the bank now,’ Reacher said.
‘Because of Max Trulenko?’
‘And some well-meaning mistakes.’
‘Will they be able to get it back from the bank?’
‘I don’t know much about that kind of stuff. But I don’t see why not. It’s all money and assets moving back and forth. Buying and selling. I don’t see why a bank would want to get in the way of a thing like that. I’m sure somehow it could find a way to turn a profit on the deal.’
They walked up the narrow concrete path. The door opened before they got to it. Aaron Shevick stood there. He had a worried look on his face.
‘Maria has disappeared,’ he said. ‘I can’t find her anywhere.’
SIXTEEN
Aaron Shevick might have been a hotshot machinist in the distant past, but he was no kind of a useful witness in the present day. He said he had heard no traf
fic outside. He had seen no cars on the street. They had gotten up at seven o’clock in the morning and had eaten a small breakfast at eight. Then he had walked to the convenience store to buy a quart of milk, for future small breakfasts. When he got home Maria was nowhere to be seen.
‘How long were you gone?’ Reacher asked.
‘Twenty minutes,’ Shevick said. ‘Maybe more. I’m still walking slow.’
‘And you looked all through the house?’
‘I thought maybe she had fallen. But she hadn’t. Not in the yard, either. So she went out somewhere. Or someone took her.’
‘Let’s start with she went out somewhere. Did she take her coat?’
‘She didn’t need her coat,’ Abby said. ‘It’s warm enough without. A better question would be, did she take her purse?’
Shevick looked in what he called all the usual places. There were four of them. A particular spot on the kitchen countertop, a particular spot on an entryway bench in the hallway area opposite the front door, a particular peg in the coat closet where they also hung their umbrellas, and lastly, a spot on the living room floor next to her armchair.
No purse.
‘OK,’ Reacher said. ‘That’s a good sign. Very persuasive. It means most likely she went out voluntarily, under her own steam, in an orderly fashion, not in any kind of panic, and not under any kind of duress.’
Shevick said, ‘She might have left her purse somewhere else.’ He glanced all around, helpless. It was a small house, but even so it hid a hundred hiding places.
‘Let’s look on the bright side,’ Reacher said. ‘She picked up her purse, she hooked it on her elbow, and she walked away down the path.’
‘Or they threw her in a car. Maybe they forced her to bring her purse. Maybe they knew how it would look to us. They’re trying to throw us off the trail.’
‘I think she went to the pawn shop,’ Reacher said.
Shevick was quiet a long moment. Then he raised a finger in a be-right-back kind of a way, and he limped down the corridor to the bedroom. A minute later he limped back carrying an ancient shoebox. It had faded pastel pink and white candystripes on it, and a faded black and white label pasted to the short end, with a manufacturer’s name, and a line drawing of a shoe, which was a proudly chunky woman’s lace-up, and a size, which was four, and a price, which was a penny shy of four bucks. Maybe the shoes Maria Shevick was married in.
‘The family jewellery,’ Shevick said.
He lifted the lid. The box was empty. No nine-carat wedding bands, no diamond engagement rings, no gold-plated watch with a crack in the crystal.
‘We should go pick her up,’ Abby said. ‘It will be a sad walk home otherwise.’
Organized crime’s traditional staples were usury, narcotics, prostitution, gambling, and protection rackets. Throughout their half of the city the Ukrainians ran them all with great skill and aplomb. Narcotics were doing better than ever. Weed had largely gone away, because of creeping legalization all over the place, but exploding demand for meth and oxy more than made up the difference. Profit was sky high. Pushed even higher by a percentage royalty on all the Mexican heroin sold in the city itself, from the western limit to Center Street. Every single gram. Gregory’s greatest success. He had negotiated the deal himself. The Mexican gangs were notorious barbarians, and it took a lot to impress them. But Gregory had persisted. Two of their street corner guys upside down with their guts out had finally done the trick. Before death, unhappily. At that point the Mexicans had started to fear for future recruitment. Street corner guys didn’t make much. Enough to risk getting shot, maybe, but not enough to risk getting hung upside down and slit wide open from throat to groin. While still alive. Hence the royalty. It kept everyone happy.
Prostitution was doing fine, too, mostly because of what Gregory thought of as a built-in advantage. Ukrainian girls were very beautiful. Many of them were tall and slender and very blonde. None of them had any chance of advancement at home. In the old country they had nothing ahead of them except a lifetime of mud and drudgery. No fine clothes, no high-rise apartments, no Mercedes-Benzes. They knew that. So they were happy to come to America. They understood the paperwork was complicated and the process expensive. They knew they would have to reimburse their helpers, for the upfront outlay, just as quickly as they could. And definitely before they moved on, to whatever it was that came next, which would hopefully involve fine clothes and high-rise apartments and Mercedes-Benzes. They were told all of that was coming soon. But first there would be a brief period of employment. Only afterwards would they get access to all those glittering opportunities. But not to worry. There was a system already in place. It was well organized. It was pleasant work, and very social. Mostly just mixing with people. Like public relations. They would enjoy it. They might even get a jump on meeting the right kind of guy.
They were graded on arrival. Not that any of them was ugly. Gregory had a wide choice. There were always a hundred thousand ready to jump on a plane. They were all fresh and flawless and fragrant. Surprisingly the most valued were not the youngest. Not at the top end of the market. Certainly there were plenty of guys willing to pay to get blown by kids younger than their granddaughters, but experience showed the guys with the really big bucks found that kind of extreme a little creepy. Experience showed such a guy preferred a slightly older woman, maybe even twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with a faint air of sophistication and worldliness about her, with a hint of approaching maturity, maybe a smile line or two, so he wouldn’t feel like a molester. So he would feel like he had a junior colleague in his room, maybe a rising executive, seeking advice or a raise or a promotion, any or all of which she might get, if she played her cards right.
Such a woman usually stayed about five years in that role. Somehow she never made it to the fine clothes and the high-rise apartments and the Mercedes-Benzes. Somehow she never quite paid off her debt. No one had thought about interest rates. Sometimes such a woman would do another five years, if she was wearing well, on the mature page of the website, and if she wasn’t wearing well, then her price would be dropped a couple of hundred bucks an hour, and she would soldier on as well as she could, for as long as she could. After that, she would be taken off the website altogether, and sent to one of their many backstreet massage parlours, where the shortest appointment was twenty minutes, and where she would be dressed in an abbreviated version of a nurse’s uniform, and rubber gloves, and put to work sixteen hours a day.
Each such parlour was managed by a parlour boss, who was assisted by a deputy parlour boss. Like the women who worked under them, they were generally not the pick of the litter. But on the plus side their job was very straightforward. They had only three tasks. They had to deliver a set number of dollars every week. They had to maintain enthusiasm among their staff. They had to maintain order among their customers. That was it. Such a specification attracted a particular type of candidate. Nasty enough to get the dollars, tough enough to subdue the customers, bent enough to enjoy the staff.
At one particular parlour two blocks west of Center their names were Bohdan and Artem. Bohdan was the boss. Artem was the deputy. So far their day was going well. They had gotten a text about a guy to be on the lookout for. With a brief verbal description, mostly about his size and weight, both of which seemed impressive. They had scrutinized their stream of customers. No such guy. But plenty of other guys. So far all well behaved. All satisfied. No issues with staff, either, beyond a small thing in the morning, when one of the older ones was late, and then not sufficiently apologetic about it. She was offered a choice of forfeits. She chose the leather paddle, as soon as she came off duty. Bohdan would administer the punishment, and Artem would video it. It would be on their porn sites an hour later. It might have earned a few bucks by the morning. A win-win. All good. So far their day was going well.
Then two customers came in who looked different. Darkish hair, darkish skin, sunglasses. Short dark raincoats. Black jeans. Almost like a uniform. Whic
h happened. Mostly because of the university. There were all kinds of folks in town. Mostly they dressed like where they came from. Hence these two. Maybe they were scholars, visiting from overseas. Maybe they were sampling the illicit charms of their host nation, purely for research. Purely to achieve a better mutual understanding.
Or not.
They pulled matching guns out from under their matching coats. Two H&K MP5 submachine guns, with integral suppressors. By coincidence the same brand and the same model the Ukrainians themselves had used the night before, outside the liquor store. Small world. The two guys gestured Bohdan and Artem to stand together, side by side, shoulder to shoulder. They each fired a round into the floor, to show their guns were silenced. Two spitting bangs. Loud, but not enough to bring someone running.
They said in bad Ukrainian, with heavy Albanian accents, that they were offering a choice. There was a car outside, and Bohdan and Artem could go get in it, or they could get gut shot right there, right then, with the guns just proved quiet enough to bring no one running. They could bleed to death on the floor, twenty minutes of agony, and then they could get dragged out by the heels, and put in the car anyway.
Their choice.
Bohdan didn’t answer. Not right away. Neither did Artem. They were genuinely uncertain. They had heard about Albanian torments. Maybe getting gut shot was better. They said nothing. The building was silent. Not a sound. The massage cubicles were all in a line, on a long corridor, the other side of a closed inner door. The front of house area could have been a lawyer’s waiting room. Some kind of under the table compromise with the city. Out of sight, out of mind. Don’t frighten the voters. Gregory had done the deal.
Then the silence was broken. There was a sound. The faint click of heels in the inner corridor. Tap, tap, tap. Five-inch spikes, like they all had to wear. Clear plastic, sometimes. Stripper shoes. The Americans had a word for everything. Tap, tap, tap. One of them was moving, maybe from the restroom back to her cubicle. Or from one cubicle to another. From one client to the next. Some girls were popular. Some got requests.