by Lee Child
The Sox cleanup hitter grounded weakly back to the pitcher, and the inning was over. One–zip Boston. Bad, but not a humiliating disaster. Yet.
Reacher said, “If we keep on talking about him like this, eventually he might clue us in.”
Heller said, “Why would he?”
“He’s in trouble.”
“What are you, Santa Claus?”
“I don’t like our pitching. I’m looking for a diversion.”
“Suck it up.”
“Like you did for a hundred years?”
At that point the bar was quiet. Just the natural ebb and flow, but the barman heard what Reacher said, and he stared, hard.
Reacher said, “What?”
Heller said, “It’s okay, Sully.”
And then Jerry DeLong looked left, looked right, and said, “I’m waiting for someone to break my legs.”
HELLER GAVE REACHER A GLANCE.
Reacher seemed to have an intuition about the fat guy. He knew something was off, somehow. Something was wrong. Funny, Heller’d had the same sort of intuition. Same way he realized pretty quickly that this Reacher guy was really sharp.
The fat man had blurted it out. He was genuinely terrified.
But then he said no more.
The top of the second started. Two balls, a strike, ball three. The Boston pitcher stared in. He didn’t want to give up a lead-off walk.
“Changeup coming,” Reacher said. “Right down the pike.”
The Yankee batter knew it. He smiled like a wolf.
Not a changeup. A full-on fastball. The batter swung as the ball hit the catcher’s glove.
Reacher looked away.
He said, “Maybe this guy’ll tell us what’s going on. With his legs and all.”
“Ya think?” Heller replied.
“Or not,” Reacher said.
“Not unless I want my arms broken, too,” the fat man said.
Full count, and another fastball. Another whiff. One down.
Heller gave the fat guy a searching look. “Haven’t seen you here before, have I?”
“I haven’t been here before, no.”
“But you’re from here.”
From here: very Boston. Bostonians always want to know if you’re one of them or not. You can’t always tell from the accent. But there’s the language. Do you drink soda or “tonic”? Is something a “pisser”? Do you go to a liquor store or a packie? Take a U-turn or “bang a uey”? They’re expert at sussing out fakes and posers. Heller was born outside New York but moved as a teenager to a town north of Boston called Melrose. A working-class place. Heller’s father went to prison and his mother was left with nothing. So Heller could sound Boston if and when he wanted. Or not.
And this guy DeLong was definitely from around here.
DeLong shrugged. “Yeah.”
“You work around here?”
DeLong shrugged again. “Government Center.”
“Don’t like the Irish pub right there?”
“Well, my office is on Cambridge Street.”
DeLong was stingy with the information. For some reason he didn’t want to talk about what he did or where he worked, which was, for Heller, like a blinking neon arrow. That meant he did something sensitive, or classified, or unpleasant. But he had the look of a bureaucrat, a government functionary, and Heller took a guess.
“The good old Saltonstall Building.” One of the office towers in the bleak ghetto of big government buildings at the foot of Beacon Hill. “How’s the asbestos?”
The Saltonstall Building, which held an assortment of state bureaucracies, had been abandoned after it was found to be contaminated with asbestos. They did some renovation and dragged the office workers back in, and some of them were mad as a wasp’s nest that’s been kicked.
“Yeah, that’s gone.”
“Uh-huh.” Heller smiled. A state worker, for sure. He thought of maps of America where the states are resized by population and Rhode Island is twice the size of Wyoming. If you did a map of state employees in the Saltonstall building, the biggest state would be the Department of Revenue.
“So you’re a tax man.”
“Something like that,” DeLong said. He didn’t look happy about it. Like he was being put down somehow. But at the same time he didn’t seem to want to say more.
“One of those forensic accountant types, aren’t you?”
DeLong looked away uneasily, which just confirmed Heller’s theory.
“What do you say, Reacher?” Heller said, reaching around DeLong and bumping Reacher’s shoulder. “Someone’s trying to dodge an audit by some direct means, wouldn’t you say?”
“Sounds like it,” Reacher said. “Wonder how often that works.”
Jerry DeLong said, “It’s not going to work this time.” He sounded like he was trying to be brave, but without much success.
“Huh,” Heller said, looking into the mirror behind the bar. He saw a blinged-out guy sitting by himself at a small table near the front. Tinted sunglasses, necklaces, and rings. A curious upright posture. The chief enforcer for the Albanian gang in Boston, Alek Dushku. Allie Boy, as he was called, was known for all sorts of colorful executions, including strangling an old man with a shoelace until his eyes popped out of his head. On the table in front of him was a grocery sack, bulky with something.
Heller said, “You’re meeting Allie Boy?”
Jerry DeLong looked in the mirror and his face paled.
He said, “Is that him?”
“Sure is.” Heller gestured with his head, straight at the guy. “No time like the present.”
DeLong said nothing.
Reacher said, “What’s in the grocery sack?”
DeLong said, “Money. A hundred grand.”
“What for?”
“Me.”
“So what is this? A bribe or a threat?”
“Both.”
“He’s going to break your legs and then give you a hundred grand?”
“Maybe the money first.”
“Why?”
DeLong didn’t answer.
Heller said, “It’s an Albanian thing. One of them read a law book. They like to give good and valuable consideration. They think it cements the deal. And legs heal. Money never goes away. It’s either in your house or your bank. It means you’re theirs forever.”
Reacher said, “I never heard of that before.”
“You’re not from here.”
“Ethical gangsters?”
“Not really. Like I said, legs heal.”
“But it’s definitely a two-part deal?”
“All part of the culture.”
The top of the second ended with a limp swing-and-miss, strike three. Still one–zip Boston. The zip didn’t look likely to change. The one did. Reacher turned to the fat guy and said, “He’s supposed to make contact with you, right?”
DeLong nodded yes.
“When?”
“I’m not sure. Soon, I guess. I don’t really know what he’s waiting for.”
“Maybe he’s watching the game.”
“He isn’t,” Heller said.
“Not as dumb as he looks, then.”
“You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Depends when the audit starts, I guess.”
“Tomorrow morning,” DeLong said.
“And what happens if you’re in the orthopedic ward?”
“Someone else does it. Less well.”
The bottom of the second started. A four-pitch lead-off walk. Hopeless. Reacher rocked back and looked at Heller and said, “Do you live here?”
Heller said, “Not in this actual bar.”
“But in town?”
“Shouldn’t I?”
“I guess someone has to. You worried about these Albanians?”
“Altogether less hassle if Allie Boy doesn’t remember my face.”
“Where did you serve?”
“With General Hood.”
“Did you get out in time?�
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“Unscathed.”
“Good for you.”
“What were you?”
“MPs,” Reacher said. “Hood’s still in Leavenworth, as far as I know.”
“Where he belongs.”
“You armed, by any chance?”
“No, or I’d have shot you already. When you said a hundred years. It was less than ninety.”
“Is the Albanian guy armed?”
“Probably. A Sig, most likely. In the back of his pants. See how he’s sitting?”
“I don’t think we can get it done during the commercials. We’re going to have to give up half an inning.”
“Top of the next.”
Now Boston had two runners on. Reacher said, “I’m not sure our corpulent friend can wait that long.”
The fat guy said, “What are you talking about?”
Reacher saw the Albanian moving in the mirror, shifting in his chair, putting his hand on the grocery sack.
Heller said, “Now.”
Reacher turned back to DeLong and said, “Get up, right now, and walk out, straight line, fast, don’t look back, and keep on going.”
“Out?”
“To the street. Right now.”
“Which way?”
“Turn left. If in doubt, always turn left. That’s a rule that will serve you well.”
“Left?”
“Or right. It really doesn’t matter. Fast as you can.”
Which wasn’t lightning-quick, but it was reasonably speedy. The guy swiveled and kind of fell forward off his stool, and waited while his fat bounced and jiggled and settled, and then he set off through the crowd, surprisingly light on his dainty feet, and he was already past the blinged-out Albanian before the guy really noticed. Reacher and Heller paused a beat and slid off their stools in turn, and made up the third and fourth places in a determined little procession through the throng, first DeLong, then the Albanian with the sack, then Reacher, with Heller right behind him. DeLong had the advantage. He was cruising like a ship. People were scattering in front of him, for fear of getting run over. The Albanian guy wasn’t getting the same physical deference. From a distance he wasn’t imposing. Reacher and Heller didn’t have that problem. People were stepping smartly aside, out of their way.
DeLong pushed through the bar door and was gone. The Albanian got there a second later. Reacher and Heller followed him out, practically close enough to touch. The street was quiet and dark and narrow. Old Boston. The fat guy had turned left. His pale bulk was twenty yards away, on the sidewalk. The Albanian had seen him. He was getting ready to hustle in pursuit.
“Here?” Reacher asked.
Heller said, “It’s as good a place as any.”
Reacher called, “Allie Boy?”
The guy missed a step, but kept on walking.
“Yes, you, asshole,” Reacher said.
The guy glanced back.
“All those rings and chains,” Reacher said. “Didn’t your momma tell you it’s dumb to walk around like that in a poor part of town?”
The guy stopped and turned and said, “What?”
“You could get mugged,” Heller said.
The guy said, “Mugged?”
Reacher said, “Where a couple of guys take all your stuff. You don’t have that in Albania?”
“You know who I am?”
“Obviously. I just used your name and said you’re from Albania. This stuff ain’t rocket science.”
“You know what will happen to you?”
“Nobody knows what will happen to them. The future’s not ours to see. But in this case I don’t suppose much will happen. We might get a couple bucks for the bling. We’re certainly not going to wear it. We got more taste.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Was that a comedy club we were just in?”
There was a dull roar from inside the bar. Likely a three-run homer. Reacher winced. Heller smiled. The Albanian hitched the paper sack higher to the crook of his left elbow. Which left his right hand free.
Heller stepped forward, going right, and Reacher went left. At that point the Albanian guy should have turned and run. That was the smart play. He was probably fast enough. But he didn’t, inevitably. He was a tough guy. The streets were his. He went for his gun.
Which was very dumb, because it took both his hands out of the game. One was cradling his grocery sack, and the other was snaking around behind his back. Reacher hit him with a straight right, hard, in the center of his face, and after that it didn’t really matter where his hands were. Command and control were temporarily unavailable. The guy dropped the sack and rocked back on rubber legs, blood already spurting, ready for a standing count.
Which he didn’t get. Street-fighting’s first rule: there are no rules. Heller kicked him dead-on in the nuts, hard enough to take his weight off his feet, and then the guy collapsed down to about half his size in a crouch, and Heller used the flat of his sole to tip him over on his side, and Reacher kicked him in the head, and the guy lay still.
“Was that hard enough?” Heller said.
“For amnesia? Difficult to judge. Amnesia is unpredictable.”
“Best guess?”
“Better safe than sorry.”
So Heller picked his spot and kicked the guy again, in the left temple, going for lateral displacement of the brain in the pan. Generally four times more effective than front-to-back. No surprise. One of General Hood’s boys would have learned stuff like that pretty early. Hood wasn’t all bad. Mostly, but not all.
In the far distance Jerry DeLong was watching.
Reacher picked up the grocery sack. It was full of hundred-dollar bills, all used and wrinkled, held together in bricks by orange rubber bands. Reacher had four pants pockets, two in front, two in back, so he took four bricks from the sack and stuffed one in each pocket. Then he tore off the gold chains and pulled off the rings and found the Sig and went through the Albanian’s pockets and dumped out all the loot. He gave the sack to Heller.
Heller said, “The cops will come. We don’t leave people on the street here. Not like New York.”
Reacher said, “They’ll check the bar.”
“Their first stop.”
“I’ll go east and you go west. Pleasure working with you.”
“Likewise,” Heller said.
They shook hands, and melted away into the darkness, opposite directions, leaving the Albanian where he was on the sidewalk, an unfortunate victim of a mugging, his good and valuable consideration stolen before the deal with DeLong could be properly consummated. Therefore no deal existed. Their own rules said so. DeLong had no obligations, and nothing to betray. An Albanian thing. Part of the culture.
REACHER WATCHED THE END OF the game in a bar a mile away. He was sure Heller was doing the same thing a mile in the other direction. In which case they were watching two different events. Reacher was watching a limp and miserable defeat. Heller was watching a glorious and triumphant victory. But such was life. You can’t win them all.
Author Biographies
LEE CHILD has been a television director, union organizer, theater technician, and law student. After being fired, and on the dole, he hatched a harebrained scheme to write a novel, thus saving his family from financial ruin. Killing Floor (1997) was that novel and won worldwide acclaim. The hero first introduced there was Jack Reacher. Seventeen novels later Reacher is a worldwide phenomenon. Millions of copies of those books have been sold in countless languages. In 2012, Tom Cruise brought Reacher to life on the big screen. Lee himself was born in England but now lives in New York City. He likes to say that he leaves the island of Manhattan “only when required to by forces beyond his control.” Visit Lee online at leechild.com.
JOSEPH FINDER is the New York Times best-selling author of ten novels. The Boston Globe called him a “master of the modern thriller.” His first novel, The Moscow Club (1991), was named one of the ten best spy novels of all time. In 2007, his Killer Instinct (2006) was tagg
ed as Best Novel of the Year by International Thriller Writers. He’s also made a successful move into theaters. A major motion picture based on his novel Paranoia, starring Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, and Liam Hemsworth, was released in 2013. Previously, his novel High Crimes became a hit starring Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd. Joe is a graduate of Yale College and the Harvard Russian Research Center. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. He lives in Boston. Check him out at josephfinder.com.