by Lee Child
Reacher sat back.
The guy with the beard sat back.
The bus rolled on. There were fields either side, dusted pale green with spring. Then came the first commercial lots, for farm equipment, and domestic automobiles, all spread over huge acreages, with hundreds of shiny machines lined up under flags and bunting. Then came office parks, and a giant out-of-town supermarket. Then came the city itself. The four-lane narrowed to two. Up ahead were taller buildings. But the bus turned off left and tracked around, keeping a polite distance behind the high-rent districts, until half a mile later it arrived at the depot. The first stop of the day. Reacher stayed in his seat. His ticket was good for the end of the line.
The guy with the money stood up.
He kind of nodded to himself, and hitched up his pants, and tugged down his jacket. All the things an old guy does, when he’s about to get out of a bus.
He stepped into the aisle, and shuffled forward. No bag. Just him. Gray hair, blue jacket, one pocket fat, one pocket empty.
The guy with the goatee beard got a new plan.
It came on him all of a sudden. Reacher could practically see the gears spinning in the back of his head. Coming up cherries. A sequence of conclusions built on a chain of assumptions. Bus depots were never in the nice part of town. The exit doors would give out onto cheap streets, the backs of other buildings, maybe vacant lots, maybe self-pay parking. There would be blind corners and empty sidewalks. It would be a twenty-something against a seventy-something. A blow from behind. A simple mugging. Happened all the time. How hard could it be?
The guy with the goatee beard jumped up and hustled down the aisle, following the guy with the money six feet behind.
Reacher got up and followed them both.
Chapter 2
The guy with the money knew where he was going. That was clear. He didn’t glance around to get his bearings. He just stepped through the depot door and turned east and set out walking. No hesitation. But no speed either. He trudged along slow. He looked a little unsteady. His shoulders were slumped. He looked old and tired and worn out and beaten down. He had no enthusiasm. He looked like he was en route between two points of equally zero appeal.
The guy with the goatee beard followed along about six paces behind, hanging back, staying slow, restraining himself. Which looked difficult. He was a rangy, long-legged individual, all hopped up with excitement and anticipation. He wanted to get right to it. But the terrain was wrong. Too flat and open. The sidewalks were wide. Up ahead was a four-way traffic light, with three cars waiting for a green. Three drivers, bored, gazing about. Maybe passengers. All potential witnesses. Better to wait.
The guy with the money stopped at the curb. Waiting to cross. Aiming dead ahead. Where there were older buildings, with narrower streets between. Wider than alleys, but shaded from the sun, and hemmed in by mean three- and four-story walls either side.
Better terrain.
The light changed. The guy with the money trudged across the road, obediently, as if resigned. The guy with the goatee beard followed six paces behind. Reacher closed the gap on him a little. He sensed the moment coming. The kid wasn’t going to wait forever. He wasn’t going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Two blocks in would do it.
They walked on, single file, spaced apart, oblivious. The first block felt good up ahead and side to side, but behind them it still felt open, so the guy with the beard hung back, until the guy with the money was over the cross street and into the second block. Which looked properly secretive. It was shady at both ends. There were a couple of boarded-up establishments, and a closed-down diner, and a tax preparer with dusty windows.
Perfect.
Decision time.
Reacher guessed the kid would go for it, right there, and he guessed the launch would be prefaced by a nervous glance all around, including behind, so he stayed out of sight around the cross street’s corner, one second, two, three, which he figured was long enough for all the glances a person could need. Then he stepped out and saw the kid with the beard already closing the gap ahead, hustling, eating up the six-pace distance with a long and eager stride. Reacher didn’t like running, but on that occasion he had to.
He got there too late. The guy with the beard shoved the guy with the money, who went down forward with a heavy ragged thump, hands, knees, head, and the guy with the beard swooped down in a seamless dexterous glide, into the still-moving pocket, and out again with the envelope. Which was when Reacher arrived, at a clumsy run, six feet five of bone and muscle and 250 pounds of moving mass, against a lean kid just then coming up out of a crouch. Reacher slammed into him with a twist and a dip of the shoulder, and the guy flailed through the air like a crash test dummy, and landed in a long sliding tangle of limbs, half on the sidewalk, half in the gutter. He came to rest and lay still.
Reacher walked over and took the envelope from him. It wasn’t sealed. They never were. He took a look. The wad was about three quarters of an inch thick. A hundred dollar bill on the top, and a hundred dollar bill on the bottom. He flicked through. A hundred dollar bill in every other possible location, too. Thousands and thousands of dollars. Could be fifteen. Could be twenty grand.
He glanced back. The old guy’s head was up. He was gazing about, panic stricken. He had a cut on his face. From the fall. Or maybe his nose was bleeding. Reacher held up the envelope. The old guy stared at it. He tried to get up, but couldn’t.
Reacher walked back.
He said, “Anything broken?”
The guy said, “What happened?”
“Can you move?”
“I think so.”
“OK, roll over.”
“Here?”
“On your back,” Reacher said. “Then we can sit you up.”
“What happened?”
“First I need to check you out. I might need to call the ambulance. You got a phone?”
“No ambulance,” the guy said. “No doctors.”
He took a breath and clamped his teeth, and squirmed and thrashed until he rolled over on his back, like a guy in bed with a nightmare.
He breathed out.
Reacher said, “Where does it hurt?”
“Everywhere.”
“Regular kind of thing, or worse?”
“I guess regular.”
“OK, then.”
Reacher got the flat of his hand under the guy’s back, high up between his shoulder blades, and he folded him forward into a sitting position, and swiveled him around, and scooted him along, until he was sitting on the curb with his feet down on the road, which would be more comfortable, Reacher thought.
The guy said, “My mom always told me, don’t play in the gutter.”
“Mine, too,” Reacher said. “But right now we ain’t playing.”
He handed over the envelope. The guy took it and squeezed it all over, fingers and thumb, as if confirming it was real. Reacher sat down next to him. The guy looked inside the envelope.
“What happened?” he said again. He pointed. “Did that guy mug me?”
Twenty feet to their right the kid with the goatee beard was face down and motionless.
“He followed you off the bus,” Reacher said. “He saw the envelope in your pocket.”
“Were you on the bus, too?”
Reacher nodded.
He said, “I came out of the depot right behind you.”
The guy put the envelope back in his pocket.
He said, “Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You have no idea. More than I can possibly say.”
“You’re welcome,” Reacher said.
“You saved my life.”
“My pleasure.”
“I feel like I should offer you a reward.”
“Not necessary.”
“I can’t anyway,” the guy said.
He touched his pocket. “This is a payment I have to make. It’s very important. I need it all. I’m sorry. I apologize. I feel bad.”
“Don’t,” Reacher said.
Twenty feet to their right the kid with the beard pushed himself up to his hands and knees.
The guy with the money said, “No police.”
The kid glanced back. He was stunned and shaky, but he was already twenty feet ahead. Should he go for it?
Reacher said, “Why no police?”
“They ask questions when they see a lot of cash.”
“Questions you don’t want to answer?”
“I can’t anyway,” the guy said again.
The kid with the beard took off. He staggered to his feet and set out fleeing the scene, weak and bruised and floppy and uncoordinated, but still plenty fast. Reacher let him go. He had run enough for one day.
The guy with the money said, “I need to get going now.”
He had scrapes on his cheek and his forehead, and blood on his upper lip, from his nose, which had taken a decent impact.
“You sure you’re OK?” Reacher asked.
“I better be,” the guy said. “I don’t have much time.”
“Let me see you stand up.”
The guy couldn’t. Either his core strength had drained away, or his knees were bad, or both. Hard to say. Reacher helped him to his feet. The guy stood in the gutter, facing the opposite side of the street, hunched and bent. He turned around, laboriously, shuffling in place.
He couldn’t step up the curb. He got his foot in place, but the propulsive force necessary to boost himself up six inches was too much load for his knee to take. It must have been bruised and sore. There was a bad scuff on the fabric of his pants, right where his kneecap would be.
Reacher stood behind him and cupped his hands under his elbows, and lifted, and the guy stepped up weightless, like a man on the moon.
Reacher asked, “Can you walk?”
The guy tried. He managed small steps, delicate and precise, but he winced and gasped, short and sharp, every time his right leg took the weight.
“How far have you got to go?” Reacher asked.
The guy looked all around, calibrating. Making sure where he was.
“Three more blocks,” he said. “On the other side of the street.”
“That’s a lot of curbs,” Reacher said. “That’s a lot of stepping up and down.”
“I’ll walk it off.”
“Show me,” Reacher said.
The guy set out, heading east as before, at a slow shuffling creep, with his hands out a little, as if for balance. The wincing and the gasping was loud and clear. Maybe getting worse.
“You need a cane,” Reacher said.
“I need a lot of things,” the guy said.
Reacher stepped around next to him, on the right, and cupped his elbow, and took the guy’s weight in his palm. Mechanically the same thing as a stick or a cane or a crutch. An upward force, ultimately through the guy’s shoulder. Newtonian physics.
“Try it now,” Reacher said.
“You can’t come with me.”
“Why not?”
The guy said, “You’ve done enough for me already.”
“That’s not the reason. You would have said you really couldn’t ask me to do that. Something vague and polite. But you were much more emphatic than that. You said I can’t come with you. Why? Where are you going?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You can’t get there without me.”
The guy breathed in and breathed out, and his lips moved, like he was rehearsing things to say. He raised his hand and touched the scrape on his forehead, then his cheek, then his nose. More wincing.
He said, “Help me to the right block, and help me across the street. Then turn around and go home. That’s the biggest favor you could do for me. I mean it. I would be grateful. I’m already grateful. I hope you understand.”
“I don’t,” Reacher said.
“I’m not allowed to bring anyone.”
“Who says?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Suppose I was headed in that direction anyway. You could peel off and go in the door and I could walk on.”
“You would know where I went.”
“I already know.”
“How could you?”
Reacher had seen all kinds of cities, all across America, east, west, north, south, all kinds of sizes and ages and current conditions. He knew their rhythms and their grammars. He knew the history baked into their bricks. The block he was on was one of a hundred thousand just like it east of the Mississippi. Back offices for dry goods wholesalers, some specialist retail, some light manufacturing, some lawyers and shipping agents and land agents and travel agents. Maybe some tenement accommodations in the rear courtyards. All peaking in terms of hustle and bustle in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth. Now crumbled and corroded and hollowed out by time. Hence the boarded-up establishments and the closed-down diner. But some places held out longer than others. Some places held out longest of all. Some habits and appetites were stubborn.
“Three blocks east of here, and across the street,” Reacher said. “The bar. That’s where you’re headed.”
The guy said nothing.
“To make a payment,” Reacher said. “In a bar, before lunch. Therefore to some kind of a local loan shark. That’s my guess. Fifteen or twenty grand. You’re in trouble. I think you sold your car. You got the best cash price out of town. Maybe a collector. A regular guy like you, it could have been an old car. You drove out there and took the bus back. Via the buyer’s bank. The teller put the cash in an envelope.”
“Who are you?”
“A bar is a public place. I get thirsty, same as anyone else. Maybe they have coffee. I’ll sit at a different table. You can pretend not to know me. You’ll need help getting out again. That knee is going to stiffen up some.”
“Who are you?” the guy said again.
“My name is Jack Reacher. I was a military cop. I was trained to detect things.”
“It was a Chevy Caprice. The old style. All original. Perfect condition. Very low miles.”
“I know nothing about cars.”
“People like the old Caprices now.”
“How much did you get for it?”
“Twenty-two five.”
Reacher nodded. More than he thought. Crisp new bills, packed tight.
He said, “You owe it all?”
“Until twelve o’clock,” the guy said. “After that it goes up.”
“Then we better get going. This could be a relatively slow process.”
“Thank you,” the guy said. “My name is Aaron Shevick. I am forever in your debt.”
“The kindness of strangers,” Reacher said. “Makes the world go round. Some guy wrote a play about it.”
“Tennessee Williams,” Shevick said. “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
“One of which we could use right now. Three blocks for a nickel would be a bargain.”
They set out walking, Reacher stepping slow and short, Shevick hopping and pecking and lurching, all lopsided because of Newtonian physics.
Chapter 3
The bar was on the ground floor of a plain old brick building in the middle of the block. It had a battered brown door in the center, with grimy windows either side. There was an Irish name in sputtering green neon above the door, and half dead neon harps and shamrocks and other dusty shapes in the windows, all of them advertising brands of beer, some of which Reacher recognized, and some of which he didn’t. He helped Shevick down the far curb, and across the street, and up the opposite curb, to the door. The time in his head was twenty to twelve.
“I’ll go in first,” he said. “Then you come in. Works bette
r that way around. Like we never met. OK?”
“How long?” Shevick asked.
“Couple minutes,” Reacher said. “Get your breath.”
“OK.”
Reacher pulled the door and went in. The light was dim and the air smelled of spilled beer and disinfectant. The place was a decent size. Not cavernous, but not just a storefront, either. There were long rows of four-top tables either side of a worn central track that led to the bar itself, which was laid out in a square shape, in the back left corner of the room. Behind the bar was a fat guy with a four-day beard and a towel slung over his shoulder, like a badge of office. There were four customers, each of them alone at a separate table, each of them hunched and vacant, looking just as old and tired and worn out and beaten down as Shevick himself. Two of them were cradling long-neck bottles, and two of them were cradling half-empty glasses, defensively, as if they expected them to be snatched away at any moment.
None of them looked like a loan shark. Maybe the barman did the business. An agent, or a go-between, or a middleman. Reacher walked up and asked him for coffee. The guy said he didn’t have any, which was a disappointment, but not a surprise. The guy’s tone was polite, but Reacher got the feeling it might not have been, had the guy not been talking to an unknown stranger of Reacher’s size and implacable demeanor. A regular Joe might have gotten a sarcastic response.
Instead of coffee Reacher got a bottle of domestic beer, cold and slick and dewy, with a volcano of foam erupting out the top. He left a dollar of his change on the bar, and stepped over to the nearest empty four-top, which happened to be in the rear right-hand corner, which was good, because it meant he could sit with his back to the wall, and see the whole room at once.
“Not there,” the barman called out.
“Why not?” Reacher called back.
“Reserved.”
The other four customers looked up, and looked away.
Reacher stepped back and took his dollar off the bar. No please, no thank you, no tip. He crossed diagonally to the front table on the other side, under the grimy window. Same geometry, but in reverse. He had a corner behind him, and he could see the whole room. He took a swallow of beer, which was mostly foam, and then Shevick came in, limping. He glanced ahead at the empty table in the far right-hand corner, and stopped in surprise. He looked all around the room. At the barman, at the four lonely customers, at Reacher, and then back at the corner table again. It was still empty.