by Lee Child
Shevick set out hobbling toward it, but he stopped halfway. He changed direction. He limped to the bar instead. He spoke to the barman. Reacher was too far away to hear what he said, but he guessed it was a question. Could have been, where’s so-and-so? Certainly it involved a glance at the empty four-top in the rear corner. It seemed to get a sarcastic response. Could have been, what am I, clairvoyant? Shevick flinched away and stepped a pace into no-man’s-land. Where he could think about what to do next.
The clock in Reacher’s head said quarter to twelve.
Shevick limped over to the empty table, and stood for a moment, undecided. Then he sat down, opposite the corner, as if in a visitor chair in front of a desk, not in the executive chair behind it. He perched on the edge of the seat, bolt upright, half turned, watching the door, as if ready to spring up politely, as soon as the guy he was meeting walked in.
No guy walked in. The bar stayed quiet. Some grateful swallowing, some wet breathing, the squeak of the barman’s towel on a glass. Shevick stared at the door. Time ticked on.
Reacher got up and walked to the bar. To the part nearest Shevick’s table. He rested his elbows and looked expectant, like a guy with a new order. The barman turned his back and suddenly got busy with an urgent task all the way in the opposite corner. As in, no tip, no service. Which Reacher had predicted. And wanted. For a degree of privacy.
He whispered, “What?”
“He isn’t here,” Shevick whispered back.
“Is he usually?”
“Always,” Shevick whispered. “He sits at this table all day long.”
“How many times have you done this?”
“Three.”
The barman was still busy, way far away.
Shevick whispered, “Five minutes from now I’ll owe them twenty-three five, not twenty-two five.”
“The late fee is a thousand dollars?”
“Every day.”
“Not your fault,” Reacher whispered. “Not if the guy doesn’t show up.”
“These are not reasonable people.”
Shevick stared at the door. The barman finished up his imaginary task, and waddled the diagonal distance from the back of the bar to the front, with his chin up, hostile, as if possibly willing to entertain a request, but very unlikely to fulfill it.
He stopped a yard from Reacher and waited.
Reacher said, “What?”
“You want something?” the guy said.
“Not anymore. I wanted to make you walk there and back. You looked like you could use the exercise. But now you’ve done it, so I’m all good. Thanks anyway.”
The guy stared. Sizing up his situation. Which wasn’t great. Maybe he had a bat or a gun under the counter, but he would never get to them. Reacher was only an arm’s length away. His response was going to have to be verbal. Which was going to be a struggle. That was clear. In the end he was saved by his wall phone. It rang behind him. An old-fashioned bell. A long muted mournful peal, and then another.
The barman turned away and answered the call. The phone was a classic design, with a big plastic handset on a curly cord stretched so much it dragged on the floor. The barman listened and hung up. He jutted his chin in the direction of Shevick, all the way over at the rear corner table.
He called out, “Come back at six o’clock tonight.”
“What?” Shevick said.
“You heard me.”
The barman walked away, to another imaginary task.
Reacher sat down at Shevick’s table.
Shevick said, “What did he mean, come back at six o’clock?”
“I guess the guy you’re waiting for got delayed. He called in, so you know where you stand.”
“But I don’t know,” Shevick said. “What about my twelve o’clock deadline?”
“Not your fault,” Reacher said again. “It was the guy who missed it, not you.”
“He’s going to say I owe them another grand.”
“Not if he didn’t show up. Which everyone knows he didn’t. The barman took his call. He’s a witness. You were here and the other guy wasn’t.”
“I can’t find another thousand dollars,” Shevick said. “I just don’t have it.”
“I would say the postponement gives you a pass. It’s a clear implication. Like an implied term in a contract. You were offering legal tender in the right place at the right time. They didn’t show up to accept it. It’s some kind of a common law principle. An attorney could explain it.”
“No lawyers,” Shevick said.
“Worried about them, too?”
“I can’t afford one. Especially if I have to find another thousand bucks.”
“You don’t. They can’t have it both ways. You were here on time. They weren’t.”
“These are not reasonable people.”
The barman glared from far away.
The clock in Reacher’s head hit twelve noon exactly.
He said, “We can’t wait here six hours.”
“My wife will be worried,” Shevick said. “I should go home and see her. Then come back again.”
“Where do you live?”
“About a mile from here.”
“I’ll walk with you, if you like.”
Shevick paused a long moment.
Then he said, “No, I really couldn’t ask you to do that. You’ve done enough for me already.”
“That was vague and polite, for damn sure.”
“I mean I mustn’t put you out anymore. I’m sure you have things to do.”
“Generally I avoid having things to do. Clearly a reaction against literal regimentation earlier in my life. The result is I have no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there. I’m happy to take a one-mile detour.”
“No, I couldn’t ask you to do that.”
“The regimentation I mentioned was, as I said, in the military police, where, as I also said, we were trained to notice things. Not just physical clues, but things about how people are. How they behave and what they believe. Human nature, and so on and so forth. Most of it was bullshit, but some of it rang bells. Right now you’re facing a mile walk through a backstreet neighborhood, with more than twenty grand in your pocket, which you feel weird about, because you’re not really supposed to still have it, and it’s a total disaster if you lose it, and you’ve already been mugged once today, so the truth is, all in all you’re afraid of that walk, and you know I could help with that feeling, and you’re also hurt from the attack, and therefore not moving well, and you know I can help with that too, so all in all you should be begging me to see you home.”
Shevick said nothing.
“But you’re a gentleman,” Reacher said. “You wanted to give me a reward. Now if I walk you home and meet your wife, you think the very least you should do is give me lunch. But there is no lunch. You’re embarrassed. But you shouldn’t be. I get it. You’re in trouble with a moneylender. You haven’t eaten lunch in a couple of months. You look like you lost twenty pounds. Your skin is hanging loose. So we’ll pick up sandwiches on the way. Uncle Sam’s dime. That’s where my cash comes from. Your tax dollars at work. We’ll enjoy some conversation, and then I’ll walk you back here. You can pay off your guy, and I’ll get on my way.”
“Thank you,” Shevick said. “I mean it.”
“You’re welcome,” Reacher said. “I mean it.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Someplace else. Often depends on the weather. I like to be warm. Saves buying a coat.”
The barman glared again, still from far away.
“Let’s go,” Reacher said. “A person could die of thirst in here.”
Chapter 4
The man who had been due to meet Aaron Shevick at the table in the far back corner of the bar was a forty-year-ol
d Albanian named Fisnik. He was one of the two men mentioned that morning by Gregory, the Ukrainian boss. Accordingly he had gotten a call at home from Dino, telling him to drop by the lumber yard before starting his day’s work in the bar. Dino’s tone of voice revealed nothing untoward. In fact if anything it sounded cheery and enthusiastic, as if praise and recognition were in store. Maybe expanded opportunities, or a bonus, or both. Maybe a promotion, or extra status in the organization.
It didn’t work out that way. Fisnik ducked through the personnel door in the roll-up gate, and smelled fresh pine, and heard the whine of a saw, and headed to the offices in back, feeling pretty good about things. A minute later he was duct-taped to a wooden chair, and suddenly the pine smelled like coffins, and the saw sounded like agony. First they drilled through his knees with a cordless DeWalt sporting a quarter-inch masonry bit. Then they moved on. He told them nothing, because he had nothing to tell. His silence was taken as a stoic confession. Such was their culture. He garnered a little grudging admiration for his fortitude, but not enough to stop the drill. He died about the same time Reacher and Shevick finally left the bar.
* * *
—
The first half of the mile walk was through left-behind blocks just like the one that housed the bar, but then the view opened out to what might once have been a bunch of ten-acre pastures, until the GIs came home at the end of World War Two, when the pastures were plowed up and straight rows of small houses were built, all of them single story, some of them split level, depending on how the pastures had risen and fallen. Seventy years later they had all been re-roofed many times, no two exactly the same, and some had add-ons and bump-outs and new vinyl siding, and some had trimmed lawns and others had wild yards, but otherwise the ghost of mean postwar uniformity still marched through the whole development, with small lots and narrow roads and narrow sidewalks and tight right-angle turns, all scaled to the maximum steering capabilities of 1948 Fords and Chevys and Studebakers and Plymouths.
Reacher and Shevick stopped on the way at a gas station deli counter. They got three chicken salad sandwiches, and three bags of potato chips, and three cans of soda. Reacher carried the bag in his right hand and helped Shevick with his left. They limped and crept through the warren. Shevick’s house turned out to be deep into it, on a cul-de-sac served by a mean turnaround barely wider than the street itself. Like the bulb on the end of an old-style thermometer. The house was on the left, behind a white picket fence that had early roses budding through it. The house was a one-story ranch, same bones and same square footage as every other house, with an asphalt roof and bright white siding. It looked well cared for, but not recently. The windows were dusty and the lawn was long.
Reacher and Shevick hobbled up a concrete path barely wide enough for the two of them side by side. Shevick took out a key, but before he could get it in the lock the door opened in front of them. A woman stood there. Mrs. Shevick, without question. There was an obvious bond between them. She was gray and stooped and newly thin like he was, also about seventy, but her head was up and her eyes were steady. The fires were still burning. She stared at her husband’s face. A scrape on his forehead, a scrape on his cheek, crusted blood on his lip.
“I fell,” Shevick said. “I tripped on the curb. I banged my knee. That’s the worst of it. This gentleman was kind enough to help me.”
The woman’s gaze switched to Reacher for a second, uncomprehending, and then back to her husband.
She said, “We better get you cleaned up.”
She stood back and Shevick stepped into his hallway.
His wife started to ask him, “Did you,” but then she stopped, maybe embarrassed in front of a stranger. No doubt she meant to say, did you pay the guy? But some troubles were private.
Shevick said, “It’s complicated.”
There was silence for a moment.
Reacher held up the bag from the deli counter.
“We brought lunch,” he said. “We thought it might be difficult to get out to the store, under the circumstances.”
Mrs. Shevick looked at him again, still uncomprehending. And then a little wounded. Abashed. Ashamed.
“He knows, Maria,” Shevick said. “He was an army detective and he saw right through me.”
“You told him?”
“He figured it out. He has extensive training.”
“What’s complicated?” she asked. “What happened? Who hit you? Was it this man?”
“What man?”
She looked straight at Reacher.
“This man with the lunch,” she said. “Is he one of them?”
“No,” Shevick said. “Absolutely not. He has nothing to do with them.”
“Then why is he following you? Or escorting you? He’s like a prison guard.”
Shevick started to say, “When I was,” and then he stopped and changed it to, “When I tripped and fell, he was passing by, and he helped me up. Then I found I couldn’t walk, so he helped me along. He isn’t following me. Or escorting me. He’s here because I’m here. You can’t have one without the other. Not right now. Because I hurt my knee. Simple as that.”
“You said it was complicated, not simple.”
“We should go inside,” Shevick said.
His wife stood still for a moment, and then turned and led the way. The house was the same on the inside as it looked from the outside. Old, well cared for, but not recently. The rooms were small and the hallways were narrow. They stopped in the living room, which had a loveseat and two armchairs, and outlets and wires but no TV.
Mrs. Shevick said, “What’s complicated?”
“Fisnik didn’t show,” Shevick said. “Normally he’s there all day. But not today. All we got was a phone message to come back at six o’clock.”
“So where’s the money now?”
“I still have it.”
“Where?”
“In my pocket.”
“Fisnik is going to say we owe them another thousand dollars.”
“This gentleman thinks he can’t.”
The woman looked at Reacher again, and then back at her husband, and she said, “We should go get you cleaned up.” Then she looked at Reacher again and pointed toward the kitchen and said, “Please put the lunch in the refrigerator.”
Which was more or less empty. Reacher got there and pulled the door and found a well scrubbed space with nothing much in it, except used-up bottles of stuff that could have been six months old. He put the bag on the middle shelf and went back to the living room to wait. There were family photographs on the walls, grouped and clustered like in a magazine. Senior among them were three ornate frames holding black and white images gone coppery with age. The first showed a literal GI standing in front of the house, with what Reacher guessed was his new bride alongside him. The guy was in a crisp khaki uniform. A private soldier. Probably too young to have fought in World War Two. Probably did a three-year hitch in Germany afterward. Probably got called up again for Korea. The woman was in a flowery dress that puffed out to calf length. Both of them were smiling. The siding behind them shone in the sun. The dirt at their feet was raw.
The second photograph showed a year-old lawn at their feet, and a baby in their arms. Same smiles, same bright siding. The new father was out of uniform and in a pair of high-waisted miracle-fiber pants and a white shirt with short sleeves. The new mother had swapped out the floral dress for a thin sweater and pedal pushers. The baby was mostly wrapped up in a shawl, except for its face, which looked pale and indistinct.
The third photograph showed the three of them about eight years later. Behind them foundation plantings covered half the siding. The grass at their feet was lush and thick. The guy was eight years less bony, a little thicker in the waist, a little heavier in the shoulders. His hair was slicked back, and he was losing some of it. The woman was prettier than before, but
tired, in all the ways women were, in photographs from the 1950s.
The eight-year-old girl standing in front of them was almost certainly Maria Shevick. Something about the shape of her face and the directness of her gaze. She had grown up, they had grown old, they had died, she had inherited their house. That was Reacher’s guess. He was proved right by the next group of pictures. Now in faded Kodak colors, but in the same location. Same patch of lawn. Same length of wall. Some kind of a tradition. The first showed Mrs. Shevick maybe twenty years old, next to a much straighter and much leaner Mr. Shevick, also about twenty years old, their faces sharp and young and hawkish with shadows, their smiles wide and happy.
The second in the new sequence showed the same couple with a baby in their arms. It grew up in leaps and bounds, left to right across the next row down, into a toddler, then a girl about four, then six, then eight, while above her the Shevicks cycled through 1970s hairstyles, big and bushy, above tight tank tops and puffy sleeves.
The next row down showed the same girl become a teenager, then a high-school graduate, then a young woman. Then a woman who got older as the Kodak got newer. She would be nearly fifty now, Reacher figured. Whatever that generation was called. The early kids of the early boomers. Got to be called something. Everyone else was.
“There you are,” Mrs. Shevick said, behind him.
“I was admiring your photographs,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
“You have a daughter.”
“Yes,” she said again.
Then Shevick himself came in. The blood had been cleaned off his lip. His scrapes were shiny with some kind of a yellow potion. His hair was brushed.
He said, “Let’s eat.”
There was a small table in the kitchen, with contoured aluminum edges, and a laminate top now dulled and faded by decades of time and wiping, but once bright and sparkly and atomic. There were three matching vinyl chairs. Maybe all bought way back when Maria Shevick was a little girl. For her first grown-up dinners. Knife and fork and please and thank you. Now many years later she told Reacher and her husband to sit down, and she put the sandwiches from the deli bag on china plates, and the chips in china bowls, and the sodas in cloudy glass tumblers. She brought cloth napkins. She sat down. She looked at Reacher.