by Lee Child
Mrs. Shevick said, “There was a glitch with her insurance. Her account number wouldn’t run. She was prepping for chemo, and people were running in and out asking her full name and date of birth and Social Security number. It was a nightmare. They had the insurance company on the phone, and no one knew what was going on. They could see her history and they knew she was a customer. But the code wouldn’t authorize. It threw up an error message. They said it was just a computer thing. No big deal. They said it would be fixed the next day. But the hospital said we couldn’t wait. They had us sign a form. It said we would cover the bill if the insurance didn’t come through. They said it was just a technicality. They said computer things happened all the time. They said everything would get straightened out.”
“I’m guessing everything didn’t,” Reacher said.
“The weekend came along, which was two more sessions, and then it was Monday, and then we found out.”
“Found out what?” Reacher asked, although he felt he could guess.
Mrs. Shevick shook her head and sighed and flapped her hand in front of her face, as if she couldn’t form the words. As if she was all done talking. Her husband leaned forward, with his elbows on his knees, and he continued the tale.
“Their third year,” he said. “When their investors got nervous. It was even worse than they knew. It was worse than anyone knew. The boss was keeping secrets. From everyone, Meg included. Behind the scenes the whole thing was falling apart. He wasn’t paying the bills. Not a dime. He didn’t renew the company health plan. He didn’t pay the premium. He just ignored it. Meg’s number wouldn’t run because the policy was canceled. On her fourth day of treatment we found out she was uninsured.”
“Not her fault,” Reacher said. “Surely. It was some kind of fraud or breach of contract. There must be a remedy.”
“There are two,” Shevick said. “One is a government no-fault fund, and the other is an insurance industry no-fault fund, both of them set up for this specific reason. Naturally we ran straight to them. Right away they got to work on how to apportion responsibility between them, and as soon as that’s done they’re going to refund everything we’ve spent so far, and then take care of everything else going forward. We expect a decision any day.”
“But you can’t pause Meg’s treatment.”
“She needs so much. Two or three sessions a day. Chemo, radiation, care and feeding, all kinds of scans, all kinds of lab work. She can’t get welfare. Technically she’s still employed, technically with a decent salary. No one in the press is interested. Where’s the story? Kid needs something, parents willing to pay. Where’s the punchline? Maybe we shouldn’t have signed that paper. Maybe other doors would have opened. But we did sign the paper. Too late now. Obviously the hospital wants to get paid. This is not emergency room stuff. It can’t be written off. Their machines cost a million dollars. They have to buy actual physical crystals of radioactive stuff. They want the money in advance. It’s what happens in cases like these. Cash on the barrelhead. Nothing happens before. Nothing we can do about it. All we can do is hang in until someone else steps up. Could be tomorrow morning. We have seven chances before the week is over.”
“You need a lawyer,” Reacher said.
“Can’t afford one.”
“There’s probably an important principle in there somewhere. You could probably get one pro bono.”
“We have three of that kind already,” Shevick said. “They’re working on the public interest aspect. Bunch of kids. They’re poorer than we are.”
“Seven chances before the week is over,” Reacher said. “Sounds like a country song.”
“It’s all we got.”
“I guess it almost qualifies as a plan.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you have a plan B?”
“Not as such.”
“You could try lying low. I’ll be long gone. The photograph they took will be no good to them.”
“You’ll be gone?”
“I can’t stay anywhere a week.”
“They have our name. I’m sure we can be traced. There must be old paperwork still around. One level down from the phone book.”
“Tell me about the lawyers.”
“They’re working for free,” Shevick said. “How good can they be?”
“Sounds like another country song.”
Shevick didn’t answer. Mrs. Shevick looked up.
“There are three of them,” she said. “Three nice young men. From a public law project. Paying their dues. Good intentions, I’m sure. But the law moves slow.”
Reacher said, “Plan B could be the police. A week from now, if the other thing hasn’t happened yet, you could head over to the station house and tell them the story.”
Shevick asked, “How well would they protect us?”
“I guess not very,” Reacher said.
“And for how long?”
“Not very,” Reacher said again.
“We would be burning our boats,” Mrs. Shevick said. “If the other thing hasn’t happened yet, then we need those people more than ever. Who else could we turn to when the next bill comes in? Going to the police would leave us with no access to anything.”
“OK,” Reacher said. “No police. Seven chances. I’m sorry about Meg. I really am. I really hope she makes it.”
He stood up, and felt large in the small boxy space.
Shevick said, “Are you going?”
Reacher nodded.
“I’ll get a hotel in town,” he said. “Maybe I’ll swing by in the morning. To say so long, before I hit the road. If I don’t, it was a pleasure meeting you. I wish you the best of luck with your troubles.”
He left them there, sitting quiet in the half empty room. He let himself out the front door, and he walked down the narrow concrete path to the street, and onward past parked cars and dark silent houses, and when he hit the main drag he turned toward town.
Chapter 10
There was a particular block on the west side of Center Street that had two restaurants side by side fronting on the sidewalk, and a third on the north side of the block, and a fourth on the south side, and a fifth in back, fronting on the next street over. All five were doing well. They were always busy. Always buzzing. Always talked about. They were the city’s gourmet quarter, right there, packed tight. The produce trucks and the linen services loved it. One stop, five customers. Deliveries were easy.
So were collections. It was a Ukrainian block, being west of Center. They came by for their protection money regular as clockwork. One stop, five customers. They loved it. They came late in the evening, when the registers were full. Before anyone else got paid. They would walk in, always two guys, always together, dark suits and black silk ties and pale blank faces. Nothing was ever said. Technically it would have been difficult to prove illegality. In fact nothing had been said, even back at the beginning, many years before, except a subjective aesthetic opinion, and then a concerned and sympathetic murmur. Nice place you’ve got here. Be a shame if anything happened to it. Polite conversation. After which a hundred dollar bill was offered, but was greeted with a shake of the head, until a second hundred was added, which was greeted with a nod. After the first encounter the cash was usually left in an envelope, usually at the maître d’ station. Usually it was handed over without a word. Technically a voluntary activity. No overt demands had been made. No offers had been solicited. A thousand dollars for a stroll around the block. Almost legal. Nice work if you could get it. Naturally there was competition for the gig. Naturally it was won by the big dogs. The senior lieutenants, looking for a quiet life.
That particular evening, they didn’t get one.
They had parked their car on the curb on Center Street, and they had started with the two establishments right there, fronting on the sidewalk, and then they had worked the block counterclockwise, m
aking their third stop on the north side, and their fourth on the back street, and their fifth on the south side. After which they kept on going, intending to turn the last corner, and thereby complete the square, and arrive back at their car.
All of which they did. Without noticing a couple of important things. Up ahead on the next block was a tow truck, facing away, parked, but idling with its reversing lights showing. And about level with it, on the opposite sidewalk, was a man in a black raincoat, walking fast toward them. What did that mean? They didn’t ask. They were senior lieutenants, looking for a quiet life.
They split up around the hood of their car, the passenger going one way, and the driver going the other. They pulled their doors, not exactly synchronized, but close. They glanced around, still standing, one last time, chins up, in case anyone was in doubt who owned the block.
They missed the tow truck start to move, slowly, backward, straight toward them. They missed the man in the raincoat step off the far sidewalk, at an angle, straight toward them.
They slid into their seats, butts, knees, feet, but before they could get their doors closed a shape had peeled out of the shadows on one side, and the man in the raincoat had arrived on the other, both with small semiautomatic .22-caliber pistols in their hands, both pistols with long fat suppressors screwed to their muzzles, which went blat blat blat as multiple rounds were fired close range into the seated heads, which were right there at waist level. Both guys in the car fell forward and inward, away from the guns. Their shattered heads bumped together, near the clock on the dash, as if they were fighting for space.
Then their doors were slammed shut. The tow truck backed up. The shape from the shadows and the man in the raincoat ran to meet it. The driver jumped out. Together they got the car craned up. All three jumped back in the tow truck. They drove off, slow and sedate. A common sight. A disabled vehicle, undignified, being dragged backward through the streets on its front wheels, with its ass way up in the air. Nothing was visible above the window line. Gravity was making sure of that. By then both guys would be piled in the foot wells. Limp and floppy. Rigor was still some hours away.
They drove direct to the crushing plant. They unhooked the car and left it on a patch of oil-soaked dirt. A huge backhoe drove over. Instead of a bucket it had giant forklift spears on the front. It lifted the car and drove it to the crusher. It set it down on a steel floor in a three-sided box not much bigger than the car itself. It backed away. The box’s fourth side folded up into place. Its top folded down.
Engines roared and hydraulics clanked and the box’s sides crushed inward, relentlessly, grating, groaning, scraping, tearing, a hundred and fifty tons of force behind each one. Then they stopped, and wheezed back to where they had started, and a piston pushed out a cube of crushed metal about a yard on a side. It rested for a moment on a heavy iron grille. For leaking fluids to drain away. Gasoline and oil and brake fluid and whatever it was in the air conditioner. Plus other fluids, on this occasion. Then a brother to the first backhoe came along. Instead of forklift spears it had a claw. It picked up the cube and drove it away and stacked it in a wall of a hundred other cubes.
Only then did the man in the raincoat call Dino. Total success. Two for two. Honor even. They had effectively traded the moneylending for the gourmet quarter. Which was a short term loss, but maybe a long term gain. It was a foot in the door. It was a landing zone that could be first defended, and then expanded. Above all it was proof the map could be redrawn.
Dino went to bed happy.
* * *
—
Reacher had been glad of the lucky taxi in the supermarket parking lot. Partly for the time it had saved. He had figured the Shevicks would be worried. And partly for the effort it had saved, especially right then, all bruised and battered. But it had done him no favors. It had let him stiffen up. His walk back to town was painful.
His sense of direction told him the best route was the one he already knew. Back past the bar, past the bus depot, and onward to Center Street, where the chain hotels would be clustered, maybe a little ways south, all within a block or two. He knew cities. He walked faster than he wanted to, and paid attention to his posture, head up, shoulders back, arms loose, back straight, finding all the aches and pains, fighting them, chasing them out, yielding nothing.
There was no one in the street outside the bar. No parked car, no insolent muscle. Reacher backed up and looked in the grimy window. Past the dusty harps and shamrocks. The pale guy was still at the table in the far corner. Still luminescent. There was no one with him. No hapless customer, down in the sewer.
Reacher moved on, getting looser, walking better. He came out of the old blocks at the four-way light, and walked on past the bus depot, watching the sky ahead for the glow of neon. For skyline buildings with lit-up names. Which could be banks or insurance companies or local TV. Or hotels. Or all of the above. There were six of them in total. Six towers, standing proud. The downtown cluster. A brave statement.
Most of the glow was to his half left, which was south of west. He decided to cut the corner and head straight there. He made a left and crossed Center Street, into a thoroughfare that in its bones was no better than the street with the bar, but a lot of money had been spent on it, and it was all gussied up. The street lights were working. The brick was clean. No establishments were boarded up. Most of them were offices of one kind or another. Not necessarily commercial ventures. Mostly worthy causes. Municipal services, and so on. A family counsellor. The local HQ of a political party. All were dark, except for one. Across the street, at the far end of the block. It was lit up bright. It had been rebuilt like a traditional old storefront. It had a sign in the window. Printed on the glass, in big letters, in an old-fashioned style, like the Marine Corps typewriters of Reacher’s youth. The sign said: The Public Law Project.
There are three of them, Mrs. Shevick had said.
From a public law project.
Three nice young men.
Behind the window was a modern blond-wood workspace, crammed with old-fashioned khaki-and-white paperwork. There were three guys sitting at desks. Young, certainly. Reacher couldn’t tell if they were nice. He wasn’t prepared to venture an opinion. They were all dressed the same, in tan chino pants and blue button-down shirts.
Reacher crossed the street. Up close he saw what were presumably their names, printed on the glass of the door. Same typewriter style, but smaller. The names were Julian Harvey Wood, Gino Vettoretto, and Isaac Mehay-Byford. Which Reacher thought was a whole lot of names, for just three guys. They all had a lot of letters after their names. All kinds of doctoral degrees. One from Stanford Law, one from Harvard, one from Yale.
He pulled the door and stepped inside.
Chapter 11
All three guys looked up, surprised. One was dark, one was fair, and one was in the middle. They all looked to be in their late twenties. They all looked tired. Hard work, late nights, pizza and coffee. Like law school all over again.
The dark one said, “Can we help you?”
“Which one are you?” Reacher said. “Julian, Gino, or Isaac?”
“I’m Gino.”
“Pleased to meet you, Gino,” Reacher said. “Any chance you know an old couple named Shevick?”
“Why?”
“I just spent a little time with them. I became familiar with their troubles. They told me they had three lawyers from a public law project. I’m wondering if that’s you. In fact I’m assuming it is. I’m asking myself how many public law projects a city this size could support.”
The fair one said, “If they’re our clients, then obviously we can’t discuss their case.”
“Which one are you?”
“I’m Julian.”
The neither dark nor fair one said, “And I’m Isaac.”
“I’m Reacher. Pleased to meet you all. Are the Shevicks your clients?”
“Yes, they are,” Gino said. “So we can’t talk about them.”
“Make it like a hypothetical example. In a case like theirs, is either one of the no-fault funds likely to pay out within the next seven days?”
Isaac said, “We really shouldn’t discuss it.”
“Just theoretically,” Reacher said. “As an abstract illustration.”
“It’s complicated,” Julian said.
“By what?”
“I mean, theoretically speaking, such a case would start out simple, but then it would get very complicated if family members stepped in to act as guarantors. Such a move would downgrade the urgency. I mean that literally. It would mark it down a grade. The no-fault funds are dealing with tens of thousands of cases. Maybe hundreds of thousands. If they know for sure a patient is currently receiving care anyway, they assign a different code. Like a lower grade. Not exactly bottom of the pile, but more like back burner. While more urgent stuff is handled first.”
“So the Shevicks made a mistake by signing the paper.”
“We can’t discuss the Shevicks,” Gino said. “There are confidentiality issues.”
“Theoretically,” Reacher said. “Hypothetically. Would it be a mistake for hypothetical parents to sign the paper?”
“Of course it would,” Isaac said. “Think about it from a bureaucrat’s point of view. The patient is getting treatment. The bureaucrat doesn’t care how. All he knows is there’s no negative PR liability for him. So he can take his sweet time. The hypothetical parents should have stood firm and said no. They should have refused to sign.”
“I guess they couldn’t bring themselves to do that.”
“I agree, it would have been tough, under the circumstances. But it would have worked. The bureaucrat would have been obliged to get his checkbook out. Right there and then. No choice.”
“It’s an education thing,” Gino said. “People need to know their rights ahead of time. It can’t be done in the moment. It’s your kid, lying on a gurney. There’s too much emotion.”