by Lee Child
Two songs later the waitress brought his food. She set it all out. He said thank you. She said he was welcome. He said, “Does the guy at the door ever stop anyone coming in?”
“Depends who they are,” she said.
“Who does he stop?”
“Cops. Although we haven’t seen cops in here for years.”
“Why cops?”
“Never a good idea. Whatever happens, if the wind changes, suddenly it’s bribery or corruption or entrapment or some other big thing. That’s why cops have their own bars.”
“Therefore he hasn’t stopped anyone coming in for years. Now I’m wondering what he’s for, exactly.”
“Why are you asking?”
“I’m curious,” Reacher said.
“Are you a cop?”
“Next you’re going to tell me I look like your dad.”
She smiled.
“He’s much smaller,” she said.
She turned away with a last look, which was not a wink, but it was close. Then she was gone. The band played on. The guy at the door was counting, Reacher figured. He was a cuckoo in the nest. Most likely the protection money was on a percentage basis. The guy counted the crowd so the owners couldn’t fudge the numbers. Plus maybe he offered a nominal security presence. To sweeten the deal. So everyone felt better.
The waitress came back before Reacher was finished. She had his check in a black vinyl wallet. She was about to go off duty. He rounded it up and added ten for a tip and paid in cash. She left. He finished his meal but stayed at his table a moment, watching the guy at the door. Then he got up and walked toward him. No other way to leave the restaurant. In the door, out the door.
He stopped level with the stool.
He said, “I have an urgent message for Maxim Trulenko. I need you to figure out a way to get it to him. I’ll be here tomorrow, same time.”
Then he moved onward, out the door, to the street. Twenty feet away on his right the waitress came out the staff-only door. At the exact same moment. Which he hadn’t expected.
She stopped on the sidewalk.
Petite, gamine, going off duty.
She said, “Hi.”
He said, “Thanks again for looking after me, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening.”
He was counting time in his head.
She said, “You too, and thank you for the very nice tip.”
She stayed about seven feet away, a little tense, a little up on her toes. All kinds of body language going on.
He said, “I try to think what kind of tip I would like, if I was a waitress.”
“That’s an image I’ll never unsee.”
He was counting time in his head because one of two things was about to happen. Either nothing or something. Maybe nothing, because maybe Maxim Trulenko’s name meant nothing to them. Or maybe something, because maybe Trulenko’s name was top of the list of their VIP clients.
Time would tell.
The waitress asked, “So what are you, if you’re not a cop?”
“I’m between jobs right now.”
If Trulenko’s name was on a list, the likely protocol would be for the guy at the door to call it in or text it in, immediately, and then, either because of an instruction in an immediate response, or because it was part of the protocol anyway, he would come out to detain and delay, any way he could, at least long enough to snap a picture with his phone, hopefully long enough for a roving surveillance team to show up. Or a roving snatch squad. No doubt they had plenty of vehicles. And not a huge patch to patrol. Half of a pear-shaped city.
“I’m sorry about your situation,” the waitress said. “I hope you find something soon.”
“Thank you,” Reacher said.
It would take the guy inside maybe forty seconds to make the call, or to text back and forth, and then get set, and take a breath, and step out the door behind them. In which case he was due right about then.
If it was something.
Maybe it was nothing.
The waitress asked, “What kind of work do you like to do?”
The guy stepped out the door behind them.
Reacher moved to the curb and turned around, to make a shallow triangle, with the waitress now on his left, and the guy on his right, and empty space at his back.
The guy looked at Reacher, but spoke to the waitress.
He said, “Run along now, kid.”
Reacher glanced at her.
She mouthed something at him. Could have been, Watch where I go. Then she ran along. Not literally. She turned and crossed the street at a brisk walk, and Reacher glanced over his shoulder twice, just briefly, not long between, like frames from a video, the first of which showed her already half a block away, striding north on the far sidewalk, and the second of which showed her gone completely. Through a doorway, therefore. Toward the end of the block.
The guy on his right said, “I would need your name, before I could put you in touch with Max Trulenko. And maybe first we should talk it through, you and me, about how you came to know him, just to put his mind at rest.”
“When could we do that?” Reacher asked.
“We could do that right now,” the guy said. “Come inside. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”
Detain and delay, Reacher thought. Until the snatch squad showed up. He looked left and right along the street. No headlights. Nothing coming. Not yet.
He said, “Thanks, but I just had dinner. I’m all set. I’ll come back tomorrow. About the same time.”
The guy took out his phone.
“I could text him your photo,” he said. “As a first step. That would be quicker.”
“No thanks,” Reacher said.
“I need you to tell me how you know Max.”
“Everyone knows Max. He was famous here for a spell.”
“Tell me the message you have for him.”
“His ears only,” Reacher said.
The guy didn’t answer. Reacher checked the street. Both ends. Nothing coming. Not yet.
The guy said, “We shouldn’t get off on the wrong foot. Any friend of Max’s is a friend of mine. But if you know Max, obviously you know we have to check you out. You wouldn’t want anything less for him.”
Reacher checked the street. Now there was something coming. There was a pair of bucking, bouncing headlight beams coming around the southwest corner of the block, faster than the front suspension could comfortably handle. They swept and dipped and settled straight and then rose up high, as the rear end of the car squatted down under heavy acceleration.
Straight at them.
“I’ll see you again,” Reacher said. “I hope.”
He turned and crossed the street and went north, away from the car. And saw a second car coming around the northwest corner of the block. Same bouncing headlight beams. From the other direction. Heavy acceleration. Straight at him. Probably two guys in each car. Decent numbers, and their response time was quick. They were on Defcon One. Therefore Trulenko was important. Therefore their rules of engagement would be pretty much whatever they wanted them to be.
Right then Reacher was the meat in a bright light sandwich.
Watch where I go.
A doorway, toward the end of the block.
He turned around, hunching away from the light, and he saw one doorway after another, looming up out of the jagged moving shadows. Most of the doors belonged to retail operations, with nothing but dusty gray dimness inside, like closed stores everywhere, and some of the doors were plainer and stoutly made of wood, presumably for private quarters above, but none of them were open, not even a tempting inch, and none of them had a rim of light around the frame. He moved north, because the waitress had been going north, and the shadows gave up more doors, one by one, but they were all the same as before, mute and g
ray and stubbornly closed.
The cars came closer. Their lights got brighter. Reacher gave up on doorways. He figured he had misheard. Or misread her lips. At that point his brain started cycling through scenarios involving two guys from the south and two from the north, no doubt all four of them armed, although probably not with shotguns, so close to downtown, therefore handguns only, possibly suppressed, depending on their de facto arrangement with the local police department. As in, don’t frighten the voters. But against any instinct toward caution would be extreme reluctance to disappoint their bosses.
The cars slowed to a stop.
Reacher was pinned right in the middle.
Rule one, set in stone since he was a tiny kid, back when he first realized he could be either frightened or frightening, was to run toward danger, not away from it. Which right then gave him his pick of forward or backward. He chose forward. North, the way he was already going. No break in his stride. No reversal of momentum. Faster and harder. Glare ahead of him and glare behind him. He kept on going. Instinctive, but also sound tactics. As sound as they could be, under the dismal circumstances. In the sense of making the best of a very bad hand. He was distorting the picture, at least. What the pointy-heads would call altering the battle space. The guys ahead would feel mounting pressure the closer he got. The guys behind would have longer shots. Both conditions would impair efficiency. Ultimately below fifty percent, with a bit of luck. Because the guys behind would worry about friendly fire. Their buddies up ahead were right next to the target.
The guys behind might take themselves out of the fight voluntarily.
Making the best of a very bad hand.
Reacher hustled onward.
He heard car doors open.
On his left, as he hustled, he saw retail store doorways jumping in and out of the headlight shadows, one by one, all of them mean and closed tight. Until one of them wasn’t. Because it wasn’t a doorway. It was an alley. On his right the traffic curb was unbroken, but on his left there was a gloomy eight-foot gap between buildings, paved the same way as the municipal sidewalk. A pedestrian thoroughfare of some kind. Public. Leading where? He didn’t care. It was dark. It was guaranteed to let out somewhere a whole lot better than an empty street lit up bright by four headlight beams from two face to face automobiles.
He ducked into the alley.
He heard footsteps start behind him.
He hustled on. The depth of a building later, the alley widened out to a narrow street. Still dark. The footsteps behind him kept on coming. He stayed close to the buildings, where the shadows were deepest.
A door opened in the darkness ahead.
A hand grabbed his arm and pulled him inside.
Chapter 14
The door closed again softly and three seconds later the footsteps clattered by outside, at a slow and wary jog. Then silence came back. The hand on Reacher’s arm pulled him deeper into darkness. Small fingers, but strong. They passed into a different space. A different acoustic. A different smell. A different room. He heard the scrabble of fingertips, searching for a light switch on a wall.
The light came on.
He blinked.
The waitress.
Watch where I go.
An alley, not a doorway. Or an alley leading to a doorway. An alley leading to a doorway with a door left open a tempting inch.
“You live here?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
She was still dressed for work. Black denim pants, black button-up shirt. Petite, gamine, short dark hair, eyes full of concern.
“Thank you,” Reacher said. “For inviting me in.”
“I tried to think what kind of tip I would like,” she said. “If I was a stranger the doorman was looking at sideways.”
“Was he?”
“You must have stirred something up.”
He didn’t answer. The room they were in was a cozy space with muted colors, full of worn and comfortable items, some of them maybe from the pawn shop, cleaned and fixed up, and some of them bolted together from the remains of old industrial components. The frame from some kind of an old machine held up the coffee table. Same kind of thing with a bookshelf. And so on. Repurposing, it was called. He had read about it in a magazine. He liked the style. He liked the result. It was a nice room. Then he heard a voice in his head: Be a shame if anything happened to it.
“You work for them,” he said. “You shouldn’t be offering me refuge.”
“I don’t work for them,” she said. “I work for the couple who own the bar. The guy on the door is the cost of doing business. It would be the same wherever I worked.”
“He seemed to think he could boss you around.”
“They all do. Part of inviting you in is paying them back.”
“Thank you,” he said again.
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m Jack Reacher,” he said. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”
“Abigail Gibson,” she said. “People call me Abby.”
“People call me Reacher.”
She said, “I’m very pleased to meet you, Reacher.”
They shook hands, quite formally. Small fingers, but strong.
He said, “I stirred it up on purpose. I wanted to see if and how fast and how hard they would react to something.”
“What something?”
“The name Maxim Trulenko. You ever heard of him?”
“Sure,” Abby said. “He just went bankrupt. Some kind of dot-com bust. He was famous here for a spell.”
“I want to find him.”
“Why?”
“He owes people money.”
“Are you a debt collector? You told me you were out of work.”
“Pro bono,” Reacher said. “Temporary. For an old couple I met. So far exploratory only. Just a toe in the water.”
“Doesn’t matter if he owes people money. He hasn’t got any. He’s bankrupt.”
“There’s a theory he hid some private cash under his mattress.”
“There’s always a theory like that.”
“I think in this case it might be right. Purely as a logical proposition. If he was broke, he would have been found by now. But he hasn’t been found by now, therefore he can’t be broke. Because the only way not to be found by now is to pay the Ukrainians to hide him. Which requires money. Therefore he still has some. If I find him soon, there might be some left.”
“For your old couple.”
“Hopefully enough to cover their needs.”
“The only way not to be found is not to be broke,” she said. “Sounds like something out of a fortune cookie. But I guess they proved it was true tonight.”
Reacher nodded.
“Two cars,” he said. “Four guys. He’s getting good value.”
“You shouldn’t mess with these people,” Abby said. “I’ve seen them up close.”
“You’re messing with them. You opened your door.”
“That’s different. They’ll never know. There are a hundred doors.”
He said, “Why did you open your door?”
“You know why,” she said.
“Maybe they just wanted a cozy chat.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Maybe all I would have gotten was a stern talking to.”
She didn’t answer.
“You knew they wanted worse than that,” he said. “That’s why you opened your door.”
“I’ve seen them up close,” she said again.
“What would they have done?”
“They don’t like people getting in their business,” she said. “I think they would have messed you up bad.”
“Have you seen that kind of thing happen before?”
She didn’t answer.
“Anyway,” Rea
cher said. “Thanks again.”
“You need anything?”
“I should get going. You’ve done enough for me already. I have a hotel room.”
“Where?”
He told her. She shook her head.
“That’s west of Center,” she said. “They have eyes in there. The texts will have already gone out, with your description.”
“They seem to be taking it very seriously.”
“I told you,” she said. “They don’t like people in their business.”
“How many of them are there?”
“Enough,” she said. “I was going to make coffee. You want some?”
“Sure,” Reacher said.
She led the way to her kitchen, which was small and mismatched but clean and tidy. It felt like home. She knocked old grounds out of a filter basket, and rinsed a pot, and set the whole thing going. It burped and slurped and filled the room with a rich aroma.
“I guess it doesn’t keep you awake,” Reacher said.
“This is my evening time,” she said. “I go to bed when the sun comes up. Then I sleep all day.”
“Makes sense.”
She opened a wall cupboard and took down two white china mugs.
“I’m going to take a shower,” she said. “Help yourself if it’s ready before I am.”
A minute later he heard running water, and after that the gentle whine of a hairdryer. The coffee machine tinkled and sputtered. Abby got back just as it finished. She looked pink and damp and she smelled of soap. She was wearing a knee-length dress that looked like a man’s button-down shirt, but longer and slimmer. Probably not a whole lot underneath it. Certainly her feet were bare. After-work attire. A cozy evening at home. They poured their coffee and took their mugs back to the living room.