by Lee Child
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said. “I guess you didn’t get a chance.”
“What question?” he said.
“What kind of work do you like to do?”
In response he gave her his capsule bio. Easy to understand at first, then harder later. Son of a Marine, childhood in fifty different places, then West Point, then the military police in a hundred different places, then the reductions in force when the Cold War ended, leading directly to his sudden head-first introduction to civilian life. A straightforward story. Followed by the wandering, which was not so straightforward. No job, no home, always restless. Always moving. Just the clothes on his back. No particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there. Some people found it hard to understand. But Abby seemed to get it. She asked none of the usual dumb questions.
Her own story was shorter, because she was younger. Born in a suburb in Michigan, raised in a suburb in California, loved books and philosophy and theater and music and dance and experiment and performance art. Came to town as an undergraduate student, and never left. A temporary gig waiting tables for a month turned into ten years. She was thirty-two. Older than she looked. She said she was happy.
They went back and forth to the kitchen for refills of coffee and ended up facing each other at opposite ends of the sofa, Reacher sprawling comfortably, Abby sitting cross-legged, with the tails of her shirt dress tucked down demurely between her bare knees. Reacher didn’t know much about philosophy or theater or dance or experiment or performance art, but he read books when he could, and he heard music when he could, so he was able to keep up. A couple of times they found they had read the same stuff. Same with music. She called it her retro phase. He said it felt like yesterday. They laughed about it.
It got to two o’clock in the morning. He figured he could get a room at an Albanian hotel. One block further east. Just as good. He could afford to waste what he had already laid out. He was more annoyed about the five minutes of his life. At the desk. He would never get that back.
Abby said, “You can stay here, if you like.”
He was pretty certain there was one more button undone than before, on the front of her shirt dress. He felt he could trust his judgment on the matter. He was an observant man. He had previously inspected the original gap many times. It had been very appealing. But the new gap was better.
He said, “I didn’t see a guest room.”
She said, “I don’t have one.”
“Would this be a lifestyle experiment?”
“As opposed to what?”
“Normal reasons.”
“I guess a mixture.”
“Works for me,” Reacher said.
Chapter 15
Dino’s two guys were simply missing all night. From the liquor store onward, not a trace. Their phones were dead. No one had seen their car. They had disappeared into thin air. Which of course was impossible. But still, no one woke Dino. A small-scale search was mounted instead. All the likely neighborhoods. No results. The two guys stayed missing. Until seven o’clock in the morning, right there on their own property, when a guy stacking lumber with a forklift in a side yard backed up and found them, behind the last of the ten-by-two cedar.
Then they woke Dino.
The side yard was separated from direct contractor access by a wire fence eight feet high. The two guys had been hung upside down from the top of the fence. They had been slit open. Gravity had tumbled their guts out, on their chests, on their faces, on the ground beneath them. After death, happily. They both had crusted gunshot wounds. One had his head mostly gone.
No sign of their car. No tracks, no nothing.
Dino called a meeting in the back office boardroom. Just fifty yards from the gruesome discovery. Like a battlefield general, on hand to examine the terrain up close.
He said, “Gregory must be out of his mind. We were the original victims here, we got the short end of every stick, and now he wants to rub it in by making it four for two as well? That’s bullshit. How lopsided does he want it to get? What the hell is he thinking?”
“But why so nasty?” his right-hand man said. “Why all the drama with their intestines hanging out? Surely that’s the key to this thing.”
“Is it?”
“Got to be. It was already gratuitous. This was unnecessary. Like they were mad at us. Like revenge for something. As if we had gotten the better of them somehow.”
“Well, we didn’t.”
“Maybe there’s something we don’t know. Maybe we actually did get the better of them somehow, but we haven’t caught on to it yet.”
“Caught on to what?”
“We don’t know yet. That’s the point.”
“All we got is the restaurant block.”
“So maybe it’s special in some way. Maybe it’s a good producer. Maybe we get better access to people. All the bigwigs must eat there. With their wives and so on. Where else would they go?”
Dino didn’t answer.
His guy said, “Why else would they get so angry?”
Still Dino didn’t answer.
Then he said, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe the restaurant block is worth more than the moneylending. I sincerely hope so. We got lucky, they got resentful. But whatever, four for two is bullshit. We can’t live with that. Put the word out. Level the score by sunset.”
* * *
—
Reacher woke at eight in the morning, warm, relaxed, peaceful, partially entwined with Abby, who slept on undisturbed. She was tiny beside him. She was more than a foot shorter, and less than half his weight. In repose she was soft and boneless. In motion she had been hard and lithe and strong. And certainly experimental. Her performance had been an art. That was for damn sure. He was a lucky man. He breathed deep and gazed up at the unfamiliar ceiling. It had cracks in the plaster, like a river system, painted over many times, like healed scars.
He disentangled himself gently and slid out of bed and padded naked to the bathroom, and then to the kitchen, where he set the coffee going. He went back to the bathroom and took a shower, and then he collected his clothes from all over the living room, and he got dressed. He took a third white china mug from the wall cabinet, and poured his first cup of the day. He sat at a tiny table in the window. The sky was blue and the sun was up. It was a beautiful morning. Faint sounds came in. Traffic and voices. People hustling and bustling, going to work, starting their day.
He got up and got a refill and sat back down again. A minute later Abby came in, naked, yawning, stretching, smiling. She took coffee and padded across the kitchen and sat in his lap. Naked, soft, warm and fragrant. What was a guy to do? A minute later they were back in bed. Even better than the first time. Experimental all around. Twenty whole minutes, soup to nuts. Afterward they fell back, gasping and panting. He thought, not bad for an old guy. She snuggled against his chest, spent, breathing hard. He sensed the physical release in her. Some kind of bone-deep animal satisfaction. But something else also. Something more. She felt safe. She felt safe, and warm, and protected. She was luxuriating in it. She was celebrating the fact she was feeling it.
“Last night,” he said. “In the bar. When I asked you about the guy on the door, you asked me if I was a cop.”
“You are a cop,” she murmured.
“Was a cop,” he said.
“Close enough for a first impression. I’m sure it’s a look you never lose.”
“Did you want me to be a cop? Were you hoping I was?”
“Why would I be?”
“Because of the guy on the door. Maybe you thought I could do something about him.”
“No,” she said. “Hoping would have been a waste of time. The cops don’t do anything about those guys. Never. Too much hassle. Too much money changing hands. Those guys are pretty much safe from the cops, believe me.”
Old disappointments in her voice.
As an experiment he asked, “Would you have liked it if I could have done something about him?”
She snuggled tighter. Unconsciously, he thought. Which he figured had to mean something.
She said, “That particular guy?”
“He was the one in front of me.”
She paused a beat.
“Yes,” she said. “I would have liked it.”
“What would you have liked me to do to him?”
He felt her stiffen against him.
She said, “I guess I would have liked you to mess him up.”
“Bad?”
“Real bad.”
“What have you got against him?”
She wouldn’t answer.
After a minute he said, “There was something else you mentioned last night. You said texts would have gone out, with my description.”
“As soon as they realized they lost you.”
“To hotels and such.”
“To everybody. That’s how they do it now. They have automated systems. They’re very good at technology. They’re very advanced with computers. They’re always trying new scams. Sending out an automatic all-points bulletin is easy in comparison.”
“And literally everyone gets the same alert?”
“Who are you thinking of in particular?”
“Potentially, a guy in a different division. In the moneylending section.”
“Would that be a problem?”
“He has a photograph of me. A close-up of my face. He’ll recognize the description, and he’ll text the picture in response.”
She snuggled closer. Relaxed again.
“Doesn’t really matter,” she said. “They’re all out looking for you anyway. Your description is more than enough. A photograph of your face doesn’t add much. Not from a distance.”
“That’s not the problem.”
“What is?”
“The moneylending guy thinks my name is Aaron Shevick.”
“Why?”
“The Shevicks are my old couple. I did some business on their behalf. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But now the wrong name is out there. They could dig for an address. I wouldn’t want them showing up at the Shevick house, looking for me. That could lead to all kinds of unpleasantness. The Shevicks have enough on their plates already.”
“Where do they live?”
“Halfway to the eastern city limit, in an old postwar development.”
“That’s Albanian territory. It would be a very big deal for the Ukrainians to go there.”
“They already took over their moneylending bar,” Reacher said. “That was way east of Center. The battle lines seem relatively fluid right now.”
Abby nodded sleepily against his chest.
“I know,” she said. “They all agree they can’t have a war, because of the new police commissioner, but all kinds of things seem to be happening.”
Then she took a deep breath and held it and sat up and shook herself awake and said, “We should go now.”
“Where?” Reacher asked.
“We should go make sure your old couple is OK.”
* * *
—
Abby had a car. It was parked in a garage a block away. It was a small white Toyota sedan, with a stick shift and no hubcaps. Plus electrical ties holding on one of the fenders. Plus a crack in the windshield that made the view out front look like two overlapping halves. But the engine started and the wheels steered and the brakes worked. The glass in the windows was plain, not tinted, and Reacher felt his face was close to it, clearly visible to those outside, crammed as he was in a cramped interior. He watched for Town Cars, like he had crashed at the Ford dealer, and seen the night before, coming at him north and south on the street, but he saw none at all, and no pale men in dark suits either, loitering on corners, watching.
They drove the same way he had walked, past the bus depot, through the light, into the narrower streets, past the bar, and out again to the wider spaces. The gas station with the deli counter was up ahead.
“Pull in there,” Reacher said. “We should take them some food.”
“Are they OK with that?”
“Does it matter? They got to eat.”
She pulled in. The menu was the same. Chicken salad or tuna salad. He got two of each, plus chips, plus soda. Plus a can of coffee. Quitting eating was one thing. Coffee was a whole different thing entirely.
They drove into the development and worked their way around the tight right-angle turns to the cul-de-sac near its center. They parked by the picket fence, with its nudging rosebuds.
“This is it?” Abby said.
“Owned by the bank now,” Reacher said.
“Because of Max Trulenko?”
“And some well meaning mistakes.”
“Will they be able to get it back from the bank?”
“I don’t know much about that kind of stuff. But I don’t see why not. It’s all money and assets moving back and forth. Buying and selling. I don’t see why a bank would want to get in the way of a thing like that. I’m sure somehow it could find a way to turn a profit on the deal.”
They walked up the narrow concrete path. The door opened before they got to it. Aaron Shevick stood there. He had a worried look on his face.
“Maria has disappeared,” he said. “I can’t find her anywhere.”
Chapter 16
Aaron Shevick might have been a hotshot machinist in the distant past, but he was no kind of a useful witness in the present day. He said he had heard no traffic outside. He had seen no cars on the street. They had gotten up at seven o’clock in the morning and had eaten a small breakfast at eight. Then he had walked to the convenience store to buy a quart of milk, for future small breakfasts. When he got home Maria was nowhere to be seen.
“How long were you gone?” Reacher asked.
“Twenty minutes,” Shevick said. “Maybe more. I’m still walking slow.”
“And you looked all through the house?”
“I thought maybe she had fallen. But she hadn’t. Not in the yard, either. So she went out somewhere. Or someone took her.”
“Let’s start with she went out somewhere. Did she take her coat?”
“She didn’t need her coat,” Abby said. “It’s warm enough without. A better question would be, did she take her purse?”
Shevick looked in what he called all the usual places. There were four of them. A particular spot on the kitchen countertop, a particular spot on an entryway bench in the hallway area opposite the front door, a particular peg in the coat closet where they also hung their umbrellas, and lastly, a spot on the living room floor next to her armchair.
No purse.
“OK,” Reacher said. “That’s a good sign. Very persuasive. It means most likely she went out voluntarily, under her own steam, in an orderly fashion, not in any kind of panic, and not under any kind of duress.”
Shevick said, “She might have left her purse somewhere else.” He glanced all around, helpless. It was a small house, but even so it hid a hundred hiding places.
“Let’s look on the bright side,” Reacher said. “She picked up her purse, she hooked it on her elbow, and she walked away down the path.”
“Or they threw her in a car. Maybe they forced her to bring her purse. Maybe they knew how it would look to us. They’re trying to throw us off the trail.”
“I think she went to the pawn shop,” Reacher said.
Shevick was quiet a long moment. Then he raised a finger in a be-right-back kind of a way, and he limped down the corridor to the bedroom. A minute later he limped back carrying an ancient shoebox. It had faded pastel pink and white candystripes on it, and a faded black and white label pasted to the short end, with a manuf
acturer’s name, and a line drawing of a shoe, which was a proudly chunky woman’s lace-up, and a size, which was four, and a price, which was a penny shy of four bucks. Maybe the shoes Maria Shevick was married in.
“The family jewelry,” Shevick said.
He lifted the lid. The box was empty. No nine-carat wedding bands, no diamond engagement rings, no gold-plated watch with a crack in the crystal.
“We should go pick her up,” Abby said. “It will be a sad walk home otherwise.”
* * *
—
Organized crime’s traditional staples were usury, narcotics, prostitution, gambling, and protection rackets. Throughout their half of the city the Ukrainians ran them all with great skill and aplomb. Narcotics were doing better than ever. Weed had largely gone away, because of creeping legalization all over the place, but exploding demand for meth and oxy more than made up the difference. Profit was sky high. Pushed even higher by a percentage royalty on all the Mexican heroin sold in the city itself, from the western limit to Center Street. Every single gram. Gregory’s greatest success. He had negotiated the deal himself. The Mexican gangs were notorious barbarians, and it took a lot to impress them. But Gregory had persisted. Two of their street corner guys upside down with their guts out had finally done the trick. Before death, unhappily. At that point the Mexicans had started to fear for future recruitment. Street corner guys didn’t make much. Enough to risk getting shot, maybe, but not enough to risk getting hung upside down and slit wide open from throat to groin. While still alive. Hence the royalty. It kept everyone happy.
Prostitution was doing fine, too, mostly because of what Gregory thought of as a built-in advantage. Ukrainian girls were very beautiful. Many of them were tall and slender and very blonde. None of them had any chance of advancement at home. In the old country they had nothing ahead of them except a lifetime of mud and drudgery. No fine clothes, no high-rise apartments, no Mercedes-Benzes. They knew that. So they were happy to come to America. They understood the paperwork was complicated and the process expensive. They knew they would have to reimburse their helpers, for the upfront outlay, just as quickly as they could. And definitely before they moved on, to whatever it was that came next, which would hopefully involve fine clothes and high-rise apartments and Mercedes-Benzes. They were told all of that was coming soon. But first there would be a brief period of employment. Only afterward would they get access to all those glittering opportunities. But not to worry. There was a system already in place. It was well organized. It was pleasant work, and very social. Mostly just mixing with people. Like public relations. They would enjoy it. They might even get a jump on meeting the right kind of guy.