by Lee Child
They were graded on arrival. Not that any of them was ugly. Gregory had a wide choice. There were always a hundred thousand ready to jump on a plane. They were all fresh and flawless and fragrant. Surprisingly the most valued were not the youngest. Not at the top end of the market. Certainly there were plenty of guys willing to pay to get blown by kids younger than their granddaughters, but experience showed the guys with the really big bucks found that kind of extreme a little creepy. Experience showed such a guy preferred a slightly older woman, maybe even twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with a faint air of sophistication and worldliness about her, with a hint of approaching maturity, maybe a smile line or two, so he wouldn’t feel like a molester. So he would feel like he had a junior colleague in his room, maybe a rising executive, seeking advice or a raise or a promotion, any or all of which she might get, if she played her cards right.
Such a woman usually stayed about five years in that role. Somehow she never made it to the fine clothes and the high-rise apartments and the Mercedes-Benzes. Somehow she never quite paid off her debt. No one had thought about interest rates. Sometimes such a woman would do another five years, if she was wearing well, on the mature page of the website, and if she wasn’t wearing well, then her price would be dropped a couple hundred bucks an hour, and she would soldier on as well as she could, for as long as she could. After that, she would be taken off the website altogether, and sent to one of their many backstreet massage parlors, where the shortest appointment was twenty minutes, and where she would be dressed in an abbreviated version of a nurse’s uniform, and rubber gloves, and put to work sixteen hours a day.
Each such parlor was managed by a parlor boss, who was assisted by a deputy parlor boss. Like the women who worked under them, they were generally not the pick of the litter. But on the plus side their job was very straightforward. They had only three tasks. They had to deliver a set number of dollars every week. They had to maintain enthusiasm among their staff. They had to maintain order among their customers. That was it. Such a specification attracted a particular type of candidate. Nasty enough to get the dollars, tough enough to subdue the customers, bent enough to enjoy the staff.
At one particular parlor two blocks west of Center their names were Bohdan and Artem. Bohdan was the boss. Artem was the deputy. So far their day was going well. They had gotten a text about a guy to be on the lookout for. With a brief verbal description, mostly about his size and weight, both of which seemed impressive. They had scrutinized their stream of customers. No such guy. But plenty of other guys. So far all well behaved. All satisfied. No issues with staff, either, beyond a small thing in the morning, when one of the older ones was late, and then not sufficiently apologetic about it. She was offered a choice of forfeits. She chose the leather paddle, as soon as she came off duty. Bohdan would administer the punishment, and Artem would video it. It would be on their porn sites an hour later. It might have earned a few bucks by the morning. A win-win. All good. So far their day was going well.
Then two customers came in who looked different. Darkish hair, darkish skin, sunglasses. Short dark raincoats. Black jeans. Almost like a uniform. Which happened. Mostly because of the university. There were all kinds of folks in town. Mostly they dressed like where they came from. Hence these two. Maybe they were scholars, visiting from overseas. Maybe they were sampling the illicit charms of their host nation, purely for research. Purely to achieve a better mutual understanding.
Or not.
They pulled matching guns out from under their matching coats. Two H&K MP5 submachine guns, with integral suppressors. By coincidence the same brand and the same model the Ukrainians themselves had used the night before, outside the liquor store. Small world. The two guys gestured Bohdan and Artem to stand together, side by side, shoulder to shoulder. They each fired a round into the floor, to show their guns were silenced. Two spitting bangs. Loud, but not enough to bring someone running.
They said in bad Ukrainian, with heavy Albanian accents, that they were offering a choice. There was a car outside, and Bohdan and Artem could go get in it, or they could get gut shot right there, right then, with the guns just proved quiet enough to bring no one running. They could bleed to death on the floor, twenty minutes of agony, and then they could get dragged out by the heels, and put in the car anyway.
Their choice.
Bohdan didn’t answer. Not right away. Neither did Artem. They were genuinely uncertain. They had heard about Albanian torments. Maybe getting gut shot was better. They said nothing. The building was silent. Not a sound. The massage cubicles were all in a line, on a long corridor, the other side of a closed inner door. The front of house area could have been a lawyer’s waiting room. Some kind of under the table compromise with the city. Out of sight, out of mind. Don’t frighten the voters. Gregory had done the deal.
Then the silence was broken. There was a sound. The faint click of heels in the inner corridor. Tap, tap, tap. Five-inch spikes, like they all had to wear. Clear plastic, sometimes. Stripper shoes. The Americans had a word for everything. Tap, tap, tap. One of them was moving, maybe from the restroom back to her cubicle. Or from one cubicle to another. From one client to the next. Some girls were popular. Some got requests.
The heels kept on coming. Tap, tap, tap. Maybe she was headed for a cubicle all the way up front.
Tap, tap, tap.
The inner door opened. A woman stepped through. Bohdan saw it was one of the older ones. In fact the one due to get the paddle when she came off duty. Like all of them she was half-wearing a half-size shiny white latex version of a nurse’s uniform, complete with a little white cap pinned up top. The hem of her skirt rode six inches higher than the tops of her stockings. She raised her hand, one finger vaguely ahead of the others, like people do, simultaneously as an apology for an interruption and the introduction of a question.
She never got there. Whatever mundane issue was on her mind remained unexpressed. More towels, more lotion, new rubber gloves. Whatever it was. The door swinging open was in the left corner of the left-hand guy’s eye, and he fired instantly, a neat quiet stitch of three into her center mass. No reason for it. Some kind of hyper state. Some kind of fever pitch. A twitch of the muzzle, a twitch of the trigger finger. There was no echo. Just a long, ragged, plastic, fleshy thump as the woman went down.
Bohdan said, “Jesus Christ.”
It changed the argument. Getting gut shot was no longer a theory. Visual aids had been introduced. Ancient human instinct took over. Stay alive a minute longer. See what happens next. They got in the car voluntarily. By chance they crossed Center Street and entered Albanian territory at the exact same moment the woman in the nurse costume died. She was alone on the floor of the parlor, half in and half out of the back corridor. All the clients had fled. They had jumped over her and run. Likewise her co-workers. They had all done the same thing. They were all gone. She died alone, in pain, uncomforted and unconsoled. Her name was Anna Ulyana Dorozhkin. She was forty-one years old. She had first come to the city fifteen years earlier, at the age of twenty-six, all excited about a career in PR.
Chapter 17
Aaron Shevick didn’t know exactly where the city’s pawn shops were. Reacher’s guess was they would be somewhere on the same radius as the bus depot. At a discreet distance from the fancy neighborhoods. He knew cities. There would be low-rent enterprises packed tight throughout the outlying blocks. There would be window tinting and laundromats and dusty old mom-and-pop hardware stores and off-brand auto parts. And pawn shops. The problem was planning a route. They wanted to be able to pick Mrs. Shevick up if she had already done her business and was already walking home. Not knowing her destination made that difficult. In response they drove wide loops, finding a pawn shop, checking inside through the window, not seeing her, setting out home until they were sure she couldn’t still be ahead of them, and then driving back and starting over with the next place they saw.
She was embarrassed at first, in front of Abby. A stranger. You must think us very foolish. Aaron asked her how much she had gotten for the rings and the watch, and she just shook her head and wouldn’t answer.
Then eventually she said, “Eighty dollars.”
No one spoke. They drove back east, past the depot, through the four-way light.
* * *
—
At that moment, in his office, Gregory was getting the news about his massage parlor. By chance another of his guys had been passing by on unrelated business. He had sensed something wrong. Too quiet. He had gone inside. The place was completely deserted. Nothing but an old hooker, shot dead on the floor, in a big pool of blood. No one else. No clients. Apparently all the other hookers had run away. There was no trace of Bohdan or Artem. Artem’s phone was lying on his desk, and Bohdan’s jacket was still on the back of his chair. Not good signs. They meant they had not left the premises voluntarily. They meant they had left under some kind of duress.
Gregory called his top boys together. He told them the facts. Then he told them to think hard for sixty seconds, and come up with first an analysis of what the hell was going on, and second what the hell to do about it.
His right-hand man spoke first.
“This is Dino’s doing,” he said. “I think we all know that. He’s a man on a mission. We took two of his guys, with the trick about the spy in the police station, so he took two of ours, up at the Ford dealer. Which was fair. Can’t dispute it. What goes around comes around. Except evidently he didn’t like losing the loan business, so he decided to punish us by taking two more of our guys, on the restaurant block. So we took two more of his, outside the liquor store last night. Which was then four for four. A fair exchange. End of story. Except apparently Dino doesn’t agree. Apparently he feels he has a point to make. Perhaps an ego thing. He wants to be two guys ahead at all times. Perhaps it makes him feel better. So now he’s made it six for four.”
“What should we do about it?” Gregory asked.
His guy was quiet for a very long time.
Then he said, “We didn’t get where we are by being stupid. If we make it six for six, he’ll make it eight for six. And so on, forever. It will be a slow-motion war. We can’t get into a war right now.”
“So what should we do?”
“We should suck it up. We’re down two guys and the restaurant block, but we got the loan business instead. Overall we came out ahead.”
Gregory said, “Makes us look weak.”
“No,” his guy said. “It makes us look like the grown-ups, playing the long game, with our eyes on the prize.”
“We’re down two men. It’s humiliating.”
“If a week ago Dino had offered to trade all of his loan business for two of our men and the restaurant block, we would have bitten his hand off. We came out way ahead. Dino is humiliated, not us.”
“It feels weird, just to leave it.”
“No,” his guy said again. “It feels smart. We’re playing chess here. And right now we’re winning.”
“What will they do to our guys?”
“Nothing pleasant, I’m sure.”
No one spoke for a minute.
Then Gregory said, “We need to find the hookers. Can’t let them run away. Bad for discipline.”
“We’re on it,” someone said.
Silence again.
Then Gregory’s phone rang. He answered and listened and hung up.
He looked straight at his right-hand man.
He smiled.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Maybe having the loan business puts us ahead.”
“How so?” his guy asked.
“Now we have a name,” Gregory said. “And a photograph. The guy who asked about Max Trulenko last night is called Aaron Shevick. He’s a customer. Currently he owes us twenty-five thousand dollars. We’re working on getting his address. Apparently he’s a big ugly son of a bitch.”
* * *
—
Abby parked on the curb next to the picket fence, and they all got out and walked up the narrow concrete path. Maria Shevick took her keys from the purse on her elbow and unlocked the door. They went inside. Maria saw the can of coffee on the kitchen counter.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Pure self-interest,” Reacher said back.
“You want some?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Maria opened the can and set the machine going. She joined Abby in the living room. Abby was looking at the photographs on the wall.
She asked, quietly, gently, “What’s the latest news on Meg?”
“It’s a brutal treatment,” Maria said. “She’s in a special isolation unit, either out of her mind on painkillers, or fast asleep, because they sedate her. We can’t visit. We can’t even talk on the phone.”
“That’s awful.”
“But the doctors are optimistic,” Maria said. “So far, anyway. We’ll know more soon. They’ll do another scan before long.”
“If we pay for it first,” her husband said.
Six chances before the week is over, Reacher thought.
He said, “We think Meg’s old boss is still in town. We think he still has money. Your lawyers reckon the best strategy is to sue him direct. Absolutely can’t fail, they said.”
“Where is he?” Shevick asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
“Can you find him?”
“Probably,” Reacher said. “That kind of thing used to be part of my job.”
“The law moves slow,” Maria said, like she had once before.
They ate the lunch from the gas station deli. In the living room, because the kitchen had only three chairs. Abby sat cross-legged on the floor where the TV used to be, and ate off her lap. Maria Shevick asked her what she did for a living. Abby told her. Aaron talked about the good old days before computer controlled machine tools. When everything was cut by eye and feel, to a thousandth of an inch. They could make anything. American workers. Once the greatest natural resource in the world. Now look what happened. A crying shame.
Reacher heard a car in the street. The soft hiss and squelch of a big sedan. He got up and stepped into the hallway and looked out the window. A black Lincoln Town Car. Two guys in it. Pale faces, fair hair, white necks. They were trying to turn the car around. Back and forth, back and forth, across the narrow width. They wanted to be facing in the right direction. For a fast getaway, perhaps. Abby’s Toyota didn’t help. It was in the way.
Reacher went back to the living room.
He said, “They figured out Aaron Shevick’s address.”
Abby stood up.
Maria said, “They’re here?”
“Because someone sent them,” Reacher said. “That’s the thing we have to remember. We’ve got about thirty seconds to figure this out. Whoever sent them knows where they are. If anything happens to them, this house becomes ground zero for retribution. We should try to avoid that if possible. If we were somewhere else, no problem. But not here.”
Shevick said, “So what do we do?”
“Get rid of them.”
“Me?”
“Any of you. Just not me. I’m the one they think is Aaron Shevick.”
There was a knock at the door.
Chapter 18
There was a second
knock at the door. No one moved. Then Abby took a step, but Maria put a hand on her arm, and Aaron went instead. Reacher ducked into the kitchen, and sat there, listening. He heard the door open, and then a missed beat from the step, just silence, as if the two guys were momentarily set back by the fact that the man who had opened the door was not the man they were looking for.
One of them said, “We need to speak with Mr. Aaron Shevick.”
Mr. Aaron Shevick said, “Who?”
“Aaron Shevick.”
“I think he was the last tenant.”
“You rent here?”
“I’m retired. Too expensive to buy.”
“Who’s your landlord?”
“A bank.”
“What’s your name?”
“I’m not sure I want to tell you that, until you state your business.”
“Our business is private, with Mr. Shevick alone. It’s a very sensitive matter.”
“Wait a minute,” Shevick said. “Are you from the government?”
No answer.
“Or the insurance fund?”
One of the two guys said, “What’s your name, old man?”
Menace in his voice.
Shevick said, “Jack Reacher.”
“How do we know you’re not Aaron Shevick’s dad?”
“We would have the same name.”