He waited.
Another minute later he heard a muted yelp. A woman’s voice. Maybe joy. Or ecstasy. Or maybe not. Maybe outrage or anger. It was hard to tell. But it was definitely muted. It was suppressed, in a particular way. It was the sound of clamped lips.
Nothing visible.
He moved left, and saw a gap between a bag store and a shoe store. It was pedestrian access to a narrow alley that divided two buildings. The alley had doors both sides for walk-up apartments above the stores. Two people were standing next to one of the doors. A man and a woman, in a full-on clinch. Like wrestling standing up. They were half lit by a harsh bulb above the door. The guy was young. Not much more than a kid. But he was big and solid. The woman was a little older. She had blonde hair, and she was wearing high heels and black nylons under a short black coat, which was getting rucked up by the wrestling.
Good or bad?
Hard to tell.
He didn’t want to ruin anyone’s evening.
He watched.
Then the woman squirmed her face away and said, “No,” in a sudden low and breathy tone, like spitting, as firm as talking to a dog, but also with what Reacher took to be feelings of shame and embarrassment and disgust. She pushed against the guy’s chest, and tried to get away. The guy wouldn’t let her.
Reacher said, “Hey.”
They both turned their faces toward him.
He said, “Take your hands off her, kid.”
The boy said, “This is none of your business.”
“It is now. You woke me up.”
“Get lost.”
“I heard her say no. So step back.”
The kid half turned. He was wearing a sweatshirt embroidered with the name of a famous university. He was a big solid boy. Maybe six-three, and 220 pounds. Maybe an athlete. He was rippling with youth and excitement. He had a look in his eye. He thought he was a hell of a guy.
Reacher looked at the woman and said, “Miss, are you OK?”
She asked, “Are you a cop?”
“I was once upon a time, in the army. Now I’m just a guy passing through.”
She didn’t reply. She was close to thirty, Reacher thought. She looked like a nice person. But sad.
“Are you OK?” he asked her again.
She pushed away from the boy and stood a yard apart. She didn’t speak. But she looked at Reacher like she didn’t want him to leave.
He said, “Did this happen last night, too?”
She nodded.
“Same place?”
She nodded again.
“Same exact time?”
“It’s when I get home from work.”
“You live here?”
“Until I get on my feet.”
Reacher looked at her heels and her hair and her nylons and said, “You work in a cocktail bar.”
“In Manchester.”
“And this guy followed you home.”
She nodded.
“Two nights running?” Reacher said.
She nodded again.
The boy said, “She asked me to, man. So butt out and let nature take its course.”
“That’s not true,” the woman said. “I did not ask you.”
“You were all over me.”
“I was being polite. That’s what you do when you work in a cocktail bar.”
Reacher looked at the boy.
“Sounds like a classic misunderstanding,” he said. “But easily fixed. All you need to do is apologize most sincerely and then go away and never come back.”
“It’s her who won’t come back. Not to that bar, anyway. My father owns a big chunk of it. She’ll lose her job.”
Reacher looked at the woman, and said, “What happened last night?”
“I let him,” she said. “He agreed one time only. So I got it over with. But now he’s back for more.”
“I’ll discuss it with him, if you like,” Reacher said. “Meanwhile you go inside now, if you want. And think no more about it.”
“Don’t you dare go inside,” the boy said. “Not without me.”
The woman looked from him to Reacher, and back again. And again, as if choosing. As if down to her last twenty bucks at the racetrack. She made her decision. She took her keys from her bag, and unlocked her door, and stepped inside, and closed her door behind her.
The boy in the sweatshirt stared first at the door, and then at Reacher. Who jerked his head toward the mouth of the alley, and said, “Run along now, kid.”
The boy stared a minute longer, apparently thinking hard. And then he went. He walked out of the alley and turned out of sight. To the right. Which made him right-handed. He would want to set up his ambush so that Reacher would walk face first into a free-swinging right hook. Which pretty much defined the location. About three feet around the corner, Reacher thought. Level with the edge of the bag shop’s window. Because of the pivot point for the right hook. Basic geometry. Fixed in space.
But not fixed in time. Speed was under Reacher’s control. The kid would be expecting a normal kind of approach, plus or minus. Maybe a little tense and urgent. Maybe a little cautious and wary. But mostly average. He would trigger the hook at the first glimpse of Reacher coming around the corner. Any kind of normal walking pace would bring it home good and solid. The kid wasn’t dumb. Possibly an athlete. Probably had decent hand to eye coordination.
Therefore nothing would be done at normal or average speed.
Reacher stopped six paces short of the corner, and waited, and waited, and then he took another pace, a slow, sliding scrape across grit and dirt, and then he paused, and waited, and took another step, slow, sliding, ominous. And then another long wait, and another slow step. He pictured the kid around the corner, tensed up, his fist cocked, holding his position. And holding. Holding too long. Getting too tensed. Getting all cramped and shaky.
Reacher took another step, long and slow. Now he was six feet from the corner. He waited. And waited. Then he launched fast, at a run, his left hand up, palm open, fingers spread like a baseball glove. He burst around the corner and saw the kid sputtering to life, confused by the change of pace, locked into slow-motion waiting, so that his triumphant right hook was so far coming out like a herky-jerky feeble squib, which Reacher caught easily in his left palm, like a soft liner to second. The kid’s fist was big, but Reacher’s open hand was bigger, so he clamped down and squeezed, not hard enough to crush the bones, but hard enough to make the kid concentrate on keeping his mouth shut, so no whines or squeals came out, which obviously he couldn’t afford, being a hell of a guy.