“After he twigged.”
“Maybe he has now.”
“How much of a point is he going to make?”
“Maybe this is it,” the guy said. “Two men for two men. We keep the loan business. It would be a surrender with honor. He’s a realistic man. He doesn’t have many options. He can’t start a war, with the cops watching.”
Gregory said nothing. The room went quiet. No sound at all, except muted chatter from the taxi radio in the front office. Through the closed door. Just background noise. No one paid any attention to it. If they had, they would have heard a driver calling in to say he had let out an old lady at the supermarket, and was going to use his waiting time while she shopped to earn an extra buck, by driving a guy home, to the old tract houses east of downtown. The guy was on foot, but he looked reasonably civilized and he had cash money. Maybe his car had broken down. It was four miles there, and four miles back. He would be done before the old lady was even out of the bakery aisle. No harm, no foul.
* * *
—
At that moment Dino was getting a much earlier and incomplete snapshot of part of the news. It had taken an hour to travel up the chain. It included nothing about the car wreck. Most of the day had been spent disposing of Fisnik and his named accomplice. Reorganization had been left very late. Almost an afterthought. A replacement had been sent to the bar, to pick up on Fisnik’s business. The chosen guy had gotten there a little after eight o’clock in the evening. Immediately he had seen Ukrainian muscle in the street. Guarding the place. A Town Car, and two men. He had snuck around to the bar’s rear fire door, and snuck a look inside. A Ukrainian guy was sitting at Fisnik’s table in the far back corner, talking to a big guy, who looked disheveled and poor. Obviously a customer.
At that point the chosen replacement regrouped and retreated. He phoned it in. The guy he told called another guy. Who called another guy. And so on. Because bad news traveled slowly. An hour later Dino heard about it. He called his top boys together, in the lumber yard.
He said, “There are two possible scenarios. Either the thing about the police commissioner’s list was true, and they opportunistically and treacherously used the disruption to muscle in on our moneylending business, or it wasn’t true, and they planned this thing all along, and in fact tricked us into clearing the way for them.”
His right-hand man said, “I suppose we must hope it was the former.”
Dino was quiet for a long spell.
Then he said, “I’m afraid we must pretend it was the former. We have no choice. We can’t start a war. Not now. We’ll have to let them keep the moneylending business. We have no practical way to get it back. But we’ll surrender it with honor. It must be two for two. We can’t be seen to do less than that. Kill two of their men, and we’ll call it even.”
His right-hand man asked, “Which two?”
“I don’t care,” Dino said.
Then he changed his mind.
“No, choose them carefully,” he said. “Let’s try to find an advantage.”
Chapter 9
Reacher got out of the taxi at the Shevick house and walked up the narrow concrete path. The door opened before he could ring the bell. Shevick stood there, with the light behind him and his phone in his hand.
“The money came through an hour ago,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Welcome,” Reacher said.
“You’re late. We thought maybe you weren’t coming back.”
“I had to take a minor detour.”
“Where?”
“Let’s go inside,” Reacher said. “We need to talk.”
This time they used the living room. The photographs on the wall, the amputated television. The Shevicks took the armchairs, and Reacher sat on the loveseat.
He said, “It happened pretty much like it happened with you and Fisnik. Except the guy snapped my picture. Which might be a good thing, in the end. Your name, my face. A little confusion never hurts. But if I was a real client, I wouldn’t have liked it. Not one little bit. It would have felt like a bony finger on my shoulder. It would have made me feel vulnerable. Then I got outside and there was more. Two guys, who wanted to drive me home, to see where I lived, and who I lived with. My wife, if I had one. Which was another bony finger. Maybe a whole bony hand.”
“What happened?”
“The three of us negotiated a different arrangement. Not linked in any way to your name or address. In fact fairly confusing as to exactly what took place. I wanted an element of mystery about it. Their bosses will suspect a message, but they won’t be sure who from. They’ll think the Albanians, most likely. Not you, certainly.”
“What happened to the men?”
“They were part of the message. As in, this is America. Don’t send an asshole who last time out was seventh on the undercard in some basement fight club in Kiev. At least take it seriously. Show some respect.”
“They saw your face.”
“They won’t remember. They had an accident. They got all banged up. Their memories will be missing an hour or two. Retrograde amnesia, they call it. Fairly common, after physical trauma. If they don’t die first, that is.”
“So everything’s OK?”
“Not really,” Reacher said.
“What else?”
“These are not reasonable people.”
“We know.”
“How are you going to pay their money back?”
They didn’t answer.
“You need twenty-five grand, a week from right now. You can’t be late. They showed me pictures, too. Fisnik’s can’t have been worse. You need some kind of a plan.”
Shevick said, “A week is a long time.”
“Not really,” Reacher said again.
Mrs. Shevick said, “Something good might happen.”
Nothing more.
Reacher said, “You really need to tell me what it is you’re waiting for.”
* * *
—
It was about their daughter, inevitably. Mrs. Shevick’s gaze roamed the pictures on the wall as she told the story. Their daughter’s name was Margaret, shortened since childhood to Meg. She had been a bright, happy infant, full of charm and energy. She loved other children. She loved kindergarten. She loved elementary school. She loved to read and write and draw. She smiled and chattered all the time. She could persuade anyone to do anything. She could have sold ice to the Eskimos, her mother said.