They drove direct to the crushing plant. They unhooked the car and left it on a patch of oil-soaked dirt. A huge backhoe drove over. Instead of a bucket it had giant forklift spears on the front. It lifted the car and drove it to the crusher. It set it down on a steel floor in a three-sided box not much bigger than the car itself. It backed away. The box’s fourth side folded up into place. Its top folded down.
Engines roared and hydraulics clanked and the box’s sides crushed inward, relentlessly, grating, groaning, scraping, tearing, a hundred and fifty tons of force behind each one. Then they stopped, and wheezed back to where they had started, and a piston pushed out a cube of crushed metal about a yard on a side. It rested for a moment on a heavy iron grille. For leaking fluids to drain away. Gasoline and oil and brake fluid and whatever it was in the air conditioner. Plus other fluids, on this occasion. Then a brother to the first backhoe came along. Instead of forklift spears it had a claw. It picked up the cube and drove it away and stacked it in a wall of a hundred other cubes.
Only then did the man in the raincoat call Dino. Total success. Two for two. Honor even. They had effectively traded the moneylending for the gourmet quarter. Which was a short term loss, but maybe a long term gain. It was a foot in the door. It was a landing zone that could be first defended, and then expanded. Above all it was proof the map could be redrawn.
Dino went to bed happy.
* * *
—
Reacher had been glad of the lucky taxi in the supermarket parking lot. Partly for the time it had saved. He had figured the Shevicks would be worried. And partly for the effort it had saved, especially right then, all bruised and battered. But it had done him no favors. It had let him stiffen up. His walk back to town was painful.
His sense of direction told him the best route was the one he already knew. Back past the bar, past the bus depot, and onward to Center Street, where the chain hotels would be clustered, maybe a little ways south, all within a block or two. He knew cities. He walked faster than he wanted to, and paid attention to his posture, head up, shoulders back, arms loose, back straight, finding all the aches and pains, fighting them, chasing them out, yielding nothing.
There was no one in the street outside the bar. No parked car, no insolent muscle. Reacher backed up and looked in the grimy window. Past the dusty harps and shamrocks. The pale guy was still at the table in the far corner. Still luminescent. There was no one with him. No hapless customer, down in the sewer.
Reacher moved on, getting looser, walking better. He came out of the old blocks at the four-way light, and walked on past the bus depot, watching the sky ahead for the glow of neon. For skyline buildings with lit-up names. Which could be banks or insurance companies or local TV. Or hotels. Or all of the above. There were six of them in total. Six towers, standing proud. The downtown cluster. A brave statement.
Most of the glow was to his half left, which was south of west. He decided to cut the corner and head straight there. He made a left and crossed Center Street, into a thoroughfare that in its bones was no better than the street with the bar, but a lot of money had been spent on it, and it was all gussied up. The street lights were working. The brick was clean. No establishments were boarded up. Most of them were offices of one kind or another. Not necessarily commercial ventures. Mostly worthy causes. Municipal services, and so on. A family counsellor. The local HQ of a political party. All were dark, except for one. Across the street, at the far end of the block. It was lit up bright. It had been rebuilt like a traditional old storefront. It had a sign in the window. Printed on the glass, in big letters, in an old-fashioned style, like the Marine Corps typewriters of Reacher’s youth. The sign said: The Public Law Project.
There are three of them, Mrs. Shevick had said.
From a public law project.
Three nice young men.
Behind the window was a modern blond-wood workspace, crammed with old-fashioned khaki-and-white paperwork. There were three guys sitting at desks. Young, certainly. Reacher couldn’t tell if they were nice. He wasn’t prepared to venture an opinion. They were all dressed the same, in tan chino pants and blue button-down shirts.
Reacher crossed the street. Up close he saw what were presumably their names, printed on the glass of the door. Same typewriter style, but smaller. The names were Julian Harvey Wood, Gino Vettoretto, and Isaac Mehay-Byford. Which Reacher thought was a whole lot of names, for just three guys. They all had a lot of letters after their names. All kinds of doctoral degrees. One from Stanford Law, one from Harvard, one from Yale.
He pulled the door and stepped inside.
Chapter 11
All three guys looked up, surprised. One was dark, one was fair, and one was in the middle. They all looked to be in their late twenties. They all looked tired. Hard work, late nights, pizza and coffee. Like law school all over again.
The dark one said, “Can we help you?”
“Which one are you?” Reacher said. “Julian, Gino, or Isaac?”
“I’m Gino.”
“Pleased to meet you, Gino,” Reacher said. “Any chance you know an old couple named Shevick?”
“Why?”
“I just spent a little time with them. I became familiar with their troubles. They told me they had three lawyers from a public law project. I’m wondering if that’s you. In fact I’m assuming it is. I’m asking myself how many public law projects a city this size could support.”
The fair one said, “If they’re our clients, then obviously we can’t discuss their case.”
“Which one are you?”
“I’m Julian.”
The neither dark nor fair one said, “And I’m Isaac.”
“I’m Reacher. Pleased to meet you all. Are the Shevicks your clients?”
“Yes, they are,” Gino said. “So we can’t talk about them.”
“Make it like a hypothetical example. In a case like theirs, is either one of the no-fault funds likely to pay out within the next seven days?”
Isaac said, “We really shouldn’t discuss it.”
“Just theoretically,” Reacher said. “As an abstract illustration.”
“It’s complicated,” Julian said.
“By what?”
“I mean, theoretically speaking, such a case would start out simple, but then it would get very complicated if family members stepped in to act as guarantors. Such a move would downgrade the urgency. I mean that literally. It would mark it down a grade. The no-fault funds are dealing with tens of thousands of cases. Maybe hundreds of thousands. If they know for sure a patient is currently receiving care anyway, they assign a different code. Like a lower grade. Not exactly bottom of the pile, but more like back burner. While more urgent stuff is handled first.”