Abby said, “What happened?”
She was standing near her own car, very still, on the sidewalk, looking in through the Lincoln’s windshield.
Reacher said, “They showed extraordinary loyalty to an organization that doesn’t seem to treat them very well.”
“You shot them?”
“Self-defense.”
“How?”
“They blinked first.”
“Are they dead?”
“We might need to give them another minute. Depends how fast they’re bleeding.”
She said, “This has never happened to me before.”
He said, “I’m sorry it had to.”
“You killed two people.”
“I warned them. I told them not to. All my cards were on the table. It was more like assisted suicide. Think of it that way.”
“Did you do it for me?” she asked. “I told you I wanted them messed up.”
“I didn’t want to do it at all,” he said. “I wanted to send them home, safe and sound. But no. They tried their best. I guess they did what I would have done. Although I hope I would have done it better.”
“What should we do about it?”
The flames were licking higher. The vinyl on the seat backs was bubbling and splitting and peeling, like skin.
Reacher said, “We should get in your car and drive away.”
“Just like that?”
“For me it’s all about the shoe on the other foot. What would they do for me? That’s what sets the bar.”
She was quiet a beat.
Then she said, “OK, get in the car.”
She drove. He sat in the passenger seat. His extra weight on that side dipped the suspension down just enough that the old Toyota’s newly falling-off fender banged against the blacktop now and then, unpredictable and irregular, like spaced-out Morse code played on a bass drum, all the way along their route.
Chapter 21
No one would dream of calling the cops about a burning car on a two-thirds abandoned block on the east side of the city. Such a thing was obviously someone else’s private business, and obviously best kept that way. But plenty of people dreamed about calling Dino’s people. Always. About anything that might be useful. But especially about news like this. It might get them ahead. It might make their names. Some of them made dangerous up-close inspections, flinching away from the heat. They saw burning bodies inside. They wrote down the license plate, before the flames consumed it.
They called Dino’s people and told them it was a Ukrainian car on fire. It was the type of Lincoln they used west of Center. As far as anyone could tell the two bodies in it were dressed in suits and ties. Which was standard practice over there. Looked like they had been shot in the back. Which was standard practice everywhere. Case closed. They were the enemy.
At which point Dino himself took over.
“Let it burn,” he said.
While it did, he called his inner council together. In back of the lumber yard. Which a few of them didn’t like, because lumber was combustible, and something somewhere was currently on fire. Maybe throwing sparks. But they all came. His right-hand man, and his other top boys. No choice.
“Did we do this?” Dino asked them.
“No,” his right-hand man said. “This is not ours.”
“Are you sure?”
“By now everyone knows about the massage parlor. Everyone knows we’re four for four, honors even, game over. We have no rogues, or mavericks, or private business. I guarantee that. I would have heard.”
“Then explain this to me.”
No one could.
“At least the practical details,” Dino said. “If not the actual meaning.”
One of his guys said, “Maybe they drove in to have a meeting. Their contact was waiting on the sidewalk. He got in the back seat to chat. But he shot them instead. Maybe threw in a burning rag.”
“What contact waiting on the sidewalk?”
“I don’t know.”
“A local person?”
“Probably.”
“One of our guys?”
“Could be.”
“Like an anonymous snitch?”
“It’s possible.”
“So anonymous we never noticed him before? So furtive he escaped our attention all these years? I don’t think so. I think such a master of tradecraft would be waiting in a coffee shop on Center Street. He would be talking to some random kid in a hoodie. He wouldn’t let two men in suits in a Town Car anywhere near him. Not within a million miles. Especially not all the way out in this part of town. He might as well publish a confession in the newspaper. So it wasn’t a meeting.”
“OK.”
“And why would he shoot them?”
“I don’t know.”
Another guy said, “Then the shooter must have been in the back seat all along. They drove out here as a threesome.”
“Therefore the shooter is one of them.”
“Has to be. You don’t let an armed man ride behind you unless you know him.”
“Where is he now?”
“He got out and maybe a second car picked him up. Something anonymous. Not another Town Car. Someone would have seen it leaving.”
“How many people in the second car?”
“Two, I’m sure. They always work in pairs.”
“Therefore overall not a small operation,” Dino said. “It must have required a certain amount of resources, and planning, and coordination. And secrecy. Five guys drove out here. I assume two of them didn’t know what was about to happen.”
“I guess not.”
“But why did it happen? What was the strategic objective?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did he set the car on fire?”
“I don’t know,” the guy said again.
Dino looked around the table.
He asked, “Do we all agree the shooter was in the back seat all along, and therefore was one of them?”
Everyone nodded, most of them gravely, as if coming to a weighty conclusion made inevitable by many hours of deliberation.
“And then after he shot the guys in the front seats, we know he set the car on fire.”