More nods, this time faster and brisker, because some things were self-evident.
“Why all that?” Dino asked.
No one answered.
No one could.
“It feels like myth and legend,” Dino said. “It feels highly symbolic. Like the Vikings burning their warriors in their boats. Like a ceremonial funeral pyre. Like a ritual sacrifice. It feels like Gregory is making an offering to us.”
“Of two of his men?” his right-hand man asked.
“The number is significant.”
“How?”
“We’re getting a new police commissioner. Gregory can’t afford to fight a war. He knows he went too far. Now he’s apologizing. He’s making peace. He knows he was in the wrong. Now he’s trying to make it right. He’s making it six for four, in our favor. As a gesture. So we don’t have to do it ourselves. He’s showing that he agrees with us. He agrees we should be ahead in the count.”
No one responded.
No one could.
Dino got up and walked out. The others heard his footsteps click through the outer office, and through the big corrugated shed. They heard his driver start his car. They heard it drive away. The yard went quiet.
At first no one spoke.
Then someone said, “An offering?”
Silence for a moment.
“You see it different?” the right-hand man asked.
“We would never do a thing like that. Therefore neither would Gregory. Why would he?”
“You think Dino is wrong?”
A huge, dangerous question.
The guy looked all around.
“I think Dino is losing it,” he said. “A Viking funeral pyre? That’s crazy talk.”
“Those are bold words.”
“Do you disagree with them?”
Silence again.
Then the right-hand man shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I don’t disagree. I don’t think it was a sacrifice or an offering.”
“Then what was it?”
“I think it was outside interference.”
“Who?”
“I think someone killed those guys here so Gregory would blame us for it. He’ll attack us, we’ll attack him back. We’ll end up destroying each other. For someone else’s benefit. So someone else can move in on both our turf. I think that might be the intention.”
“Who?” the guy asked again.
“I don’t know. But we’re going to find out. Then we’re going to kill them all. They’re completely out of line.”
“Dino wouldn’t sign off on that. He thinks it’s an offering. He thinks everything is sweetness and light now.”
“We can’t wait.”
“Are we not going to tell him?” the guy asked.
The right-hand man was quiet a beat.
Then he said, “No, not yet. He would only slow us down. This is too important.”
“Are you the new boss now?”
“Maybe. If Dino has really lost it. Which you said first, by the way. Everyone heard you.”
“I meant no disrespect. But this is a very big step. We better be sure we know what we’re doing. Otherwise it’s a betrayal. The worst kind. He’ll kill us all.”
“Time to choose up sides,” the right-hand man said. “Time for us all to place our bets. It’s either Viking rituals or it’s some out-of-towner’s takeover bid. Which will kill us all faster than Dino could anyway.”
The guy didn’t speak for ten long seconds.
Then he said, “What should we do first?”
“Put the fire out. Haul the wreck to the crusher. Then start asking around. Two cars drove in. One was a big shiny Lincoln. Someone will remember the other one. We’ll find it, and we’ll find the guy who was in it, and we’ll make him tell us who he’s working for.”
* * *
—
At that moment Reacher was four streets away, in the front parlor of a battered row house owned by a musician named Frank Barton. Barton was Abby’s friend in the east of the city. Also present in the house was Barton’s lodger, a man named Joe Hogan, once a U.S. Marine, now also a musician. A drummer, to be exact. His kit took up half the room. Barton played the bass guitar. His stuff took up the other half. Four instruments on stands, amplifiers, giant loudspeaker cabinets. Here and there among the clutter were narrow armchairs, thinly upholstered with stained and threadbare fabrics. Reacher had one, Abby had one, and Barton had the third and last. Hogan sat on his drum stool. The white Toyota was parked outside the window.
Barton said, “This is crazy, man. I know those guys. I play the clubs over there. They never forget. Abby can’t go back there, ever again.”
“Unless I find Trulenko,” Reacher said.
“How will that help?”
“I think a defeat of that magnitude would change things a little.”
“How?”
Reacher didn’t answer.
Hogan said, “He means the only route to a high-value target like Trulenko will be straight through the top levels of the organization. Therefore afterward the remaining survivors will be no better than low-level drones running around like chickens with their heads cut off. The Albanians will eat them for breakfast. They’ll own the whole city. What the Ukrainians were once upon a time worried about won’t matter a damn anymore. Because the Ukrainians will all be dead.”
Once a U.S. Marine. A sound grasp of strategy.
“This is crazy,” Barton said again.
Six chances before the week is over, Reacher thought.
Chapter 22
Gregory’s right-hand man knocked on the inner office door and entered and took a seat in front of the massive desk. He ran through what he knew. Two guys had been deployed outside Abigail Gibson’s house. They were now missing. They were not answering their phones. Their car was no longer where it should be.
Gregory said, “Dino?”
“Maybe not.”
“Why?”
“Maybe this was never Dino. Not at first, anyway. We made certain assumptions. Now we need to take a fresh look at the facts. Think about the first two, who got in the wreck up at the Ford dealer. Who was their last known contact?”