Hogan said, “Something is on fire over there.”
“Your fault,” Reacher said.
“How?”
“You pointed out that if the Ukrainians go down, the Albanians would take over the city. I didn’t want that to happen. It felt like it would be a win-lose.”
“So what’s on fire?”
“The Albanian HQ. It’s in the back of a lumber yard. It should burn for days.”
Hogan said nothing.
Barton said, “Someone else will take over.”
“Maybe not,” Reacher said. “The new commissioner will have a clean slate. Maybe it’s easier to stop new people coming in than it is to get old people out.”
Vantresca said, “What next?”
“We need to find the Ukrainian nerve center.”
“Sure, but how?”
“I guess we need to know exactly what it does. That might tell us what to look for. To some extent form follows function. For instance, if it was a drug lab, it would need exhaust fans, and gas and water, and so on and so forth.”
“I don’t know what it does,” Vantresca said.
“Call the journalist,” Reacher said. “The woman you helped. She might know. At least she might know what they’re into. If necessary we could work it out backward, about what kind of place they would need.”
“She won’t talk to me. She was terrified.”
“Give me her number,” Reacher said. “I’ll call her.”
“Why would she talk to you?”
“I have a nicer personality. People talk to me all the time. Sometimes I can’t stop them.”
“I would have to go to my office.”
“Go to the Shevicks’ first,” Reacher said. “I have something for them. Right now they need reassurance.”
Chapter 37
Gregory pieced the story together from early word he got three separate ways, from a cop on his payroll, and a guy in the fire department who owed him money, and a secret snitch he had behind a bar on the east side. Right away he called a meeting of his inner council. They gathered together, in the office in back of the taxi dispatcher.
“Dino is dead,” Gregory said. “Jetmir is dead. Their entire inner council is dead. Their top twenty are gone, just like that. Maybe more. They are no longer an effective force. Nor will they ever be, ever again. They have no leadership prospects. Their most senior survivor is an old bruiser named Hoxha. And he was spared only because he was in the hospital. Because he can’t talk. Some leader he would make.”
Someone asked, “How did it happen?”
“The Russians, obviously,” Gregory said. “Shock and awe east of Center, clearing half the field, preempting a possible defensive alliance, before turning their full might on us alone.”
“Good strategy.”
“But badly executed,” Gregory said. “They were clumsy at the lumber yard. Every cop and every firefighter in the city is over there. The east side will be no use to anyone for months to come. Too much scrutiny. Bribes only go so far. Some things can’t be ignored. I bet the whole thing is already on the television. In the spotlight, literally. Where no one wants to be. Which makes the west side the whole enchilada now. Now they’ll want it more than ever.”
“When will they come for us?”
“I don’t know,” Gregory said. “But we’ll be ready. Starting right now, we’ll go to Situation C. Tighten the guard. Take up defensive positions. Let no one through.”
“We can’t sustain Situation C indefinitely. We need to know when they’re coming.”
Gregory nodded.
“Aaron Shevick must know,” he said. “We should ask him.”
“We can’t find him.”
“Do we still have people at the old woman’s house?”
“Yes, but Shevick never shows up there anymore. Probably the old woman tipped him off. Obviously she’s his mother or his aunt or something.”
Gregory nodded again.
“OK,” he said. “There’s your answer. Call our boys and tell them to bring her in. She can get him on the phone, while we’re working on her. He’ll come running, the first time he hears her scream.”
* * *
—
Vantresca had picked them up a mile from the lumber yard, which meant the Shevicks’ house was another mile further on, to the southwest, like two sides of a triangle. The black Jaguar rumbled through the streets. By then it was mid-morning. The sun was high. The neighborhood was harsh with light and shadows. Reacher asked Vantresca to pull over at the gas station with the deli counter. They parked in the back, next to the car wash tunnel. A white sedan was inching its way through, under the thrashing brushes. There was blue foam and white bubbles everywhere.
Reacher said, “I guess now we can put the Shevicks in an east side hotel. No need to hide anymore. There’s no one left to care if we’re seen walking in with them.”
“They can’t afford it,” Abby said.
Reacher checked Gezim Hoxha’s potato-shaped wallet.
He said, “They don’t need to.”
“I’m sure they would prefer it all spent on Meg.”
“It’s a drop in the ocean. And this ain’t a democracy. They can’t stay in their house anymore.”
“Why not?”
“We need to get this thing rolling. I want their capo unsettled. Gregory, right? I want him to hear us knocking at the door. Might as well start right here, with the guys outside the house. They’ve been cluttering up the place long enough. But there might be a response. So the Shevicks need to move out. Just for the time being.”
“There’s no room in the car,” Barton said.
“We’ll take their Lincoln,” Reacher said. “We’ll drive the Shevicks to a fancy hotel in the back of a Town Car. They might like that.”
“They live on a cul-de-sac,” Vantresca said. “We’ll be approaching head on. No element of surprise.”
“For you, maybe,” Reacher said. “I’ll go in the back again, and come out through the house. Behind them. While they’re trying to figure out who the hell you guys are. That should be a surprise.”
The Jaguar rolled back out to the main drag, and took the early right, and the left, and stopped in the same spot Reacher and Abby had parked the Chrysler, before dawn, outside the Shevicks’ back-to-back neighbor. Outside the informer’s house, whose calls would henceforth go unanswered, because the instrument on the other end of the line had long ago melted. Like the Chrysler had been, the Jaguar was lined up exactly parallel with the Lincoln, nose to nose and tail to tail, about two hundred feet apart, the depth of two small residential lots, with two buildings in the way. But only for a moment. Reacher got out, and it rolled onward.