The pale guy was at the back table on Reacher’s left. The same as before. Luminescent in the gloom. Glittering hair. Thick white wrists, big white hands, a thick black ledger. The same black suit, the same white shirt, the same black silk necktie. The same tattoo.
Abby stepped in the street door. She stood still as it closed behind her. Performance art. Every eye was on her. She was softly backlit by the dull neon in the windows. Petite and gamine, neat and slender, dressed all in black. Short dark hair, lively dark eyes. A shy but contagious smile. A stranger, dropping by, hoping for a welcome.
She didn’t get one. All five customers looked away. But the barman didn’t. Neither did the pale guy. She set out walking and they watched her all the way.
Reacher took a step. He was six feet behind the pale guy, and six feet to the side, no doubt in the corner of his eye, but hopefully Abby was filling all of it. She kept on coming, and he took another step.
The barman called out, “Hey.”
He had been in the corner of the barman’s eye, too. Six feet behind, six feet to the side. All kinds of things happened next. Like a complex ballet. Like a triple play in baseball. The pale guy glanced back, started to get up, Reacher stepped away, toward the bar, where he grabbed the barman’s fat head in both hands, and jumped up and thrust it down and smashed it on the mahogany, like dunking a basketball from way high in the air, and he used the bounce of his landing to pivot back to the pale guy, one step, two, and he hit him with a colossal straight right, all his moving mass behind it, center of the guy’s face as he rose up from his chair, and the guy disappeared backward like he had been shot out of a cannon. He slid and sprawled on the floor, flat on his back, blood coming out of his nose and his mouth.
All five customers got up and hurried out the door. Maybe a traditional local response, in such situations. In which case Reacher applauded the habit. It left no witnesses. There were blood and teeth on the bar top, but the barman himself had fallen backward out of sight.
“I guess he didn’t watch me all the way,” Abby said.
“I told you,” Reacher said. “He’s an asshole.”
They crouched next to the pale guy and took his gun and his phone and his car key and what looked like about eight thousand dollars from his pockets. His nose was badly busted. He was breathing through his mouth. Flecks of blood were bubbling at the corners of his lips. Reacher remembered him tapping his glittering head with his bone-white finger. Some kind of a threatening implication. He thought, how the mighty are fallen.
He said, “Yes or no?”
Abby was quiet a beat.
Then she said, “Yes.”
Reacher clamped his palm over the guy’s mouth. Hard to keep it there, because it was slippery with blood. But he prevailed. The guy wasted time scrabbling for his pocket, looking for his gun, which was no longer there, and then he wasted the rest of his life drumming his heels and clawing uselessly at Reacher’s wrist. Eventually he went limp, and then still.
* * *
—
They took the pale guy’s Lincoln, because its trunk was empty. It rode much better. They drove downtown and parked on a hydrant around a corner from the Shevicks’ hotel. Abby checked the new phone. No new texts. Nothing since the conspiracy theory from Gregory.
“Was it from his own number?” Reacher asked.
Abby compared it with previous texts.
“I guess,” she said. “It isn’t the usual number.”
“We should call him again. Keep him updated.”
Abby dabbed a shortcut from the text screen and put the phone on speaker. They heard it ring. They heard it answered. Gregory said a word, short and urgent, probably not hello. Probably shoot, or yes, or what.
“Speak English,” Reacher said.
“You.”
“You just lost two more. I’m coming for you, Gregory.”
“Who are you?”
“Not from Kiev.”
“Then from where?”
“The 110th Special MP.”
“What is that?”
“You’ll find out, pretty soon.”
“What do you want from me?”
“You made a mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“You crossed a line. So get ready. Payback time is here.”
“You’re American.”
“As apple pie.”
Gregory paused a long moment. No doubt thinking. No doubt about his wide network of bribes paid, and palms greased, and backs scratched, and favors owed, and hair-trigger early warning tripwires carefully set in place. Any or all of which should have alerted him long ago. But he had heard nothing. From anywhere.
“You’re not a cop,” he said. “You’re not a government man. You’re on your own. Aren’t you?”
“Which I’m sure will make it all the harder for you to take, when your organization is in ruins, and all your men are dead, except for you, because you’re the last one alive, and then I step in through the door.”
“You won’t get near me.”
“How am I doing so far?”
No answer.
“Get ready,” Reacher said. “I’m coming for you.”
Then he clicked off the call and threw the phone out the window. They drove on, around the corner, and they parked in a ten-minute bay outside the Shevicks’ hotel.
Chapter 42
Reacher and Abby rode the elevator up to the Shevicks’ floor, which was low to medium by New York or Chicago standards, but by local standards it was probably the highest point for a hundred miles around. They found the right door. Maria Shevick looked at them through the peephole, and let them in. The room was a suite. It had a separate living room. It was bright and fresh and new and clean. There were two huge floor to ceiling windows, set at a right angle in the corner. It was early afternoon and the sun was high and the air was clear. The view was spectacular. The city lay spread out below. Like the hotel map Reacher had studied, now come to life.
Abby unveiled the money. The banded ten grand from the charnel house in back of the lumber yard, and close to eight from the moneylending bar. So much it thumped and bounced on the table, and some of it fluttered to the floor. The Shevicks practically laughed with joy. Today’s problem solved. Aaron decided he would pay it in at the bank, and then send a wire to the hospital in the normal businesslike way. A last shred of dignity. Abby offered to walk with him, to the downtown branch. Just for the company. No other reason. No need for one. By that point Aaron was walking much better, and east of Center was now safe as houses. So just for fun. They left together, and Reacher went back to the windows. Back to the view. Maria sat on a narrow sofa behind him.