by Child, Lee
At that moment Reacher was four streets away, in the front parlour 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 afterwards 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 any more. 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.
TWENTY-TWO
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?’
‘They were doing an address check.’
‘On Aaron Shevick. And who was observed flirting with the waitress outside of whose house two more guys just disappeared?’
‘Aaron Shevick.’
‘No such thing as a coincidence.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Someone is paying him. To set you and Dino at each other’s throat. So that we destroy each other. So the someone can take over.’
‘Who?’
‘Shevick will tell us. When we find him.’
The Albanians hauled the smoking wreck to the crusher, and then they started asking around. The inner council. The top boys. Unused to legwork. Their question was fairly simple. Did you see a two-vehicle convoy, one of which was a Lincoln Town Car? No one lied to them. They were pretty sure about that. Folks had seen what happened to people who lied to them. Instead everyone racked their brains. But results were disappointing. Partly because the concept of the convoy was sometimes hard to grasp. During rush hour, for instance, there were no two-car convoys. There were hundred-and-two-car convoys. Anywhere downtown, at the best of times, maybe twenty-two-car. Who knew which two were the convoy in question? People didn’t want to give the wrong answer. Not when the top boys were asking.
So a different way was found, to ask the same question. It was quickly agreed that among the traffic there had been a handful of black Lincolns. Probably six in total. Three of them had been the fat-ass kind the Ukrainians drove. The top boys encouraged detailed descriptions of what had been in front of each of them, and what had been behind. There was a two-car convoy in there somewhere.
Three separate witnesses remembered a small white sedan with a hanging-off front fender. In each report it was ahead of one particular Lincoln, which seemed attentive to its lane changes and such, definitely as if following it. Coming out of the west of the city, heading east.
The two-car convoy.
The small white sedan was maybe a Honda. Or the other H. Hyundai. Or maybe Kia. Was there another new brand? Or maybe it wasn’t a new brand at all, because it was a pretty old car. Could have been a Toyota. Yes, that was it. A Toyota Corolla. Poverty spec. That was the final conclusion. All three witnesses agreed.
No one had seen it leave.
The top boys put the word out. All eyes open. An old white Toyota Corolla sedan, with a hanging-off front fender. Report back immediately.
By that point it was late in the afternoon, which was a respectable time for musicians to start their day. Hogan warmed up with a steady 4/4 beat, hi-hat working, ride cymbal ticking. Barton plugged in a battered Fender and turned on his amp, buzzing and humming. He laid down a line, looping and sinuous, staying firmly in the pocket with the kick drum, coming home on the two and the four, launching again on the one of the new measure. Reacher and Abby listened for a spell, and then went to find the guest room.
It was upstairs at the front of the house, a small space over the street door, with a round window made of wavy glass that could have been a hundred years old. The Toyota was directly below. The bed was a queen. The night table was an old guitar amplifier tipped up on its end. There was no closet. There was a row of brass hooks instead, screwed to the wall. The thump of the drums and the bass roared up through the floor.
‘Not as nice as your place,’ Reacher said. ‘I’m sorry.’
Abby didn’t answer.
Reacher said, ‘I asked the guys in the Lincoln where Trulenko was. They didn’t know. So then I asked their opinion about a smart first place to look. They said where he works.’
‘Does he work?’
‘Got to admit, I hadn’t thought of it that way.’
‘Maybe in exchange for hiding him. Maybe there’s no money left after all. Maybe he’s working his passage.’
‘That would be a drag,’ Reacher said.
‘Why else would he work?’
‘Maybe he was getting bored.’
‘Possible.’
‘What kind of work would he do?’
‘Nothing physical,’ Abby said. ‘He looked like a pretty small guy. His picture was in the paper all the time. He was young but his hair was going and he wore eyeglasses. He won’t be breaking rocks in a quarry. He’ll be in an office somewhere. Organizing data systems or something. That’s what he was good at. His new product was an app on your phone that linked your vital signs direct to your doctor. In real time, just in case. Or something like that. Or maybe your watch linked to your phone, and then to the doctor. No one really understood it. But anyway, Trulenko is a desk guy. A thinker.’
‘So he’s in an office somewhere on the west side of the city. With accommodations either very close by, or integrated. With security. Maybe an underground bunker. With a single bottleneck entrance, heavily defended. No one gets in or out except for known and trusted faces.’
‘Therefore you can’t get near him.’
‘I agree there will be an element of challenge.’
‘More like impossible.’
‘No such word.’
‘How big of a place would it be?’
‘I don’t know,’ Reacher said. ‘A couple dozen people, maybe. Or more. Or less. Some kind of nerve centre. Where they send all the texts. You said they were good with technology.’
‘There can’t be many suitable locations.’
‘See?’ Reacher said. ‘We’re making progress already.’
‘No point, if the money is gone.’
‘His employers will have some. I never met a poor gangster.’
‘The Shevicks can’t sue Trulenko’s new-found employers. They were nothing to do with it. It’s not their fault.’
‘By that po
int the spirit of the law might feel more important than the letter.’
‘You would steal it?’
Reacher moved to the window and looked down.
‘The capo over there is a guy named Gregory,’ he said. ‘I would ask him to consider it a charitable donation. For a hard-luck story I heard about. I could deploy a number of arguments. I’m sure he would agree. And if he’s profiting from Trulenko’s labour in some way, then it’s almost the same thing as taking Trulenko’s own money anyway.’
Abby got a faraway look in her eyes, and she put her hand up to her cheek, as if automatically.
‘I heard of Gregory,’ she said. ‘Never met him. Never even saw him.’
‘How did you hear about him?’
She didn’t answer. Just shook her head.
He said, ‘What happened to you?’
‘Who says anything did?’
‘You just saw two dead bodies. Now I’m talking about threatening people and stealing their money. I’m that kind of guy. We’re standing by a double bed. Most women would be edging out the door by now. You’re not. You really, really don’t like these people. Must be a reason.’
‘Maybe I really like you.’
‘I live in hope,’ Reacher said. ‘But I’m realistic.’
‘I’ll tell you later,’ she said. ‘Maybe.’
‘OK.’
‘What now?’
‘We should go get your bag. And we should go move your car. I don’t want it parked right outside. They already saw it at the Shevick house. Someone else might have seen it driving in today. We should go put it somewhere random. Always safer that way.’
‘How long will we have to live like this?’
‘I live like this all the time. I would have been pushing up daisies long ago if I didn’t.’
‘Frank said I can’t ever go home again.’
‘And Hogan saw how you could.’
‘If you get Trulenko.’
‘Six chances before the week is over.’
They went downstairs again into the deep bass groove, and onward out to the car. Abby wrestled her bag off the rear seat and hauled it back to the hallway. They closed the door on it and got in the car. It started second time and dragged its fender on the tight turn out of its boxed-in slot. They drove a random zigzag route, through different parts of the neighbourhood, some of them shabbily residential, some of them commercial, including two full blocks dedicated to the construction trade, including an electrical warehouse, and a plumbing warehouse, and a lumber yard. Then came progressive stages of decay, all the way to abandoned blocks just like the place where the Lincoln had burned.
‘Here?’ Abby asked.
Reacher looked all around. Desolation everywhere. No owners, no occupants, no residents. No innocent doors to get busted down, if the car was spotted nearby. No risk of collateral damage.
‘Works for me,’ he said.
She parked and they got out and she locked up and they walked away. They went back more or less the same way they had come, cutting the corners off some of the widest zigs and zags of their earlier random route, but always keeping track of it. Their surroundings grew cleaner and better maintained. They came to the blocks dedicated to the construction trade. First up in the reverse direction came the lumber yard. There was a guy standing in the scoop between the sidewalk and the gate. Somewhat sentry-like. Maybe there to check loads in and out. Presumably lumber got scammed and stolen like anything else.
They passed the guy by and walked on, to the plumbing warehouse, the electrical warehouse, and onward, through a tangle of streets. They heard the bass and drums a hundred yards away.
The reports came in fast, but not fast enough. One after the other the members of the inner council got hurried calls on their cell phones. An old white Toyota Corolla with a half-off front fender had been seen driving one block, then another, then another. No rhyme or reason in terms of direction. No obvious destination. Generally it seemed to be headed towards the tumbledown neighbourhoods where not even homeless people lived.
Then came the paydirt call. A reliable guy a hundred yards away saw the car slow, stop, and park. Two people got out. The driver was a small woman with short dark hair. In her twenties or thirties, and dressed all in black. Her passenger was a huge guy, about twice her size. He was older, easily six-five and two-fifty, built like a brick outhouse, and dressed like a refugee. They locked the car and walked away together, and were lost to sight very quickly, after the first corner they turned.
All that information was shared immediately, by calls and voicemails and texts. Fast, but not fast enough. The message got to the guy at the lumber yard gate about ninety seconds after a small dark-haired woman and a huge ugly guy had walked right past. Close enough to touch. More minutes were spent getting cars together, and then they streamed away in the direction the couple had been walking.
No result. The small woman and the big man were long gone. They had disappeared somewhere in a crowded residential neighbourhood, maybe ten blocks by ten of shabby row houses packed tightly together. Maybe four hundred separate addresses. Plus basements and sublets. Full of deadbeats and weirdos, who either came and went at all hours, or never went out at all. Hopeless.
The top boys put a new word out. All eyes open. A small dark-haired woman, younger, and a big ugly guy, older. Report back immediately.
TWENTY-THREE
Neither Barton nor Hogan had a gig that night, so they closed down their jam when Reacher and Abby got back, and proposed a chill evening in, maybe with Chinese delivery, maybe a bottle of wine, maybe a little weed, some conversation, some stories, some catch-up. Maybe put some records on. All good, until Abby’s cell phone rang.
It was Maria Shevick, calling from Aaron Shevick’s phone. She and Abby had exchanged numbers. Just in case. And this felt like a just-in-case situation. Maria said a black Lincoln Town Car was parked outside her house. Two guys in it, watching. They had been there all afternoon. They looked like they were set to stay.
Abby passed her phone to Reacher.
He said, ‘They’re looking for me. Because I mentioned Trulenko. They got worried. Just ignore them.’
Maria asked, ‘Suppose they knock on the door?’
Seventy, stooped, and starving.
He said, ‘Let them search the house. Show them whatever they want to look at. They’ll see I’m not there, and they’ll go back to their car, and after that all they’ll need to do is watch the sidewalk. Should be relatively painless.’
‘Very well.’
‘Any news on Meg?’
‘Good and bad,’ Maria said.
‘Start with the good,’ Reacher said.
‘I think for the first time the doctors truly believe she’s improving. I can hear it in their voices. Not what they say, but the way they say it. Their words are always circumspect. But now they’re excited. They think they’re winning. I can tell.’
‘What’s the bad news?’
‘They’ll want to confirm it with tests and scans. Which we’ll have to pay for first.’
‘How much?’
‘We don’t know yet. A lot, I’m sure. They have amazing machines now. There have been dramatic advances in soft tissue analysis. It’s all very expensive.’
‘When will they need it?’
‘Obviously half of me wants it to be as soon as possible. And obviously the other half doesn’t.’
‘You should do what is right medically. We’ll figure out the rest as we go along.’
‘We can’t borrow it,’ Maria said. ‘You would have to do it for us, because they think you’re Aaron Shevick. But now, for you, that would be a trap. Because you asked about Trulenko.’
‘Aaron could borrow it under my name. Or any name. They’re new at this game. They have no system for checking. Not yet, anyway. It’s an option. If you need it fast.’
‘You said you could find Trulenko. You said it used to be part of your job.’
‘The question is when,’ Reach
er said. ‘I figured I had six chances before the week is over. Now maybe not so many. I need to work on a faster plan.’
‘I apologize for my tone.’
‘No need,’ Reacher said.
‘This is all very stressful.’
‘I can only imagine,’ Reacher said.
They hung up and Reacher passed the phone back to Abby.
Barton said, ‘This is crazy, man. I’m going to keep on saying it, because it’s going to keep on being true. I know those people. I play their clubs. I’ve seen what they do. One time, there was a piano player they didn’t like. They smashed his fingers with a hammer. The guy never played again. You can’t take them on.’
Reacher looked at Hogan and asked, ‘Do you play their clubs?’
‘I’m a drummer,’ Hogan said. ‘I play anywhere they pay me.’
‘Have you seen what they do?’
‘I agree with Frank. These are not pleasant people.’
‘What would the Marine Corps do about them?’
‘Nothing. The pointy-heads would hand them off to the SEALs. Much more glamorous. The Corps wouldn’t get a sniff.’
‘What would the SEALs do?’
‘A lot of planning first. With maps and blueprints. If we’re assuming a hardened bunker of some kind, they would look for emergency exits, or delivery bays, or incursions by ventilation shafts or water pipes or sewers, and places where they could gain access by demolition of walls between adjacent structures. Then they would plan simultaneous assaults from everywhere they could, at least three or four places, with three- or four-man teams in each location. Which would probably get the job done, except it might be hard to keep any single person of interest alive. There would be a lot of crossfire. It would depend on dimensions and visibility.’
Reacher asked, ‘What were you, in the Corps?’
‘Infantry,’ Hogan said. ‘Just a plain old jarhead.’
‘Not a bandsman?’
‘That would have been too logical for the Corps.’
‘Were you always a drummer?’
