There was nobody else around. The boy was on his own. Reacher stepped into the alley. The way to do it is to walk fast and focus on something way beyond your target. Make the guy feel like he’s got nothing to do with anything. Reacher made a show of checking his watch and glancing far ahead into the distance. He hustled along, almost running. At the last minute, he dropped his gaze to the car, like he was suddenly dragged back into the present by the obstacle. The boy was watching him. Reacher dodged left, where he knew the angle of the car wouldn’t let him through. He pulled up in exasperation and dodged right, turning with the pent-up fury of a hurrying man balked by a nuisance. He swung his left arm with the turn and hit the kid square in the side of the head. The kid toppled and he hit him again, right-handed, just a short-arm jab, relatively gentle. No reason to put him in the hospital.
He let him fall off the trunk lid unaided, to see how far away he’d put him. A conscious person will always break his fall. This kid didn’t. He hit the alley floor with a dusty thump. Reacher rolled him over and checked his pockets. There was a gun in there, but it wasn’t the sort of thing he was going to bear home in triumph. It was a Chinese .22, some imitation of a Soviet imitation of something that was probably useless to start with. He pitched it out of reach under the car.
He knew the back door of the tenement would be unlocked, because that’s the point of a back door when you’re doing a roaring trade about 150 yards south of Police Plaza. They come in the front, you need to be able to get out the back without fumbling for the key. He inched it open with his toe and stood gazing into the gloom. There was an inner door off the back hallway, leading to the right, into a room with a light on inside. It was about ten paces away.
No point in waiting. They weren’t about to take a dinner break. He walked ahead ten paces and stopped at the door. The building stank of decay and sweat and urine. It was quiet. An abandoned building. He listened. There was a low voice inside the room. Then an answer to it. Two people, minimum.
Swinging the door open and standing and taking stock of the scene inside is not the way to do it. The guy who pauses even for a millisecond is the guy who dies earlier than his classmates. Reacher’s guess was the tenement was maybe fifteen feet wide, of which three were represented by the hallway he was standing in. So he aimed to be the other twelve feet into the room before they even knew he was there. They would still be looking at the door, wondering who else was coming in after him.
He took a breath and burst through the door like it wasn’t there at all. It crashed back against the hinge and he was across the room in two huge strides. Dim light. A single electric bulb. Two men. Packages on the table. Money on the table. A handgun on the table. He hit the first guy a wide swinging roundhouse blow square on the temple. The guy fell sideways and Reacher drove through him with a knee in the gut on his way back to the second man, who was coming up out of his chair with his eyes wide and his mouth open in shock. Reacher aimed high and smacked him with a forearm smash exactly horizontal between his eyebrows and his hairline. Do it hard enough, and the guy goes down for an hour, but his skull stays in one piece. This was supposed to be a shopping trip, not an execution.
He stood still and listened through the door. Nothing. The guy in the alley was sleeping and the noise on the street was occupying the kids on the sidewalk. He glanced at the table and glanced away again, because the handgun lying there was a Colt Detective Special. A six-shot, .38-caliber revolver in blued steel with black plastic grips. Stubby little two-inch barrel. No good at all. Nowhere near the sort of thing he was looking for. The short barrel was a drawback, and the caliber was a disappointment. He remembered a Louisiana cop he’d met, a police captain from some small jurisdiction out in the bayou. The guy had come to the military police for firearms advice and Reacher had been detailed to deal with him. The guy had all kinds of tales of woe about the .38-caliber revolvers his men were using. He said you just can’t rely on them to put a guy down, not if he’s coming at you all pumped up on angel dust. He told a story about a suicide. The guy needed five shots to the head with a .38 to put himself away. Reacher had been impressed by the guy’s unhappy face and he had decided then and there to stay away from .38s, which was a policy he was not about to change now. So he turned his back on the table and stood still and listened again. Nothing. He squatted next to the guy he’d hit in the head and started through his jacket.
The busiest dealers make the most money, and the most money buys the best toys, which was why he was in this building, and not in one of the slower rivals up or down the street. He found exactly what he wanted in the guy’s left-hand inner pocket. Something a whole lot better than a puny .38 Detective Special. It was a big black automatic, a Steyr GB, a handsome nine-millimeter which had been a big favorite of his Special Forces friends through most of his career. He pulled it out and checked it over. The magazine had all eighteen shells in it and the chamber smelled like it had never been fired. He pulled the trigger and watched the mechanism move. Then he reassembled the gun and jammed it under his belt in the small of his back and smiled. Stayed down next to the unconscious guy and whispered, “I’ll buy your Steyr for a buck. Just shake your head if you’ve got a problem with that, OK?”
Then he smiled again and stood up. Peeled a dollar bill off his roll and left it weighted down on the tabletop under the Detective Special. Stepped back to the hallway. All quiet. He made the ten paces to the back and came out into the light. Checked left and right up and down the alley and stepped over to the parked sedan. Opened the driver’s door and found the lever and popped the trunk. There was a black nylon sports bag in there, empty. A small cardboard box of nine-millimeter reloads under a tangle of red and black jump leads. He put the ammunition in the bag and walked away with it. The pizza was waiting for him when he arrived back on Broadway.
IT WAS SUDDEN. It happened without warning. As soon as they were inside and the door was closed, the man hit Sheryl, a vicious backhand blow to the face with whatever was inside his empty sleeve. Marilyn was frozen with shock. She saw the man twisting violently and the hook swinging through its glittering arc and she heard the wet crunch as his arm hit Sheryl’s face and she clamped both hands over her mouth as if it were somehow vitally important she didn’t scream. She saw the man spinning back toward her and reaching up under his right armpit and coming out with a gun in his left hand. She saw Sheryl going over backward and sprawling on the rug, right where it was still damp from the steam cleaning. She saw the gun arcing at her along the exact same radius he had used before, but in the reverse direction, coming straight at her. The gun was made of dark metal, gray, dewed with oil. It was dull, but it shone. It stopped level with her chest, and she stared down at its color, and all she could think was: that’s what they mean when they say gunmetal.
“Step closer,” the man said.
She was paralyzed. Her hands were clamped to her face and her eyes were open so wide she thought the skin on her face would tear.
“Closer,” the man said again.
She stared down at Sheryl. She was struggling up on her elbows. Her eyes were crossed and blood was running from her nose. Her top lip was swelling and the blood was dripping off her chin. Her knees were up and her skirt was rucked. She could see her panty hose change from thin to thick at the top. Her breathing was ragged. Then her elbows gave way again and slid forward and her knees splayed out. Her head hit the floor with a soft thump and rolled sideways.
“Step closer,” the man said.
She stared at his face. It was rigid. The scars looked like hard plastic. One eye was hooded under an eyelid as thick and coarse as a thumb. The other was cold and unblinking. She stared at the gun. It was a foot away from her chest. Not moving. The hand that held it was smooth. The nails were manicured. She stepped forward a quarter step.
“Closer.”
She slid her feet forward until the gun was touching the fabric of her dress. She felt the hardness and the coldness of the gray metal through the thin s
ilk.
“Closer.”
She stared at him. His face was a foot away from hers. On the left the skin was gray and lined. The good eye was webbed with lines. The right eye blinked. The eyelid was slow and heavy. It went down, then up, deliberately, like a machine. She leaned forward an inch. The gun pressed into her breast.
“Closer.”
She moved her feet. He answered with matching pressure on the gun. The metal was pressing hard into the softness of her flesh. It was crushing her breast. The silk was yielding into a deep crater. It was pulling her nipple sideways. It was hurting her. The man raised his right arm. The hook. He held it up in front of her eyes. It was a plain steel curve, rubbed and polished until it shone. He rotated it slowly, with an awkward movement of his forearm. She heard leather inside his sleeve. The tip of the hook was machined to a point. He rotated the tip away and laid the flat of the curve against her forehead. She flinched. It was cold. He scraped it down her forehead and traced the curve of her nose. In under her nose. He pressed it against her top lip. Brought it down and in and pressed until her mouth opened. He tapped it gently against her teeth. It caught on her bottom lip, because her lip was dry. He dragged her lip down with the steel until the soft rubbery flesh pulled free. He traced over the curve of her chin. Down under her chin to her throat. Up again an inch, and back, under the shelf of her jaw, until he was forcing her head up with the strength in his shoulder. He stared into her eyes.
“My name is Hobie,” he said.
She was up on tiptoes, trying to take the weight off her throat. She was starting to gag. She couldn’t remember taking a breath since she had opened the door.
“Did Chester mention me?”
Her head was tilting upward. She was staring at the ceiling. The gun was digging into her breast. It was no longer cold. The heat of her body had warmed it. She shook her head, a small urgent motion, balanced on the pressure of the hook.
“He didn’t mention me?”
“No,” she gasped. “Why? Should he have?”
“Is he a secretive man?”
She shook her head again. The same small urgent motion, side to side, the skin of her throat snagging left and right against the metal.
“Did he tell you about his business problems?”
She blinked. Shook her head again.
“So he is a secretive man.”
“I guess,” she gasped. “But I knew anyway.”
“Does he have a girlfriend?”
She blinked again. Shook her head.
“How can you be sure?” Hobie asked. “If he’s a secretive man?”
“What do you want?” she gasped.
“But I guess he doesn’t need a girlfriend. You’re a very beautiful woman.”
She blinked again. She was up on her toes. The Gucci heels were off the ground.
“I just paid you a compliment,” Hobie said. “Oughtn’t you say something in response? Politely?”
He increased the pressure. The steel dug into the flesh of her throat. One foot came free of the ground.
“Thank you,” she gasped.
The hook eased down. Her eye line came back to the horizontal and her heels touched the rug. She realized she was breathing. She was panting, in and out, in and out.
“A very beautiful woman.”
He dropped the hook away from her throat. It touched her waist. Traced down over the curve of her hip. Down over her thigh. He was staring at her face. The gun was jammed hard in her flesh. The hook turned, and the flat face of the curve lifted off her thigh, leaving just the point behind. It traced downward. She felt it slide off the silk onto her bare leg. It was sharp. Not like a needle. Like a pencil point. It stopped moving. It started back up. He was pressing with it, gently. It wasn’t cutting her. She knew that. But it was furrowing against the firmness of her skin. It moved up. It slid under the silk. She felt the metal on the skin of her thigh. It moved up. She could feel the silk of her dress bunching and gathering in the radius of the hook. The hook moved up. The back of the hem was sliding up the backs of her legs. Sheryl stirred on the floor. The hook stopped moving and Hobie’s awful right eye swiveled slowly across and down.
“Put your hand in my pocket,” he said.
She stared at him.
“Your left hand,” he said. “My right pocket.”
She had to move closer and reach over and down between his arms. Her face was close to his. He smelled of soap. She felt around to his pocket. Darted her fingers inside and closed them over a small cylinder. Slid it out. It was a used roll of duct tape, an inch in diameter. Silver. Maybe five yards remaining. Hobie stepped away from her.
“Tape Sheryl’s wrists together,” he said.
She wriggled her hips to make the hem of her dress fall down into place. He watched her do it and smiled. She glanced between the roll of silver tape and Sheryl, down on the floor.
“Turn her over,” he said.
The light from the window was catching the gun. She knelt next to Sheryl. Pulled on one shoulder and pushed on the other until she flopped over on her front.
“Put her elbows together,” he said.
She hesitated. He raised the gun a fraction, and then the hook, arms wide, a display of superior weaponry. She grimaced. Sheryl stirred again. Her blood had pooled on the rug. It was brown and sticky. Marilyn used both hands and forced her elbows together, behind her back. Hobie looked down.
“Get them real close,” he said.
She picked at the tape with her nail and got a length free. Wrapped it around and around Sheryl’s forearms, just below her elbows.
“Tight,” he said. “All the way up.”
She wound the tape around and around, up above her elbows and down to her wrists. Sheryl was stirring and struggling.
“OK, sit her up,” Hobie said.
She dragged her into a sitting position with her taped arms behind her. Her face was masked in blood. Her nose was swollen, going blue. Her lips were puffy.
“Put tape on her mouth,” Hobie said.
She used her teeth and bit off a six-inch length. Sheryl was blinking and focusing. Marilyn shrugged unhappily at her, like a helpless apology, and stuck the tape over her mouth. It was thick tape, with tough reinforcing threads baked into the silver plastic coating. It was shiny, but not slippery, because of the raised crisscross threads. She rubbed her fingers side to side across them to make it stick. Sheryl’s nose started bubbling and her eyes opened wide in panic.
“God, she can’t breathe,” Marilyn gasped.
She went to rip the tape off again, but Hobie kicked her hand away.
“You broke her nose,” Marilyn said. “She can’t breathe.”
The gun was pointing down at her head. Held steady. Eighteen inches away.
“She’s going to die,” Marilyn said.
“That’s for damn sure,” Hobie said back.
She stared up at him in horror. Blood was rasping and bubbling in Sheryl’s fractured airways. Her eyes were staring in panic. Her chest was heaving. Hobie’s eyes were on Marilyn’s face.
“You want me to be nice?” he asked.
She nodded wildly.
“Are you going to be nice back?”
She stared at her friend. Her chest was convulsing, heaving for air that wasn’t there. Her head was shaking from side to side. Hobie leaned down and turned the hook so the point was rasping across the tape on Sheryl’s mouth as her head jerked back and forth. Then he jabbed hard and forced the point through the silver. Sheryl froze. Hobie moved his arm, left and right, up and down. Pulled the hook back out. There was a ragged hole left in the tape, with air whistling in and out. The tape sucked and blew against her lips as Sheryl gasped and panted.
“I was nice,” Hobie said. “So now you owe me, OK?”
Sheryl’s breathing was sucking hard through the hole in the tape. She was concentrating on it. Her eyes were squinting down, like she was confirming there was air in front of her to use. Marilyn was watching her, sitting b
ack on her heels, cold with terror.
“Help her to the car,” Hobie said.
10
CHESTER STONE WAS alone in the bathroom on the eighty-eighth floor. Tony had forced him to go in there. Not physically. He had just stood there and pointed silently, and Stone had scuttled across the carpet in his undershirt and shorts, with his dark socks and polished shoes on his feet. Then Tony had lowered his arm and stopped pointing and told him to stay in there and closed the door on him. There had been muffled sounds out in the office, and after a few minutes the two men must have left, because Stone heard doors shutting and the nearby whine of the elevator. Then it had gone dark and silent.
He sat on the bathroom floor with his back against the gray granite tiling, staring into the silence. The bathroom door was not locked. He knew that. There had been no fiddling or clicking when the door closed. He was cold. The floor was hard tile, and the chill was striking up through the thin cotton of his boxers. He started shivering. He was hungry, and thirsty.
He listened carefully. Nothing. He eased himself up off the floor and stepped to the sink. Turned the faucet and listened again over the trickle of water. Nothing. He bent his head and drank. His teeth touched the metal of the faucet and he tasted the chlorine taste of city water. He held a mouthful unswallowed and let it soak into his dry tongue. Then he gulped it down and turned the faucet off.
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