Blue Moon

by Lee Child

  “Then maybe he’s an ex-cop or ex-FBI and Dino hired him to mess with us.”

  “No,” Gregory said again. “Same as the new commissioner. Dino wouldn’t hire outside help. He doesn’t trust anyone enough. Like we don’t.”

  “Then who is he?”

  “He’s a guy who borrowed money and then asked about Max. Which I agree is an odd combination.”

  “What do you want to do about him?”

  “Watch the house you found,” Gregory said. “If he lives there, he’ll show up sooner or later.”

  * * *

  —

  Abby kept her seat belt on. Reacher took his off. He braced his palm against the dash. She put the gear stick in first.

  “Ready?” she said.

  “Walking speed,” he said. “It’s going to seem awful fast when you get there. But don’t slow down. Maybe better to close your eyes for the last bit.”

  She pulled away from the curb and rolled down the street.

  Chapter 20

  Walking speed was customarily reckoned to be about three miles an hour, which was about two hundred seventy feet a minute, so it took the battered white Toyota twenty whole agonizing seconds to close the gap on the parked Lincoln. Abby lined it up and took a nervous breath and held it and closed her eyes. The Toyota rolled on unchecked and smacked hard into the Lincoln’s back bumper. Walking speed, but still a big noisy impact. Abby was thrown forward against her belt. Reacher used both hands on the dash. The Lincoln bucked forward a foot. The Toyota bounced backward a foot. Reacher stumbled out, one fast pace, two, three, straight ahead to the Lincoln’s rear right-hand door. He grabbed the handle.

  The safety doo-dad had done its work.

  The door opened. There were two guys inside. Elbow to elbow in the front, belts off, reclined, recently comfortable, now a little shaken up and bounced around. Their heads had come to rest on their seat backs, which made them waist-high to Reacher as he slid in behind them, which made them easy to grab, one in each palm, which made them easy to crash together like the guy in back of the orchestra with the cymbals. And again, after a little more bouncing around, and then ramrod straight forward, the left-hand guy into the rim of the steering wheel, and the right-hand guy into the dashboard roll above the glove box.

  Then it was both hands inside their suit coats, leaning over their shoulders from the rear compartment, searching, finding leather straps, and shoulder holsters, and pistols, which he took. He found nothing more in their waistbands, and, leaning all the way forward, he found nothing more strapped around their ankles.

  He sat back. The pistols were H&K P7s. German police issue. Beautifully engineered. Almost delicate. But also steely and hard edged. Therefore manly.

  Reacher said, “Wake up now, guys.”

  He waited. Through the window he saw Abby step through her door, into her house.

  “Wake up, guys,” he said again.

  And they did, soon enough. They came back groggy and blinking, looking around, trying to piece it together.

  Reacher said, “Here’s the deal. There’s an incentive attached. You’re going to drive me east. Along the way I’m going to ask you questions. If you lie to me, I’ll feed you to the Albanians when we get there. If you tell me the truth, I’ll get out and walk away and let you turn around and drive home again unharmed. That’s the incentive. Take it or leave it. Are we clear?”

  He saw Abby come out of her house, with a bulging bag. She heaved it across the sidewalk to her car. She dumped it in the back. She got in the front.

  Inside the Lincoln the guy behind the wheel clutched his head and said, “Are you crazy? I can’t even see straight. I can’t drive you anywhere now.”

  “No such word,” Reacher said. “My advice is try very hard.”

  He buzzed down his window and stuck his arm out and signaled Abby to go ahead and pull around and lead the way. He watched her hesitant maneuver. The Toyota’s front fender was no longer horizontal. It was hanging down diagonally, way lower than it should have been. The passenger-side corner was about an inch away from scraping on the blacktop. Maybe two electrical ties would be required. Possibly three.

  “Follow that car,” he said.

  The guy behind the Lincoln’s wheel took off as clumsy as a first-timer. Beside him his partner craned around as far as a cricked neck would let him, and he looked out the corner of his eye, straight at Reacher.

  Who said nothing. Up ahead the battered white Toyota was making good progress. Heading east on the cross streets. The Lincoln followed behind it. The guy at the wheel got better at driving. Much smoother.

  Reacher said, “Where is Max Trulenko?”

  At first neither one of them spoke. Then the guy with the bad neck said, “You’re a lousy cheat.”

  “How so?” Reacher said.

  “What our own people would do to us if we told you Trulenko’s location is worse than anything the Albanians could do to us. Which makes it a phony choice. It’s not an incentive. Plus we’re guys who sit in cars and watch doors. You think they would tell folks like us where Trulenko is? So the truthful answer is, we don’t know. Which you will say is a lie. Which makes it another phony choice, not an incentive. So do what you got to do. Just spare us the pious bullshit along the way.”

  “But you know who Trulenko is.”

  “Of course we do.”

  “And you know someone is hiding him somewhere.”

  “No comment.”

  “But you don’t know where.”

  “No comment.”

  “If your life depended on it, where would you look?”

  The guy with the neck didn’t answer. Then the driver’s cell phone rang. In his pocket. A jaunty little marimba tune, plinking away, over and over, muffled. Reacher thought about coded warnings and secret SOS alerts, and he said, “Don’t answer it.”

  The driver said, “They’ll come looking for us.”

  “Who will?”

  “They’ll send a couple of guys.”

  “Like you two? Now I’m really scared.”

  No answer. The phone stopped.

  Reacher asked, “What’s your boss’s name?”

  “Our boss?”

  “Not the boss of sitting in cars watching doors. The top boy. The capo di tutti capi.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Italian,” Reacher said. “The boss of all bosses.”

  No response. Not at first. They glanced at each other, as if trying to share a mute decision. How far could they go? On the one hand, omerta. Also Italian. A code of absolute silence. A code to live by, and to die for. On the other hand, they were currently in deep trouble. Personally and individually. In the real world, in the here and now. Dying for a code was all well and good in theory. In practice things were different. Right then number one on their to-do list was not honorable or glorious sacrifice, but living long enough to drive home afterward.

  The guy with the neck said, “Gregory.”

  “That’s his name?”

  “In English.”

  Then they glanced at each other again. Different looks. Some new discussion.

  “How long have you been over here?” Reacher asked. Because he wanted them back on track. Because answering questions eventually became a habit. Start with the easy ones, and work up to the hard ones. A basic interrogation technique. Again the two guys shared a glance, seeking each other’s permission. On the one hand, and on the other hand.

  “Eight years we have been here,” the driver said.

  “Your English is pretty good.”

  “Thank you.”

  Then the other guy’s phone rang. The guy with the neck. Also in his pocket. Equally muffled, but a different tone. A digital reproduction of an old-fashioned electric telephone bell, like in the moneylending bar, on the wall behind the f
at guy, a long muted mournful peal, and then another.

  “Don’t answer it,” Reacher said.

  “They can track us with them,” the guy said.

  “Doesn’t matter. They can’t react quickly enough. My guess is two minutes from now all this will be over. You’ll be heading home anyway.”

  A third muffled peal, and a fourth.

  “Or not,” Reacher said. “Maybe two minutes from now the Albanians will have you. Either way it’s going to happen fast.”

  Up ahead the Toyota slowed and pulled in at the curb. The Lincoln stopped behind it. On a block with old brick buildings and old brick sidewalks and old bricks showing under pocked blacktop on the street. Two thirds of the buildings were closed down and boarded up, and the open third seemed to be conducting no kind of reputable business. Some dubious place east of Center. Abby had chosen well.

  The phone stopped ringing.

  Reacher leaned way over and turned the motor off and pulled the key. He sat back. They turned to look at him. A P7 in his left hand, and the car key in his right.

  He said, “If your life depended on it, where would you look for Max Trulenko?”

  No response. More glances. Both kinds. At first apprehensive and rock-and-a-hard-place frustrated, like before, and then different. The new discussion.

  The guy with the neck said, “They’ll be suspicious of us. They’ll want to know how come we were brought all the way out here and then let go again.”

  “I agree, it’s a matter of perception.”

  “That’s the problem. They’ll assume we traded something.”

  “Tell them the truth.”

  “That would be suicide.”

  “A version of the truth,” Reacher said. “Carefully selected and curated. Some parts redacted. But all of it still absolutely true in itself. Tell them a woman came out the door you were watching, with a bag of stuff, and she got in a car, and you followed her here. Give them any address on this block. Tell them you figured if Gregory thought the house was worth watching, he would certainly like to know where the missing occupant was currently hiding out. Be a little aw-shucks about it. You’ll get a pat on the head and a gold star for initiative.”

  The driver said, “Not mention you at all?”

  “Always safer that way.”

  More glances at each other. Looking for holes in the cover story. Not finding any. Then turning back and looking at Reacher again. The gun rock steady in his left hand, the car key tiny in his right.

  He said, “Where would a sensible fellow start the search?”

  The two guys turned to the front and glanced at each other again, still apprehensive, but then a little bolder, and bolder still, as they talked themselves into it. They weren’t being asked for facts, after all. They hadn’t been trusted with facts. Not lowly people like them. They were being asked for an opinion. That was all. Where would a sensible fellow look? Pure hypothetical speculation. Third-party commentary. Just polite conversation, really. And of course flattering, to a lowly person, that his opinion was sought at all.

  Reacher watched the process. He saw the boldness build. He saw the firming of jaws, and the drawing of breaths, and the filling of lungs. Ready to talk, both physically and figuratively. But ready for something else, too. Something bad. The new discussion. Some crazy idea. It was coming off them like a smell. The fault was his own. Completely. Because of the phony choice. The guy was right. And because of the question about the capo. No doubt a scary figure, capable of terrible retributions. And because of the happy conclusion to the cover story. The pat on the head and the gold star. The wrong thing to say to frustrated, ambitious people. It got them thinking. Pats on the head and gold stars were great, but better still was promotion and status, and after eight long years best of all would be finally getting out of sitting in cars watching doors. They wanted to move up the ladder. Which they knew would take more than following a girl to an address. They would need a greater achievement.

  Capturing Aaron Shevick would qualify. Which was who they thought he was, obviously. They had gotten texts, the same as everyone. The description and the photograph. They hadn’t asked who he was. Most people would. They would say, who the hell are you? What do you want? But these guys had shown no curiosity at all. Because they already knew. He was a guy they got texts about. Therefore important. Therefore a prize. Therefore crazy ideas.

  His own fault.

  Don’t do it, he thought.

  Out loud he said, “Don’t do it.”

  The driver said, “Do what?”

  “Anything stupid.”

  They paused a beat. He guessed they would start by telling him something true. Too hard to coordinate a lie with silent glances. It would be like a teaser. It would be something that required a couple seconds of thought, and then the careful formulation of a follow-up question. All to make him momentarily preoccupied. To give them time to jump him. The guy with the neck would corkscrew over from the front and land with his chest on Reacher’s left arm, and his hips on Reacher’s right arm, whereupon the driver would come over the top and attack his undefended head. With his cell phone, edge on, if he had any sense, and no inhibitions about smashing up a precision piece of electronics. Which most people were willing to do, in Reacher’s experience, when their lives depended on it.

  Don’t do it, he thought.

  Out loud he said, “Where would you look for Max Trulenko?”

  The driver said, “Where he works, of course.”

  Reacher put a momentarily blank look on his face, but inside he was thinking of nothing, and formulating no follow-up questions. He was just waiting. Time passed in quarter-second beats, like a racing heart, at first nothing, then still nothing, then the guy with the neck launching, hard and clumsy, his arms spearing out ahead of him, his feet thrusting, his back arching, aiming to get most of his bulk beyond the point of no return, so that even if he landed on the seat back gravity would do the rest of his work for him, dumping him into Reacher’s lap, in an undignified but equally effective manner.

  He didn’t get to the point of no return.

  Reacher jammed the gun against the seat back and shot the guy through the upholstery. Then he repelled the falling corpse with his elbow. Like a double tap. One, two, gunshot, elbow. The shot was loud, but not terrible. The interior of the thick Lincoln seat squab had acted like a huge suppressor. All kinds of wool and horsehair in there. All kinds of cotton batting. Natural absorption. One minor problem. Some of it had caught on fire. Plus the driver was leaning forward, leaning down, feeling under the dashboard near his shins. Then coming back up and twisting around. In his hand was a tiny pocket gun. Maybe Russian. Secured out of sight with hook and loop tape. Reacher shot him through his own seat back. It caught on fire, too. A nine-millimeter round. The muzzle hard against the padding, a massive explosion of superheated gases. Maybe never taken into account, during Lincoln’s design process.

  Reacher opened the door and slid out to the sidewalk. He put the guns in his pocket. Fresh air blew inside the car and the tiny fires perked up. Not just smoldering. There were actual flames. Small, like a lady’s fingernail, dancing inside the seats.

  Abby said, “What happened?”

  She was standing near her own car, very still, on the sidewalk, looking in through the Lincoln’s windshield.

  Reacher said, “They showed extraordinary loyalty to an organization that doesn’t seem to treat them very well.”

  “You shot them?”

  “Self-defense.”

  “How?”

  “They blinked first.”

  “Are they dead?”

  “We might need to give them another minute. Depends how fast they’re bleeding.”

  She said, “This has never happened to me before.”

  He said, “I’m sorry it had to.”

  “You ki
lled two people.”

  “I warned them. I told them not to. All my cards were on the table. It was more like assisted suicide. Think of it that way.”

  “Did you do it for me?” she asked. “I told you I wanted them messed up.”

  “I didn’t want to do it at all,” he said. “I wanted to send them home, safe and sound. But no. They tried their best. I guess they did what I would have done. Although I hope I would have done it better.”

  “What should we do about it?”

  The flames were licking higher. The vinyl on the seat backs was bubbling and splitting and peeling, like skin.

  Reacher said, “We should get in your car and drive away.”

  “Just like that?”

  “For me it’s all about the shoe on the other foot. What would they do for me? That’s what sets the bar.”

  She was quiet a beat.

  Then she said, “OK, get in the car.”

  She drove. He sat in the passenger seat. His extra weight on that side dipped the suspension down just enough that the old Toyota’s newly falling-off fender banged against the blacktop now and then, unpredictable and irregular, like spaced-out Morse code played on a bass drum, all the way along their route.

  Chapter 21

  No one would dream of calling the cops about a burning car on a two-thirds abandoned block on the east side of the city. Such a thing was obviously someone else’s private business, and obviously best kept that way. But plenty of people dreamed about calling Dino’s people. Always. About anything that might be useful. But especially about news like this. It might get them ahead. It might make their names. Some of them made dangerous up-close inspections, flinching away from the heat. They saw burning bodies inside. They wrote down the license plate, before the flames consumed it.

  They called Dino’s people and told them it was a Ukrainian car on fire. It was the type of Lincoln they used west of Center. As far as anyone could tell the two bodies in it were dressed in suits and ties. Which was standard practice over there. Looked like they had been shot in the back. Which was standard practice everywhere. Case closed. They were the enemy.