“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 fat 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.