“You saved my life.”
“My pleasure.”
“I feel like I should offer you a reward.”
“Not necessary.”
“I can’t anyway,” the guy said. He touched his pocket. “This is a payment I have to make. It’s very important. I need it all. I’m sorry. I apologize. I feel bad.”
“Don’t,” Reacher said.
Twenty feet to their right the kid with the beard pushed himself up to his hands and knees.
The guy with the money said, “No police.”
The kid glanced back. He was stunned and shaky, but he was already twenty feet ahead. Should he go for it?
Reacher said, “Why no police?”
“They ask questions when they see a lot of cash.”
“Questions you don’t want to answer?”
“I can’t anyway,” the guy said again.
The kid with the beard took off. He staggered to his feet and set out fleeing the scene, weak and bruised and floppy and uncoordinated, but still plenty fast. Reacher let him go. He had run enough for one day.
The guy with the money said, “I need to get going now.”
He had scrapes on his cheek and his forehead, and blood on his upper lip, from his nose, which had taken a decent impact.
“You sure you’re OK?” Reacher asked.
“I better be,” the guy said. “I don’t have much time.”
“Let me see you stand up.”
The guy couldn’t. Either his core strength had drained away, or his knees were bad, or both. Hard to say. Reacher helped him to his feet. The guy stood in the gutter, facing the opposite side of the street, hunched and bent. He turned around, laboriously, shuffling in place.
He couldn’t step up the curb. He got his foot in place, but the propulsive force necessary to boost himself up six inches was too much load for his knee to take. It must have been bruised and sore. There was a bad scuff on the fabric of his pants, right where his kneecap would be.
Reacher stood behind him and cupped his hands under his elbows, and lifted, and the guy stepped up weightless, like a man on the moon.
Reacher asked, “Can you walk?”
The guy tried. He managed small steps, delicate and precise, but he winced and gasped, short and sharp, every time his right leg took the weight.
“How far have you got to go?” Reacher asked.
The guy looked all around, calibrating. Making sure where he was.
“Three more blocks,” he said. “On the other side of the street.”
“That’s a lot of curbs,” Reacher said. “That’s a lot of stepping up and down.”
“I’ll walk it off.”
“Show me,” Reacher said.
The guy set out, heading east as before, at a slow shuffling creep, with his hands out a little, as if for balance. The wincing and the gasping was loud and clear. Maybe getting worse.
“You need a cane,” Reacher said.
“I need a lot of things,” the guy said.
Reacher stepped around next to him, on the right, and cupped his elbow, and took the guy’s weight in his palm. Mechanically the same thing as a stick or a cane or a crutch. An upward force, ultimately through the guy’s shoulder. Newtonian physics.
“Try it now,” Reacher said.
“You can’t come with me.”
“Why not?”
The guy said, “You’ve done enough for me already.”
“That’s not the reason. You would have said you really couldn’t ask me to do that. Something vague and polite. But you were much more emphatic than that. You said I can’t come with you. Why? Where are you going?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You can’t get there without me.”
The guy breathed in and breathed out, and his lips moved, like he was rehearsing things to say. He raised his hand and touched the scrape on his forehead, then his cheek, then his nose. More wincing.
He said, “Help me to the right block, and help me across the street. Then turn around and go home. That’s the biggest favor you could do for me. I mean it. I would be grateful. I’m already grateful. I hope you understand.”
“I don’t,” Reacher said.
“I’m not allowed to bring anyone.”
“Who says?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Suppose I was headed in that direction anyway. You could peel off and go in the door and I could walk on.”
“You would know where I went.”
“I already know.”
“How could you?”
Reacher had seen all kinds of cities, all across America, east, west, north, south, all kinds of sizes and ages and current conditions. He knew their rhythms and their grammars. He knew the history baked into their bricks. The block he was on was one of a hundred thousand just like it east of the Mississippi. Back offices for dry goods wholesalers, some specialist retail, some light manufacturing, some lawyers and shipping agents and land agents and travel agents. Maybe some tenement accommodations in the rear courtyards. All peaking in terms of hustle and bustle in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth. Now crumbled and corroded and hollowed out by time. Hence the boarded-up establishments and the closed-down diner. But some places held out longer than others. Some places held out longest of all. Some habits and appetites were stubborn.
“Three blocks east of here, and across the street,” Reacher said. “The bar. That’s where you’re headed.”
The guy said nothing.
“To make a payment,” Reacher said. “In a bar, before lunch. Therefore to some kind of a local loan shark. That’s my guess. Fifteen or twenty grand. You’re in trouble. I think you sold your car. You got the best cash price out of town. Maybe a collector. A regular guy like you, it could have been an old car. You drove out there and took the bus back. Via the buyer’s bank. The teller put the cash in an envelope.”
“Who are you?”
“A bar is a public place. I get thirsty, same as anyone else. Maybe they have coffee. I’ll sit at a different table. You can pretend not to know me. You’ll need help getting out again. That knee is going to stiffen up some.”
“Who are you?” the guy said again.
“My name is Jack Reacher. I was a military cop. I was trained to detect things.”
“It was a Chevy Caprice. The old style. All original. Perfect condition. Very low miles.”
“I know nothing about cars.”
“People like the old Caprices now.”
“How much did you get for it?”
“Twenty-two five.”
Reacher nodded. More than he thought. Crisp new bills, packed tight.
He said, “You owe it all?”
“Until twelve o’clock,” the guy said. “After that it goes up.”
“Then we better get going. This could be a relatively slow process.”
“Thank you,” the guy said. “My name is Aaron Shevick. I am forever in your debt.”
“The kindness of strangers,” Reacher said. “Makes the world go round. Some guy wrote a play about it.”
“Tennessee Williams,” Shevick said. “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
“One of which we could use right now. Three blocks for a nickel would be a bargain.”
They set out walking, Reacher stepping slow and short, Shevick hopping and pecking and lurching, all lopsided because of Newtonian physics.
Chapter 3
The bar was on the ground floor of a plain old brick building in the middle of the block. It had a battered brown door in the center, with grimy windows either side. There was an Irish name in sputtering green neon above the door, and half dead neon harps and shamrocks and other dusty shapes in the windows, all of them advertising brands of beer, some of which Reacher recognized, and some of which he didn’t. He helped Shevick down the far curb, and across the street, and up the opposite curb, to the door. The time in his head was twenty to twelve.
“I’ll go in first,” he said. “Then you come in. Works better that way around. Like we never met. OK?”
“How long?” Shevick asked.
“Couple minutes,” Reacher said. “Get your breath.”