All good.
Reacher drifted back to the stage. The gear was all set up. It was humming and buzzing gently. Barton’s Precision Bass was leaning against his monster cabinet. Ready for action. His back-up instrument was on a stand next to it. Ready for emergencies. Barton himself was at a table close by. Eating lunch. A hamburger. He said the band got free food. Whatever they wanted off the menu, to a max of twenty bucks.
Reacher asked him, “What kind of stuff are you going to play?”
“Covers, mostly,” he said. “Maybe a couple of our own songs.”
“Are you loud?”
“If we want to be.”
“Do people dance?”
“If we want them to.”
“Make them dance the third number,” Reacher said. “Make it loud. Every eye on you.”
“That part usually comes at the end.”
“We don’t have time.”
“We have a rock and roll medley. Everyone dances to that. I guess we could bring it in early.”
“Works for me,” Reacher said. “Thank you.”
All good.
Plan made.
—
The house lights went down and the stage lights came up and the band kicked into its opening number, which was a mid-tempo rocker with a sad verse and an exuberant chorus. Reacher and Abby drifted away to the near right corner of the room, diagonally opposite the man on the stool. They drifted through the crowd at the bar, following the right-hand wall, aiming for the far right corner. They got there just as the band started its second number, which was faster and hotter than the first. They were warming up the crowd. Getting them ready for the rock and roll medley coming next. They were pretty good at it. They were hitting the spot. Absurdly Reacher wanted to stop and dance. Something about the pulse of the beat. He could see Abby felt the same way. She was walking ahead of him. He could see it in her hips. She wanted to dance.
So, absurdly, they did. In the dark, beyond the rim of the crowd, close to the wall, bopping away, maintaining some element of linear progress, in a two steps forward, one step back kind of a way, but basically just having fun. Some kind of release, Reacher figured, or relief, or diversion, or consolation. Or normality. What two people who just met should be doing.
All around them other people were doing it, too. More and more. So that when the third number started the place went wild, with people crushing in on the parquet floor, hopping around, plus a wide halo of more on the carpet, bumping tables, spilling drinks, going crazy. Make them dance. Make it loud. Every eye on you. Barton had delivered big time.
Reacher and Abby stopped dancing.
They ghosted the rest of the way along the back wall, behind the mass of dancers, toward the far left corner, where they arrived directly behind the man on the stool. They waited in the gloom six feet away, until a gaggle of latecomers started down the stairs. The man on the stool looked up at them. Reacher stepped behind him and clapped a hand down on his shoulder. Like a friendly greeting. Or a pretend surprise, just horsing around, like some guys do. Reacher figured that was all the latecomers saw. What they didn’t see was his fingers curling under the guy’s shirt collar, twisting it, tightening it. What they also didn’t see was his other hand, low down behind, jamming the muzzle of a gun hard against the base of the guy’s spine. Really hard. Hard enough to cause a puncture wound all by itself, even without pulling the trigger.
Reacher leaned forward and spoke in the guy’s ear.
He said, “Let’s go take a walk.”
He pulled with his left and pushed with his right and maneuvered the guy backward off the stool. He stood him upright and got him balanced. He twisted his collar harder. Abby stepped up and patted his pockets and took his phone and his gun. Another steel P7. The band fell straight into the second song in the medley. Faster and louder. Reacher leaned forward again.
He yelled, “Hear that backbeat? I could shoot you four to the bar and no one in here would notice a damn thing. So do exactly what I tell you.”
He pushed the guy along the left-hand wall, stiff, awkward, four-legged, like the shadow he had seen in the Shevicks’ hallway. Abby kept pace a yard away, like a wingman. She roved back and forth. She ducked in and out. The band went straight into the third part of the medley. Faster and louder still. Reacher hustled the guy harder. Ran him all the way to the mouth of the corridor. To the freight elevator. Up to the street. Out to the dock. Out to the daylight. He hauled him around to the rear of the Lincoln. He stood him up straight and made him watch.
Abby pressed the button on the key fob.
The trunk lid raised up.
Two dead guys. Same suits, same ties. Limp, bloody, stinking.
The guy looked away.
Reacher said to him, “That’s you, a minute from now. Unless you answer my questions.”
The guy said nothing. He couldn’t speak. His collar was twisted too tight.
Reacher asked, “Where does Maxim Trulenko work?”
He slackened his grip half an inch. The guy panted a couple of breaths. He glanced left, glanced right, glanced up to the sky, as if he was considering his options. As if he had options to consider. Then he looked down. At the dead guys in the trunk.
Then he stared.
He said, “That’s my cousin.”
“Which one?” Reacher asked. “The one I shot in the head, or the one I shot in the throat?”
“We came here together. From Odessa. We arrived in New Jersey.”
“You must be confusing me with someone who gives a shit. I asked you a question. Where does Maxim Trulenko work?”
The guy said the word they had seen in the text message. Biologically inexact. Either a hive or a nest or a burrow. For something that hummed or buzzed or thrashed around.
“Where is it?” Reacher said.
“I don’t know,” the guy said. “It’s a secret operation.”
“How big is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who else works there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do Danilo and Gregory work there?”
“No.”
“Where do they work?”
“In the office.”
“Is that separate?”
“From what?”
“The word you used. The hive.”
“Of course it is.”
“Where is the office?”
The guy named a street, and a cross street. He said, “Behind the taxi company, across from the pawn shop, next to the bail bonds.”
“We were right there,” Abby said.
Reacher nodded. He slid his hand around under the guy’s collar, from the back, to the side. He dug down with his fingers until he felt the inside face of the guy’s necktie centered in the meat of his palm. He felt it through the cotton of the collar. A silk necktie, at that point about an inch and a half wide. More tensile strength than steel. Silk shimmered because its fibers were triangular, like elongated prisms, which did nice things with light, but which also locked together so tight it was virtually impossible to pull them apart end to end. A steel cable would give way sooner.
Reacher bunched his fist. Took up what slack there was. At first his hand was square on. All his knuckles were lined up parallel with the crushed rim of the collar. Like he was hanging one-handed from a rung on a ladder. Then he rotated his thumb toward him, and his pinkie knuckle away from him. As if he was trying to spin the ladder, like an airplane propeller. Or like a tweak on a rein, turning a horse. All of which drove his pinkie knuckle into the side of the guy’s neck. Which in turn tightened the stronger-than-steel strap against the other side of his neck. Reacher held it like that for a spell, and then he turned his hand another small angle. And then another. The doorman was calm. The pressure was all side to side, not front to back. He wasn’t choking for lack of air. Not thrashing around in desperate panic. Instead the arteries in his neck were closed off and no blood was reaching his brain. Relaxed. Peaceful. Like a narcotic. Warm and comfortable.