“The regimentation I mentioned was, as I said, in the military police, where, as I also said, we were trained to notice things. Not just physical clues, but things about how people are. How they behave and what they believe. Human nature, and so on and so forth. Most of it was bullshit, but some of it rang bells. Right now you’re facing a mile walk through a backstreet neighborhood, with more than twenty grand in your pocket, which you feel weird about, because you’re not really supposed to still have it, and it’s a total disaster if you lose it, and you’ve already been mugged once today, so the truth is, all in all you’re afraid of that walk, and you know I could help with that feeling, and you’re also hurt from the attack, and therefore not moving well, and you know I can help with that too, so all in all you should be begging me to see you home.”
Shevick said nothing.
“But you’re a gentleman,” Reacher said. “You wanted to give me a reward. Now if I walk you home and meet your wife, you think the very least you should do is give me lunch. But there is no lunch. You’re embarrassed. But you shouldn’t be. I get it. You’re in trouble with a moneylender. You haven’t eaten lunch in a couple of months. You look like you lost twenty pounds. Your skin is hanging loose. So we’ll pick up sandwiches on the way. Uncle Sam’s dime. That’s where my cash comes from. Your tax dollars at work. We’ll enjoy some conversation, and then I’ll walk you back here. You can pay off your guy, and I’ll get on my way.”
“Thank you,” Shevick said. “I mean it.”
“You’re welcome,” Reacher said. “I mean it.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Someplace else. Often depends on the weather. I like to be warm. Saves buying a coat.”
The barman glared again, still from far away.
“Let’s go,” Reacher said. “A person could die of thirst in here.”
Chapter 4
The man who had been due to meet Aaron Shevick at the table in the far back corner of the bar was a forty-year-old Albanian named Fisnik. He was one of the two men mentioned that morning by Gregory, the Ukrainian boss. Accordingly he had gotten a call at home from Dino, telling him to drop by the lumber yard before starting his day’s work in the bar. Dino’s tone of voice revealed nothing untoward. In fact if anything it sounded cheery and enthusiastic, as if praise and recognition were in store. Maybe expanded opportunities, or a bonus, or both. Maybe a promotion, or extra status in the organization.
It didn’t work out that way. Fisnik ducked through the personnel door in the roll-up gate, and smelled fresh pine, and heard the whine of a saw, and headed to the offices in back, feeling pretty good about things. A minute later he was duct-taped to a wooden chair, and suddenly the pine smelled like coffins, and the saw sounded like agony. First they drilled through his knees with a cordless DeWalt sporting a quarter-inch masonry bit. Then they moved on. He told them nothing, because he had nothing to tell. His silence was taken as a stoic confession. Such was their culture. He garnered a little grudging admiration for his fortitude, but not enough to stop the drill. He died about the same time Reacher and Shevick finally left the bar.
—
The first half of the mile walk was through left-behind blocks just like the one that housed the bar, but then the view opened out to what might once have been a bunch of ten-acre pastures, until the GIs came home at the end of World War Two, when the pastures were plowed up and straight rows of small houses were built, all of them single story, some of them split level, depending on how the pastures had risen and fallen. Seventy years later they had all been re-roofed many times, no two exactly the same, and some had add-ons and bump-outs and new vinyl siding, and some had trimmed lawns and others had wild yards, but otherwise the ghost of mean postwar uniformity still marched through the whole development, with small lots and narrow roads and narrow sidewalks and tight right-angle turns, all scaled to the maximum steering capabilities of 1948 Fords and Chevys and Studebakers and Plymouths.
Reacher and Shevick stopped on the way at a gas station deli counter. They got three chicken salad sandwiches, and three bags of potato chips, and three cans of soda. Reacher carried the bag in his right hand and helped Shevick with his left. They limped and crept through the warren. Shevick’s house turned out to be deep into it, on a cul-de-sac served by a mean turnaround barely wider than the street itself. Like the bulb on the end of an old-style thermometer. The house was on the left, behind a white picket fence that had early roses budding through it. The house was a one-story ranch, same bones and same square footage as every other house, with an asphalt roof and bright white siding. It looked well cared for, but not recently. The windows were dusty and the lawn was long.
Reacher and Shevick hobbled up a concrete path barely wide enough for the two of them side by side. Shevick took out a key, but before he could get it in the lock the door opened in front of them. A woman stood there. Mrs. Shevick, without question. There was an obvious bond between them. She was gray and stooped and newly thin like he was, also about seventy, but her head was up and her eyes were steady. The fires were still burning. She stared at her husband’s face. A scrape on his forehead, a scrape on his cheek, crusted blood on his lip.
“I fell,” Shevick said. “I tripped on the curb. I banged my knee. That’s the worst of it. This gentleman was kind enough to help me.”
The woman’s gaze switched to Reacher for a second, uncomprehending, and then back to her husband.
She said, “We better get you cleaned up.”
She stood back and Shevick stepped into his hallway.
His wife started to ask him, “Did you,” but then she stopped, maybe embarrassed in front of a stranger. No doubt she meant to say, did you pay the guy? But some troubles were private.
Shevick said, “It’s complicated.”
There was silence for a moment.
Reacher held up the bag from the deli counter.
“We brought lunch,” he said. “We thought it might be difficult to get out to the store, under the circumstances.”
Mrs. Shevick looked at him again, still uncomprehending. And then a little wounded. Abashed. Ashamed.
“He knows, Maria,” Shevick said. “He was an army detective and he saw right through me.”
“You told him?”
“He figured it out. He has extensive training.”
“What’s complicated?” she asked. “What happened? Who hit you? Was it this man?”
“What man?”
She looked straight at Reacher.
“This man with the lunch,” she said. “Is he one of them?”
“No,” Shevick said. “Absolutely not. He has nothing to do with them.”
“Then why is he following you? Or escorting you? He’s like a prison guard.”
Shevick started to say, “When I was,” and then he stopped and changed it to, “When I tripped and fell, he was passing by, and he helped me up. Then I found I couldn’t walk, so he helped me along. He isn’t following me. Or escorting me. He’s here because I’m here. You can’t have one without the other. Not right now. Because I hurt my knee. Simple as that.”
“You said it was complicated, not simple.”
“We should go inside,” Shevick said.
His wife stood still for a moment, and then turned and led the way. The house was the same on the inside as it looked from the outside. Old, well cared for, but not recently. The rooms were small and the hallways were narrow. They stopped in the living room, which had a loveseat and two armchairs, and outlets and wires but no TV.
Mrs. Shevick said, “What’s complicated?”
“Fisnik didn’t show,” Shevick said. “Normally he’s there all day. But not today. All we got was a phone message to come back at six o’clock.”
“So where’s the money now?”
“I still have it.”