All five customers got up and hurried out the door. Maybe a traditional local response, in such situations. In which case Reacher applauded the habit. It left no witnesses. There were blood and teeth on the bar top, but the barman himself had fallen backward out of sight.
“I guess he didn’t watch me all the way,” Abby said.
“I told you,” Reacher said. “He’s an asshole.”
They crouched next to the pale guy and took his gun and his phone and his car key and what looked like about eight thousand dollars from his pockets. His nose was badly busted. He was breathing through his mouth. Flecks of blood were bubbling at the corners of his lips. Reacher remembered him tapping his glittering head with his bone-white finger. Some kind of a threatening implication. He thought, how the mighty are fallen.
He said, “Yes or no?”
Abby was quiet a beat.
Then she said, “Yes.”
Reacher clamped his palm over the guy’s mouth. Hard to keep it there, because it was slippery with blood. But he prevailed. The guy wasted time scrabbling for his pocket, looking for his gun, which was no longer there, and then he wasted the rest of his life drumming his heels and clawing uselessly at Reacher’s wrist. Eventually he went limp, and then still.
—
They took the pale guy’s Lincoln, because its trunk was empty. It rode much better. They drove downtown and parked on a hydrant around a corner from the Shevicks’ hotel. Abby checked the new phone. No new texts. Nothing since the conspiracy theory from Gregory.
“Was it from his own number?” Reacher asked.
Abby compared it with previous texts.
“I guess,” she said. “It isn’t the usual number.”
“We should call him again. Keep him updated.”
Abby dabbed a shortcut from the text screen and put the phone on speaker. They heard it ring. They heard it answered. Gregory said a word, short and urgent, probably not hello. Probably shoot, or yes, or what.
“Speak English,” Reacher said.
“You.”
“You just lost two more. I’m coming for you, Gregory.”
“Who are you?”
“Not from Kiev.”
“Then from where?”
“The 110th Special MP.”
“What is that?”
“You’ll find out, pretty soon.”
“What do you want from me?”
“You made a mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“You crossed a line. So get ready. Payback time is here.”
“You’re American.”
“As apple pie.”
Gregory paused a long moment. No doubt thinking. No doubt about his wide network of bribes paid, and palms greased, and backs scratched, and favors owed, and hair-trigger early warning tripwires carefully set in place. Any or all of which should have alerted him long ago. But he had heard nothing. From anywhere.
“You’re not a cop,” he said. “You’re not a government man. You’re on your own. Aren’t you?”
“Which I’m sure will make it all the harder for you to take, when your organization is in ruins, and all your men are dead, except for you, because you’re the last one alive, and then I step in through the door.”
“You won’t get near me.”
“How am I doing so far?”
No answer.
“Get ready,” Reacher said. “I’m coming for you.”
Then he clicked off the call and threw the phone out the window. They drove on, around the corner, and they parked in a ten-minute bay outside the Shevicks’ hotel.
Chapter 42
Reacher and Abby rode the elevator up to the Shevicks’ floor, which was low to medium by New York or Chicago standards, but by local standards it was probably the highest point for a hundred miles around. They found the right door. Maria Shevick looked at them through the peephole, and let them in. The room was a suite. It had a separate living room. It was bright and fresh and new and clean. There were two huge floor to ceiling windows, set at a right angle in the corner. It was early afternoon and the sun was high and the air was clear. The view was spectacular. The city lay spread out below. Like the hotel map Reacher had studied, now come to life.
Abby unveiled the money. The banded ten grand from the charnel house in back of the lumber yard, and close to eight from the moneylending bar. So much it thumped and bounced on the table, and some of it fluttered to the floor. The Shevicks practically laughed with joy. Today’s problem solved. Aaron decided he would pay it in at the bank, and then send a wire to the hospital in the normal businesslike way. A last shred of dignity. Abby offered to walk with him, to the downtown branch. Just for the company. No other reason. No need for one. By that point Aaron was walking much better, and east of Center was now safe as houses. So just for fun. They left together, and Reacher went back to the windows. Back to the view. Maria sat on a narrow sofa behind him.
She said, “Do you have children?”
“I don’t think so,” Reacher said. “None that I know of, anyway.”
He was looking at the city below him. The fat part of the pear shape. The corner windows showed him the whole of the northwest quadrant. From about nine on a clock face, to twelve. He could see Center Street more or less directly below. Close by beyond it, to his half left, were two office towers and another high-rise hotel. They looked brand new. They speared bravely upward from a uniform and spreading carpet of three- and four-story buildings, mostly old, mostly brick, mostly dowdy. They had flat roofs, patched and painted silver. Most had air conditioning units sitting on angle-iron frames. There were metal exhaust chimneys coming up from restaurant kitchens, and satellite dishes the size of trampolines, and parking garages with open top decks. The streets were narrow, in some places choked with traffic, in others empty and quiet. There were tiny people walking, turning left, turning right, going in and coming out of doorways. The vista continued into the hazy distance.
Could be any basement in town, Vantresca had said.
Maria asked, “Are you married?”
“No,” Reacher said.
“Don’t you want to be?”
“The decision is only fifty percent mine,” he said. “I guess that would explain it.”
He turned back and looked at the view. Like he had looked at the map. Where would a competent commander hide a secret satellite operation? What kind of place? Security, accommodations, power, internet, isolation, easy supply and resupply. He looked for possibilities. The carpet of small brown buildings. The winking roofs. The traffic.
“Abby likes you,” Maria said.
“Maybe,” Reacher said.
“You don’t want to admit it?”
“I agree she’s putting in some hard time here. I assume there’s a reason.”
“You don’t think you’re it?”
Reacher smiled.
He said, “What are you, my mother?”
No answer. Reacher kept on looking. As always the answer depended. If the southwest quadrant was the same as the northwest, then there were either fewer than ten or more than a hundred possible places. It depended on standards. It depended on what part of security, accommodations, power, internet, isolation, and easy supply a person didn’t understand.
He said, “What’s the news on Meg?”
She said, “The mood is still good. The scan tomorrow should confirm it. Everyone thinks so. Personally I feel like we’re gambling. Surely now this has to be it. It’s either a huge, huge win, or it’s a devastating loss.”