He looked scared.
REACHER’S FIRST NAME WAS JACK, and he was pretty damn sure the guy with the muscles wasn’t called either Howie or Ken. He could have been born with either moniker, obviously, but he would have abandoned it fast, in favor of something harder, if he wanted to survive the kind of world he evidently had. Which meant the fat guy was lying through his teeth. He wasn’t watching the game with Howie and Ken. In fact he wasn’t watching the game at all. When the lucky fly ball had left the tiny bandbox the guy had been a long beat behind. He had looked up with a blank expression because of the sudden noise. He was watching the mirror. He was watching the door. He was expecting someone he didn’t know by sight. Hence the half-expectant welcome a minute earlier. Jerry DeLong, the guy had said, as if it might mean something.
Reacher snaked a long arm behind DeLong’s immense back and poked the guy with the muscles in the shoulder. The guy leaned back, but kept his eyes on the game. As did Reacher. The guy in the two-hole for the Sox swung and missed. Strike three. Better.
Reacher said, “Who got here first, you or him?”
The guy said, “Him.”
“Did you get the same thing I got?”
“Identical.”
“Was he saving the seats?”
“I doubt it.”
“So now he’s expecting a tap on the shoulder, and then they’ll go somewhere to do their business?”
“That’s how I see it.”
The third batter for the Sox stepped up. Reacher said, “What kind of business? Am I in the kind of place I don’t want to be?”
“You from New York?”
“Not exactly.”
“But you’re rooting for them.”
“No crime in being a sane human being.”
“This place is okay. I don’t know what the tub of lard wants.”
Reacher said, “You could ask him.”
“Or you could.”
“I’m not very interested.”
“Me, either. But he’s worried about something.”
The third Sox batter popped up, way high, in the infield. Comfortable for the Yankees’ second baseman. The guy with the muscles said, “You got a name?”
Reacher said, “Everyone’s got a name.”
“What is it?”
“Reacher.”
“I’m Heller.” The guy offered his left fist. Reacher bumped it with his right, behind DeLong’s back. Not the first time his knuckles had touched a Sox fan, but by far the gentlest.
The Sox cleanup hitter grounded weakly back to the pitcher, and the inning was over. One-zip Boston. Bad, but not a humiliating disaster. Yet.
Reacher said, “If we keep on talking about him like this, eventually he might clue us in.”
Heller said, “Why would he?”
“He’s in trouble.”
“What are you, Santa Claus?”
“I don’t like our pitching. I’m looking for a diversion.”
“Suck it up.”
“Like you did for a hundred years?”
At that point the bar was quiet. Just the natural ebb and flow, but the barman heard what Reacher said, and he stared, hard.
Reacher said, “What?”
Heller said, “It’s okay, Sully.”
And then Jerry DeLong looked left, looked right, and said, “I’m waiting for someone to break my legs.”
HELLER GAVE REACHER A GLANCE.
Reacher seemed to have an intuition about the fat guy. He knew something was off, somehow. Something was wrong. Funny, Heller’d had the same sort of intuition. Same way he realized pretty quickly that this Reacher guy was really sharp.
The fat man had blurted it out. He was genuinely terrified.
But then he said no more.
The top of the second started. Two balls, a strike, ball three. The Boston pitcher stared in. He didn’t want to give up a lead-off walk.
“Changeup coming,” Reacher said. “Right down the pike.”
The Yankee batter knew it. He smiled like a wolf.
Not a changeup. A full-on fastball. The batter swung as the ball hit the catcher’s glove.
Reacher looked away.
He said, “Maybe this guy’ll tell us what’s going on. With his legs and all.”
“Ya think?” Heller replied.
“Or not,” Reacher said.
“Not unless I want my arms broken, too,” the fat man said.
Full count, and another fastball. Another whiff. One down.
Heller gave the fat guy a searching look. “Haven’t seen you here before, have I?”
“I haven’t been here before, no.”
“But you’re from here.”
From here: very Boston. Bostonians always want to know if you’re one of them or not. You can’t always tell from the accent. But there’s the language. Do you drink soda or “tonic”? Is something a “pisser”? Do you go to a liquor store or a packie? Take a U-turn or “bang a uey”? They’re expert at sussing out fakes and posers. Heller was born outside New York but moved as a teenager to a town north of Boston called Melrose. A working-class place. Heller’s father went to prison and his mother was left with nothing. So Heller could sound Boston if and when he wanted. Or not.
And this guy DeLong was definitely from around here.
DeLong shrugged. “Yeah.”
“You work around here?”
DeLong shrugged again. “Government Center.”
“Don’t like the Irish pub right there?”
“Well, my office is on Cambridge Street.”
DeLong was stingy with the information. For some reason he didn’t want to talk about what he did or where he worked, which was, for Heller, like a blinking neon arrow. That meant he did something sensitive, or classified, or unpleasant. But he had the look of a bureaucrat, a government functionary, and Heller took a guess.
“The good old Saltonstall Building.” One of the office towers in the bleak ghetto of big government buildings at the foot of Beacon Hill. “How’s the asbestos?”
The Saltonstall Building, which held an assortment of state bureaucracies, had been abandoned after it was found to be contaminated with asbestos. They did some renovation and dragged the office workers back in, and some of them were mad as a wasp’s nest that’s been kicked.
“Yeah, that’s gone.”
“Uh-huh.” Heller smiled. A state worker, for sure. He thought of maps of America where the states are resized by population and Rhode Island is twice the size of Wyoming. If you did a map of state employees in the Saltonstall building, the biggest state would be the Department of Revenue.
“So you’re a tax man.”
“Something like that,” DeLong said. He didn’t look happy about it. Like he was being put down somehow. But at the same time he didn’t seem to want to say more.
“One of those forensic accountant types, aren’t you?”
DeLong looked away uneasily, which just confirmed Heller’s theory.
“What do you say, Reacher?” Heller said, reaching around DeLong and bumping Reacher’s shoulder. “Someone’s trying to dodge an audit by some direct means, wouldn’t you say?”
“Sounds like it,” Reacher said. “Wonder how often that works.”
Jerry DeLong said, “It’s not going to work this time.” He sounded like he was trying to be brave, but without much success.
“Huh,” Heller said, looking into the mirror behind the bar. He saw a blinged-out guy sitting by himself at a small table near the front. Tinted sunglasses, necklaces, and rings. A curious upright posture. The chief enforcer for the Albanian gang in Boston, Alek Dushku. Allie Boy, as he was called, was known for all sorts of colorful executions, including strangling an old man with a shoelace until his eyes popped out of his head. On the table in front of him was a grocery sack, bulky with something.
Heller said, “You’re meeting Allie Boy?”