Blue Moon

FOURTEEN

The door closed again softly and three seconds later the footsteps clattered by outside, at a slow and wary jog. Then silence came back. The hand on Reacher’s arm pulled him deeper into darkness. Small fingers, but strong. They passed into a different space. A different acoustic. A different smell. A different room. He heard the scrabble of fingertips, searching for a light switch on a wall.

The light came on.

He blinked.

The waitress.

Watch where I go.

An alley, not a doorway. Or an alley leading to a doorway. An alley leading to a doorway with a door left open a tempting inch.

‘You live here?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said.

She was still dressed for work. Black denim pants, black button-up shirt. Petite, gamine, short dark hair, eyes full of concern.

‘Thank you,’ Reacher said. ‘For inviting me in.’

‘I tried to think what kind of tip I would like,’ she said. ‘If I was a stranger the doorman was looking at sideways.’

‘Was he?’

‘You must have stirred something up.’

He didn’t answer. The room they were in was a cosy space with muted colours, full of worn and comfortable items, some of them maybe from the pawn shop, cleaned and fixed up, and some of them bolted together from the remains of old industrial components. The frame from some kind of an old machine held up the coffee table. Same kind of thing with a bookshelf. And so on. Repurposing, it was called. He had read about it in a magazine. He liked the style. He liked the result. It was a nice room. Then he heard a voice in his head: Be a shame if anything happened to it.

‘You work for them,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be offering me refuge.’

‘I don’t work for them,’ she said. ‘I work for the couple who own the bar. The guy on the door is the cost of doing business. It would be the same wherever I worked.’

‘He seemed to think he could boss you around.’

‘They all do. Part of inviting you in is paying them back.’

‘Thank you,’ he said again.

‘You’re welcome.’

‘I’m Jack Reacher,’ he said. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you.’

‘Abigail Gibson,’ she said. ‘People call me Abby.’

‘People call me Reacher.’

She said, ‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Reacher.’

They shook hands, quite formally. Small fingers, but strong.

He said, ‘I stirred it up on purpose. I wanted to see if and how fast and how hard they would react to something.’

‘What something?’

‘The name Maxim Trulenko. You ever heard of him?’

‘Sure,’ Abby said. ‘He just went bankrupt. Some kind of dot-com bust. He was famous here for a spell.’

‘I want to find him.’

‘Why?’

‘He owes people money.’

‘Are you a debt collector? You told me you were out of work.’

‘Pro bono,’ Reacher said. ‘Temporary. For an old couple I met. So far exploratory only. Just a toe in the water.’

‘Doesn’t matter if he owes people money. He hasn’t got any. He’s bankrupt.’

‘There’s a theory he hid some private cash under his mattress.’

‘There’s always a theory like that.’

‘I think in this case it might be right. Purely as a logical proposition. If he was broke, he would have been found by now. But he hasn’t been found by now, therefore he can’t be broke. Because the only way not to be found by now is to pay the Ukrainians to hide him. Which requires money. Therefore he still has some. If I find him soon, there might be some left.’

‘For your old couple.’

‘Hopefully enough to cover their needs.’

‘The only way not to be found is not to be broke,’ she said. ‘Sounds like something out of a fortune cookie. But I guess they proved it was true tonight.’

Reacher nodded.

‘Two cars,’ he said. ‘Four guys. He’s getting good value.’

‘You shouldn’t mess with these people,’ Abby said. ‘I’ve seen them up close.’

‘You’re messing with them. You opened your door.’

‘That’s different. They’ll never know. There are a hundred doors.’

He said, ‘Why did you open your door?’

‘You know why,’ she said.

‘Maybe they just wanted a cosy chat.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Maybe all I would have gotten was a stern talking-to.’

She didn’t answer.

‘You knew they wanted worse than that,’ he said. ‘That’s why you opened your door.’

‘I’ve seen them up close,’ she said again.

‘What would they have done?’

‘They don’t like people getting in their business,’ she said. ‘I think they would have messed you up bad.’

‘Have you seen that kind of thing happen before?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Anyway,’ Reacher said. ‘Thanks again.’

‘You need anything?’

‘I should get going. You’ve done enough for me already. I have a hotel room.’

‘Where?’

He told her. She shook her head.

‘That’s west of Center,’ she said. ‘They have eyes in there. The texts will have already gone out, with your description.’

‘They seem to be taking it very seriously.’

‘I told you,’ she said. ‘They don’t like people in their business.’

‘How many of them are there?’

‘Enough,’ she said. ‘I was going to make coffee. You want some?’

‘Sure,’ Reacher said.

She led the way to her kitchen, which was small and mismatched but clean and tidy. It felt like home. She knocked old grounds out of a filter basket, and rinsed a pot, and set the whole thing going. It burped and slurped and filled the room with a rich aroma.

‘I guess it doesn’t keep you awake,’ Reacher said.

‘This is my evening time,’ she said. ‘I go to bed when the sun comes up. Then I sleep all day.’

‘Makes sense.’

She opened a wall cupboard and took down two white china mugs.

‘I’m going to take a shower,’ she said. ‘Help yourself if it’s ready before I am.’

A minute later he heard running water, and after that the gentle whine of a hairdryer. The coffee machine tinkled and sputtered. Abby got back just as it finished. She looked pink and damp and she smelled of soap. She was wearing a knee-length dress that looked like a man’s button-down shirt, but longer and slimmer. Probably not a whole lot underneath it. Certainly her feet were bare. After-work attire. A cosy evening at home. They poured their coffee and took their mugs back to the living room.

‘You didn’t answer my question,’ she said. ‘I guess you didn’t get a chance.’

‘What question?’ he said.

‘What kind of work do you like to do?’

In response he gave her his capsule bio. Easy to understand at first, then harder later. Son of a Marine, childhood in fifty different places, then West Point, then the military police in a hundred different places, then the reductions in force when the Cold War ended, leading directly to his sudden head-first introduction to civilian life. A straightforward story. Followed by the wandering, which was not so straightforward. No job, no home, always restless. Always moving. Just the clothes on his back. No particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there. Some people found it hard to understand. But Abby seemed to get it. She asked none of the usual dumb questions.

Her own story was shorter, because she was younger. Born in a suburb in Michigan, raised in a suburb in California, loved books and philosophy and theatre and music and dance and experiment and performance art. Came to town as an undergraduate student, and never left. A temporary gig waiting tables for a month turned into ten years. She was thirty-two. Older than she looked. She said she was happy.

They went back and forth to the kitchen for refills of coffee and ended up facing each other at opposite ends of the sofa, Reacher sprawling comfortably, Abby sitting cross-legged, with the tails of her shirt dress tucked down demurely between her bare knees. Reacher didn’t know much about philosophy or theatre or dance or experiment or performance art, but he read books when he could, and he heard music when he could, so he was able to keep up. A couple of times they found they had read the same stuff. Same with music. She called it her retro phase. He said it felt like yesterday. They laughed about it.

It got to two o’clock in the morning. He figured he could get a room at an Albanian hotel. One block further east. Just as good. He could afford to waste what he had already laid out. He was more annoyed about the five minutes of his life. At the desk. He would never get that back.

Abby said, ‘You can stay here, if you like.’

He was pretty certain there was one more button undone than before, on the front of her shirt dress. He felt he could trust his judgement on the matter. He was an observant man. He had previously inspected the original gap many times. It had been very appealing. But the new gap was better.

He said, ‘I didn’t see a guest room.’

She said, ‘I don’t have one.’

‘Would this be a lifestyle experiment?’

‘As opposed to what?’

‘Normal reasons.’

‘I guess a mixture.’

‘Works for me,’ Reacher said.