Blue Moon

TWENTY-ONE

No one would dream of calling the cops about a burning car on a two-thirds abandoned block on the east side of the city. Such a thing was obviously someone else’s private business, and obviously best kept that way. But plenty of people dreamed about calling Dino’s people. Always. About anything that might be useful. But especially about news like this. It might get them ahead. It might make their names. Some of them made dangerous up-close inspections, flinching away from the heat. They saw burning bodies inside. They wrote down the licence plate, before the flames consumed it.

They called Dino’s people and told them it was a Ukrainian car on fire. It was the type of Lincoln they used west of Center. As far as anyone could tell the two bodies in it were dressed in suits and ties. Which was standard practice over there. Looked like they had been shot in the back. Which was standard practice everywhere. Case closed. They were the enemy.

At which point Dino himself took over.

‘Let it burn,’ he said.

While it did, he called his inner council together. In back of the lumber yard. Which a few of them didn’t like, because lumber was combustible, and something somewhere was currently on fire. Maybe throwing sparks. But they all came. His right-hand man, and his other top boys. No choice.

‘Did we do this?’ Dino asked them.

‘No,’ his right-hand man said. ‘This is not ours.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘By now everyone knows about the massage parlour. Everyone knows we’re four for four, honours even, game over. We have no rogues, or mavericks, or private business. I guarantee that. I would have heard.’

‘Then explain this to me.’

No one could.

‘At least the practical details,’ Dino said. ‘If not the actual meaning.’

One of his guys said, ‘Maybe they drove in to have a meeting. Their contact was waiting on the sidewalk. He got in the back seat to chat. But he shot them instead. Maybe threw in a burning rag.’

‘What contact waiting on the sidewalk?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘A local person?’

‘Probably.’

‘One of our guys?’

‘Could be.’

‘Like an anonymous snitch?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘So anonymous we never noticed him before? So furtive he escaped our attention all these years? I don’t think so. I think such a master of tradecraft would be waiting in a coffee shop on Center Street. He would be talking to some random kid in a hoodie. He wouldn’t let two men in suits in a Town Car anywhere near him. Not within a million miles. Especially not all the way out in this part of town. He might as well publish a confession in the newspaper. So it wasn’t a meeting.’

‘OK.’

‘And why would he shoot them?’

‘I don’t know.’

Another guy said, ‘Then the shooter must have been in the back seat all along. They drove out here as a threesome.’

‘Therefore the shooter is one of them.’

‘Has to be. You don’t let an armed man ride behind you unless you know him.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘He got out and maybe a second car picked him up. Something anonymous. Not another Town Car. Someone would have seen it leaving.’

‘How many people in the second car?’

‘Two, I’m sure. They always work in pairs.’

‘Therefore overall not a small operation,’ Dino said. ‘It must have required a certain amount of resources, and planning, and coordination. And secrecy. Five guys drove out here. I assume two of them didn’t know what was about to happen.’

‘I guess not.’

‘But why did it happen? What was the strategic objective?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why did he set the car on fire?’

‘I don’t know,’ the guy said again.

Dino looked around the table.

He asked, ‘Do we all agree the shooter was in the back seat all along, and therefore was one of them?’

Everyone nodded, most of them gravely, as if coming to a weighty conclusion made inevitable by many hours of deliberation.

‘And then after he shot the guys in the front seats, we know he set the car on fire.’

More nods, this time faster and brisker, because some things were self-evident.

‘Why all that?’ Dino asked.

No one answered.

No one could.

‘It feels like myth and legend,’ Dino said. ‘It feels highly symbolic. Like the Vikings burning their warriors in their boats. Like a ceremonial funeral pyre. Like a ritual sacrifice. It feels like Gregory is making an offering to us.’

‘Of two of his men?’ his right-hand man asked.

‘The number is significant.’

‘How?’

‘We’re getting a new police commissioner. Gregory can’t afford to fight a war. He knows he went too far. Now he’s apologizing. He’s making peace. He knows he was in the wrong. Now he’s trying to make it right. He’s making it six for four, in our favour. As a gesture. So we don’t have to do it ourselves. He’s showing that he agrees with us. He agrees we should be ahead in the count.’

No one responded.

No one could.

Dino got up and walked out. The others heard his footsteps click through the outer office, and through the big corrugated shed. They heard his driver start his car. They heard it drive away. The yard went quiet.

At first no one spoke.

Then someone said, ‘An offering?’

Silence for a moment.

‘You see it different?’ the right-hand man asked.

‘We would never do a thing like that. Therefore neither would Gregory. Why would he?’

‘You think Dino is wrong?’

A huge, dangerous question.

The guy looked all around.

‘I think Dino is losing it,’ he said. ‘A Viking funeral pyre? That’s crazy talk.’

‘Those are bold words.’

‘Do you disagree with them?’

Silence again.

Then the right-hand man shook his head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t disagree. I don’t think it was a sacrifice or an offering.’

‘Then what was it?’

‘I think it was outside interference.’

‘Who?’

‘I think someone killed those guys here so Gregory would blame us for it. He’ll attack us, we’ll attack him back. We’ll end up destroying each other. For someone else’s benefit. So someone else can move in on both our turf. I think that might be the intention.’

‘Who?’ the guy asked again.

‘I don’t know. But we’re going to find out. Then we’re going to kill them all. They’re completely out of line.’

‘Dino wouldn’t sign off on that. He thinks it’s an offering. He thinks everything is sweetness and light now.’

‘We can’t wait.’

‘Are we not going to tell him?’ the guy asked.

The right-hand man was quiet a beat.

Then he said, ‘No, not yet. He would only slow us down. This is too important.’

‘Are you the new boss now?’

‘Maybe. If Dino has really lost it. Which you said first, by the way. Everyone heard you.’

‘I meant no disrespect. But this is a very big step. We better be sure we know what we’re doing. Otherwise it’s a betrayal. The worst kind. He’ll kill us all.’

‘Time to choose up sides,’ the right-hand man said. ‘Time for us all to place our bets. It’s either Viking rituals or it’s some out-of-towner’s takeover bid. Which will kill us all faster than Dino could anyway.’

The guy didn’t speak for ten long seconds.

Then he said, ‘What should we do first?’

‘Put the fire out. Haul the wreck to the crusher. Then start asking around. Two cars drove in. One was a big shiny Lincoln. Someone will remember the other one. We’ll find it, and we’ll find the guy who was in it, and we’ll make him tell us who he’s working for.’

At that moment Reacher was four streets away, in the front parlour of a battered row house owned by a musician named Frank Barton. Barton was Abby’s friend in the east of the city. Also present in the house was Barton’s lodger, a man named Joe Hogan, once a U.S. Marine, now also a musician. A drummer, to be exact. His kit took up half the room. Barton played the bass guitar. His stuff took up the other half. Four instruments on stands, amplifiers, giant loudspeaker cabinets. Here and there among the clutter were narrow armchairs, thinly upholstered with stained and threadbare fabrics. Reacher had one, Abby had one, and Barton had the third and last. Hogan sat on his drum stool. The white Toyota was parked outside the window.

Barton said, ‘This is crazy, man. I know those guys. I play the clubs over there. They never forget. Abby can’t go back there, ever again.’

‘Unless I find Trulenko,’ Reacher said.

‘How will that help?’

‘I think a defeat of that magnitude would change things a little.’

‘How?’

Reacher didn’t answer.

Hogan said, ‘He means the only route to a high-value target like Trulenko will be straight through the top levels of the organization. Therefore afterwards the remaining survivors will be no better than low-level drones running around like chickens with their heads cut off. The Albanians will eat them for breakfast. They’ll own the whole city. What the Ukrainians were once upon a time worried about won’t matter a damn any more. Because the Ukrainians will all be dead.’

Once a U.S. Marine. A sound grasp of strategy.

‘This is crazy,’ Barton said again.

Six chances before the week is over, Reacher thought.