FORTY


The lounge was in the basement of a wide brick building on a decent street three blocks from the first of the downtown high-rises. There were coffee shops and boutiques on the ground floor, and other enterprises above. Maybe twelve in total. They all shared a freight entrance in back, where Barton parked. Reacher slotted the Lincoln next to him. Between them they hauled the stuff to the elevator. Then Vantresca showed up, in his Jaguar. He parked the other side of the van and got out and said, ‘I’m with the band.’

Barton and Hogan rode down with their gear. Reacher and Abby stayed on the street. Abby asked Vantresca about the Shevicks.

‘They’re hanging in there,’ Vantresca said. ‘They’re on a high floor. It feels safe and remote. They’re taking showers and taking naps. I showed them how room service works. They’ll be OK. They seem pretty resilient. They’re too old to be snowflakes. At least they can watch TV now. They were happy about that. Tried not to show it.’

Abby gave him the second Ukrainian phone. The one Reacher didn’t throw out the car window. Vantresca read through the string of new texts. He said, ‘They know the Albanians are wiped out. They think they’re both being attacked by Russian organized crime. They’ve gone to Situation C. They’re tightening the guard. They’re taking up defensive positions. They’re saying, let no one pass. With an exclamation point. Very dramatic. Sounds like a slogan on an old Eastern Bloc billboard.’

‘Any mention of Trulenko?’ Reacher asked.

‘Nothing. Presumably he’s part of tightening the guard.’

‘But they’re not shutting him down.’

‘Doesn’t say so.’

‘Therefore what he does can’t be interrupted. Even for a war with Russian organized crime. That should tell us something.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know,’ Reacher said. ‘Did you stop by your office?’

Vantresca nodded. He pulled a slip of paper out his back pants pocket. He handed it over. A name, and a number. Barbara Buckley. The Washington Post. A D.C. area code.

‘Waste of time,’ Vantresca said. ‘She won’t talk to you.’

Reacher took the captured phone from him. He dialled the number. The phone rang. The call was answered.

He said, ‘Ms Buckley?’

‘Not here,’ a voice said. ‘Try later.’

The phone went down again. Almost noon. The day half over. They rode the empty freight elevator down to the basement, where they found Barton and Hogan setting up. They had two friends on stage with them. A guy who played guitar, and a woman who sang. A regular lunchtime date for all of them, once a week.

Reacher hung back in the shadows. The room was large, but low. No windows, because it was a basement. There was a bar all the way across the right-hand wall, and a rectangle of parquet dance floor, and some chairs and tables, and some standing room only. There were maybe sixty people already inside. With more filing in. Past a guy in a suit on a stool. He was in the far left corner of the room. Not exactly a doorman. More like a bottom-of-the-stairs man. But his role was identical. Counting heads, and looking tough. He was a big individual. Broad shoulders, wide neck. Black suit, white shirt, black silk necktie. In the near left corner of the room was a double-wide corridor, that led to the restrooms, and a fire exit, and the freight elevator. It was the way they had come in. There were wide hoops of coloured spotlights fixed to the ceiling, all trained inward on the stage. Not much else in the way of illumination. A dim fire exit sign at the head of the corridor, and another behind the man on the stool.

All good.

Reacher drifted back to the stage. The gear was all set up. It was humming and buzzing gently. Barton’s Precision bass was leaning against his monster cabinet. Ready for action. His back-up instrument was on a stand next to it. Ready for emergencies. Barton himself was at a table close by. Eating lunch. A hamburger. He said the band got free food. Whatever they wanted off the menu, to a max of twenty bucks.

Reacher asked him, ‘What kind of stuff are you going to play?’

‘Covers, mostly,’ he said. ‘Maybe a couple of our own songs.’

‘Are you loud?’

‘If we want to be.’

‘Do people dance?’

‘If we want them to.’

‘Make them dance the third number,’ Reacher said. ‘Make it loud. Every eye on you.’

‘That part usually comes at the end.’

‘We don’t have time.’

‘We have a rock and roll medley. Everyone dances to that. I guess we could bring it in early.’

‘Works for me,’ Reacher said. ‘Thank you.’

All good.

Plan made.


The house lights went down and the stage lights came up and the band kicked into its opening number, which was a mid-tempo rocker with a sad verse and an exuberant chorus. Reacher and Abby drifted away to the near right corner of the room, diagonally opposite the man on the stool. They drifted through the crowd at the bar, following the right-hand wall, aiming for the far right corner. They got there just as the band started its second number, which was faster and hotter than the first. They were warming up the crowd. Getting them ready for the rock and roll medley coming next. They were pretty good at it. They were hitting the spot. Absurdly Reacher wanted to stop and dance. Something about the pulse of the beat. He could see Abby felt the same way. She was walking ahead of him. He could see it in her hips. She wanted to dance.

So, absurdly, they did. In the dark, beyond the rim of the crowd, close to the wall, bopping away, maintaining some element of linear progress, in a two steps forward, one step back kind of a way, but basically just having fun. Some kind of release, Reacher figured, or relief, or diversion, or consolation. Or normality. What two people who just met should be doing.

All around them other people were doing it too. More and more. So that when the third number started the place went wild, with people crushing in on the parquet floor, hopping around, plus a wide halo of more on the carpet, bumping tables, spilling drinks, going crazy. Make them dance. Make it loud. Every eye on you. Barton had delivered big time.

Reacher and Abby stopped dancing.

They ghosted the rest of the way along the back wall, behind the mass of dancers, towards the far left corner, where they arrived directly behind the man on the stool. They waited in the gloom six feet away, until a gaggle of latecomers started down the stairs. The man on the stool looked up at them. Reacher stepped behind him and clapped a hand down on his shoulder. Like a friendly greeting. Or a pretend surprise, just horsing around, like some guys do. Reacher figured that was all the latecomers saw. What they didn’t see was his fingers curling under the guy’s shirt collar, twisting it, tightening it. What they also didn’t see was his other hand, low down behind, jamming the muzzle of a gun hard against the base of the guy’s spine. Really hard. Hard enough to cause a puncture wound all by itself, even without pulling the trigger.

Reacher leaned forward and spoke in the guy’s ear.

He said, ‘Let’s go take a walk.’

He pulled with his left and pushed with his right and manoeuvred the guy backward off the stool. He stood him upright and got him balanced. He twisted his collar harder. Abby stepped up and patted his pockets and took his phone and his gun. Another steel P7. The band fell straight into the second song in the medley. Faster and louder. Reacher leaned forward again.

He yelled, ‘Hear that backbeat? I could shoot you four to the bar and no one in here would notice a damn thing. So do exactly what I tell you.’

He pushed the guy along the left-hand wall, stiff, awkward, four-legged, like the shadow he had seen in the Shevicks’ hallway. Abby kept pace a yard away, like a wingman. She roved back and forth. She ducked in and out. The band went straight into the third part of the medley. Faster and louder still. Reacher hustled the guy harder. Ran him all the way to the mouth of the corridor. To the freight elevator. Up to the street. Out to the dock. Out to the daylight. He hauled him around to the rear of the Lincoln. He stood him up straight and made him watch.

Abby pressed the button on the key fob.

The trunk lid raised up.

Two dead guys. Same suits, same ties. Limp, bloody, stinking.

The guy looked away.

Reacher said to him, ‘That’s you, a minute from now. Unless you answer my questions.’

The guy said nothing. He couldn’t speak. His collar was twisted too tight.

Reacher asked, ‘Where does Maxim Trulenko work?’

He slackened his grip half an inch. The guy panted a couple of breaths. He glanced left, glanced right, glanced up to the sky, as if he was considering his options. As if he had options to consider. Then he looked down. At the dead guys in the trunk.

Then he stared.

He said, ‘That’s my cousin.’

‘Which one?’ Reacher asked. ‘The one I shot in the head, or the one I shot in the throat?’

‘We came here together. From Odessa. We arrived in New Jersey.’

‘You must be confusing me with someone who gives a shit. I asked you a question. Where does Maxim Trulenko work?’

The guy said the word they had seen in the text message. Biologically inexact. Either a hive or a nest or a burrow. For something that hummed or buzzed or thrashed around.

‘Where is it?’ Reacher said.

‘I don’t know,’ the guy said. ‘It’s a secret operation.’

‘How big is it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Who else works there?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do Danilo and Gregory work there?’

‘No.’

‘Where do they work?’

‘In the office.’

‘Is that separate?’

‘From what?’

‘The word you used. The hive.’

‘Of course it is.’

‘Where is the office?’

The guy named a street, and a cross street. He said, ‘Behind the taxi company, across from the pawn shop, next to the bail bonds.’

‘We were right there,’ Abby said.

Reacher nodded. He slid his hand around under the guy’s collar, from the back, to the side. He dug down with his fingers until he felt the inside face of the guy’s necktie centred in the meat of his palm. He felt it through the cotton of the collar. A silk necktie, at that point about an inch and a half wide. More tensile strength than steel. Silk shimmered because its fibres were triangular, like elongated prisms, which did nice things with light, but which also locked together so tight it was virtually impossible to pull them apart end to end. A steel cable would give way sooner.

Reacher bunched his fist. Took up what slack there was. At first his hand was square on. All his knuckles were lined up parallel with the crushed rim of the collar. Like he was hanging one-handed from a rung on a ladder. Then he rotated his thumb towards him, and his pinkie knuckle away from him. As if he was trying to spin the ladder, like an airplane propeller. Or like a tweak on a rein, turning a horse. All of which drove his pinkie knuckle into the side of the guy’s neck. Which in turn tightened the stronger-than-steel strap against the other side of his neck. Reacher held it like that for a spell, and then he turned his hand another small angle. And then another. The doorman was calm. The pressure was all side to side, not front to back. He wasn’t choking for lack of air. Not thrashing around in desperate panic. Instead the arteries in his neck were closed off and no blood was reaching his brain. Relaxed. Peaceful. Like a narcotic. Warm and comfortable.

Sleepy.

Almost there.

Almost done.

Reacher held it a whole extra minute, just to be sure, and then he tipped the guy in the trunk with his cousin, and he slammed the lid. Abby looked at him. As if to ask, are we going to kill them all? But not disapproving. Not accusatory. Merely a request for information. He thought to himself, I hope so.

Out loud he said, ‘I should try the Washington Post again.’

She passed him the dead guy’s phone. There was a brand new text on the screen. As yet unread. It had his picture in a fat green bubble. The surprise portrait from the moneylending bar. The pale guy, raising his phone. Below the photo was a block of Cyrillic writing. Some long screed about something or other.

‘What the hell is their problem now?’ he said.

‘Vantresca will tell us,’ she said.

He dialled the Washington Post from memory, having done it not long before. Once again the phone rang. Once again the call was answered.

Once again he said, ‘Ms Buckley?’

‘Yes?’ a voice said.

‘Barbara Buckley?’

‘What do you want?’

‘I have two things for you,’ Reacher said. ‘Some good news, and a story.’

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