FaceOff

Good and Valuable Consideration

The bar was a hundred years old, built for an ink-stained subset of the working class. Clerks, scriveners, printers, and other office-bound wretches of every kind, who had once filled the narrow streets as they quit at the ends of long days in poor conditions, seeking solace wherever they could find it. Now it was just another Boston curiosity, full of dim light and glazed oatmeal-colored tile, and brass, and mahogany, most notably on the bar itself, where a length of tight-grained wood from a massive old tree had been polished to an impossible shine by a million sleeves. The only discordant decorative note was high on the bar back itself, but it was also the only reason Reacher was there: a big flat-screen television, tuned to a live broadcast of the Yankees at Fenway Park.

Reacher paused inside the door and tried to pick his spot. His eyesight was pretty good, so he didn’t need to be close, but in his experience flat-screens weren’t great when viewed at an angle, so he wanted to be central. Which gave him just one practical choice, a lone unoccupied stool among five in the middle section of the bar, which was more or less directly face-on to the screen. If it had been a theater seat, it would have been expensive. Front row, center. There was a dark-haired woman on its left, her back to the room, and a fat guy on its right, and then came a lean guy with short hair and muscles in his neck and his back, and on the right-hand end of the section was another woman, a blonde, with her high heels hooked over the rail of her stool. The lizard part of Reacher’s brain told him immediately the only one to either worry about or rely on was the guy with the short hair and the muscles. Not that Reacher was expecting trouble, even though he was in Boston, rooting for the Yankees.

The bar back was mirrored behind a thicket of bottles, and Reacher saw the short-haired guy spot him, just a blink of roving vigilance, automatic, which reinforced the message his lizard brain had sent. Not a cop, he thought, but some kind of a lone-wolf tough guy, very relaxed, very sure of himself. Ex-military, possibly, from the kind of shadowy unit that taught you to glance in mirrors from time to time, or suffer the consequences.

Then the fat guy on the right of the empty stool looked in the mirror, too, much more obviously. He was not relaxed. He was not sure of himself. He kept his eyes on Reacher’s reflected image, all the way through the trip from the door to the empty stool. Reacher slid in beside him and rocked from side to side, to claim his space, and he put his elbows on the mahogany, and the fat guy half turned, with a hesitant but expectant look, as if unsure whether to speak or wait to be spoken to. Reacher said nothing. He rarely offered greetings to strangers. He liked to keep to himself.

Eventually the guy turned away again, but he kept his gaze on the mirror, not the screen. He had a prominent lower lip, sticking out like a pout, and then a great wattle of flesh fell away in a perfect parabola to his shirt collar, uninterrupted by any kind of bony structure. The pneumatic impression continued all the way to his dainty feet. The guy was like a balloon made of flesh-colored silk. He looked like he would be soft and dry to the touch. He had a wedding band on his left hand, deep in the fat, like a sausage with a tourniquet. He was wearing a suit made of the same material as chino pants. The waistband could have been sixty inches.

Reacher looked up at the game. The top of the first was over, no hits, no runs, one man left on base. The commercials were starting, first up being a leasing offer on a brand of automobile Reacher had never heard of. The barman finished up elsewhere and scooted over sideways and Reacher asked for a full-fat Bud in a bottle, which he got seconds later, ice cold and foaming.

The fat guy said, “I’m Jerry DeLong.”

At first Reacher wasn’t sure who he had been addressing, but by a process of elimination he figured it was him. He said, “Are you?”

The guy with the short hair and the muscles was watching the exchange in the mirror. Reacher glanced at his reflection, and then the fat guy’s, who looked straight at him via the glass. Barroom intimacy. Eye contact, but indirect.

Reacher said, “I’m here to watch the game.”

Which seemed to satisfy the guy. He looked away, as if an issue had been settled. His gaze returned to the mirror. The various angles of incidence and reflection were hard to calculate, but Reacher figured the guy was watching the door behind him. He was giving off a low-level buzz of anxiety. His eyes were pale and watery. But the rest of him was composed. His huge, pale face was immobile, and his body was still.

The commercials ended, and the broadcast returned to Fenway. The little green bandbox looked luscious under the lights. The Yankees were in the field, in road gray. Their pitcher was throwing the last of his warm-ups. He didn’t look very good.

Nick Heller had entered the bar three minutes earlier, and had immediately picked up on the after-work vibe, the frenzied high spirits, the smell of sweat and cologne and beer and unwinding anxiety. It was like walking into a party at its very peak: the disorienting cacophony of chatter, the nearly deafening babble, the whooping laughter.

It was one of Heller’s favorite hometown bars because it was the real thing. You’d never find raspberry wheat craft beer here. They had Narragansett beer on tap, a beer that Bostonians were loyal to even if it was watery swill.

There were a couple of available seats at the bar, on either side of a great fat man. Interesting. Heller wondered whether the fat guy was saving them for friends. He couldn’t be from the neighborhood. No one who came here did things like saving seats.

Heller sidled through the crowd toward the bar counter. One of the things he liked about this place was the mirror behind the serried ranks of bottles. A mirror like this, you could see the faces of those sitting at the bar as you approached. Or you could sit at the bar, back to the room, and see who was coming up from behind. You could talk to the guy or the woman next to you and be looking him or her in the face. In the mirror. Directly, but at the same time indirectly. Heller liked being able to relax when he went for a drink, and you never knew who might turn up.

As he neared the bar, he noticed one face in the mirror looking at him. The fat guy. He had an odd face, a receding chin with a cowl-like wattle that tucked under his collar like an apron. He reminded Heller of a trout. He was watching Heller intently. Like he’d been waiting for him. Heller had never seen the guy before, but still the fat man studied him. As if… well, as if he were expecting someone but didn’t know what that person might look like.

As if Heller might be that guy. Strange. Heller didn’t know him.

Heller sat on the stool and nodded at the man.

“Howyadoin?” the guy said.

“Hey,” Heller said, neither friendly nor rude.

A pause. “Jerry DeLong,” the man said, sticking out his hand.

Heller didn’t feel like making friends. He didn’t want to chat. The Red Sox were playing the Yankees at Fenway Park. This was a major moment in Boston sports, a rite, like the gladiator games at the Roman Coliseum back in the day. And there was no better place to watch an important game like this than here.

After a brief pause, Heller shook his hand. “Nick,” he said. No last name. Heller didn’t like to give out his name. He immediately turned to the huge, flat TV screen, set to the Sox. Of course it was. The owner of the bar, a buddy of Nick’s, was an ardent Sox fan. So was Sully, the bartender. Some nights, though, there was discord in the bar when the Sox were playing opposite the Bruins. Bostonians also loved their hockey. You even had nights when all four Boston teams — the Sox, the Bruins, the Celtics, and the Patriots — were playing on four different channels. You didn’t want to be in this particular bar on a night like that. It got ugly.

“Nick,” the bartender said, pulling him a Budweiser without asking.

“Sully,” Heller said.

“Big night, huh?”

“Romp to victory.”

“Absolutely,” said Sully, setting the glass of beer in front of him, a foamy white head like a layer of cotton batting. He wagged his head as if to say, From your mouth to God’s ear.

Then Heller sensed in his peripheral field the fat guy staring at him again.

In a neutral voice Heller said, “Do I know you?”

The guy sipped a gin and tonic. “Uh, you here to meet someone?” he said.

“I’m here to watch the Sox win,” Heller said. A degree friendlier this time, but still no-nonsense.

“Sorry.”

“It’s cool,” Heller relented.

In the bar-back mirror he noticed a large man approaching the empty seat on DeLong’s left. Heller knew at once this was someone to keep a wary eye on. He was huge, way taller than most — easily six-foot-five — and at least two hundred fifty pounds. Unusually broad-shouldered. A tank. He was all muscle and had that ex-military look you couldn’t miss. The thrift-shop clothes and brutalist haircut made him look a little like a drifter, or at least not someone who paid more than ten bucks at the barber shop.

But there was also a canny intelligence in the eyes, and a wariness. He had the confident look of someone who wasn’t challenged physically very often and, when he was, usually won. He intimidated people and didn’t mind it.

So this was who Jerry DeLong was meeting. That was a relief. Heller wasn’t going to have to fend off some blab-o-maniac during the ball game.

Then he overheard Jerry DeLong introduce himself to the big guy and meet with the same puzzled reaction he’d got from Nick.

Heller put his elbow on the mahogany bar next to an ugly cigarette burn from the good old days when you could smoke in bars, and took a sip of the beer. It was crisp and cold. He never understood why the Brits liked beer at room temperature.

The Yankee pitcher was throwing the last of his warm-ups. He was dismayingly good. Graceful, and a great arm. A knuckleballer. He had a mean slider and a nasty power changeup with serious depth and fade. Most important, he wasn’t wasting his stuff. He was saving it for the game. This wasn’t a pitcher who’d burn out long before one hundred pitches, like so many others did.

Of course he was good: he’d been one of the Red Sox’s best starters until the Yankees hired him away for money no one could turn down. The best pitching money can buy. Yankee fans used to boo him relentlessly when the Sox came to Yankee Stadium. But as soon as he started pitching no-hitters for them, they switched allegiances.

Heller wasn’t a guy who switched allegiances.

The bottom of the first started and the Red Sox batter stepped up to the plate and hit a smash off the first pitch. A home run. It sailed over the Green Monster, that ridiculously high left-field wall that had turned many a surefire homer into a double. The ball probably broke a store window somewhere over on Lansdowne Street. The bar erupted in cheers, predictably.

Then Heller noticed three interesting things.

Jerry DeLong hadn’t been paying attention to the game. He turned to the set searchingly, a beat too late, trying to figure out what had just happened.

And the big bruiser on his left wasn’t cheering. Not even smiling. He’d been watching the game closely, but obviously wasn’t a Sox fan. He winced at the home run and made a little snort. He didn’t look happy. A New Yorker, then. A Yankees fan. It took a fair measure of chutzpah for a Yankees fan to watch a Sox-Yankees game in a bar like this one. Either that or not caring what other people thought. The latter, Heller decided.

Then the fat guy’s cell phone rang and he took it out of his pocket and held it up to his ear, next to the pouch of flesh below his jowls. He cupped his other hand around the phone, shielding it from the clamor of the bar.

“Hey, honey,” he said, easy and familiar, but also a little panicked, like husbands in bars everywhere. “No, not at all — I’m watching the game with Howie and Ken.”

Which was the third interesting thing. The fat man was lying to his wife.

Men lie to their wives for a long list of reasons, infidelity being right at the top. But this was no Craigslist assignation. He wasn’t here for sex. He didn’t have that freshly scrubbed look of a guy on the make. He hadn’t combed his hair or splashed on fresh cologne.

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?”

Jerry DeLong looked in the mirror and his face paled.

He said, “Is that him?”

“Sure is.” Heller gestured with his head, straight at the guy. “No time like the present.”

DeLong said nothing.

Reacher said, “What’s in the grocery sack?”

DeLong said, “Money. A hundred grand.”

“What for?”

“Me.”

“So what is this? A bribe or a threat?”

“Both.”

“He’s going to break your legs and then give you a hundred grand?”

“Maybe the money first.”

“Why?”

DeLong didn’t answer.

Heller said, “It’s an Albanian thing. One of them read a law book. They like to give good and valuable consideration. They think it cements the deal. And legs heal. Money never goes away. It’s either in your house or your bank. It means you’re theirs forever.”

Reacher said, “I never heard of that before.”

“You’re not from here.”

“Ethical gangsters?”

“Not really. Like I said, legs heal.”

“But it’s definitely a two-part deal?”

“All part of the culture.”

The top of the second ended with a limp swing-and-miss, strike three. Still one — zip Boston. The zip didn’t look likely to change. The one did. Reacher turned to the fat guy and said, “He’s supposed to make contact with you, right?”

DeLong nodded yes.

“When?”

“I’m not sure. Soon, I guess. I don’t really know what he’s waiting for.”

“Maybe he’s watching the game.”

“He isn’t,” Heller said.

“Not as dumb as he looks, then.”

“You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Depends when the audit starts, I guess.”

“Tomorrow morning,” DeLong said.

“And what happens if you’re in the orthopedic ward?”

“Someone else does it. Less well.”

The bottom of the second started. A four-pitch lead-off walk. Hopeless. Reacher rocked back and looked at Heller and said, “Do you live here?”

Heller said, “Not in this actual bar.”

“But in town?”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“I guess someone has to. You worried about these Albanians?”

“Altogether less hassle if Allie Boy doesn’t remember my face.”

“Where did you serve?”

“With General Hood.”

“Did you get out in time?”

“Unscathed.”

“Good for you.”

“What were you?”

“MPs,” Reacher said. “Hood’s still in Leavenworth, as far as I know.”

“Where he belongs.”

“You armed, by any chance?”

“No, or I’d have shot you already. When you said a hundred years. It was less than ninety.”

“Is the Albanian guy armed?”

“Probably. A Sig, most likely. In the back of his pants. See how he’s sitting?”

“I don’t think we can get it done during the commercials. We’re going to have to give up half an inning.”

“Top of the next.”

Now Boston had two runners on. Reacher said, “I’m not sure our corpulent friend can wait that long.”

The fat guy said, “What are you talking about?”

Reacher saw the Albanian moving in the mirror, shifting in his chair, putting his hand on the grocery sack.

Heller said, “Now.”

Reacher turned back to DeLong and said, “Get up, right now, and walk out, straight line, fast, don’t look back, and keep on going.”

“Out?”

“To the street. Right now.”

“Which way?”

“Turn left. If in doubt, always turn left. That’s a rule that will serve you well.”

“Left?”

“Or right. It really doesn’t matter. Fast as you can.”

Which wasn’t lightning-quick, but it was reasonably speedy. The guy swiveled and kind of fell forward off his stool, and waited while his fat bounced and jiggled and settled, and then he set off through the crowd, surprisingly light on his dainty feet, and he was already past the blinged-out Albanian before the guy really noticed. Reacher and Heller paused a beat and slid off their stools in turn, and made up the third and fourth places in a determined little procession through the throng, first DeLong, then the Albanian with the sack, then Reacher, with Heller right behind him. DeLong had the advantage. He was cruising like a ship. People were scattering in front of him, for fear of getting run over. The Albanian guy wasn’t getting the same physical deference. From a distance he wasn’t imposing. Reacher and Heller didn’t have that problem. People were stepping smartly aside, out of their way.

DeLong pushed through the bar door and was gone. The Albanian got there a second later. Reacher and Heller followed him out, practically close enough to touch. The street was quiet and dark and narrow. Old Boston. The fat guy had turned left. His pale bulk was twenty yards away, on the sidewalk. The Albanian had seen him. He was getting ready to hustle in pursuit.

“Here?” Reacher asked.

Heller said, “It’s as good a place as any.”

Reacher called, “Allie Boy?”

The guy missed a step, but kept on walking.

“Yes, you, asshole,” Reacher said.

The guy glanced back.

“All those rings and chains,” Reacher said. “Didn’t your momma tell you it’s dumb to walk around like that in a poor part of town?”

The guy stopped and turned and said, “What?”

“You could get mugged,” Heller said.

The guy said, “Mugged?”

Reacher said, “Where a couple of guys take all your stuff. You don’t have that in Albania?”

“You know who I am?”

“Obviously. I just used your name and said you’re from Albania. This stuff ain’t rocket science.”

“You know what will happen to you?”

“Nobody knows what will happen to them. The future’s not ours to see. But in this case I don’t suppose much will happen. We might get a couple bucks for the bling. We’re certainly not going to wear it. We got more taste.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Was that a comedy club we were just in?”

There was a dull roar from inside the bar. Likely a three-run homer. Reacher winced. Heller smiled. The Albanian hitched the paper sack higher to the crook of his left elbow. Which left his right hand free.

Heller stepped forward, going right, and Reacher went left. At that point the Albanian guy should have turned and run. That was the smart play. He was probably fast enough. But he didn’t, inevitably. He was a tough guy. The streets were his. He went for his gun.

Which was very dumb, because it took both his hands out of the game. One was cradling his grocery sack, and the other was snaking around behind his back. Reacher hit him with a straight right, hard, in the center of his face, and after that it didn’t really matter where his hands were. Command and control were temporarily unavailable. The guy dropped the sack and rocked back on rubber legs, blood already spurting, ready for a standing count.

Which he didn’t get. Street-fighting’s first rule: there are no rules. Heller kicked him dead-on in the nuts, hard enough to take his weight off his feet, and then the guy collapsed down to about half his size in a crouch, and Heller used the flat of his sole to tip him over on his side, and Reacher kicked him in the head, and the guy lay still.

“Was that hard enough?” Heller said.

“For amnesia? Difficult to judge. Amnesia is unpredictable.”

“Best guess?”

“Better safe than sorry.”

So Heller picked his spot and kicked the guy again, in the left temple, going for lateral displacement of the brain in the pan. Generally four times more effective than front-to-back. No surprise. One of General Hood’s boys would have learned stuff like that pretty early. Hood wasn’t all bad. Mostly, but not all.

In the far distance Jerry DeLong was watching.

Reacher picked up the grocery sack. It was full of hundred-dollar bills, all used and wrinkled, held together in bricks by orange rubber bands. Reacher had four pants pockets, two in front, two in back, so he took four bricks from the sack and stuffed one in each pocket. Then he tore off the gold chains and pulled off the rings and found the Sig and went through the Albanian’s pockets and dumped out all the loot. He gave the sack to Heller.

Heller said, “The cops will come. We don’t leave people on the street here. Not like New York.”

Reacher said, “They’ll check the bar.”

“Their first stop.”

“I’ll go east and you go west. Pleasure working with you.”

“Likewise,” Heller said.

They shook hands, and melted away into the darkness, opposite directions, leaving the Albanian where he was on the sidewalk, an unfortunate victim of a mugging, his good and valuable consideration stolen before the deal with DeLong could be properly consummated. Therefore no deal existed. Their own rules said so. DeLong had no obligations, and nothing to betray. An Albanian thing. Part of the culture.

Reacher watched the end of the game in a bar a mile away. He was sure Heller was doing the same thing a mile in the other direction. In which case they were watching two different events. Reacher was watching a limp and miserable defeat. Heller was watching a glorious and triumphant victory. But such was life. You can’t win them all.