Ли Чайлд - No Middle Name

‘You said we would hang out and let her come to us.’

‘Mission creep. Occupational hazard. Like the navy transporting the Marines.’

‘I’m an English major.’

‘Just five minutes, OK?’

‘OK,’ she said.

But they didn’t need five minutes. They were done in barely sixty seconds. They made the tight left on to Downing, and a right on Bedford, and a right on Carmine, back towards Bleecker again, and in a doorway on the right side of the street Reacher caught a flash of pale skin and blonde hair, and he pointed, and Chrissie jammed to a stop, and Jill Hemingway stepped out of the dark and bent down to Reacher’s window, like a Seoul streetwalker talking to an enlisted man.

Reacher expected Hemingway to be mad at his reappearance, but she wasn’t. He figured she felt exposed. Or caught out in her own obsession. Which she was, basically. And she looked a little sheepish about it.

He asked, ‘Is his place near here?’

She pointed through the car at a pair of large blank doors across the street. They were tall and wide. Like a wagon entrance, from long ago, big enough for a cart and a team of horses. In the daylight the paint might have looked dark green. Set into the right-hand door was a judas gate, big enough for a person. Presumably the doors would lead to an interior ground-floor yard. It was a two-storey building. Offices above, possibly. Or storerooms. Behind the building was a bigger building, blank and dark and massive. A brick church of some kind, maybe.

Reacher asked, ‘Is he in there?’

Hemingway nodded.

Reacher asked, ‘With how many others?’

‘He’s alone.’

‘Really?’

‘He runs protection rackets. Among other things. So now he has to deliver. His guys are all out, watching over his clients.’

‘I didn’t know protection rackets worked that way. I thought they were just extortion, plain and simple.’

‘They are, basically. But he needs to maintain some kind of credibility. And he needs to keep his best cash cows in business. There’s a lot of damage being done tonight. Plenty of places are going to go under. No more payoffs from them. And a wise man keeps an eye on his cash flow.’

Reacher turned and looked at the doors. ‘You hoping someone will break in?’

‘I don’t know what’s taking them so long. That’s the problem with junkies. No get-up-and-go.’

‘What has he got in there?’

‘A little of everything. He keeps his inventory low because he’s got the New Jersey Turnpike and the Holland Tunnel for rapid resupply, which is apparently what they teach you in business school now, but still, I bet there’s a week’s worth in there.’

‘Are we in the way? Should we go park somewhere else?’

‘You should go home. This isn’t your business.’

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘About what?’

‘The Son of Sam.’

‘Croselli isn’t enough for you?’

‘I saw him.’

‘Who?’

‘I saw a man carrying a Charter Arms Bulldog and peering into cars.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘It was our car he peered into.’

‘Where?’

‘The East River, at 34th Street.’

Hemingway said, ‘You know guns, right? Being a Marine and all?’

‘Son of a Marine,’ Reacher said. ‘It was the right gun.’

‘It’s pitch dark.’

‘The moon and the stars and the water.’

Hemingway ducked down another inch and looked across Reacher at Chrissie. ‘Did you see it too?’

Chrissie said, ‘No.’

‘How come?’

‘I wasn’t looking.’

Hemingway said, ‘I don’t know what to do. OK, let’s say we have a confirmed sighting, but so what? We already know the Son of Sam is in New York. That’s the point of the guy. It adds no new information. You’d need something more. You’d need to know who he is. Do you?’

‘No,’ Reacher said. ‘But I know what he used to be.’

They parked on Bleecker, intending to walk back and join Hemingway in her doorway hideout, but suddenly Bleecker had people on it, some of them in groups, some of them in pairs, some of those groups and pairs carrying stuff too heavy for comfort, and therefore consequently looking for alternative modes of transportation, such as small hatchback cars, each one apparently ideal for hauling a large television. Reacher and Chrissie were a yard out of the Chevette, with the doors closed but not locked, when the staring match started. Two guys, staggering under an enormous box, with Sony written on it upside down. They came in a straight line, eyeballing the Chevette all the way, and Reacher said, ‘Keep walking, guys.’

The guy on the left was a shadowy grunting figure, and he said, ‘Suppose we don’t?’

‘Then I’ll kick your butt and steal your television.’

‘Suppose you drive us?’

‘Just keep walking,’ Reacher said.

They didn’t. They eased the box carefully to the ground and stood up again, breathing deep, two dark figures in the dark. Even from six feet away it was hard to make out detail, but their hands hadn’t gone to their pockets yet, which was a good sign. It meant any upcoming combat was likely to be unarmed, which was reassuring. Reacher had grown up in a culture of extreme violence, it being hard to describe the U.S. Marine Corps any other way, and he had taken its lessons on board, with the result that he hadn’t lost a fight in more than ten years, against Corps kids from the same culture, and against rivalrous local youth all around the world, who liked to think the U.S. military was nothing special, and who liked to try to prove it by proxy, usually unsuccessfully. Two punks on a blacked-out New York City street were unlikely to prove an unprecedented problem, unless they had knives or guns, which was unknowable at that point.

The guy on the right said, ‘Maybe we’ll take the girl with us. Maybe we’ll have ourselves some fun.’

The guy on the left said, ‘Just give us the keys and no one gets hurt.’

Which was the moment of decision. Surprise was always good. Delay was always fatal. Guys who let a situation unfold in its own good time were just stockpiling problems for themselves. Reacher ran at the left-hand guy, two choppy steps, like an infielder charging a grounder, and he didn’t slow down. He ran right through the guy, leading with his forearm held horizontal, jerking his elbow into the guy’s face, and as soon as he felt the guy’s nose burst open he stamped down and reversed direction around the box and went after the second guy, who flinched away and took Reacher’s charging weight flat in the back. The guy pitched forward like he had been hit by a truck, and Reacher kicked him in the head, and the guy lay still.

Reacher checked their pockets. No knives, no guns, which was usually the case. But it had been their choice. They could have kept on walking. He hauled the right-hand guy next to the left-hand guy, close together, shoulder to shoulder, and he picked up the heavy box like a strongman in the circus, struggling and tottering, and he took two short steps and dropped it on their heads from waist height.

Chrissie said, ‘Why did you do that?’

‘Rules,’ Reacher said. ‘Winning ain’t enough. The other guy has to know he lost.’

‘Is that what they teach you in the Marine Corps?’

‘More or less.’

‘They’ll wreck the car when they wake up.’

‘They won’t. They’ll throw up and crawl home. By which time you’ll be long gone anyway.’

So Chrissie locked up, and they walked back through the heat to where Hemingway was waiting on Carmine. Reacher said, ‘No progress?’

Hemingway said, ‘Not yet.’

‘Maybe we should go recruit someone. There are plenty of people on Bleecker.’

‘That would be suborning a felony.’