Ли Чайлд - No Middle Name

‘This has nothing to do with Hemingway.’

‘Pull up your shirt.’

‘Why?’

‘I want to see the wire. Before I shoot you.’

Reacher thought: unregistered guns, a deceptive real estate title, a straight-up reference to the Medellin cartel out of Colombia, and a straight-up reference to bribery. The tape had enough. He took a deep, deep breath and put his hands on the hem of his T-shirt. Then he jerked forward from the waist and blew out the candle.

The room went from softly glowing to blacker than the Earl of Hell’s winter coat all in a split second, and Reacher blundered straight ahead, forcing passage between Croselli’s chair and the desk, and Croselli whipped the Colt around in the same general direction and fired. But he missed by a mile, and the muzzle flash backlit him perfectly, like a photographer’s strobe, so Reacher picked his spot and slammed a straight right into the back of his neck, right where soft turns to hard, and Croselli pitched head first out of the chair and landed on his knees. Reacher groped for the chair and lifted it high by the armrests and slammed it down on Croselli’s back. He heard the sound of steel on linoleum as the Colt skittered away, and he brushed the chair aside and groped and patted blindly until he found the collar of Croselli’s shirt, which he bunched in his left hand while he pounded away with his right, short roundhouse punches to the side of Croselli’s head, his ear, his jaw, one, two, three, four , vicious clubbing blows, until he felt the steam go out of the guy, whereupon he reached forward and grabbed the guy’s wrists and yanked them up behind his back, high and painful, and he clamped them together in his left hand, human handcuffs, a party trick perfected years before, enabled by the freakish strength in his fingers, from which no one had ever escaped, not even his brother, who was of equal size, or his father, who was smaller but stronger. He hauled Croselli to his feet and slapped at his pants pockets until he heard the jingle of keys. Croselli got his second wind and started struggling hard, so Reacher turned him a little sideways and quieted him down again with a pile-driver jab to the kidney.

Then he fished out the keys and held them in his right hand, and he asked, ‘Where’s your book of matches?’

Croselli said, ‘You’re going to die, kid.’

‘Obviously,’ Reacher said. ‘No one lives for ever.’

‘I mean tonight, kid.’

Reacher separated a key by feel and pressed the point high on Croselli’s cheek. He said, ‘If so, you won’t see it happen. I’ll take your eyes out first.’

‘Matches in the desk drawer,’ Croselli said.

Reacher turned him again and slammed a short right to his stomach, to fold him over and keep him preoccupied, and he walked him bent over and puking to the desk, and he used his free hand to rattle open the drawers, and to root around, all by feel. There was all kinds of stuff in the drawers. Staplers, pens, rolls of Scotch tape, some in dispensers, pencils, paperclips. And a book of matches, a little limp and damp.

Using a matchbook one-handed was practically impossible, so Reacher turned Croselli towards the window wall, and let go of his wrists, and shoved him hard, and used the resulting few undisturbed seconds to detach a match and strike it, all fizzing and flaring in the dark, and to light the candle with it once again, by which time Croselli was shaping up for a charge, so Reacher stepped towards him and dropped him with a right to the solar plexus, just as the room bloomed back to its former cosy glow.

A solar plexus was worth at least a minute, Reacher thought, and he used that minute to cross the room and pick up the Colt, and to dump its magazine, and to eject the shell from its chamber, and to pick up the chair, and to set it back on its castors, and to turn it just so, and to find the Scotch tape, and to pick the guy up, and to dump him in the chair, and to start taping his wrists to the frame.

Scotch tape was weaker than duct tape, but Reacher made up for it with length, around and around, right hand, left hand, until the guy looked like he had two broken wrists, in casts made of some kind of new see-through yellowish plaster. Then came his ankles. In all Reacher used six whole rolls of tape, and after that there was no way the guy was moving.

Then Hemingway came in the door.

She looked at the candle first, and then at Croselli.

Reacher said, ‘He admits on tape everything here is his.’

She said, ‘I heard a gunshot.’

‘He missed. It was about twenty degrees off on the port side.’

‘I was worried.’

‘It’s the godfather should worry. This is a made man.’

‘What did he say on the tape?’

‘Take it out of my pants and listen for yourself.’

Which she did. Reacher felt the hot quick fingers again, and the weird embrace, under his shirt, as the microphone was passed from hand to hand. Then she clicked and waited and clicked again, and a thin tinny version of Croselli’s voice filled the room, taking responsibility for everything in it, admitting to the Medellin connection, admitting to the bribe, and hinting at the size of it.

She said, ‘You have his keys?’

Reacher said, ‘Right here in my hand.’

‘Open the safe doors.’

Which he did, starting next to the empty armoury, working away from the window, until all of the safes stood open. All of them were full of smooth-packed plastic-wrapped bricks, some brown or green in colour, most white or yellow.

She said, ‘Can you get his keys back in his pocket?’

He did, and said, ‘What next?’

‘Does his phone work?’

He tried it, and said, ‘Yes.’

She gave him a number and said, ‘It’s our internal credible threat hotline.’

He called it in, the exact address, without giving his name, and then the call ended, and she said, ‘Their response time will be more than five minutes but less than ten.’

She put her plastic cassette recorder on the floor near Croselli’s feet. She said, ‘We should go. My car is not close.’

Reacher said, ‘Is this enough?’

She said, ‘More than enough. Medellin is toxic. And the evidence is right here. It’s a photograph, Reacher. This is a photogenic prosecution. It doesn’t matter who he bribed. No one is ever going to say a word against this one. It’s a tidal wave.’

‘One last thing,’ Reacher said, and he turned back to Croselli, and he said, ‘Slapping women is not permitted. You’re supposed to be a man, not a pussy.’

Croselli said nothing.

Reacher raised his hand. ‘How would you like it?’

Croselli said, ‘You wouldn’t hit a guy tied to a chair.’

Reacher said, ‘Watch me,’ and slapped the guy in the face, hard, a real crack , wet or not, and the chair went up on its side legs, and balanced, and balanced, and tottered, and then thumped down on its side, with its castors spinning and Croselli’s head bouncing around like a pinball.

Then they hit the bricks, and Hemingway’s prediction of five-to-ten came true, in that they saw hurrying cars about six minutes out, and then a pair of heavy trucks. A lot of firepower. And why not, for a credible threat?

Hemingway’s car was four blocks away, on Sullivan. It was the mid-blue Granada Reacher had seen before, with the vinyl roof and the toothy grille. He said, ‘You sure this gets you off the hook?’

She said, ‘Count on it, kid. Being right afterwards is a wonderful thing.’

‘Then give me a ride out of town.’

‘I should stay.’

‘Give them time to grieve. Give them time to figure out how it’s really their own idea. I’ve seen this shit before. All organizations are the same. You need to lay low for a day. You need to be out of the spotlight.’