Ли Чайлд - No Middle Name

Context , Reacher thought again. And melodrama . He figured he’d better snag a room before the panic turned into a rush. He had seen news video from time to time, of stranded travellers sprawled in motel lobbies. No room at the inn.

Which made him remember it was Christmas Eve. December twenty-fourth.

He chose the cheapest-looking place, which was a falling-down motel next to a Shell station big enough for eighteen-wheel trucks. It was a twelve-room dump with ten already taken, which made Reacher think maybe the rush had already started. The place could have been no one’s first choice. It wasn’t the Ritz. That was for sure.

He paid cash and got a key and walked along the row to his room, all hunched under his collar to ward off the blowing snow. Ten rooms had cars parked outside, all rimed with snow and streaked with salt, all with plates from states to the south, all laden with luggage and packages. Families, Reacher guessed, aiming to get together for the holidays, their journeys interrupted, their plans ruined, their gifts undelivered.

He unlocked his door and stepped into his room, which looked adequate in every respect. There was a bed and a bathroom. Even a chair. He shook meltwater off his shoes and sat down, and watched the flurries through a fogged window, as they whirled through yellow halos of vapour light. He figured drivers would be chickening out in waves. But they would look for accommodation first, not food, which meant the diners wouldn’t crowd out for another couple of hours. He switched on the bedside light and took a paperback book from his pocket.

Ninety minutes later he was in a diner, waiting for a cheeseburger. The place was filling up and service was slow. There was a kind of manic energy in the room, from a lot of forced high spirits. Folks were trying to convince themselves they were having an adventure. Eventually his food came and he ate. The place got more and more crowded. People were coming in and just standing there, somehow defeated. The motels were full, Reacher realized. No more room at the inn. People were eyeing the diner floor. Like in the news footage. He ordered peach pie and black coffee, and settled in to wait for it.

He walked back to the motel pretty late in the evening. The snow was still coming down, but lighter. Tomorrow would be a better day. He turned in at the motel office and stopped short, to avoid walking straight into a very pregnant woman. She was with a guy, huddled aimlessly, and she had been crying.

An idling car stood by, an old three-door, rimed with snow and streaked with salt, and full of luggage and packages.

No room at the inn.

Reacher said, ‘Are you guys OK?’

The man said nothing, and the woman said, ‘Not exactly.’

‘Can’t get a room?’

‘The whole town is full.’

‘Should have kept on going,’ Reacher said. ‘The weather is letting up.’

‘I made him pull off. I was worried.’

‘So what do you plan to do?’

The woman didn’t answer, and the man said, ‘I guess we’ll sleep in the car.’

‘You’ll freeze.’

‘What choice do we have?’

Reacher said, ‘When is the baby due?’

‘Soon.’

Reacher said, ‘I’ll trade.’

‘What for what?’

‘I’ll sleep in your car, and you can have my room.’

‘We can’t let you do that.’

‘I’ve slept in cars before. But never while pregnant. I imagine that wouldn’t be easy.’

Neither the man nor the woman spoke. Reacher took his key out of his pocket and said, ‘Take it or leave it.’

The woman said, ‘You’ll freeze.’

‘I’ll be just fine.’

And then they all stood around for a minute more, shuffling in the cold, but soon enough the woman took the key, and she and her partner crabbed away to the room, a little embarrassed but basically very happy, wanting to look back but not letting themselves. Reacher called a happy Christmas after them, and they turned and wished him the same. Then they went inside, and Reacher turned away.

He didn’t sleep in their car. He walked over to the Shell station instead, and found a guy with a tanker with five thousand gallons of milk in it. Which had a use-by date. And the weather was clearing. The guy was willing to go for it, and Reacher went with him.

Reacher saunters out of the subway below the Flatiron Building in Manhattan, and walks straight into an FBI stake-out.

JACK REACHER GOT out of the R train at 23rd Street and found the nearest stairway blocked off with plastic police tape. It was striped blue and white, tied between one handrail and the other, and it was moving in the subway wind, and it said: Police Do Not Enter . Which technically Reacher didn’t want to do anyway. He wanted to exit. Although to exit he would need to enter the stairwell. Which was a linguistic complexity. In which context he sympathized with the cops. They didn’t have different kinds of tape for different kinds of situation. Police Do Not Enter In Order To Exit was not in their inventory.

So Reacher turned around and hiked half the length of the platform to the next stairway. Which was also taped off. Police Do Not Enter . Blue and white, fluttering gently in the last of the departing train’s slipstream. Which was odd. He was prepared to believe the first stairway might have been the site of a singular peril, maybe a chunk of fallen concrete, or a buckled nose on a crucial step, or some other hazard to life and limb. But not both stairways. Not both at once. What were the odds? So maybe the sidewalk above was the problem. A whole block’s length. Maybe there had been a car wreck. Or a bus wreck. Or a suicide from a high window above. Or a drive-by shooting. Or a bomb. Maybe the sidewalk was slick with blood and littered with body parts. Or auto parts. Or both.

Reacher half-turned and looked across the track. The exit directly opposite was taped off. And the next, and the next. All the exits were taped off. Blue and white, Police Do Not Enter . No way out. Which was an issue. The Broadway Local was a fine line, and the 23rd Street station was a fine example of its type, and Reacher had many times slept in far worse places, but he had things to do and not much time to do them in.

He walked back to the first stairway he had tried, and he ducked under the tape.

He was cautious up the stairs, craning his neck, looking ahead, and especially looking upward, but seeing nothing untoward. No loose rebar, no fallen concrete, no damaged steps, no thin rivulets of blood, no spattered fragments of flesh on the tile.

Nothing.

He stopped on the stairs with his nose level with the 23rd Street sidewalk and he scanned left and right.

Nothing.

He stepped up one stair and turned around and looked across Broadway’s humped blacktop at the Flatiron Building. His destination. He looked left and right. He saw nothing.

He saw less than nothing.

No cars. No taxis. No buses, no trucks, no scurrying panel vans, with their business names hastily handwritten on their doors. No motorbikes, no Vespa scooters in pastel colours. No deliverymen on bikes, from restaurants or messenger services. No skateboarders, no rollerbladers.

No pedestrians.

It was summer, close to eleven at night, and still warm. Fifth Avenue was crossing Broadway right in front of him. Dead ahead was Chelsea, behind him was Gramercy, to his left was Union Square, and to his right the Empire State Building loomed over the scene like the implacable monolith it was. He should have seen a hundred people. Or a thousand. Or ten thousand. Guys in canvas shoes and T-shirts, girls in short summer dresses, some of them strolling, some of them hustling, to clubs about to open their doors, or bars with the latest vodka, or midnight movies.