Ли Чайлд - Blue Moon

Reacher said, ‘Speak English.’

The voice said, ‘Who are you?’

‘You first,’ Reacher said. ‘Tell me your name.’

‘Are you Shevick?’

‘No,’ Reacher said. ‘You’re confused about that. You’re confused about a lot of things.’

‘Then who are you?’

‘You first,’ Reacher said again.

‘What do you want?’

‘I have a message for Gregory.’

‘Who are you?’

‘You first,’ Reacher said, for the third time.

‘My name is Danilo,’ the guy said.

Abby stiffened in her seat.

‘I am Gregory’s chief of staff,’ the guy said. ‘What is your message?’

‘It’s for Gregory,’ Reacher said. ‘Transfer the call.’

‘Not until I know who you are. Where are you from?’

‘I was born in Berlin,’ Reacher said.

‘You’re East German? Not Russian?’

‘My dad was a U.S. Marine. He was deployed to our embassy. I was born there. A month later I was somewhere else. Now I’m here. With a message for Gregory.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Jack Reacher.’

‘That’s the old man.’

‘I told you, you’re confused about that. I’m not as young as I was, but I’m not old yet. Overall I’m doing OK. Now transfer the call.’

The guy named Danilo went quiet for a long moment. The chief of staff. A big decision. Like an executive officer. You didn’t bug the CO with the small stuff, but you made damn sure you knew which small stuff was really big stuff in disguise. And then, the biggest bureaucratic rule of all: if in doubt, play it safe.

Danilo played it safe. There was a click, and a long moment of dead air, and another click, and then a new voice came on, with a foreign word that could have been hello, or yes, or what, or shoot, or whatever.

Reacher said, ‘Speak English.’

Gregory said, ‘What do you want?’

‘You got caller ID?’

‘Why?’

‘So you can tell who’s calling you.’

‘You told Danilo your name is Reacher.’

‘But whose phone am I on?’

No answer.

‘They’re dead,’ Reacher said. ‘They were useless. Like all your guys have been useless. They’re going down like flies. Pretty soon you’ll have no one left.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I’m coming for you, Gregory. You were going to hurt Maria Shevick. I don’t like people like you. I’m going to find you, and I’m going to make you cry like a little girl. Then I’m going to rip your leg off at the hip and beat you to death with it.’

Gregory paused a beat, and said, ‘You think you can do that?’

‘I’m pretty sure.’

‘Not if I see you first.’

‘You won’t,’ Reacher said. ‘You haven’t yet. You never will. You can’t find me. You’re not good enough. You’re an amateur, Gregory. I’m a professional. You won’t see me coming. You could go all the way to Situation Z and it wouldn’t help you. My advice right now is say your goodbyes and make your will.’

He clicked off and threw the phone out the window.

Abby said, ‘Danilo.’

A small voice. Hesitant.

Reacher said, ‘What about him?’

‘He was the guy,’ she said.

‘What guy?’

‘Who did the thing to me.’

Abby started her story at a red light and continued it through three more. She spoke in a small, quiet voice. Diffident, uncertain, full of pain and embarrassment. Reacher listened, mostly saying nothing in response. It seemed like the best thing to do.

She said thirteen months previously, she had been waiting tables in a bar west of Center. It was new and hip and it made a lot of money. A flagship enterprise. As such it always had a man on the door. Mostly he was there to collect Gregory’s percentage, but sometimes he took on a security role. Like a bouncer. Which was Gregory’s way. He liked to offer the illusion of something in exchange. Abby said she was OK with all of that, fundamentally. She had worked in bars all her adult life, and she knew protection money was an inescapable reality, and she knew a bouncer had occasional value, when drunk guys were grabbing her ass and making lewd suggestions. Most of the time she was content to make a deal with the devil. She went along to get along, and sometimes she looked away, and other times she benefited from a little intervention.

But one night a young guy was in, twenty-something, for a birthday celebration. He was a geeky guy, thin, hyped up, always in motion, laughing out loud at random things. But totally harmless. She said truth to tell, she wondered if he had a mental dysfunction. Some kind of screw loose, that made him overexcited. Which he was, undeniably. Even so, no one really objected. Except a guy in a thousand-dollar suit, who had maybe been expecting a different kind of ambience. Maybe more sophisticated. He was with a woman in a thousand-dollar dress, and between them they acted out all kinds of dissatisfied body language, telegraphing it, semaphoring it, huffing and puffing, getting more and more exaggerated, until even the doorman noticed.

Whereupon the doorman did what he was supposed to, which was to eyeball the interested parties, and assess them carefully, in terms of which of them was likely to be of greater future value, in terms of cold hard future revenue. Which was obviously the couple in the thousand-dollar clothes. They were drinking fancy cocktails. Their tab was going to be a couple hundred bucks. The geeky twenty-something was drinking domestic beer, very slowly. His tab was going to be about twelve dollars. So the doorman asked the geeky guy to leave.

Abby said, ‘Which I was still OK with, at that point. I mean, yeah, it was sad, and it sucked, but this is the real world. Everyone is trying to stay in business. But when they got face to face, I could see the doorman really hated the kid. I think it was the mental thing. Definitely the kid was a little off. The doorman reacted to it. It was primitive. Like the kid was the other, and had to be rooted out. Or maybe the doorman was deep down scared. Some people are, by mental illness. But whichever, he dragged the kid out the back, not the front, and beat him nearly to death. I mean, really, really badly. Broken skull, arm, ribs, pelvis, leg. Which was not OK with me.’

Reacher said, ‘What did you do about it?’

‘I went to the cops. Obviously I knew Gregory was paying off the whole department, but I imagined there must be a line somewhere, that they wouldn’t let him cross.’

‘Don’t frighten the voters.’

‘But clearly this didn’t. Because nothing ever happened. The cops ignored me completely. No doubt Gregory straightened it all out behind the scenes. Probably with one phone call. Meanwhile I was left hanging out in the breeze. All alone and exposed.’

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing, the first day. Then I was called to a disciplinary tribunal. They love all that stuff. Organized crime is more bureaucratic than the post office. There were four men at a table. Danilo chaired the meeting. He never spoke. Just watched. At first I wouldn’t speak either. I mean, it was bullshit. I don’t work for them. They don’t make rules for me. As far as I was concerned, they could take their tribunal and stick it where the sun don’t shine. Then they explained the realities to me. If I didn’t cooperate, I would never work again, west of Center. Which is half the jobs I get, obviously. I really couldn’t afford to lose them. I would have starved. I would have had to leave town and start over somewhere else. So in the end I said OK, whatever.’

‘How was it?’

She shrugged and shook her head and didn’t answer the question directly. Not with a one-word description. Instead she said, ‘I had to confess to my crime, in detail. I had to explain my motivation, and show where I later realized I had been misguided. I had to apologize most sincerely, over and over again, for going to the police, for criticizing the doorman, for thinking I knew better. I had to promise them I was a reformed character. I had to assure them it was safe to let me keep on working. I had to make a formal application. I had to say, please sir, let me work in your half of town. In a nice voice. Like a good little girl.’