Ли Чайлд - Blue Moon

Reacher and Abby stopped dancing.

They ghosted the rest of the way along the back wall, behind the mass of dancers, towards the far left corner, where they arrived directly behind the man on the stool. They waited in the gloom six feet away, until a gaggle of latecomers started down the stairs. The man on the stool looked up at them. Reacher stepped behind him and clapped a hand down on his shoulder. Like a friendly greeting. Or a pretend surprise, just horsing around, like some guys do. Reacher figured that was all the latecomers saw. What they didn’t see was his fingers curling under the guy’s shirt collar, twisting it, tightening it. What they also didn’t see was his other hand, low down behind, jamming the muzzle of a gun hard against the base of the guy’s spine. Really hard. Hard enough to cause a puncture wound all by itself, even without pulling the trigger.

Reacher leaned forward and spoke in the guy’s ear.

He said, ‘Let’s go take a walk.’

He pulled with his left and pushed with his right and manoeuvred the guy backward off the stool. He stood him upright and got him balanced. He twisted his collar harder. Abby stepped up and patted his pockets and took his phone and his gun. Another steel P7. The band fell straight into the second song in the medley. Faster and louder. Reacher leaned forward again.

He yelled, ‘Hear that backbeat? I could shoot you four to the bar and no one in here would notice a damn thing. So do exactly what I tell you.’

He pushed the guy along the left-hand wall, stiff, awkward, four-legged, like the shadow he had seen in the Shevicks’ hallway. Abby kept pace a yard away, like a wingman. She roved back and forth. She ducked in and out. The band went straight into the third part of the medley. Faster and louder still. Reacher hustled the guy harder. Ran him all the way to the mouth of the corridor. To the freight elevator. Up to the street. Out to the dock. Out to the daylight. He hauled him around to the rear of the Lincoln. He stood him up straight and made him watch.

Abby pressed the button on the key fob.

The trunk lid raised up.

Two dead guys. Same suits, same ties. Limp, bloody, stinking.

The guy looked away.

Reacher said to him, ‘That’s you, a minute from now. Unless you answer my questions.’

The guy said nothing. He couldn’t speak. His collar was twisted too tight.

Reacher asked, ‘Where does Maxim Trulenko work?’

He slackened his grip half an inch. The guy panted a couple of breaths. He glanced left, glanced right, glanced up to the sky, as if he was considering his options. As if he had options to consider. Then he looked down. At the dead guys in the trunk.

Then he stared.

He said, ‘That’s my cousin.’

‘Which one?’ Reacher asked. ‘The one I shot in the head, or the one I shot in the throat?’

‘We came here together. From Odessa. We arrived in New Jersey.’

‘You must be confusing me with someone who gives a shit. I asked you a question. Where does Maxim Trulenko work?’

The guy said the word they had seen in the text message. Biologically inexact. Either a hive or a nest or a burrow. For something that hummed or buzzed or thrashed around.

‘Where is it?’ Reacher said.

‘I don’t know,’ the guy said. ‘It’s a secret operation.’

‘How big is it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Who else works there?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do Danilo and Gregory work there?’

‘No.’

‘Where do they work?’

‘In the office.’

‘Is that separate?’

‘From what?’

‘The word you used. The hive.’

‘Of course it is.’

‘Where is the office?’

The guy named a street, and a cross street. He said, ‘Behind the taxi company, across from the pawn shop, next to the bail bonds.’

‘We were right there,’ Abby said.

Reacher nodded. He slid his hand around under the guy’s collar, from the back, to the side. He dug down with his fingers until he felt the inside face of the guy’s necktie centred in the meat of his palm. He felt it through the cotton of the collar. A silk necktie, at that point about an inch and a half wide. More tensile strength than steel. Silk shimmered because its fibres were triangular, like elongated prisms, which did nice things with light, but which also locked together so tight it was virtually impossible to pull them apart end to end. A steel cable would give way sooner.

Reacher bunched his fist. Took up what slack there was. At first his hand was square on. All his knuckles were lined up parallel with the crushed rim of the collar. Like he was hanging one-handed from a rung on a ladder. Then he rotated his thumb towards him, and his pinkie knuckle away from him. As if he was trying to spin the ladder, like an airplane propeller. Or like a tweak on a rein, turning a horse. All of which drove his pinkie knuckle into the side of the guy’s neck. Which in turn tightened the stronger-than-steel strap against the other side of his neck. Reacher held it like that for a spell, and then he turned his hand another small angle. And then another. The doorman was calm. The pressure was all side to side, not front to back. He wasn’t choking for lack of air. Not thrashing around in desperate panic. Instead the arteries in his neck were closed off and no blood was reaching his brain. Relaxed. Peaceful. Like a narcotic. Warm and comfortable.

Sleepy.

Almost there.

Almost done.

Reacher held it a whole extra minute, just to be sure, and then he tipped the guy in the trunk with his cousin, and he slammed the lid. Abby looked at him. As if to ask, are we going to kill them all? But not disapproving. Not accusatory. Merely a request for information. He thought to himself, I hope so.

Out loud he said, ‘I should try the Washington Post again.’

She passed him the dead guy’s phone. There was a brand new text on the screen. As yet unread. It had his picture in a fat green bubble. The surprise portrait from the moneylending bar. The pale guy, raising his phone. Below the photo was a block of Cyrillic writing. Some long screed about something or other.

‘What the hell is their problem now?’ he said.

‘Vantresca will tell us,’ she said.

He dialled the Washington Post from memory, having done it not long before. Once again the phone rang. Once again the call was answered.

Once again he said, ‘Ms Buckley?’

‘Yes?’ a voice said.

‘Barbara Buckley?’

‘What do you want?’

‘I have two things for you,’ Reacher said. ‘Some good news, and a story.’

In the background on the line Reacher heard all kinds of hustle and bustle. A big open space. Maybe a low hard ceiling. The clatter of keyboards. A dozen conversations. He said, ‘I’m guessing you’re at a desk in a newsroom.’

Barbara Buckley said, ‘No shit, Sherlock.’

‘I’m guessing you’ve got tickers and cable news on screens all around you.’

‘Hundreds of them.’

‘Maybe right now one of them is showing regional coverage of a fire in a lumber yard in a city you know.’

No answer.

Reacher said, ‘The good news is the lumber yard was the Albanian gang’s HQ. It’s burning to the ground. Most of them are dead inside. The rest have fled. They’re history. The things they said to you don’t apply any more. From when you had that meeting, a couple months ago. In the back room of the restaurant. Those threats are now gone for ever. As of today. We believe it was important you should know as soon as possible. It’s a part of our victim’s rights protocol.’

‘Is this the police department?’

‘Strictly speaking, no.’

‘But you are law enforcement?’