Lee Child - Running Blind

“Expensive place?” Harper asked.

Reacher shrugged. “I don’t know. Not the most expensive, I guess. But they won’t be giving them away.”

The street door was open. The lobby was narrow, with hard stucco walls carefully streaked with paint so they looked a little like marble. There was a single elevator at the back of the lobby, with a narrow brown door.

The apartment they wanted was on the eighth floor. Reacher touched the elevator button and the door rolled back. The car was lined with bronze mirror on all four sides. Harper stepped in and Reacher crowded after her. Pressed 8. An infinite number of reflections rode up with them.

“You knock on their door,” Reacher said. “Get them to open up. They won’t if they see me in the spyhole.”

She nodded and the elevator stopped on 8. The door rolled back. They stepped out on a dull landing the same shape as the lobby. The apartment they were looking for was in the back of the building on the right.

Reacher stood flat against the wall and Harper stood in front of the door. She bent forward and then back to flip her hair off her face. Took a breath and raised her hand and knocked on the door. Nothing happened for a moment. Then Harper stiffened like she was under scrutiny. There was a rattle of chain from the inside and the door opened a crack.

“Building management,” Harper said. “I need to check the air conditioners.”

Wrong season , Reacher thought. But Harper was more than six feet tall and had blond hair more than a yard long and her hands in her pockets so the front of her shirt was pulled tight. The door pushed shut for a second and the chain rattled again and the door swung back. Harper stepped inside like she was accepting a gracious invitation.

Reacher peeled off the wall and followed her in before the door closed again. It was a small dark apartment with a view of the light well. Everything was brown, rugs, furniture, drapes. There was a small foyer opening to a small living room. The living room held a sofa and two armchairs, and Harper. And both of the guys Reacher had last seen leaving the alley behind Mostro’s.

“Hey, guys,” he said.

“We’re brothers,” the first guy said, irrelevantly.

They both had broad strips of hospital gauze taped to their foreheads, stark white, a little longer and broader than the labels Reacher had stuck there. One of them had bandages on his hands. They were dressed identically in sweaters and golf pants. Without their bulky overcoats, they looked smaller. One guy was wearing boat shoes. The other was wearing moccasin slippers that looked like he’d made them himself from a mail-order kit. Reacher stared at them and felt his aggression drain away.

“Shit,” he said.

They stared back at him.

“Sit down,” he said.

They sat, side by side on the sofa. They watched him, with fearful eyes hooded under the ludicrous gauze.

“Are these the right guys?” Harper asked.

Reacher nodded.

“Things change, I guess,” he said.

“Petrosian’s dead,” the first guy said.

“We know that already,” Reacher said back.

“We don’t know nothing else,” the second guy said.

Reacher shook his head. “Don’t say that. You know plenty of things.”

“Like what?”

“Like where Bellevue is.”

The first guy looked nervous. “Bellevue?”

Reacher nodded. “The hospital they took you to.”

Both brothers looked at the wall.

“You liked it there?” Reacher asked.

Neither one of them replied.

“You want to go back there?”

No reply.

“Big emergency room there, right?” Reacher said. “Good for fixing all kinds of things. Broken arms, broken legs, all kinds of injuries.”

The brother with the bandaged hands was older. The spokesman.

“What do you want?” he said.

“A trade.”

“What for what?”

“Information,” Reacher said. “In exchange for not sending you back to Bellevue.”

“OK,” the guy said.

Harper smiled. “That was easy.”

“Easier than I thought it would be,” Reacher said.

“Things change,” the guy said. “Petrosian’s dead.”

“Those guns you had,” Reacher said. “Where did you get them?”

The guy was wary.

“The guns?” he said.

“The guns,” Reacher repeated. “Where did you get them?”

“Petrosian gave them to us,” the guy said.

“Where did he get them from?”

“We don’t know.”

Reacher smiled and shook his head. “You can’t say that. You can’t just say we don’t know. It’s not convincing. You could say I don’t know, but you can’t answer for your brother. You can’t know for sure what he knows, can you?”

“We don’t know,” the guy said again.

“They came from the Army,” Reacher said.

“Petrosian bought them,” the guy said.

“He paid for them,” Reacher said.

“He bought them.”

“He arranged their purchase, I accept that.”

“He gave them to us,” the younger brother said.

“Did they come in the mail?”

The older brother nodded. “Yes, in the mail.”

Reacher shook his head. “No, they didn’t. He sent you to pick them up someplace. Probably a whole consignment. ”

“He picked them up himself.”

“No, he didn’t. He sent you. Petrosian wouldn’t go himself. He sent you, in that Mercedes you were using. ”

The brothers stared at the wall, thinking, like there was a decision to be made.

“Who are you?” the older one asked.

“I’m nobody,” Reacher said.

“Nobody?”

“Not a cop, not FBI, not ATF, not anybody.”

No reply.

“So there’s an upside and a downside here,” Reacher said. “You tell me stuff, it stays with me. Doesn’t have to go any farther. I’m interested in the Army, not you. The downside is, you don’t tell me, I’m not concerned with sending you off to court with all kinds of civil rights. I’m concerned with sending you back to Bellevue with all kinds of broken arms and legs.”

“You INS?” the guy asked.

Reacher smiled. “Mislaid your green cards?”

The brothers said nothing.

“I’m not INS,” Reacher said. “I told you, I’m not anything. I’m nobody. Just a guy who wants an answer. You tell me the answer, you can stay here as long as you want, enjoy the benefits of American civilization. But I’m getting impatient. Those shoes aren’t going to do it forever.”

“Shoes?”

“I don’t want to hit a guy wearing slippers like that.”

There was silence.

“New Jersey,” the older brother said. “Through the Lincoln Tunnel, there’s a roadhouse set back where Route 3 meets the turnpike.”

“What’s it called?”

“I don’t know,” the guy said. “Somebody’s Bar, is all I know. Mac something, like Irish.”

“Who did you see in there?”

“Guy called Bob.”

“Bob what?”

“Bob, I don’t know. We didn’t exchange business cards or anything. Petrosian just told us Bob.”

“A soldier?”

“I guess. I mean, he wasn’t in uniform or nothing. But he had real short hair.”

“How does it go down?”

“You go in the bar, you find him, you give him the cash, he takes you in the parking lot and gives you the stuff out of the trunk of his car.”

"A Cadillac,” the other guy said. "An old DeVille, some dark color.”

“How many times?”

“Three.”

“What stuff?”

“Berettas. Twelve each trip.”

“What time of day?”

“Evening time, around eight o’clock.”

“You have to call him ahead?”

The younger brother shook his head.

“He’s always in there by eight o’clock,” he said. “That’s what Petrosian told us.”