Lee Child - The Hard Way

Then his wrist broke.

Two giant hands seized it and snapped it like a rotten twig. One shattering sudden explosion of motion. A blur. At first there was no pain. Then it kicked in like a tidal wave. But by then it was too late to scream. One of the giant hands was clamped over his mouth. It was like being hit hard in the face with a first baseman’s mitt.

“I’ve got three questions,” the big guy said, quietly. “Tell me the truth and I’ll let you go. Tell me a lie and I’ll break your other wrist. We clear on that?”

The big guy had hardly moved. Just his hands, once, twice, three times, fast, efficient, and lethal. He wasn’t even breathing hard. The man in the hooded sweatshirt couldn’t breathe at all. He nodded desperately.

“OK, first question: What exactly are you doing?” The big guy took his hand away, to enable the answer.

“Your money,” the man in the hooded sweatshirt said. His voice wouldn’t work properly. It was all strangled up with pain and panic.

“Not your first time,” the big guy said. His eyes were half-open, clear blue, expressionless. Hypnotic. The man in the sweatshirt couldn’t lie.

“I call it the dawn patrol,” he said. “There’s sometimes two or three guys like you.”

“Not exactly like me,” the big guy said.

“No.”

“Bad choice.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Second question: Are you alone?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Third question: Do you want to walk away now?”

“Yes, I do.”

“So do it. Slow and natural. Go north. Turn right on Prince. Don’t run. Don’t look back. Just disappear. Right now.”

Gregory turned left off Hudson Street onto Houston and waited at the light at the bottom of Seventh Avenue. He was a block and a half from the fireplug and about eight minutes early. He figured he would pull in at the curb before he got to Sixth. He figured he should try to time it exactly.

Reacher’s heart rate was back to normal within about fifteen seconds. He jammed his cash deeper in his pocket and put his arms back behind his head. Let his head fall sideways and let his eyes half-close. He saw nobody near the red door. Saw nobody even glance at it.

The man in the hooded sweatshirt cradled his broken wrist and made it as far as Prince. Then he abandoned the slow and natural walk and just ran east as fast as he could. Stopped two blocks away and threw up in the gutter. Stayed there for a spell, bent at the waist, panting, his good hand on his knee, his bad hand tucked in the sweatshirt pocket like a sling.

Reacher had no watch but he figured when he saw Gregory it must have been between eight and nine minutes after seven o’clock. Below Houston the north-south blocks are long. Eight or nine minutes was about right for the walk down from the fireplug on Sixth. So Gregory was right on time. He came in on Spring from the west. He was walking briskly. His hand was in the pocket of his suit coat. He stopped on the sidewalk outside the dull red door and turned with military precision and walked up the three short steps, light and easy, balanced on the balls of his feet. Then his hand came out of his pocket and Reacher saw the flash of metal and black plastic. Saw Gregory lift the mail slot’s flap with his left hand and shovel the keys through with his right. Saw him drop the flap back into place and turn and walk away. Saw him make the left onto West Broadway. He didn’t look back. He just kept on walking, playing his part, trying to keep Kate Lane alive.

Reacher kept his eyes on the red door. Waited. Three minutes, he figured. Five million bucks was a lot of money. There would be a certain degree of impatience. As soon as the one guy confirmed that Gregory was safely distant, the other guy would be in through the door. And they would figure one long block plus a crosswalk was safely distant. So as soon as Gregory was south of Broome, the call would come.

One minute.

Two minutes.

Three minutes.

Nothing happened.

Reacher laid back, stayed relaxed, stayed casual. No outward sign of his interest. Or his concern.

Four minutes. Nothing happened.

Reacher kept his eyes half-closed but stared at the door so hard that its details etched themselves in his mind. Scars, nicks, streaks of dirt and rust, graffiti overspray. He felt that fifty years in the future he would be able to draw a picture as accurate as a Polaroid.

Six minutes. Eight. Nine.

Nothing happened.

There were all kinds of people on the sidewalks now but none of them went anywhere near the red door. There was traffic and there were trucks unloading and there were bodegas and bakeries open for business. There were people with newspapers and closed cups of coffee heading for the subway.

Nobody stepped up to the red door.

Twelve minutes. Fifteen.

Reacher asked himself: Did they see me ? He answered himself: Of course they did. Close to a certainty. The mugger saw me. That was for damn sure. And these other guys are smarter than any mugger. They’re the type who see everything . Guys good enough to take down an SAS veteran outside a department store were going to check the street pretty carefully. Then he asked himself: But were they worried ? Answered himself: No, they weren’t . The mugger saw a professional opportunity. That was all. To these other guys, people in doorways were like trash cans or mail boxes or fire hydrants or cruising taxis. Street furniture. You see them, you see the city. And he was alone. Cops or FBI would have come in a group. Mob-handed. There would have been a whole bunch of unexplained people hanging around looking shifty and awkward with walkie-talkies in brown paper bags made up to look like pints of liquor.

So they saw me, but they didn’t scare.

So what the hell was happening?

Eighteen minutes.

Fire hydrants , Reacher thought.

The BMW was parked on a fire hydrant. Rush hour was building. NYPD tow trucks were firing up and leaving their garages and starting their day. They all had quotas to make. How long could a sane person leave five million bucks inside an illegally parked car in New York City?

Nineteen minutes.

Reacher gave it up after twenty. Just rolled out of the doorway and stood up. Stretched once and hustled north, and then west on Prince all the way to Sixth Avenue, and then north again across Houston to the curb with the fireplug.

It was empty. No BMW.

REACHER HEADED SOUTHagain, all the way back to Spring Street. Six blocks, moving fast, seven minutes. He found Gregory on the sidewalk outside the dull red door.

“Well?” Gregory said.

Reacher shook his head.

“Nothing,” he said. “Not a damn thing. Nobody showed up. It all turned to rat shit. Isn’t that what you SAS guys call it?”

“When we’re feeling polite,” Gregory said.

“The car is gone.”

“How is that possible?”

“There’s a back door,” Reacher said. “That’s my best guess right now.”

“Shit.”

Reacher nodded. “Like I said, rat shit.”

“We should check it out. Mr. Lane is going to want the whole story.”

They found an alley entrance two buildings west. It was gated and the gates were chained. The chains were secured with a padlock the size of a frying pan. Unbreakable. But reasonably new. Oiled, and frequently used. Above the gates was a single iron screen covering the whole width of the alley and extending twenty feet in the air.

No way in.

Reacher stepped back and looked left and right. The target building’s right-hand neighbor was a chocolate shop. A security screen was down over the window but Reacher could see confections the size of babies’ fists displayed behind it. Fakes , he guessed. Otherwise they would melt or go white. There was a light on in back of the store. He cupped his hands against the glass and peered inside. Saw a small shadowy figure moving about. He banged on the door, loud, with the flat of his hand. The small figure stopped moving and turned around. Pointed at something waist-high to Reacher’s right. There was a neatly engraved card taped to the door glass: Opening hours, 10 am-10 pm . Reacher shook his head and beckoned the small figure closer. It gave a little universal shrug of exasperation and headed his way. It was a woman. Short, dark, young, tired. She turned numerous complicated locks and opened the door against a thick steel chain.