Blue Moon (Jack Reacher #24)(12)

The guy picked up his ledger and opened it and propped it upright on his edge of the table. He peered down at it, with difficulty, like a guy playing his cards too close to his vest.

He said, “What’s your name?”

“What’s yours?” Reacher said.

“My name is of no importance.”

“Where’s Fisnik?”

“Fisnik has been replaced. Whatever business you had with him, now you have it with me.”

“I need more than that,” Reacher said. “This is an important transaction. This is a serious financial matter. Fisnik lent me money, and I need to pay him back.”

“I just told you, whatever business you had with Fisnik, now you have it with me. Fisnik’s clients are now my clients. If you owed money to Fisnik, now you owe it to me. This is not rocket science. What’s your name?”

Reacher said, “Aaron Shevick.”

The guy squinted down at his book.

He nodded.

He said, “Is this a final payment?”

“Do I get a receipt?” Reacher asked.

“Did Fisnik give you receipts?”

“You’re not Fisnik. I don’t even know your name.”

“My name is of no importance.”

“It is to me. I need to know who I’m paying.”

The guy tapped his finger, white as a bone, against the side of his glittering head.

“Your receipt is in here,” he said. “That’s all you need to know.”

“I could have Fisnik coming after me tomorrow.”

“I told you two times already, yesterday you were Fisnik’s, today you are mine. Tomorrow you will still be mine. Fisnik is history. Fisnik is gone. Things change. How much do you owe?”

“I don’t know,” Reacher said. “I depended on Fisnik to tell me. He had a formula.”

“What formula?”

“For the fees and the penalties and the add-ons. Rounded up to the nearest hundred, plus another five hundred as an administrative charge. That was his rule. I could never work it out right. I didn’t want him to think I was shortchanging him. I preferred to pay what he told me. Safer that way.”

“How much do you think it should be?”

“This time?”

“As your final payment.”

“I wouldn’t want you to think I was shortchanging you, either. Not if you inherited Fisnik’s business. I assume the same terms apply.”

“Give it to me both ways,” the guy said. “What you figure, and then what you think Fisnik’s formula would figure. Maybe I’ll cut you a break. Maybe we’ll split the difference. As an introductory offer.”

“I figure eight hundred dollars,” Reacher said. “But Fisnik would probably figure fourteen hundred. Like I told you. Rounded up to the nearest hundred plus five as a charge.”

The guy squinted down at his book.

He nodded, slowly, sagely, in complete agreement.

“But no break,” he said. “I decided against. I’ll take the full fourteen hundred.”

He closed his book and laid it flat on the table.

Reacher put his hand in his pocket and his thumb in the envelope and peeled fourteen bills off the back of Shevick’s wad. He handed them over. The pale guy recounted them with fast practiced fingers, folded them once, and put them in his own pocket.

“Are we good now?” Reacher asked.

“Paid off in full,” the guy said.

“Receipt?”

The guy tapped the side of his head again.

“Now get lost,” he said. “Until the next time.”

“The next time what?” Reacher said.

“You need a loan.”

“I hope not to.”

“Losers like you always do. You know where to find me.”

Reacher paused a beat.

“Yes,” he said. “I do. Count on it.”

He stayed where he was for a long moment, and then he got up out of the visitor chair and walked away, slowly, eyes front, all the way out the door to the sidewalk.

A minute later Shevick limped out after him.

“We need to talk,” Reacher said.





Chapter 6


Shevick still had a cell phone. He said he hadn’t sold it because it was an old flip worth close to nothing, and he was still using it because canceling his plan would have cost more than continuing it. Plus there were times he really needed it. Reacher told him this was one of those times. He told him to call a cab. Shevick said he couldn’t afford a cab. Reacher told him yes he could, just this once.

The cab that came was an old beat-up Crown Vic, thick with orange-peel paint, with a cop-car spotlight on the driver’s pillar and a taxi light strapped to the roof. Not an appealing vehicle, visually. But it worked OK. It wallowed and whined the mile to Shevick’s house and pulled up outside. Reacher helped Shevick down the narrow concrete path to his door. Once again it opened before the guy could get his key in the lock. Mrs. Shevick stared out at him. There were silent questions in her face. A taxi? For your knee? Then why did the big man come back, too?

And above all: Do we owe another thousand dollars?

“It’s complicated again,” Shevick said.

They went back to the kitchen. The stove was cold. No dinner. They had already eaten once that day. They all sat down at the table. Shevick told his part of the story. No Fisnik. A substitute instead. A sinister pale stranger with a big black book. Then Reacher’s offer to be a go-between.