Blue Moon (Jack Reacher #24)(15)

The pale guy said, “Aaron Shevick, right?”

“Yes,” Reacher said.

“What brings you back so soon?”

“I need a loan.”

“Already? You just paid me off.”

“Something came up.”

“I told you,” the guy said. “Losers like you always come back.”

“I remember,” Reacher said.

“How much do you want?”

“Eighteen thousand nine hundred dollars,” Reacher said.

The pale guy shook his head.

“Can’t do it,” he said.

“Why not?”

“It’s a big jump up from eight hundred last time.”

“Fourteen hundred.”

“Six hundred of that was fees and charges. The capital sum was eight hundred only.”

“That was then. This is now. It’s what I need.”

“You good for it?”

“I always was before,” Reacher said. “Ask Fisnik.”

“Fisnik is history,” the pale guy said.

Nothing more.

Reacher waited.

Then the pale guy said, “Maybe there’s a way I can help you. Although you got to understand, I would be taking a risk, which would have to be reflected in the price. You comfortable with that scenario?”

“I guess,” Reacher said.

“And I have to tell you, I’m pretty much a round-figures guy. Can’t do eighteen-nine. We would have to call it twenty. Then I would take eleven hundred off the top as an administration fee. You would get the exact amount you need. You want to hear the interest rates?”

“I guess,” Reacher said again.

“Things have moved on since Fisnik’s day. We’re in an era of innovation now. We operate what they call dynamic pricing. We pitch the rate up or down, depending on supply and demand and things like that, but also on what we think of the borrower. Will he be reliable? Can we trust him? Questions of that nature.”

“So what am I?” Reacher asked. “Up or down?”

“I’m going to start you off way up there at the very top. Where the worst risks are. Truth is, I don’t like you very much, Aaron Shevick. I’m not getting a good feeling. You take twenty tonight, you bring me twenty-five, a week from today. After that, interest continues at twenty-five percent a week or part of a week, plus a late fee of a thousand dollars a day, or part of a day. After the first deadline, all sums become payable in full immediately on demand. Refusal or inability to pay on demand may expose you to unpleasant things of various different types. You have to understand that ahead of time. I need to hear you say so, in your own words. It’s not the kind of thing that can be written down and signed. I have photographs for you to look at.”

“Terrific,” Reacher said.

The guy dabbed at his phone, menus, albums, slideshows, and he handed it over sideways, like a landscape, not a portrait, which was appropriate, because all the subjects of all the pictures were lying down. Mostly they were duct-taped to an iron bedstead, in a room with whitewashed walls gone gray with age and damp. Some had their eyeballs popped out with a spoon, and some had been grazed by an electric saw, deeper and deeper, and some had been burned with a smoothing iron, and some had been drilled with cordless power tools, which were left in the pictures as if in proof, yellow and black, top heavy and wobbling, their bits two-thirds buried in yielding flesh.

Pretty bad.

But not the worst things Reacher had ever seen.

Maybe the worst things all on one phone, though.

He handed it back. The guy dabbed through his menus again, until he got where he wanted to be. Serious business now.

He said, “Do you understand the terms of the contract?”

“Yes,” Reacher said.

“Do you agree to them?”

“Yes,” Reacher said.

“Bank account?”

Reacher gave him Shevick’s numbers. The guy typed them in, right there on his phone, and then he dabbed a big green rectangle at the bottom of the screen. The go button.

He said, “The money will be in your bank in twenty minutes.”

Then he dabbed through more menus, and suddenly raised the phone in camera mode, and snapped Reacher’s picture.

He said, “Thank you, Mr. Shevick. A pleasure doing business. I’ll see you again in one week exactly.”

Then he tapped his bristly head with his bone-white finger, the same gesture as before. Something about remembering. Some kind of a threatening implication.

Whatever, Reacher thought.

He got up and walked away, out the door, into the dark. There was a car at the curb. A black Lincoln, with an idling engine, and an idling driver behind the wheel, leaning back in his seat, head on the cushion, elbows wide, knees wide, like limo guys everywhere, taking a break.

There was a second guy, outside the car, leaning on the rear fender. He was dressed the same as the driver. And the guy inside the bar. Black suit, white shirt, black silk tie. Like a uniform. He had his ankles crossed, and his arms crossed. He was just waiting. He looked like the guy at the corner table would look, after about a month in the sun. White, not luminescent. He had pale hair buzzed close to his scalp, and a busted nose, and scar tissue on his eyebrows. Not much of a fighter, Reacher thought. Obviously he got hit a lot.