Blue Moon (Jack Reacher #24)(21)

Chapter 10


There was a particular block on the west side of Center Street that had two restaurants side by side fronting on the sidewalk, and a third on the north side of the block, and a fourth on the south side, and a fifth in back, fronting on the next street over. All five were doing well. They were always busy. Always buzzing. Always talked about. They were the city’s gourmet quarter, right there, packed tight. The produce trucks and the linen services loved it. One stop, five customers. Deliveries were easy.

So were collections. It was a Ukrainian block, being west of Center. They came by for their protection money regular as clockwork. One stop, five customers. They loved it. They came late in the evening, when the registers were full. Before anyone else got paid. They would walk in, always two guys, always together, dark suits and black silk ties and pale blank faces. Nothing was ever said. Technically it would have been difficult to prove illegality. In fact nothing had been said, even back at the beginning, many years before, except a subjective aesthetic opinion, and then a concerned and sympathetic murmur. Nice place you’ve got here. Be a shame if anything happened to it. Polite conversation. After which a hundred dollar bill was offered, but was greeted with a shake of the head, until a second hundred was added, which was greeted with a nod. After the first encounter the cash was usually left in an envelope, usually at the ma?tre d’ station. Usually it was handed over without a word. Technically a voluntary activity. No overt demands had been made. No offers had been solicited. A thousand dollars for a stroll around the block. Almost legal. Nice work if you could get it. Naturally there was competition for the gig. Naturally it was won by the big dogs. The senior lieutenants, looking for a quiet life.

That particular evening, they didn’t get one.

They had parked their car on the curb on Center Street, and they had started with the two establishments right there, fronting on the sidewalk, and then they had worked the block counterclockwise, making their third stop on the north side, and their fourth on the back street, and their fifth on the south side. After which they kept on going, intending to turn the last corner, and thereby complete the square, and arrive back at their car.

All of which they did. Without noticing a couple of important things. Up ahead on the next block was a tow truck, facing away, parked, but idling with its reversing lights showing. And about level with it, on the opposite sidewalk, was a man in a black raincoat, walking fast toward them. What did that mean? They didn’t ask. They were senior lieutenants, looking for a quiet life.

They split up around the hood of their car, the passenger going one way, and the driver going the other. They pulled their doors, not exactly synchronized, but close. They glanced around, still standing, one last time, chins up, in case anyone was in doubt who owned the block.

They missed the tow truck start to move, slowly, backward, straight toward them. They missed the man in the raincoat step off the far sidewalk, at an angle, straight toward them.

They slid into their seats, butts, knees, feet, but before they could get their doors closed a shape had peeled out of the shadows on one side, and the man in the raincoat had arrived on the other, both with small semiautomatic .22-caliber pistols in their hands, both pistols with long fat suppressors screwed to their muzzles, which went blat blat blat as multiple rounds were fired close range into the seated heads, which were right there at waist level. Both guys in the car fell forward and inward, away from the guns. Their shattered heads bumped together, near the clock on the dash, as if they were fighting for space.

Then their doors were slammed shut. The tow truck backed up. The shape from the shadows and the man in the raincoat ran to meet it. The driver jumped out. Together they got the car craned up. All three jumped back in the tow truck. They drove off, slow and sedate. A common sight. A disabled vehicle, undignified, being dragged backward through the streets on its front wheels, with its ass way up in the air. Nothing was visible above the window line. Gravity was making sure of that. By then both guys would be piled in the foot wells. Limp and floppy. Rigor was still some hours away.

They drove direct to the crushing plant. They unhooked the car and left it on a patch of oil-soaked dirt. A huge backhoe drove over. Instead of a bucket it had giant forklift spears on the front. It lifted the car and drove it to the crusher. It set it down on a steel floor in a three-sided box not much bigger than the car itself. It backed away. The box’s fourth side folded up into place. Its top folded down.

Engines roared and hydraulics clanked and the box’s sides crushed inward, relentlessly, grating, groaning, scraping, tearing, a hundred and fifty tons of force behind each one. Then they stopped, and wheezed back to where they had started, and a piston pushed out a cube of crushed metal about a yard on a side. It rested for a moment on a heavy iron grille. For leaking fluids to drain away. Gasoline and oil and brake fluid and whatever it was in the air conditioner. Plus other fluids, on this occasion. Then a brother to the first backhoe came along. Instead of forklift spears it had a claw. It picked up the cube and drove it away and stacked it in a wall of a hundred other cubes.

Only then did the man in the raincoat call Dino. Total success. Two for two. Honor even. They had effectively traded the moneylending for the gourmet quarter. Which was a short term loss, but maybe a long term gain. It was a foot in the door. It was a landing zone that could be first defended, and then expanded. Above all it was proof the map could be redrawn.

Dino went to bed happy.