Blue Moon (Jack Reacher #24)(25)

Where would a very smart and very rich guy choose to lie low?

Nowhere. That was Reacher’s conclusion. The city was big, but not big enough. The guy had been famous. He had employed a Senior Vice President for Communications. Everyone was talking about him. Presumably his picture had been in the paper all the time. Could such a person become an instant overnight hermit? Not possible. The guy had to eat, at least. He had to go out and get food, or have it brought to him. Either way people would see him. They would recognize him. They would talk. A week later there would be bus tours to his house.

Unless the guys who brought him food didn’t talk.

The population of Ukraine was about forty-five million. Some of them had come to America. No reason to believe they all knew each other. No reason to assume a connection. But a connection was the only way for a person to hide, in a city that size. The only guarantee of success was to be concealed and protected and catered to by a loyal and vigilant force. Like a secret agent in a safe house. Staring longingly out a window, while discreet couriers came and went.

Seven chances before the week is over, he thought.

He folded the map and jammed it in his back pocket. He rode down to the lobby and stepped out to the street. He was hungry. He hadn’t eaten since lunch with the Shevicks. A chicken salad sandwich, a bag of potato chips, and a can of soda. Not much, and a long time ago. He turned and walked on Center Street, and within a block and a half he realized that in terms of food service, most places were already closed. It was already too late in the evening.

Which was OK. He didn’t want most places.

He walked north on Center, to where in his mind’s eye the fat part of the pear began to thin, and then he turned back south and sat on a bus bench and watched the ebb and flow in front of him. It was a slow motion exercise. Mostly the place was empty. There were long quiet gaps between vehicles. Pedestrians came and went, often in groups of four or five, which based on age and appearance were sometimes the last restaurant parties letting out and heading home, and sometimes the first fashionably late arrivals at whichever establishments were newly cool. Which seemed to be split about fifty-fifty east and west of Center, judging by the general drift. Which was actually more than a drift. There was some energy in it. Some attraction.

Also heading in one direction or the other was the occasional loner. A man, every time, some of them looking down at the sidewalk, some of them staring rigidly ahead, as if embarrassed to be seen. All of them anxious to get where they were going.

Reacher got up off the bus bench and followed the drift to the east. Up ahead he saw a glamorous quartet pass through a door on the right. When he got there he saw a bar dressed up to look like a federal prison. The bartenders were wearing orange jumpsuits. The only staff member not in costume was a big guy on a stool inside the door. He was wearing black pants and a black shirt. He had black hair. Albanian, almost certainly. Reacher knew that part of the world. He had spent time there. The guy looked like a recent transplant. He had a smug look on his face. He had power, and he enjoyed it.

Reacher drifted onward. He followed a furtive but determined man around a corner and saw him go in an unmarked door, just as another man came out, all red in the face and happy. Gambling, Reacher thought. Not prostitution. He knew the difference. He had been an MP thirteen years. He guessed the guy going in thought he was about to win back what he lost yesterday, and the guy coming out had just won enough to pay his debts, with enough left over for a bouquet of flowers and dinner for two. Unless fate would be better served by continuing the winning streak. It was a tough decision. Almost a moral choice. What was a guy to do?

Reacher watched.

The guy opted for flowers and dinner.

Reacher drifted onward.



* * *



—

Albanian collections tended to be made later in the evening, because their scene tended to start later, which meant registers filled later. Their method was completely different than on the other side of Center Street. They didn’t go inside. No menacing presence. No dark suits. No black silk ties. They stayed in the car. They had been asked not to upset the various clienteles of the various establishments they serviced. They could be mistaken for cops or agents of some other kind. Bad for business. In no one’s interest. Instead a runner would bring out the envelope, hand it through the car window, and duck back inside. Thousands of dollars, for a ride around the block. Nice work if you could get it.

Two blocks east and one block north of the gambling club Reacher had seen was a trio of side-by-side establishments all owned by the same family. First a bar, then an open-all-night convenience store, and in third place a liquor store. Their contributions were collected by a veteran pair, both retired leg-breakers, both much respected. They had a practiced rhythm for driving from door to door. It was about thirty feet from one to the next. One guy drove, and the other guy sat behind him. Their preferred method. The far back window was down two inches. The envelope was passed into a void. No contact. Nothing too close. Then the pedal was blipped, and a sluggish surge through the transmission propelled the car thirty feet, to the next door, where an envelope was passed into a void. And so on, except that night at the third stop outside the liquor store it wasn’t an envelope. It was a fat black suppressor on the end of a gun.





Chapter 13


The gun was a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun, and evidently it was set to fire threes, because that was what the guy in the back of the car received, aimed blind but smart, slightly back, stitching low to medium, hoping for legs and arms and maybe his chest. Meanwhile the driver was getting much the same thing from the other side, but mostly to his head, through the shattering glass, from another H&K, dancing in from the opposite sidewalk.