Blue Moon (Jack Reacher #24)(34)

She never got there. Whatever mundane issue was on her mind remained unexpressed. More towels, more lotion, new rubber gloves. Whatever it was. The door swinging open was in the left corner of the left-hand guy’s eye, and he fired instantly, a neat quiet stitch of three into her center mass. No reason for it. Some kind of hyper state. Some kind of fever pitch. A twitch of the muzzle, a twitch of the trigger finger. There was no echo. Just a long, ragged, plastic, fleshy thump as the woman went down.

Bohdan said, “Jesus Christ.”

It changed the argument. Getting gut shot was no longer a theory. Visual aids had been introduced. Ancient human instinct took over. Stay alive a minute longer. See what happens next. They got in the car voluntarily. By chance they crossed Center Street and entered Albanian territory at the exact same moment the woman in the nurse costume died. She was alone on the floor of the parlor, half in and half out of the back corridor. All the clients had fled. They had jumped over her and run. Likewise her co-workers. They had all done the same thing. They were all gone. She died alone, in pain, uncomforted and unconsoled. Her name was Anna Ulyana Dorozhkin. She was forty-one years old. She had first come to the city fifteen years earlier, at the age of twenty-six, all excited about a career in PR.





Chapter 17


Aaron Shevick didn’t know exactly where the city’s pawn shops were. Reacher’s guess was they would be somewhere on the same radius as the bus depot. At a discreet distance from the fancy neighborhoods. He knew cities. There would be low-rent enterprises packed tight throughout the outlying blocks. There would be window tinting and laundromats and dusty old mom-and-pop hardware stores and off-brand auto parts. And pawn shops. The problem was planning a route. They wanted to be able to pick Mrs. Shevick up if she had already done her business and was already walking home. Not knowing her destination made that difficult. In response they drove wide loops, finding a pawn shop, checking inside through the window, not seeing her, setting out home until they were sure she couldn’t still be ahead of them, and then driving back and starting over with the next place they saw.

In the end they found her all the way west of Center, stepping out of a grimy pawn shop across a narrow street from a taxi dispatcher and a bail bond office. Mrs. Shevick, right there, large as life, head up, her purse hooked on her elbow. Abby pulled over next to her and Aaron wound down his window and called out to her. She was very surprised to see him, but she got over it fast. She got right in the car. Less than ten seconds, beginning to end. Like it had been arranged in advance.

She was embarrassed at first, in front of Abby. A stranger. You must think us very foolish. Aaron asked her how much she had gotten for the rings and the watch, and she just shook her head and wouldn’t answer.

Then eventually she said, “Eighty dollars.”

No one spoke. They drove back east, past the depot, through the four-way light.



* * *



—

At that moment, in his office, Gregory was getting the news about his massage parlor. By chance another of his guys had been passing by on unrelated business. He had sensed something wrong. Too quiet. He had gone inside. The place was completely deserted. Nothing but an old hooker, shot dead on the floor, in a big pool of blood. No one else. No clients. Apparently all the other hookers had run away. There was no trace of Bohdan or Artem. Artem’s phone was lying on his desk, and Bohdan’s jacket was still on the back of his chair. Not good signs. They meant they had not left the premises voluntarily. They meant they had left under some kind of duress.

Gregory called his top boys together. He told them the facts. Then he told them to think hard for sixty seconds, and come up with first an analysis of what the hell was going on, and second what the hell to do about it.

His right-hand man spoke first.

“This is Dino’s doing,” he said. “I think we all know that. He’s a man on a mission. We took two of his guys, with the trick about the spy in the police station, so he took two of ours, up at the Ford dealer. Which was fair. Can’t dispute it. What goes around comes around. Except evidently he didn’t like losing the loan business, so he decided to punish us by taking two more of our guys, on the restaurant block. So we took two more of his, outside the liquor store last night. Which was then four for four. A fair exchange. End of story. Except apparently Dino doesn’t agree. Apparently he feels he has a point to make. Perhaps an ego thing. He wants to be two guys ahead at all times. Perhaps it makes him feel better. So now he’s made it six for four.”

“What should we do about it?” Gregory asked.

His guy was quiet for a very long time.

Then he said, “We didn’t get where we are by being stupid. If we make it six for six, he’ll make it eight for six. And so on, forever. It will be a slow-motion war. We can’t get into a war right now.”

“So what should we do?”

“We should suck it up. We’re down two guys and the restaurant block, but we got the loan business instead. Overall we came out ahead.”

Gregory said, “Makes us look weak.”

“No,” his guy said. “It makes us look like the grown-ups, playing the long game, with our eyes on the prize.”

“We’re down two men. It’s humiliating.”

“If a week ago Dino had offered to trade all of his loan business for two of our men and the restaurant block, we would have bitten his hand off. We came out way ahead. Dino is humiliated, not us.”