Blue Moon

Walking speed was customarily reckoned to be about three miles an hour, which was about two hundred seventy feet a minute, so it took the battered white Toyota twenty whole agonizing seconds to close the gap on the parked Lincoln. Abby lined it up and took a nervous breath and held it and closed her eyes. The Toyota rolled on unchecked and smacked hard into the Lincoln’s back bumper. Walking speed, but still a big noisy impact. Abby was thrown forward against her belt. Reacher used both hands on the dash. The Lincoln bucked forward a foot. The Toyota bounced backward a foot. Reacher stumbled out, one fast pace, two, three, straight ahead to the Lincoln’s rear right-hand door. He grabbed the handle.

The safety doo-dad had done its work.

The door opened. There were two guys inside. Elbow to elbow in the front, belts off, reclined, recently comfortable, now a little shaken up and bounced around. Their heads had come to rest on their seat backs, which made them waist-high to Reacher as he slid in behind them, which made them easy to grab, one in each palm, which made them easy to crash together like the guy in back of the orchestra with the cymbals. And again, after a little more bouncing around, and then ramrod straight forward, the left-hand guy into the rim of the steering wheel, and the right-hand guy into the dashboard roll above the glove box.

Then it was both hands inside their suit coats, leaning over their shoulders from the rear compartment, searching, finding leather straps, and shoulder holsters, and pistols, which he took. He found nothing more in their waistbands, and, leaning all the way forward, he found nothing more strapped around their ankles.

He sat back. The pistols were H&K P7s. German police issue. Beautifully engineered. Almost delicate. But also steely and hard edged. Therefore manly.

Reacher said, “Wake up now, guys.”

He waited. Through the window he saw Abby step through her door, into her house.

“Wake up, guys,” he said again.

And they did, soon enough. They came back groggy and blinking, looking around, trying to piece it together.

Reacher said, “Here’s the deal. There’s an incentive attached. You’re going to drive me east. Along the way I’m going to ask you questions. If you lie to me, I’ll feed you to the Albanians when we get there. If you tell me the truth, I’ll get out and walk away and let you turn around and drive home again unharmed. That’s the incentive. Take it or leave it. Are we clear?”

He saw Abby come out of her house, with a bulging bag. She heaved it across the sidewalk to her car. She dumped it in the back. She got in the front.

Inside the Lincoln the guy behind the wheel clutched his head and said, “Are you crazy? I can’t even see straight. I can’t drive you anywhere now.”

“No such word,” Reacher said. “My advice is try very hard.”

He buzzed down his window and stuck his arm out and signaled Abby to go ahead and pull around and lead the way. He watched her hesitant maneuver. The Toyota’s front fender was no longer horizontal. It was hanging down diagonally, way lower than it should have been. The passenger-side corner was about an inch away from scraping on the blacktop. Maybe two electrical ties would be required. Possibly three.

“Follow that car,” he said.

The guy behind the Lincoln’s wheel took off as clumsy as a first-timer. Beside him his partner craned around as far as a cricked neck would let him, and he looked out the corner of his eye, straight at Reacher.

Who said nothing. Up ahead the battered white Toyota was making good progress. Heading east on the cross streets. The Lincoln followed behind it. The guy at the wheel got better at driving. Much smoother.

Reacher said, “Where is Max Trulenko?”

At first neither one of them spoke. Then the guy with the bad neck said, “You’re a lousy cheat.”

“How so?” Reacher said.

“What our own people would do to us if we told you Trulenko’s location is worse than anything the Albanians could do to us. Which makes it a phony choice. It’s not an incentive. Plus we’re guys who sit in cars and watch doors. You think they would tell folks like us where Trulenko is? So the truthful answer is, we don’t know. Which you will say is a lie. Which makes it another phony choice, not an incentive. So do what you got to do. Just spare us the pious bullshit along the way.”

“But you know who Trulenko is.”

“Of course we do.”

“And you know someone is hiding him somewhere.”

“No comment.”

“But you don’t know where.”

“No comment.”

“If your life depended on it, where would you look?”

The guy with the neck didn’t answer. Then the driver’s cell phone rang. In his pocket. A jaunty little marimba tune, plinking away, over and over, muffled. Reacher thought about coded warnings and secret SOS alerts, and he said, “Don’t answer it.”

The driver said, “They’ll come looking for us.”

“Who will?”

“They’ll send a couple of guys.”

“Like you two? Now I’m really scared.”

No answer. The phone stopped.

Reacher asked, “What’s your boss’s name?”

“Our boss?”