Blue Moon

Gregory’s right-hand man knocked on the inner office door and entered and took a seat in front of the massive desk. He ran through what he knew. Two guys had been deployed outside Abigail Gibson’s house. They were now missing. They were not answering their phones. Their car was no longer where it should be.

Gregory said, “Dino?”

“Maybe not.”

“Why?”

“Maybe this was never Dino. Not at first, anyway. We made certain assumptions. Now we need to take a fresh look at the facts. Think about the first two, who got in the wreck up at the Ford dealer. Who was their last known contact?”

“They were doing an address check.”

“On Aaron Shevick. And who was observed flirting with the waitress outside of whose house two more guys just disappeared?”

“Aaron Shevick.”

“No such thing as a coincidence.”

“Who is he?”

“Someone is paying him. To set you and Dino at each other’s throat. So that we destroy each other. So the someone can take over.”

“Who?”

“Shevick will tell us. When we find him.”

—

The Albanians hauled the smoking wreck to the crusher, and then they started asking around. The inner council. The top boys. Unused to legwork. Their question was fairly simple. Did you see a two-vehicle convoy, one of which was a Lincoln Town Car? No one lied to them. They were pretty sure about that. Folks had seen what happened to people who lied to them. Instead everyone racked their brains. But results were disappointing. Partly because the concept of the convoy was sometimes hard to grasp. During rush hour, for instance, there were no two-car convoys. There were hundred-and-two-car convoys. Anywhere downtown, at the best of times, maybe twenty-two-car. Who knew which two were the convoy in question? People didn’t want to give the wrong answer. Not when the top boys were asking.

So a different way was found, to ask the same question. It was quickly agreed that among the traffic there had been a handful of black Lincolns. Probably six in total. Three of them had been the fat-ass kind the Ukrainians drove. The top boys encouraged detailed descriptions of what had been in front of each of them, and what had been behind. There was a two-car convoy in there somewhere.

Three separate witnesses remembered a small white sedan with a hanging-off front fender. In each report it was ahead of one particular Lincoln, which seemed attentive to its lane changes and such, definitely as if following it. Coming out of the west of the city, heading east.

The two-car convoy.

The small white sedan was maybe a Honda. Or the other H. Hyundai. Or maybe Kia. Was there another new brand? Or maybe it wasn’t a new brand at all, because it was a pretty old car. Could have been a Toyota. Yes, that was it. A Toyota Corolla. Poverty spec. That was the final conclusion. All three witnesses agreed.

No one had seen it leave.

The top boys put the word out. All eyes open. An old white Toyota Corolla sedan, with a hanging-off front fender. Report back immediately.

—

By that point it was late in the afternoon, which was a respectable time for musicians to start their day. Hogan warmed up with a steady 4/4 beat, hi-hat working, ride cymbal ticking. Barton plugged in a battered Fender and turned on his amp, buzzing and humming. He laid down a line, looping and sinuous, staying firmly in the pocket with the kick drum, coming home on the two and the four, launching again on the one of the new measure. Reacher and Abby listened for a spell, and then went to find the guest room.

It was upstairs at the front of the house, a small space over the street door, with a round window made of wavy glass that could have been a hundred years old. The Toyota was directly below. The bed was a queen. The night table was an old guitar amplifier tipped up on its end. There was no closet. There was a row of brass hooks instead, screwed to the wall. The thump of the drums and the bass roared up through the floor.

“Not as nice as your place,” Reacher said. “I’m sorry.”

Abby didn’t answer.

Reacher said, “I asked the guys in the Lincoln where Trulenko was. They didn’t know. So then I asked their opinion about a smart first place to look. They said where he works.”

“Does he work?”

“Got to admit, I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“Maybe in exchange for hiding him. Maybe there’s no money left after all. Maybe he’s working his passage.”

“That would be a drag,” Reacher said.

“Why else would he work?”

“Maybe he was getting bored.”

“Possible.”

“What kind of work would he do?”